Hereafter (Shadowlands 2)

“Hey, Darcy,” I said casually, hoping that if I acted like nothing was wrong, she’d follow suit.

But Darcy just made a grunting, scoffing sound in the back of her throat and pushed her chair back.

“Darcy,” I implored her.

“Leave me alone,” she said, one foot already on the bottom step.

My pulse started to race in that sickly way it did whenever Darcy was mad at me, but there was no way I was going to let a misunderstanding about a guy get between us. Not again. Not now, when Nadia was busy turning everyone on this island against me. I caught up with Darcy just as she was about to slam the door to her room. I flattened my hand against it and stopped her, jamming my wrist.

“Darcy, if this is about Fisher, there’s nothing going on,” I said.

She groaned again and walked farther into her room, tossing a book onto the bed. It flapped closed, and I saw the ancient silver writing, faded, on the cloth cover. Wuthering Heights. Impressive.

“Did you or did you not sneak out of the house to have breakfast with both the guys I like?” Darcy demanded.

I paled. She’d seen Joaquin, too? “It’s not like I—”

“Answer the question!” she fumed.

“Okay, yes,” I stated. “Yes. I did. But do you really think I’m going to go after Joaquin? Or Fisher?”

She flopped down on her window seat, turning her palms up atop her thighs.

“No, I don’t think you’re interested in either one of them. Not really,” she said. “But do you have any idea how this feels? It’s like you’re trying to hurt me. You. My own sister.”

She drew her legs up, facing away from me with forced casualness, as if she were fine and not vibrating with 5,000 megahertz of anger and sorrow. My chest heaved, desperate to just tell her the truth. Desperate to fix things between us however possible.

But I couldn’t. Because if I told her the truth

, I would damn her to the Shadowlands. I so wished she’d just perform a selfless act already, so this would all be a done deal. What I wouldn’t give to slap a Lifer bracelet on her wrist and tell her everything. But all I could do was keep my mouth shut and hope that it would happen. And soon.

“I’m sorry,” I said finally, quietly. “I guess I’ll just go.”

“Fine,” she spat. “Go!”

I turned on my heel but paused at the door, my fingers curling around the beveled trim.

“But, Darcy, there is one thing you should know,” I said, looking halfway over my shoulder.

She sighed. “What?”

“I would never intentionally do anything to hurt you,” I said. “Never.”

Then I slipped into the hallway, closing the door behind me.

I stared at the Scrabble board in the center of the kitchen table, but the letters might as well have been hieroglyphics. My vision blurred in and out. Nothing made sense. Darcy hated me. Joaquin, quite possibly, liked me. But worst of all was Nadia. Clearly, she was determined to turn the town, and especially the mayor, against me. And now she might even be working on Tristan. What if she convinced him? What if she and her angry mob stopped glowering from safe distances and came after me?

“Bam!” my father shouted suddenly, nearly knocking me off my chair. “Quixotic! Q on a triple-letter, X on a triple-word; that’s one hundred and eighty-eight points! Read it and weep.”

I stared at him, trying to pull myself into his present. A present where he was alive and well, devouring ice cream, playing Scrabble with his daughter, and kicking her sorry ass. He licked a drop of chocolate sauce off his lip and smiled.

“Sorry,” he said when he saw my face. “That was a tad over the top. But you gotta admit…”

He gestured at the board, waiting for me to give him his props.

“Yes, Dad. You are a genius,” I said in a jokingly toneless voice. “Get over yourself.”

I looked down at the makeshift score sheet he’d drawn out for us, two columns labeled R for Rory and D for Dad, and it reminded me of the tally I’d found down at the cave. I wondered what Pete had done with it, where it was now, whether the mayor had seen it.