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“She’s in a psychiatric hospital. She was never the same after my brother died in the fire,” I say, my throat tightening. “The doctors called it a psychotic break, but it was really just a broken heart. She couldn’t face reality. I don’t blame her. Dad tried to take care of her here after they were forced out of the city. Tried to find natural medicines for her, but nothing worked. He built this place for the both of them. Made a deal with the local Native American tribe to lease some of their land in exchange for the last of his money the feds were chasing.”
My father’s financial and professional ruin is still a sore subject for me. How one man could go from being as rich as a God–as rich as a Capulet, for that matter–to destitute in a single move is as much of a mindfuck now as it was when I was a kid and went from having a silver spoon in my mouth to sleeping on a paper-thin mattress on the floor of my foster family’s cramped house in the fucking projects. I still smelled like smoke and ash when the social worker dropped me off with my new family and told me my parents had fled San Francisco without me.
I didn’t even know my baby brother had perished in the fire until my foster mother took me to his funeral.
My new sister, born healthy just hours ago, might be a miracle, but she’s not the only baby on my mind.
Something lights, sparks, at the corner of my vision, and all at once I’m hauled back there. Back to the fire.
There’s too much fire, too much flame. It chews at the hem of my pajamas, licks at the Thomas the Tank Engine socks on my feet. The roar of it is louder than I can yell, which is loud, fucking frantic. Hands around my wrists, voices in my ears. Two men dragging me back from the burning house. One of them stomps down hard on one of my feet and I howl in pain but keep trying to break free. “I’m sorry,” he shouts, heat blooming over my face. “Your socks were on fire. Get him out of here. We have to get him out of here.” My argument is a wordless scream. They have to get my baby brother, or they have to let me go in for him, and they don’t do either of those things. Outside, my mother screams, restrained by more men whose faces I don’t remember, as the house burns, as my brother turns to ash, as everything I’ve ever known is wiped away in one cruel, savage blaze.
I shake myself back into the present. That’s not happening here. The house is fine. My dad’s new baby daughter is fine. We’re all fine.
Is Avery fine?
I turn on my side to look at her. She’s still looking up through the window, starlight on her face. I can tell she’s thinking about him.
“You want to talk about your brother?” I don’t want to talk about mine, but I do. It only seems fair. She listens to the story and reaches up to brush away another tear.
She laughs through another wave of tears, then blinks them away. “I don’t know why I’m laughing. He—” A deep breath. “He was like a doll. But they wouldn’t let me hold him. My aunt said it would be worse if I did. I just held his hand instead. His arm was so heavy … there was no life in it, you know? It felt nothing like I’d imagined a baby’s hand would feel. I didn’t realize that it was until today, when I held...that baby. That baby who was alive. She was so full of life.” Avery swallows hard, and I can’t stand being this far away from her.
I gather her up in my arms. The commune might be fucked up, but they have clean sheets. And I have Avery. What more could I ask for?
“It’s a mindfuck, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” She’s silent for a few minutes and I get caught up in how alivesheis. How warm and breathing and not tortured. “Rome.”
“Yeah?”
“I can’t believe we got out of there. Out of that place. I thought we’d die down there. When I close my eyes, for a moment, I’m still always there.”
My mind tries to force me into another flashback, and fuck that. I fight off the echo of her screams and the stains of blood and that mattress.We aren’t there.
Here, there are sheets. We have pillows. This isn’t a dank basement. We can see the sky instead of just trying to imagine it. Better to focus on the future, even if that looks dicey as fuck, too.
“What do you think’s going to happen?” My mouth has gone dry and I swallow a few times to get myself back to a semblance of normal. “When your family figures out where you are.”
Avery turns so her back is pressed against my chest and lets out a deep sigh. She traces my wrist with her finger, then locks her fingers into mine. “They have a plan. It’ll only take them a minute to force me to marry my cousin, or somebody else they choose. The Capulet agenda will rule, as always.” She laughs, the sound turning bitter. “And now, since I’ve destroyed those embryos, they’ll make me actually get pregnant with whoever they choose. I’m trapped. It’s just a matter of time.”
Tension moves through all her muscles, one by one, and I start at her shoulders and rub it out until it’s gone. There is a solution to this. It’s an obvious one.
“You know, Aves, they can’t force you to get married if you’re already married.”
She twists around to look me in the eyes, but she can’t stop herself from touching me. My hair. My cheekbone. My lips. “Don’t joke, Rome.”
“I’m not joking. I’ve wanted to marry you since we were kids, notwithstanding that decade I fucking hated you.”
Avery smiles. “You could sign up for a lifetime of hating me.”
“I could hate you at my leisure.” I kiss her forehead and pull back. “I could hate you as my wife, and you know how marriage works—there’s no way out of it.”
“No way out,” she echoes, and her expression shifts.
We’re not joking anymore.
I’m not fucking joking.
I scramble out of the bed, looking for...looking for anything. There—a flower in a vase.
