by Callie Rose
We collapse against each other, our bodies spent and exhausted, and I rest my head on his shoulder as I try to catch my breath.
I don’t ask him for any more secrets. In fact, we don’t speak for a long time.
But my mind keeps replaying his words over and over, and images of things I never even knew I might want keep flitting through my head.
Maybe it was just dirty talk, the kind of thing you say in the middle of sex that doesn’t really mean anything. But it didn’t feel like it. We may have been fucking while we talked, but that doesn’t make the conversation we just had any less real.
I asked a question.
And he answered it.
7
I’ve never really given a lot of thought to the families of accused murderers. The news reports always focus on the murderer themselves, or the victim, so I never quite considered how much something like this totally upends the life of everyone connected to the accused.
My mom is innocent.
I fucking know it, and I’d know it even if I hadn’t seen the actual murderer with my own two eyes.
But no one at my school knows that, and most of them probably wouldn’t even care to learn the actual truth. With my mom in jail and me walking the halls, they’ve got everything they could possibly need right in front of them.
They’ve got an explanation for Iris’s death—some way to process the senseless brutality of life and how it can be stolen away so quickly.
And they have someone to direct their anger toward.
Iris was a bitch to me, but she was popular at this school, and absence makes the heart grow infinitely fonder. Even people who didn’t like her all that much when she was alive hate me now, just for being the daughter of the woman who supposedly killed her.
On Monday, I walk into the girls’ bathroom on the second floor only to find writing all over the walls and mirrors. Slurs and insults about both me and my mom are spelled out in dripping red paint.
It’s stupid. It’s nothing—just words.
But my heart lurches in my chest anyway, and I rush out of the bathroom, shaking with shock and rage. I find another bathroom on the far side of the building, but when I push the door open, slashes of red paint scream at me from the walls in here too.
Whoever did this is a fucking overachiever. They hit every ladies’ room in the school, and because there are no security cameras in the bathrooms, the school admins can’t even find and punish whoever it is.
Maybe that’s why Principal Osterhaut goes so hard on the girl who shoves me into a bank of lockers later that day—to make an example of her. I find out on Tuesday that the girl was suspended for the rest of the week, and I notice flyers go up on several bulletin boards around the school detailing what the punishment will be for harassment and bullying.
I notice there’s nothing on the flyers asking students to just be decent fucking human beings. Instead, it’s all about what will happen to them if they break the rules, what the punishment will be, up to and including expulsion.
And what do you know? It works.
The janitors clean up the bathrooms by Tuesday afternoon, and by Wednesday, the worst of the bullying has stopped. Which is a relief, because if it went on any longer, Lincoln, River, Dax, and Chase were definitely gonna get themselves expelled trying to go after each of my attackers.
That doesn’t mean school becomes pleasant though. I’m still buried under a mountain of homework, still obsessing over how to find the man in black, and still hated by half the student population. And just because they’re not actively targeting me doesn’t mean they’ve welcomed me back into their good graces with open arms.
It’s like someone turned the thermostat in the entire school down to negative fifty.
I’ve started riding to and from campus with Linc again, and the kings meet me in the hall between classes when they can. There are at least four people at this school who don’t hate me, but there are way, way more than that who do.
It’s draining in a way I wouldn’t have expected.
By Friday, I can’t take it anymore. I’m dying for the fucking weekend to get here already, and I just need some time alone, so I skip lunch and head to my favorite spot under the bleachers.
It never did snow, but it’s gray and cold today, with a wind that seems to change direction every few minutes so I can never quite brace myself against it.
I slip under the scaffolding of the bleachers and drop my backpack on the ground before grabbing a seat. I dig into the side pocket of my bag for the half-smoked joint in a little plastic baggie, but before I can light it, movement in my periphery makes me turn my head.
Dax and Chase grin at me, heads ducked to peer under the metal structure.
“Jesus.” I shake my head, but a smile spreads across my face before I can stop it. “Do you guys have a tripwire set up on the path over here or something? How the fuck do you always know when I’m out here?”
“Sorry, Low. Can’t say.” Chase chuckles, maneuvering his wide shoulders through the obstacle course of metal bars as he makes his way toward me. “A magician never reveals his secrets.”
“Oh, you’re a magician now?”
“Are you impressed?”
“By you? Always.”
I smirk and lean back, sparking my lighter and taking a deep drag from the joint as the cherry glows red-orange.
His gaze drops to my lips as I finish inhaling, and he watches me press them together for a long beat before I form a soft O with my mouth, releasing the smoke. There’s a hungry look on his face, and I can’t tell if it’s because he wants the joint or something else.
Trying to banish the images that spring to my mind at that thought, I offer him the small rolled cigarette as Dax settles in next to his brother.
“You know you’re gonna have to find another place to go once winter really hits though, right?” Dax adds, taking the joint when Chase passes it. “I don’t know what it’s like in Arizona, but it gets fucking cold here. Plus, the maintenance crews only snowblow the sidewalks and parking lot. They never touch the athletic fields, much less under the bleachers.”
I groan. “Can’t I just build an igloo out here or something?”
