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Then I swing it around to my brother.
“I’m honestly not sure who to shoot first. I wonder who’ll be faster at getting the gun from me once I make my choice. Jax, you’re stronger, but Mercer’s probably faster. So…”
I point the gun back to Mercer.
“I think I’d like to kill you last. Make you suffer,you selfish prick.”
Jaxson lets out an impatient sigh. “Cara,” says my brother in that annoying and exasperating Jaxson way as he looks at Mercer. “Would have been a shit ton less trouble if you’d have used her instead of getting her to lure Ivy in for your fucked-up revenge plan.”
“Orion, if you don’t shut your fucking mouth,” Mercer says, “I’ll take the gun and shoot you myself.”
“You were both in on this together with Cara, weren’t you? That’s why all of this started in the first place.” A small sob breaks free.
“No, it’s not like that,” Jaxson/Orion says.
“Then what exactly is it like? You both lied to me. Mercer listened to me tell him how guilty I felt over you so many times, over everything, and the whole time, he knew you were alive. Did you both have a good laugh at my expense?”
“Fuck.” My brother turns, runs a hand over his shaved head, and kicks back in a chair, clearly having decided I’m not going to shoot him first. “This is your mess, Merce.”
Mercer looks at me and I grit my teeth, refusing to let his whiskey-colored eyes melt me down the way they always do. “Ivy, we work for the same organization. I thought he was dead until someone came to me and told me he was alive.”
Jaxson holds up his hand. “I’m that someone.”
“Shut up, Jaxson,” I say. “Or I’ll shoot you. I mean it. Elise and I have already mourned you. No one will give a shit. Definitely not Mercer. He’s made it perfectly clear that he only cares about himself. And a dead girl. The same one you used to date. Right, Mercer?”
He conveniently sidesteps that comment. Mercer, the most gorgeous man I’ve met, the man I’m stupidly in love with, doesn’t deny a single thing I said, and a rage like the biggest hurricane on the planet sweeps through me.
“I knew. And I didn’t say anything. But I also told you who I am and what I am, and you didn’t listen.”
“Because she’s always been in love with you, dipshit,” Jaxson grumbles.
Mercer snatches the gun from me, makes sure that it’s loaded, and then points it at my brother. “I will shoot you, Jax. I fucking swear. So shut the fuck up.”
Then as he’s about to stuff the gun into the back of his pants, I shake my head and hold out my hand. He hesitates for only a sliver of a moment before handing it to me.
“Jesus Christ.” Jaxson throws up his hands.
“She has a right to shoot us if she wants, and you know it.”
With that one sentence I know he knows I won’t do it.
“I’m an idiot,” I whisper. “A total idiot.”
Mercer’s face is dark with thunder and inexplicable pain. Probably because I ruined his plans.
“I think…I think the worst thing is you let me pour out all my pain, you listened, you nodded, and the whole time, you could have made it all go away by telling me he’s alive. And Jaxson?”
He gets up and approaches me cautiously. I narrow my eyes at him. That’s definitely guilt on his face. To me, he’s easy to read. “You could have come to me, told me you’re alive. But you didn’t. You just went off to live your life without bothering to give a second thought about the family you left behind, for whatever the hell reason.”
Suddenly a lightning bolt of realization hits me. Cara’s roommate telling me about the mysterious boyfriend. My brother knowing Cara.
I gasp. “Wait, you were seeing Cara?”
Jaxson shrugs. “Yeah, but?—”
“What?” I narrow my eyes. “Do you even care she’s gone?”
“I care about that.”
