by Lexi Ryan
“I think…” She tilts her face to the sky and growls in frustration. “I think I’ve been in love with you since sophomore English class. You went out of your way to make me laugh and make me smile.”
“Because I liked you,” I say softly. “I liked seeing you smile, and I thought someone should make you do it more.”
A bachelorette party files out of the bar and stumbles toward the Cavern, and Alex waits until they’re gone before she speaks again. “If she were still here and you chose me, maybe I could do it. Maybe I’d still be jealous of whatever time you’d had together, but I could do it.”
This ache in my chest is too big. Too much. “I’ve always wanted you, Alex. But we can’t have everything we want, and I couldn’t have you.”
“She’s dead, Sebastian. And when she was alive, you never showed any interest in me beyond friendship.”
I imagine if there was any heart left in my chest, she’d be tearing it apart now. But it’s already in pieces and entirely in her possession. “I wasn’t good for you.”
“Wasn’t that my decision to make?” Her eyes shimmer and her hands are in angry fists at her sides. “I never asked you to be anything more than you are. You were good enough for her. I can’t be her. I’m tired of trying to be. I just want to be me, and I want to be enough.”
That chisel she keeps poised against my heart makes impact, and this time it’s not just a crack. The rock in my chest crumbles into heavy shards that settle into my burning gut and leave my heart vulnerable and unprotected. “You’ve always been enough,” I whisper. “You’re better than enough. You’re all I’ve ever wanted, and you’re more than I deserve.” I close my eyes and look away. The pain on her face is too much to bear when I know no information I have will make it better.
“It wasn’t until after she was in the ground that you ever gave any indication you were interested in me. And I don’t blame you for that. No one would. But I know what that information will do to me, and I just can’t lie to myself. I can’t tell myself you’d be with me if she were still alive.”
I don’t know what to say—not when I can see on her face that every apology will fall short. “If I could go back in time… If I could change the decisions I made… But there’s no point. I can’t. For the record, you were always precious to me. Maybe you were her opposite. Maybe that’s what drew me to you, and during one of the most selfish times in my life, you were the only one I cared enough about to make a decision that wasn’t entirely selfish. I made a decision to stay away from you, a decision not to let you close, a decision not to kiss you before you went to Colorado and not to beg you to stay to be with me. You saved me, Alex. This life I have, every good fucking thing I have? I wouldn’t have any of it if it hadn’t been for you. I told you I didn’t deserve you, and now you know why.”
She presses the flat of her palm against her chest. “Why didn’t you just tell me the truth to begin with? Why pretend to be my friend and keep your relationship with her a secret?”
I shake my head, willing her to see it the way I do…the way I did. “The secret was the drugs, the dark path I set her on and she never escaped. The other stuff was meaningless. To me, it was meaningless. We fucked around, it’s true, but it was never like what I felt with you.” She won’t look at me, and I’m falling apart inside, each of those chunks from the rock around my heart digging its way out through my stomach. “I want you to understand the secrecy was to protect my family. It was never because I was in love with her. Tell me why you won’t believe that. Tell me why you can’t forgive me for this when you forgave me for everything else.”
She wraps her arms around herself and lifts her chin as she looks me in the eye. “Because she was pregnant when she died. Because she was having your baby, and I’ll never be able to look at you without thinking about that.”
Chapter Forty
Alexandra
It’s been almost four years since I’ve had this horrible darkness sitting on my chest. It reminds me of those early days after the fire, when I was still in the hospital—days when I couldn’t decide if I was happy they got to me in time or resentful that I had to continue with this pain, these scars, this body while Martina was free of it.
In those early days, my grief was like poison in the air, and breathing felt like torture. Grieving was anger and selfishness and resentment, and so fucking much self-pity I thought I might choke on it.
But at the same time it was a heavy, unwieldy beast I had to carry on my shoulders. It was forcing myself to thank God for sparing me when I wanted to curse him. It was watching them lower half of my heart into the earth and being still when I wanted to jump in after her. It was the guilt of living and the heart-stopping reminders that there would be no more Christmases, no more laughter, no more fights.
And today my grief is watching the shock on Sebastian’s face after saying that Martina was pregnant. Did he not know? Or is this horror in his eyes from his realization that I knew?
“It wasn’t mine,” he says when he finally speaks.
“Don’t.” My chest aches so much that I rub it as if that might soothe the hurt. “Don’t throw shade on a dead girl by denying—”
Shaking his head, he takes my shoulders in his hands. “We never slept together.”
“What?”
“We never had sex, and when Martina died, I hadn’t been involved with her in months. I wasn’t messing around with her or getting high with her. Nothing.”
“Then who was she with?”
“I don’t know.” He presses a kiss to the top of my head, and the tenderness in the gesture threatens to break me into pieces. “I’m so sorry. I should have protected her. I should have done something to keep her from getting too deep.”
It wasn’t his baby.
“Let me take you home.” He cups my face in his hands and tilts it up so I’m looking at him. “Please, I fucking love you more than air.”