A smile tilts his lips, and his green eyes glint as he leans forward to offer me back the joint. “Sure. That’ll work.”
Our fingertips brush as I take it, and like always, I’m conscious of every little touch. Maybe he is too, because it takes us a lot longer to make the hand-off than it should, as if we’re both lingering in the moment.
“So what made you want to hide out here today?” Chase asks, his voice lower than before, less teasing.
I glance over at him. “I’m not hidi—”
Before I can even finish my sentence, his eyebrows shoot up, calling bullshit on me without words.
My cheeks puff out as I release a breath. “Fine. I’m hiding.”
“From what?”
I take a long drag from the joint before answering. It’s almost gone, so I’m careful when I hand it over to Chase, our fingertips brushing softly too.
“I don’t know. People. Everything.”
Wrapping my arms around myself, I hesitate, glancing back and forth between the two boys, the two almost-mirror-images. I’m not sure quite when it happened, but somewhere along the line, this cramped spot under the bleachers became our little confessional. It’s more than just my haven, it’s a place where all three of us let our guards down.
Lincoln and River know I sneak out here, but the ones who always come for me, who always meet me here, are Dax and Chase.
I kind of like it.
It’s ours.
“Yeah.” Dax nods, and even though his voice is teasing, there’s sympathy in his eyes. “People and everything are the worst.”
“Anyone whose asses we need to kick?” Chase throws in, and he’s not teasing at all. I’m pretty sure if I named a name, he and Dax would disappear in a heartbeat, and whoever’s name I’d uttered would be real
ly fucking sorry.
“No.” I shake my head, sucking in a lungful of cold air. It’s chilly enough that our breath puffs out of our mouths like smoke, even though Dax just finished off the joint. “I just hate this. I hate it so fucking much. Everyone in that building thinks my mom is a murderer. Even the ones who don’t hate me for it still think she did it.”
Dax glances back toward the school, his hands tightening into fists, like maybe he’ll go on a rampage even without me naming names. I try to gather my unraveling emotions back around me, but it’s getting harder and harder to do that these days.
“I know… I know you bought us time. If whoever killed Iris thinks no one’s looking for him, he won’t come after us or try to stop us. But—” My jaw clenches. “How much time will we need? If my mom goes to trial—if she gets convicted—while I’m still looking for clues… I mean, Jesus, who am I, Sherlock fucking Holmes? What made me think I can do this?”
“You’re not gonna have to do it alone, Low,” Chase promises. “We’ll help. You know that, right?”
They’ve already been helping, combing through the long list we made last weekend and trying to find any connections between the men on that list and Iris.
“I know.” I thread my fingers through my hair, pressing at the sides of my head like it’ll help keep my thoughts contained. “I just can’t lose her. She’s my mom. She’s my… my best friend.”
Two hands reach out to rest on my knees, and this is becoming way too familiar—the feeling of these two boys comforting me.
We sit in silence for a few moments, and they let me pull myself together, blinking back tears and forcing my shoulders to relax. When I’m a little less close to freaking out, Chase cocks his head, squinting at me.
“How old is your mom, anyway?”
My eyebrows shoot up, and I glance at him sharply. “You better not be about to call her a MILF. Osterhaut can expel me for it if he wants, but I’ll kick your ass.”
His eyes widen. He makes a choked noise and then belts out a laugh, still half-coughing. “What? Jesus, no. I wasn’t gonna call her a MILF. That would be extremely fucking disturbing, considering I’ve sort of got a thing for her daughter.”
The copper-haired boy shakes his head, still chuckling, as I blink at him. He doesn’t seem to realize what he just said, or maybe he thinks it’s no big deal—or maybe he thinks I already know.
But although my entire body reacted to his statement, my nerves singing like live wires, my heart pounding out an uneven rhythm, he and Dax both seem perfectly relaxed.
His blue eyes dance with amusement as he rubs his hand over the back of his neck. “It was just the thing you said about being best friends with her. I can see that. I thought maybe it was because she was young for being a mom.”
“Oh.” I shake my head, dragging my attention back to the conversation with extreme effort. “Yeah, she is. I think that is part of it. My dad left a little while after I was born, so it’s always been just the two of us. And I went through che—I mean, we went through some tough times when I was little. She did so much for me. We’ve always been each other’s… everything.”
I glance up, wondering if either of the boys caught my stutter before I corrected myself. None of the kings of Linwood know about my leukemia, not even Linc. I don’t quite know why I haven’t mentioned it yet, only that it’s something I usually keep private, that I don’t broadcast to strangers.
But as Lincoln pointed out, we’re not fucking strangers anymore.
Now it’s more that I just don’t know how to talk about it, when to mention it, or what to say that doesn’t make me sound like I’m asking for pity.
“That’s cool.” Dax nods, looking genuinely impressed. Maybe even a little envious. “That you have that. That you’re so close.”
My brows pull together. The chill in the air is seeping through my coat into my bones, and I know it’s because I’m a sissy about cold after living in Arizona my whole life, but I’m shivering. I don’t want to go inside yet though. I don’t want to leave this little bubble Dax and Chase and I have created.
