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He pauses, and my eyes mist over with red dots of rage.
"I'll pluck your little brother's clever brain out through his nostrils while he blinks up at me."
The phone call dies, and my hollow stare crosses the plane, meeting the dark gazes of my brothers. Their sense of danger fine-tuned to the discomfort in my usually unaffected manner, to the shaking of my rage-filled body.
I've failed them.
CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE
fawn
No one speakson the flight back to the District, to the city with so many secrets. The plane is a droning vessel of grief-stricken silence. I want to curl into a ball and sob. Want to moan at the possibility of our loss.
I want Clay.
My mind is drowning in blame.
Xander…
He's gone.Taken. I dart my gaze to Cassidy, who is staring heartbrokenly out of the plane's port-like window while an exhausted little Kelly lies in her lap. Cassidy combs her daughter's golden hair with her fingers.
Then I look at Shoshanna. She is rocking the bassinet in front of her with her red sneakers—easily removable footwear—while punching buttons on her phone, concentration furrowing her brows.
What must they think of me?
Sorry.
Sorry. It's a word I don't say often anymore because Clay despises the way it slips from me unbidden. But today, Iamto blame.
I'm so sorry.
God, I'm so sorry, Clay.
He was so busy protecting me…
He'll regret that one day.
Regret me.
When we land, there is a car waiting for each of us, and I separate from Cassidy and Shoshanna without a goodbye. Striding away from them with hardly an upwards glance, I'm unable to bear their feigned expressions that hide screams of accusation. My presence is like a nail in Xander's coffin.
Does my dad want me?
It was meant to be me.
Xander…
He was the one who taught me good things come in three— Where the hell are his? I try to breathe, to fight the boiling heat in my eyes, as I slide into the backseat with HJ. The door closes on us.
Twisting my hair around my finger, I swallow around the rising bile in my throat. I'm sick with grief that knots and twists inside me. That renders guilt and self-blame to my very marrow, to my core. To the parts of me that wanted to believe in Xander's advice.
There is no sequence of good things, Xander.
Only bad. This is number one.
Xander: Number one.
Gazing out of the window at this city, I watch the blissfully ignorant citizens filter the walkways of Connolly under the early morning sun. The separation between me and them, a thin pane of tinted glass, a soundproof and bulletproof partition—and knowledge.
