I See You Part 24

"Yeah. But you also would've kept talking yourself into reasons to make me leave."

"Of course I would have," he said honestly, then rolled off me, but pulled me with him until we were on our sides. "I wouldn't know how to let you go now, Aurora, but the thought that I could hurt you will always haunt me."

"You won't-"

"You can't know that," he argued gently.

"I can."

He smiled sadly as he trailed his fingers along my jaw. "Even then, that still means Jessica . . ."

"And dealing with Linda and facing Declan and the rest of the Veils after everything that's happened for the rest of our lives." I laughed softly and searched his eyes. "I know, Jentry. Falling in love with you was the easiest thing I've ever done, but figuring out how to start our lives will be the most difficult. I knew that when I chose you."

Jentry's hand paused for a second, then his thumb brushed across my lips. "Again."

I thought over his short demand, but his meaning made sense soon enough. And though I tried to keep a straight face, my mouth kept pulling up into a smile. "I think I fell in love with you the first time you tried to make me leave you."

His body shook with his silent laughter. "Yeah?"

"No." I gave him an amused look as I thought back to that night. "No, it was that first time you told me that you weren't letting me go."

Jentry's eyes swam with regret. "If only we had been talking about longer than that night, we could have skipped a lot of bulls.h.i.t."

"It would have been easy," I said as I curled closer to his body, as if I needed the protection his arms and this room could bring. "But life isn't meant to be easy."

24.

Present Day

Aurora

I glanced at the bookshelves as Jentry and I hurried to leave the apartment the next morning, and asked, "Where did you find those? They're beautiful."

His face fell, and for a while he didn't respond to me. It wasn't until we were in the car on the way to the hospital that he finally murmured, "One of the guys on Dad's crew helped me make them."

I turned quickly in my seat to look at him, and stared blankly for a few seconds. "You made those. The bookshelves."

Jentry nodded slowly. "I used to work for my dad when I was in high school. Dec did, too. He could have built shelves if you'd asked him to. Declan only deals with the business side now and hasn't done any of the manual stuff since we graduated from high school. Neither had I, which is why I had help."

"Jentry . . . thank you." I didn't know what else to say. I wanted to go over every detail of the shelves, but couldn't seem to figure out how to now that I knew that Jentry had done all of that for me. "Just, thank you."

He shrugged nonchalantly. "You needed shelves so your books wouldn't just stay boxed up in the closet."

"But those . . ." I trailed off and shook my head. "Those were exactly what I described, and they're-" Jentry's phone began ringing, and I watched as his face fell into an unreadable mask when he pulled it out to check the screen.

His eyes darted up into the rearview mirror, and then the side mirrors before focusing on the road again.

I didn't have to ask who it was when he ignored the call and dropped his phone into the cup holder, but my suspicions were confirmed when his phone started ringing again a minute later.

"Have you heard from her since you made her leave the apartment last week?"

Jentry's nod was faint. "Every day. Just after I get to work, and right before I get back to the apartment. It's possible she's waiting somewhere around the apartment or my dad's office, but I don't know. It's not like Jess to stay in one place for long unless it's around our mother. She can't afford it, and she can't afford to follow me like that. She needs- She just can't."

"Have you answered any of the calls?"

"She's just taunting me. She'll get tired of it when she doesn't get what she wants."

I waited for a minute to see if he would continue. If he were anyone else, I wouldn't pry. But this was Jentry and I needed to know what to expect with Jessica and their relationship. "Why do I have a feeling it's not money that she wants this time?"

"She wants me to get mad."

"Oh."

"Like I said, it isn't like her to stay in one place, and she can't afford to follow me. But if she wants me mad, she'll do what she thinks she has to, which is why I'm not ruling it out."

"You said that the other night, that she wanted to make you mad. I don't understand why-"

"You don't?" he said with a laugh. "After everything I told you last night? About my biological father, about what I'm so afraid of? Jessica uses that against me. She acts like I think I'm better than her; says I've been running away from who I am because I didn't end up where she and our mother are. My anger . . . she loves it. It fuels her sickness because it makes her think we're on the same level. She gets this twisted high just seeing me get mad." There was a short pause before he softly admitted, "Jess was there when I found out about her and Declan. I can still remember the way she kept laughing as I beat the s.h.i.t out of him. Egging me on, asking if I was going to hit her, too, like she wanted me to."

"What . . ." I stared at Jentry for a moment, then turned straight ahead, but I wasn't seeing the road in front of us.

I couldn't imagine the girl Jentry was describing. It didn't fit with the girl I had first run into, or even the one from this past weekend. Who, after being abused, would try to pull that same kind of anger from their brother? Who would try to turn their twin into their abuser?

"Jentry, she's-"

"Insane?" he offered with a sarcastic laugh.

"Are you sure she isn't on drugs, too?"

He nodded slowly. "I was around our mother and her friends enough that even being that young, I knew the signs. The drugs that they do, they take a toll on you. They would take a toll on Jess, and she's too obsessed with the way she looks to let that happen."

"Why is she this spiteful if you've tried to help her? Why hasn't she let you help her?"

A weight seemed to settle over him from my questions, and for a while we just drove. "I don't know," he finally said. "I don't know if it's because Jessica feels responsible for our mother, or not. But I know that in those kinds of houses with those parents and those lifestyles, the kids either work to get away from that situation, get sucked into it, or embrace it. Jessica fully embraced that life, thrives in it, and spits in my face when I try to help get her out of it. Honestly, most of my life it's been easier to try to forget she existed." He rubbed his hand along his jaw, and let out a harsh breath. "I can't believe I just said that."

"I'm sorry, I can't imagine how difficult that must have been growing up, and how hard it must be now. I never even had a sibling to fight with, let alone one who tried to do what she does."

