Total pages in book: 155
Estimated words: 152045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 760(@200wpm)___ 608(@250wpm)___ 507(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 152045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 760(@200wpm)___ 608(@250wpm)___ 507(@300wpm)
I look at Kade, and he looks at me, and I don’t think it escapes either of our attentions the parallels between their story to ours. One brother in love and one angry. Losing each other and whatever remained being half-alive—in limbo—because of it. You don’t share a womb with someone and not have a bond made of iron. Sometimes that iron makes a shield. Sometimes it makes manacles. It can feel great, and it can hurt, but it’s always strong.
If Winslet’s really dead, the brothers know it, and they’re quite possibly still alive.
Someone in Weston must know where to find them.
I follow Kade out, back into Frosted. “You know who else spent time in Weston twenty years ago?” I ask, not waiting for an answer. “Ciaran.”
Dylan
“Thanks for helping,” I tell Aro.
I sit in a chair at my house in Weston—in the room Winslet slept in—and gaze up at Aro in the reflection of the makeup mirror she brought that sits on the desk. She stands behind me, fixing some waves in my hair with her curling iron.
She meets my eyes for just a moment. “It sucks around school without you.”
“I’m sure you’re the only one who thinks so.”
She shrugs. “They’ll get over it.”
I’m sure a few people miss me in classes, but there might be a grudge or two, despite Kade assuring me that everyone will know that it wasn’t me who vandalized the school.
It was me who stole the locker, and set off the fireworks. He hasn’t brought up either.
“You are coming back, right?” Aro asks, but it sounds more like a statement. “You can’t leave me there on my own.”
I laugh a little, fiddling with her lipsticks in the tote of stuff she brought. “My parents would never let me transfer my senior year.”
“Would you?”
I glance up at her and then back down, thinking. I convinced my parents to let me sleep here my last night, despite the fact that they know there was no adult supervision over the last two weeks, as long as I have a girls’ sleepover. Mace, Coral, and Codi happily agreed, so they’ll be staying here after the dance tonight. Hunter isn’t allowed in my room.
I had to leave his house before he and Kade made it back this morning, so I haven’t seen him. Mom and I went shopping for a dress, and then Aro and I came back here.
After my dad calmed down and he, Madoc, and Ciaran made us all breakfast, Dad just hugged me. He didn’t apologize for going ape shit, but he didn’t punish me, either, for lying about staying with a host family. I think no matter where I go or who I meet in life, I will always have met my match most with my dad. He needs to come to terms in his own time, like me. We can’t be forced.
“Actually, no,” I finally reply to Aro. “I mean, I wouldn’t hate it here, but I want to go back to the Falls and stand my ground.”
I’m ready to walk back into that school, and my house, and have the best year.
I suck in a long breath and look up at her as she crafts my hair into beautiful locks. “Where’d you learn how to do all this?”
My desk is covered in makeup and hair product. When I met her, she looked like a teenage guy starting his first metal band.
But she just smiles. “I always knew how to do all this. But when you steal cars and fence tech for a living, it’s best not to be noticed by people who consider women just as much of a commodity.”
“Right,” I murmur. Her lips are a dark pink, and her eyeliner make her eyes almost look like a cat’s. She’s gorgeous, and I can imagine she was around a lot of people whose attention she didn’t want.
She doesn’t talk about her life here in Weston much, but like Noah, she’s made big changes to chase the life she wants.
“Your first time…” I broach. “Was it okay?”
She releases a lock of hair and takes another in the clip of the curling iron. “I was fourteen.”
I narrow my eyes. “Did he…”
I don’t want to say it.
But she quickly adds, “He would’ve stopped if I’d asked him to.”
I release a breath.
“I was just too young to understand what I was agreeing to,” she points out.
“Do you regret it?”
“Regret is pointless,” she tells me. “I can’t change anything.”
She should tell that to my dad. He regrets so much, and I think he knows he projects it. He thinks I’ll regret racing and not going to college if I decide not to.
“But it was bad,” she goes on. “And the way he treated me afterward was bad. The feelings I have about it are bad. Sometimes I wish I didn’t have those memories.” She looks at me in the mirror. “Other times, I know they’re the reason that I realize exactly what I have in Hawke. He’s my love.”