“What the fuck?!” My head tugs back. “No. Fuck no. Are you crazy?”
She ignores me, and my pulse beats harder, the blue in her eyes bright and on mine. “What’s she like?”
I throw her hand away, yanking back with a shake of my head.
“Don’t.”
“Please.”
“Mallory,” I seethe, dragging my hands down my face before pinning her with a hard glare. “Go. Stay the fuck away from me. From all of us.”
I turn on my heels and rush off.
“You don’t have to tell her who I am!” she shouts.
I freeze, but I don’t turn around.
“You can say whatever you want. I won’t even speak.”
When I don’t immediately keep walking—why don’t I keep fucking walking?—she adds, “I can… be a stranger at the store or… something. Anything.”
I bite into my cheek, squeezing my eyes shut.
“I just want to look at her. Just once. Captain, please.”
My pulse beats heavy against my ribs, and my head throbs, an instant migraine forming.
My vision fogs, my mind is muddled, which must explain the stupidity that follows.
“You know my number,” I rasp when I shouldn’t.
She’d never dare to call.My phone vibrates in my jeans twenty minutes into the drive, and again fifteen later, but I don’t pull it out.
Not a single word is spoken on the drive.
It helps that Zoey fell asleep within minutes of being on the road, but the silence plays as a broken whistle, forever screaming into my ears and threatening to blow the drums.
Maddoc slid into the driver’s seat, knowing I would need to sit in the back. He keeps trying to meet my eyes in the mirror, but I can’t look away from Zoey.
My phone beeps again, and my eyes close.
Goddamn it.
My brothers’ phones have yet to ring, that can only mean one thing.
It’s her.
Begrudgingly and with a grip so tight my knuckles are white, I pull my phone from my pocket and glare at the screen, at the name I haven’t seen glowing across it in years and never wanted to again, but would have given everything for at one point in time.
When I loved her, and I swore she loved me back.
One day she was here, and the next she was gone.
I wigged out, searched for her only to find nothing. The girl I was in love with had vanished into thin air, but as quickly as the worry came, it was replaced with resentment, because in our town, there is no such thing as gone at random.
To be gone with no trail to follow meant one thing—she made the choice to go, and had help.
When she popped back up, eleven months later, she was no longer a Bray Girl, but weaseled her way into Graven Prep.
To turn your back on a Brayshaw was like a stamp of approval, they welcomed traitors to their family with open arms and promises, but by that point, I didn’t care in the slightest.
That’s because I didn’t know the reason she had left was to hide her pregnancy, to have and discard my child, to try and pretend she didn’t exist and hope I was none the wiser.
I wouldn’t have been if it wasn’t for the documents given to me, sharing the hidden news.
Victoria.
My head snaps over my shoulder, to the third-row seat where she’s pushed against the window farthest from me, staring straight out it with a wretched expression, elbow perched on the doorframe, thumbnail sliding across her chin.
Slowly her eyes make their way to mine and hold.
A deep, chocolate, brown.
Not blue.
Not blue?
My head flies forward, my eyes closing.
Fuck.
My stomach twists even more.
I shut off my phone, not opening the six-message thread waiting for me.
“Pull over,” I rasp, and all eyes are suddenly on me.
“Cap?” Maddoc frowns from the road to me.
We’re still a good twenty-minute drive from home, but I’m suffocating in this fucking thing.
“Pull over, man.”
He does, and I climb out into the fresh air, nothing but a two-lane highway seen for miles. I take a deep breath, ready to close the door when suddenly Royce’s shoes hit the ground beside me.
I look to my dad, and he gives a curt nod, shifting closer to Zoey’s car seat, so I close the door, and off they go.
It takes us well over an hour to get home, not a word spoken the entire time.
That’s one of my favorite things about my brother, his silent support, always there and never pushing.
As we walk up the steps, he turns to me with tension in his eyes, but he only clamps my shoulder and nods, disappearing inside while I drop onto my ass and look out over the driveway, at the orchard and the long road between them.
I pull my phone from my pocket, turn it on and read through Mallory’s messages.
My shoulders fall, and then Zoey’s voice flows through me, her sweet little call, and gentle laugh.