I gasp. I should be deliriously happy at those words. Instead, it’s the most painful thing I’ve ever heard because it’s a love I can’t accept.
“I need you,” he whispers. “Let’s talk this out. We can get through this.”
“I can’t, Bash.” I shake my head. “I’m sorry if my feelings don’t make sense to you, but I’m not okay, and I can’t just let you take me home and kiss away all these doubts.” I step out of his grasp, and his hands fall to his sides, his chest rising and falling in measured breaths.
I love him, but if I disregard my heartache now, it’ll always live between us. I have to walk away.
* * *
Sebastian
I wait until closing time and follow Logan up to his office. The door’s unlocked, and when I go inside, I find him behind his desk working at the computer.
I close the door behind me and lock it so no one will interrupt us.
Logan looks to me and arches a brow. “Can I help you?”
“Yes.”
Sighing, he stands. “What do you want, Sebastian?”
“I want you to stay away from her.”
“Why? So you can have her for yourself? So you can come clean about what happened and convince her to forgive you and live happily ever after? You think that’s how it’ll work?”
“There aren’t any secrets between us,” I say. “Not anymore.”
He steeples his fingers and watches me over them. “You can trust me with her. I won’t hurt her. And if you really care about her, you’ll step back and let her live her life without her sister’s mistakes hanging over her.”
That’s the knife that cuts into me every night when I try to sleep. “I want her to be happy.”
“Then let her be with me. I can take care of her. I can make her happy.”
I want to punch him in the face and tell him to stay away from her, but that’s only because the logical part of my brain knows he’s right.
Chapter Forty-One
Alexandra
My hangover on Sunday morning is nothing compared to
the hollow ache in my chest that comes every morning since I learned about Sebastian and my sister.
I have a text from Logan, checking in on me. He wanted to drive me home last night—he was worried about me—but I got a ride with Bailey. I didn’t want to talk and I knew she’d understand, whereas Logan seems determined to get me to open up. It’s sweet, but I’m not ready.
Everything I told Sebastian last night is true. As much as I want to believe that it doesn’t matter that he was with Martina first, there’s a part of me that’ll always wonder if he’d choose me. Maybe that makes me the lowest kind of petty. Maybe I’m looking for excuses. Because I’m scared that if he was with her for any period of time, he knows how good she was—without the drugs and without the addiction, an amazing person who made your life feel fuller just by being close to you. Maybe deep down inside I’m afraid he’ll spend time with me and realize that I won’t ever be her, realize that I fall short.
Or maybe it all comes down to this dark secret I carry. That I should’ve been the one by the door when we were ten and our uncle came into our room. That I should’ve been the one searching for an escape all those years.
The secret fear that if fate were fair, I would’ve been the one to die in the fire.
Maybe that dark, horrible secret won’t be a secret anymore. Because there’s only one thing worse than having all that ugliness hiding behind my thoughts and waiting for me when the nights are long and sleep is elusive—the idea that someone else might agree.
“You’re pathetic,” I mutter. I wash my face and make myself a cup of coffee. I pad out to the living room, where I take a seat on the couch and stare at the stack of journals.
If Sebastian wasn’t with Martina in the end, why did he have her journal? And why does he have that tattoo on his back? And who is the father of her baby? It never mattered to me before I knew about Sebastian, but now it feels significant.
I grab the journal I left off with, skimming the pages and reading about movies we saw and how much she hates our big brothers, and on the next page how much she loves them. I shake my head as I flip through, then I shove the whole stack to the side and let it spill to the floor as I grab the bottom journal. This is the journal she wrote in the year before she died. This is the journal Sebastian had.
I thought I needed to start at the beginning. But maybe for Martina I need to start at the end.
Taking a deep breath, I open the cover and frown when I see the sticky note on the front page.
Dear Sebastian,
If anything happens to me. Please make sure Alex gets this. I’m scared. I screwed up—a lot of things, but mostly not sharing my life with her lately. If something happens, I want her to know my story. I trust you to do the right thing.
Seeing his name in her handwriting does something to me, and I have to close the book, put it back on the coffee table, and focus on my breathing for long minutes. Suddenly this isn’t about jealousy. It isn’t about who Sebastian would choose if we were both here. Because seeing his name in her handwriting made me imagine for a moment a life where I get them both. I remember Martina warning me off Sebastian, but she was trying to protect me from the life he was involved in. I want to tell my sister that he’s changed. I want her here next to me so I can tell her I’m in love. I want to tell her about how he makes me feel when we’re in bed together, the way he held me as I fell asleep.
I want the life where I get to be with Sebastian and I get to share my happiness with my sister.
I just fucking miss her.
“Just do it,” I whisper. I grab the journal, open to the first page, and start reading.
* * *
Martina’s Journal
I’m scared.
That’s probably a bad sign—two entries in a row with those words. But I didn’t know scared last time. This is a whole new level of fear.
Mr. Bedroom Eyes told me that he was taking me for an abortion. An abortion? I don’t even understand how he could say it so callously. He said it the way he’d say, “We’re going to stop for gas on the way home.”
