The Imperfections

She turns her head to look at me, something sober on her face I haven’t seen before. “That’s not how that usually goes. She took my side over yours, and she’s only known me for a year. She’s your twin sister. Normally people will defend their loved ones no matter what, even if they are guilty of wrongdoing, but she… she assumed if I was afraid of you, I had good reason to be. She jumped right to that conclusion, like…like it wasn’t that hard to believe.”

Up until now, Alyssa’s impression of me has been entirely insulated. No one on the outside even knew we were acquainted. Every single opinion she formed about me was independent, based solely on her own interactions and observations, unassociated with my past transgressions or anyone else’s input. She made up her own mind about me, and maybe that’s why it has been so different with Alyssa. It was something people don’t get too often—an honest-to-God clean slate.

Now, I watch her struggle with this new perspective, but I don’t say a goddamn thing to ease her fears. If she wants to play with the big dogs and corner me the way she has, she deserves to sweat a little. She deserves to worry about how dangerous I am and just what exactly she might have gotten herself into.

Especially since now, she’s stuck with me.

She just effectively told my sister she’s carrying my baby, and since the truth of the matter can never be found out, this is the truth now.

Since the moment she said it, knowing she was backing us both into the same corner when she did, I’ve been feeling myself adjust to accommodate this new reality. I’m not as angry as I ordinarily would be if someone tried to strong-arm me the way she just did, but that’s because this revision of reality really is better for everyone involved—though right at this moment, I guess Alyssa probably doesn’t think so.

Too goddamn bad.

Serves her right for trapping my ass like that. It’s one thing when I was drunk and I apparently offered, but she didn’t give me a choice when she said it in front of Bri, and she damn well knows it.

“Did you send your texts?” I ask, as I ease back out of the parking spot and cut the wheel to navigate through the rows of parked cars toward the exit.

Alyssa shakes her head, looking down at the little purse on her lap. “Not yet.”

“Do it.”

She fidgets with the phone. “Are you taking me back home tomorrow?”

“Don’t worry about tomorrow. Just focus on getting through tonight.”

Taking a few deliberate in-and-out breaths, she tries to keep herself calm. I hear her swallow audibly as she stares out at the dark road ahead of us, but she doesn’t say anything more.

Coming from an ordinary man, a comment like mine might be easy enough to dismiss as bluster, but given the way Alyssa and I met, I knew it’d pack an extra punch.

Ordinarily I might not scare her on purpose, either, but tonight she has really pissed me off.

A wave of paranoia hits me when she finally starts typing out her messages. On a whim, I make her read them to me before she sends them so I can be sure she isn’t doing anything stupid. Despite her disobedience in front of Bri, though, she reads me the texts, holds her phone out and shows me, and then sends them without adding anything I told her not to.

The ride home is quiet but not uncomfortable, all things considered. Now that it’s just the two of us and Alyssa doesn’t have anyone else in her corner, she behaves as if duly chastised.

Thing is, I don’t like us being in separate corners. I liked how it was when we were in our own little world and she was teasing me about my murder workshop, not this, not back to her being afraid of me, and that might only grow and grow now that our bubble has been penetrated and the rest of my life has a chance to flood in and poison everything.

My well-meaning sister, my dodgy past—I alluded to it all the first night I met Alyssa, but I never offered details and she never asked for any. Seemed to me she was as content as I was for ours to be a fresh start.

Now that probably won’t be possible anymore, and the damned girl went and tied herself to me irrevocably. I don’t know which is worse—her timing or her judgment.

It’s a relief to pull into my driveway, but when I look over at Alyssa and she looks back warily, it feels like an echo of the first night I brought her here, and I don’t know how I feel about it.

Tonight I’m not worried about her running, at least. I walk to the front door knowing she’ll follow behind me, and when Scout comes running, she kneels down and gives him a quick hug.