AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I press the sandwich into his hands. “No.”
“Call me, and let me come over next time.”
“Fuck no.”
“Yes.” Real irritation sharpens my brother’s voice. His eyes are mirrors of mine, but he hasn’t been sleeping. Dark smudges beneath his eyes are proof of that. “I don’t know what’s going on with Dad. And I—”
“Stop.”
“And I worry—”
“Jesus Christ.”
“I worry about you,” he finishes. “So stop being such a cagey asshole.”
I want to tell him about Daphne. In a heartbeat, I want that more than I want to tell him to get out of my life. It’s inexplicable. Frankly horrifying. I don’t need Sin’s help. I don’t need Will to live nearby. I don’t need anything, other than my home. My art.
My little painter.
It’s not in my power to be different. Sin should know that better than anyone. Being the son of a monster is a permanent state. My mind veers away from the comparisons. They’re deeper than I would admit to myself when my father paid his visit. If Sin stays much longer, he’ll bring up the reason he was in prison. He’ll speak the charges into open air. To paint the words on canvas would render it worthless. I don’t want that discussion in my house. It’s enough that Sin knows. That he saw my little painter in the flesh. Enough, enough.
“Get out of my house.”
“You’ll call me?” Sin walks by my side to the front door. I don’t know who he thinks he is, showing up at my house and demanding things of me. My brother, I suppose. Giving in would be easier. It would leave more energy for Daphne. I don’t know what the hell Sin wants out of all this, but maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s only another shift in the outside world that will ultimately have little effect inside the walls of this house.
“Fine.”
He blinks. “Do you mean that?”
I suppose he has some right to ask the question. Many of the conversations we had growing up weren’t meant to be permanent promises. They were only meant to get us through until my father unlocked the door. Those discussions were rare, anyway. He preferred to keep us separate. Separate boxes, separate locks. It was better to be alone, when the crumbling in my mind had more to do with confinement and less to do with being out.
Do I fucking mean it. Christ, Sin.
“If I mean it, will you get the fuck out of my house?”
The corner of Sin’s mouth quirks, but then he sobers. “Are you playing a game with her?”
“With who?” It’s part automatic response, part barb. It’s obviously not a game. The deadly reality of all this has settled over my skin like frigid water. I can’t shake it off. I don’t want to shake it off. I want to be submerged in it. Drowned, perhaps. If I experienced nothing but Daphne for the rest of my life, I’d count that as a victory.
“With Daphne.” Sin balances the scrambled egg sandwich in his hands as he steps into the porch. “Was she really serious about you keeping her here against her will?”
“No.”
He narrows his eyes. “Does she know that, Em? Or are you planning to make her see?”
“I’ll call you,” I tell him, and shut the door in his face. Sin lets out a string of curses on the other side. I don’t care. I want to know where my little painter went. If she has what she needs. Not all of it, at the moment. She needs the heat between us. The fight. When her feelings about her status here have evened out, she might see what we do for what it is. What it could be. Something more playful and less anguished. I could do that for her within those boundaries. It might be a relief.
I climb the stairs and glance into the other rooms on the way. Not here, not here, not here. I find her in her bedroom, looking out at the ocean. Sin, goddamn him, interrupted us when Daphne was losing it. All the things she did made my nerves light up. I want all those secrets from her lips.
She was that way last night.
“Come to the studio and paint.”
Daphne’s scoffs. “Definitely not. You’re a psycho. You kidnapped me. I’m not painting.”
“Yes, you are.”
Angling herself away from the window changes the light. It limns her dark hair in the hushed blue-white chill of the winter outside. In contrast, Daphne is warm. Alive. A petal pink in her cheeks and summer light in her eyes. I can’t begin to calculate the value. She’s beyond crude measurements involving money.