I come from a big family. There were six of us, and my parents treated each kid like a miracle. Call me naïve, but that’s the way I see this pregnancy. A miracle.
I understand that some women and some situations call for abortions, but this isn’t one of them. He has plenty of money. We’d be fine, we’d make it work. Maybe he’d need to step away from the drug scene but…that would be a relief, wouldn’t it? He could finally leave his wife. We could be like a normal couple.
I told him no.
And he hit me again.
I swung back this time, a bad-ass woman who won’t be a victim. I’m so sick of being a fucking victim. I nailed him. Right in the jaw. Then he tackled me to the floor and sat on my chest, his knees on either side of my arms, his hand around my neck.
He squeezed. I thought he was going to kill me. I couldn’t breathe. And those beautiful eyes that I fell so hard for looked right into mine as he said, “You’ll fucking do as I say, or I’ll be done with you.”
I went crazy. I told him I was going to go to the police. I told him I’d tell them everything, that I knew enough to put him away for years.
“Like hell you will,” he said. He pulled my hair, and some came out. I tried to fight him, but he was too strong. I tried to get him off me.
The last thing I remember is the back of his hand against my cheek.
I woke up with a sore jaw, a fat lip, and an eye that was already swelling shut. He beat me unconscious, and I can’t even remember anything beyond the first blow.
When I found the strength to get out of bed, there was a note. He left me a diamond bracelet on the counter beside a vase of red roses. He always gets red roses. Never anything else.
I love you, baby, the note said. Please don’t disobey me. It hurts me so much.
I’m scared, and I don’t know how to get away from him. He called and told me I need to meet him tonight at this house where I know some of his guys cook meth. I don’t know if he’s going to have some black market doctor there to cut out my baby or if he has something equally horrible planned, but I’m going. Not because I want to see him or because I accept his fucking apology, but because I’m afraid if I don’t, he’ll kill me.
I’m going to drop this journal off at Sebastian’s house. Because if he finds it, I’m dead.
Chapter Forty-Two
Sebastian
After class Monday, I go to the jail to see Dad. He asked for Mom, but she told me she doesn’t want to look at him. I wish I could be so lucky.
“Thanks for showing up at court last week,” Dad says with a sneer. He’s dressed in the orange jumpsuit the jail gave him. It’s weird to see my dad like this, but the vindictive part of me feels like the uniform suits him.
I take a seat at the table across from him and nod to the guard. “You thought I was going to come support you?” I shake my head. “Been there. Done that. No. We had a deal, and you broke it.”
He stares at me for a long beat. “I’ve worked hard my whole fucking life, Sebastian. You have no idea the things I’ve sacrificed to take care of this family. I risked everything so you could have clothes on your back and hot food in your mouth.”
I’ve heard this speech before. I used to buy it. This time, I want to spit his words back at him. “What was your excuse this time?”
“I don’t have one,” he says between clenched teeth. He eyes the guard before looking at me again. “I’ve agreed to work with the FBI in exchange for a lighter sentence. It’ll happen this afternoon, but until then you need to look out for Alexandra. That man’s got his eye on her.”
“What man? What will happen this afternoon?”
“They’ll get the arrest warrant for Logan Lucas.”
“What?”
“I’m small potatoes, Sebastian. He’s the man they want.”
* * *
Alexandra
I’m halfway through Martina’s journal when there’s
a knock on the door. I don’t want to put it down. I feel like my sister’s next to me telling me a story, and how dare someone interrupt me when I’m talking to my sister?
I run my finger over the words Mr. Bedroom Eyes and frown. When Sebastian told me he hadn’t been with Martina for months before she died and the baby wasn’t his, I believed him. Believing him wasn’t the problem. But now that I’ve read two entries about “Mr. Bedroom Eyes,” I want to know who this guy is whom she refers to only in code.
She talks about going to Indianapolis with him, about their days away together and their extravagant weekends, and I wonder, if I keep reading, will I find out where she went when she ran away? Was she with him? Will she tell me who he is? He’s older and married, and I have this sick feeling in my stomach that it might be Sebastian’s dad. The idea makes my stomach churn.
The bell rings again, and with a sigh I close the journal and go to open the door. Logan’s standing on Mr. Patterson’s front porch with a bouquet of red roses and a jewelry box. He offers me the flowers, and I grin, shaking my head. “What are you doing here?”
He lifts one shoulder in a sloppy shrug. “You were sad last night,” he says. “And I couldn’t stand it. Can you blame a guy for wanting to spoil the girl he’s really into?”
I soften. “Logan, you’re so sweet, but I can’t…”
“Can’t what? Can’t take these flowers and put them in a vase? Can’t wear this necklace?” He opens the box, and the sunlight catches on the diamonds inside.
Mr. Bedroom Eyes bought me a diamond necklace. It has three-quarter-carat diamonds, each situated on a trio of golden petals.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, stepping into the house. “You don’t like it?”
