I hear Eva come in through the foyer. She puts a hand on my shoulder and tries to control her breathing. “I couldn’t get here in time.” Regret colors her voice. “Are you okay?”
“I didn’t see anything.” I’m numb with relief, and with confusion. “He made me stay upstairs.”
“That’s good,” she whispers.
Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. It’s impossible to say. All I know is that I couldn’t have stopped what happened in here. It looks like a crime scene. The aftermath of a battle. All I heard was a noise in the hall, and when I opened my door, Gerard was standing there along with twenty people from Leo’s security team. They wouldn’t let me come down until it was over.
My sister smooths back her hair. Takes another deep breath. Her expression calms. Eva slides her coat off her shoulders and hands it to me. When she steps into the room, I follow her.
Eva approaches my brother slowly. Carefully. Leo doesn’t look up at her. Neither does Haley. I don’t know where she learned how to do this. How to just—walk into a room like this, where something has clearly gone wrong, where there is so much emotion in the air that it’s hard to breathe. Eva kneels down in front of Leo and puts a hand on his shin.
His arms tighten around Haley. “She’s not leaving,” he says. “Ever.”
“No,” Eva answers. “But I think it’s time to go upstairs.”
“No one touches her.” Leo still hasn’t looked away from Haley. She runs her fingertips over his cheekbone. There’s a bruise on her temple, getting darker by the second. Someone hit her. I doubt Leo will let that person live.
Eva pats his shin until he finally meets her eyes. “No one touches her,” she promises.
“I’m tired,” he says. My heart aches. I wonder if he knows he’s crying. I don’t think he does.
“I know. Go upstairs, and you can rest. Can you get up?”
Leo stands up like it’s nothing. He has a cut on the side of his neck that he doesn’t seem to notice. He’s only concerned with Haley, who looks small, being carried like this. He goes toward the door, his eyes locked on her face, and Gerard ushers them out.
Eva picks up one of the turned-over chairs and sits in it. She puts her head in her hands. Lets out a deep breath.
“Is that what love looks like?” I just want to hear an answer. Any answer. From someone who knows more than me.
My sister laughs soundlessly behind her hands. “That’s more than love,” she says. “That’s an obsession.”
Chapter Seventeen
Emerson
I’m just out of the shower and still cold from frozen surf when my phone lights up with an alert. Three alerts. I missed one of them when I was in the shower. Someone at the gate. Someone coming in. There’s no video feed, because there are no cameras, only motion detectors. I am not interested in watching endless loops of video of the outside of my house. I am not interested in having myself captured on video. My blood pressure rises. Pulse goes up before I can grab it and pull it back down. I finish yanking my sweater over my head and snatch the phone from the shelf.
Alert: Front gate approach
Alert: Front gate entrance
Alert: Motion detected front door
I don’t have a code on the gate itself. Will can’t leave me the fuck alone about it. I’ll never waste my breath trying to explain it. It’s not as complicated as he pretends it is. Code systems are unreliable. On occasion, I need people to be able to get inside the gate without help from me.
Sinclair: Jesus Em open the door
He’s out there with a duffel bag slung over one shoulder and the hood of his coat pulled up over a knit beanie. “The fuck is that?” I ask him. “You’re not staying here.”
“Hey, Emerson. Missed you so much.” He slaps my shoulder on his way past me. Always barging in like this. The thousands of square feet around us contract. I lock the door while Sin opens my coat closet and hangs up his coat. He whips his hat off to reveal too-long dark hair. It’s getting unruly.
“You need a haircut,” I snap at him.
“Just a place to stay.” He shuts the closet door and grins at me. “Luckily, my favorite brother has the space.”
“Go camp on the beach. Or climb the bricks and sleep on the roof. Staying in a guest room is hardly adventurous.” All Sin does is go on adventures. He’s always scaling cliffs freehand or jumping out of planes and generally risking his life for no reason at all.
“Staying with you is always an adventure. Are you going to offer me a drink?”
“I hate you.”
“I love you too, Em.”
We go through my office to the den behind it. No computers in sight in this room. Just leather furniture, a fireplace, and shelves full of books. One of Daphne’s paintings hangs in the single display space. One of her smaller pieces, from college. It was early on in her study of the ocean. The brushwork and the colors are completely raw, almost like she attacked the canvas.
Sin stretches out in one of the leather chairs and searches around for the fireplace remote. He finds it, and the flames crackle to life in the grate. I open the cabinet on the mini bar. “Cold as hell out today. Did you surf?”
“What do you want to drink?”
“Vodka.” He slings an arm behind his head and closes his eyes. “How cold is the water?”
“It’s winter, Sin. It’s fucking cold.” I hold the glass in front of his face until he opens his eyes and takes it. I don’t want a drink.
“Did you go out today?” He glances down at the vodka, then back up at me. “Other than to surf.”
I don’t want to sit with him, but looking down at him like this feels ridiculous. So I take the opposite seat. “Why are you here?”
“Answer me first.”
Irritation makes my teeth snap together. Always with the questions. The endless questions, as if anything has changed. It never occurs to Sin that I don’t want anything to be different.
Fine—I want one thing to be different. I want Daphne. There’s nothing else I would change.
“Yeah. I walked for hours. I love long walks on the beach.”
He narrows his eyes. Sips his vodka. “Is that sarcasm, or—”
“Jesus Christ.”
My brother raises his free hand. “I’m only asking because—”
“Stop asking. Why are you here? Don’t tell me it’s for a goddamn family reunion.” Will was talking about this on the phone. Getting the three of us back together.
“In a manner of speaking.”
“You’re kidding.” My skin has gone cold beneath my clothes. Colder than it was when I climbed out of the ocean. Colder than when I let myself fall into the waves. “You’re fucking kidding, Sin. You can’t invite yourself into my house for a goddamn sleepover.”
The way he puts the glass on the nearby table is too deliberate. Firelight catches in the facets of the glass. Minuscule fires burn in the center of the diamonds. A cut of sunlight bisects the glass, throwing diamond rainbows onto the opposite wall. The light continues from the table to the rug to the bookshelves. Accents on the spines of the books gleam in that light. Metallic. Ordered. It would take another kind of brushstroke to replicate those bold bands.