“You guys aren’t close with your parents?”
I’ve met their folks at Mr. and Mrs. Black’s cocktail parties—if taking their coats and ushering them into the ballroom can be called “meeting”. I didn’t really get a great read on their personalities though, except that they seem sophisticated and a little uptight.
Chase laughs again, the sound filling the cramped, intimate space beneath the bleachers.
“Close with them? Fuck, no. I’m pretty sure they only had kids because it was what all their friends were doing. They just didn’t wanna fall behind, you know?”
“And instead of one kid they didn’t really want, they ended up with two. A minute and ten seconds after I was born, this ugly fucker popped out.”
Dax nudges Chase with his shoulder, and both twins grin.
I have a feeling calling each other “ugly” has been a joke between them since the moment they realized they look almost identical.
“Huh. That kinda sucks,” I murmur, trying to imagine what my life would’ve been like if my mom didn’t want me. I can’t even picture it, honestly. She’s given up so much of herself to take care of me, done more for me than I can ever repay, and she’s never once made me feel like she resents me for it.
“Yeah.” Chase shrugs, not seeming all that broken up about it. He’s probably used to it by now. “But hell, that’s why I’m glad I got a twin. At least I’ve always had somebody.”
He says that casually too, the same way he threw out the fact that he has a thing for me, but I know there’s a lot behind his words.
They may not have had parents who were loving or invested in them, but they’ve always had each other.
I purse my lips, shifting my gaze between them. “Are you guys one of those sets of twins that has like their own language or whatever?”
They share a look, grinning, and I realize they probably don’t need their own language—not a spoken one, anyway. They seem to communicate entire sentences through a single glance.
“Nah.” Dax shakes his head, turning back to me. “What are we, nerds?”
“But we did get matching tattoos last year,” Chase adds.
My mouth drops open with gleeful surprise. “Oh my God, you are nerds!”
Dax arches a brow. “We are extremely cool. And tattoos are badass.”
“Not inherently,” I shoot back, still grinning widely. “Depends what they are. Maybe you got matching tattoos of Disney princesses.”
“You wanna see?”
“Yeah. Show me.”
The high has settled into my system by now, and it’s taking the edge off my anxiety and stress. I even feel a little less cold, although I wince in sympathy when the copper-haired boys unzip their coats.
It occurs to me as they’re tossing their outer layers aside that maybe I should’ve asked where the tattoos were before I demanded to see them, and when their hands move toward the waistbands of their jeans, my breath hitches in my throat.
But each boy just grabs the hem of his shirt, pulling it up and over his head.
My greedy gaze takes in the broad, defined muscles of their chests and arms. They’re both lightly tanned, their golden skin at odds with the gray, drab light that filters down through the bleachers. But I don’t see any tattoos.
I’m about to call their bluff when the two boys turn around, their movements eerily synchronized.
Oh.
There they are.
I saw Dax and Chase shirtless the first time I ever met them, in the pool house the day I kicked River’s phone into the water. But I only saw their chests, and I was actively trying not to stare at any of the boys, so I never caught a glimpse of their ink then. When I saw them with the girl between them in the upstairs bedroom of the Black house during Linc’s party, it was too shadowy in the room to make out much.
So I’ve never seen these tattoos before. If I had, I would’ve rem
embered them.
Matching dark ink covers the left side of each boy’s upper back, spreading out from his spine to cover his entire shoulder blade and the broad planes of his back muscles. It’s an intricate design, full of whirling patterns and shades of black and gray.
“Wait… is that…?”
I scoot closer to them, squinting slightly and reaching out to run the fingertips of each hand over the two ornate designs. Both boys stiffen slightly beneath my touch, and maybe it’s because my hands are cold, but I don’t think that’s the only reason.
“You caught it already?” Dax’s voice is lower than it was before, slightly raspy. “You’re good. Some people never see it.”
“Yeah, I can see it. I just…”
My voice trails off as I continue to trace the two pieces of ink.
They’re matching designs. Or at least, that’s what they look like at first glance.
But closer examination reveals that they’re actually more like complementary designs. The general shape is the same, but there are little pieces that are missing from one but filled out in the other, lines in one that correlate to shapes in the other tattoo.
They’re beautiful. Each design stands on its own, but when you look at them side-by-side, study them closely, they paint a deeper picture than either one can by itself.
“Holy shit,” I breathe. “That’s fucking amazing. Did you design this?”
Chase’s shoulders shift as he chuckles. “Ha. No way. If Dax designed it, it would’ve looked like a five-year-old’s first attempt at finger painting.”
“Like you could do better, asshole?” Dax punches his twin in the arm before craning his neck to look at me over his shoulder. “We came up with the concept and commissioned an artist to do it for us.” His full lips tilt up in a smile. “Although a Disney princess was our second choice.”
I snort, my hands still moving over the smooth muscles of their backs as I compare the two tattoos. “Well, you’ve still got room on the other side.”
They both laugh at that, and something in my chest unclenches a little more.
Goose bumps rise on their skin from the cold air, but neither of the twins makes a move to pull away from my touch, letting me look my fill.