"I have only ever considered the Veils as family. I still wasn't okay with walking in on my best friend and twin sister, even if I hardly see her. But they're the only ones who have treated me like family, and the only ones I've ever cared about. You know, that first day I was back here and Mom had dropped all my stuff off at the apartment in that big pile, it threw me off for a second. Because that house was the first place I'd considered home, and suddenly all my s.h.i.t was just sitting in a pile somewhere outside that house, like she was throwing me out." He laughed humorlessly as he pulled into a parking spot at the hospital. "And now she's disowning me."

"Jentry," I said uneasily, "I'll fix this somehow."

"Aurora, she's not going to, no matter what she says."

I grabbed his arm and waited until he was watching me. "You said you did, but are you sure you've thought about this? Linda hates me. Even if we get past the initial shock and anger with everyone, you have to remember that your mom will probably always hate me. And your relationship with Declan might never be the same."

"I would've hated Declan for having you if you'd chosen to stay with him, but I would've always loved him as a brother and best friend. I know once the hurt fades, he'll feel the same. As for my mom, she doesn't have to love you. I do. She'll still love me, and she already knows I won't put up with what she's been doing to you. Besides, this way she might not bother us that much."

I laughed softly. "I wouldn't be so sure about that. I saw her more than ever once she started hating me."

"Then I guess we'll have to get her to at least like you," he said simply, then leaned forward to press his lips to mine. "We're gonna figure it out, Aurora, because it's always gonna be us."

Jentry

"What's happen-are we in the wrong room?" Aurora asked slowly as she looked at the empty room just minutes later.

Declan wasn't just out of his room . . . the room was completely cleared, as if he'd never been there.

I touched Aurora's arm as I backed out of the room into the hall, and looked around for the first nurse I could find. "Excuse me, can you tell me where-"

Recognition lit in her eyes when Aurora joined me, followed quickly by confusion. "Oh, Mr. Veil? I'm surprised you hadn't heard the news yet, or that you weren't here. He was released yesterday evening."

"He was released," Aurora echoed dully. "He went home?"

The nurse simply smiled. "Yes, poor thing didn't want to stay in for another weekend. Who could blame him?"

"Thank you," I mumbled, and waited until she'd walked away to start pulling Aurora back out of the hospital.

"I don't understand why they wouldn't tell us," she said once we were back in my car and I was pulling out of the s.p.a.ce.

"My parents are mad."

"But why wouldn't Declan have told us that he was getting out? He doesn't remember that night; he would have called me to tell me, wouldn't . . ." She trailed off and sank into her seat as my worries. .h.i.t her. "They told him."

I tilted my head slowly to the side. I wanted nothing more than to deny it, to take away everything that was weighing on her. But I knew I couldn't; knew there was no point in lying to her for the sake of keeping her at ease now. "They had to have."

"This wasn't how it was supposed to happen," she whispered to her window, then remained silent for a while. "I say that," she went on with a dull laugh, "but I didn't try hard enough to make it happen any other way. You were right; I was lying to your family by not telling them the truth of that night. If I had, I would've had more time to tell Declan once he woke up. Or maybe I should've just waited at the hospital until they let me see him and told him that first night, gotten it over with right away instead of letting a week pa.s.s."

"No. That . . ." I blew out a slow breath and shook my head. "I don't know when the right time would have been, but you were right not to do it that first night. You have to remember that you had already told him. How were you supposed to figure the right time to tell him again after he'd been in a coma and forgotten the first time? Not to mention that it was d.a.m.n near impossible to even get a second with him. I went to see him every day after work this week, and the two times I actually saw him, I only got about five minutes total before I was kicked out again. So how do you lay something like that on him when you know you're about to have to leave him alone in a hospital?"

"Those were some of the same things that went through my mind that kept me from saying anything, that kept him thinking things about us that weren't true. But this . . . this is so much worse and makes me wish I'd just done it."

The only reason I wanted to agree with her was because I wanted what was coming next to already be over. But no matter how much I'd hated seeing Declan think that Aurora still belonged to him, and no matter how much his words had amplified my need to keep Aurora a safe distance from me and my demons, no time in the hospital would have been a good time to tell Dec the truth about their relationship, or ours.

"Oh my G.o.d," she said when we pulled up to my parents' house.

I bit back a curse when I looked around the driveway and street. There were other cars, indicating my sisters and brothers-in-law were there, and what looked like Mom's parents-I'd never gotten close with them.

"This makes it worse," she said, sounding dejected. With a sigh, she unbuckled herself and opened the door to step out of the car.

She didn't wait for me to catch up with her, just walked determinedly toward the front door with a grave expression on her face.

Once we neared the door, I stopped her. "Say the word, and we're gone."

She looked up at me with an amused expression. "Swear?"

I grasped her chin with my fingers and turned her head until she was looking up at me. "I mean it, Aurora."

"I know you do. But I've been preparing myself for what's about to happen inside this house for the past ten minutes, and if I keep looking into your eyes and don't walk through that door right now, I'm not sure I'll still have the strength to go through with it."

She tore her eyes from mine and began pulling away from me, but at the last second, turned back and pushed up on her toes to press her mouth to mine. Her lips moved in sync with mine for a moment before she breathed, "I love you," against them, and forced herself away and into the house.

Aurora

I held my breath while I walked quickly into the house, afraid to wait for someone to answer the door, or even for Jentry to open it. I needed to do this before I talked myself out of it, because the disastrous climax that waited for me in one of those rooms would only continue to wait. Only continue to haunt me and taunt me.

I already had Jessica doing one of those things. I didn't need an entire family added on to that.

I walked through the entryway into the kitchen, somehow still holding on to my false bravado, but felt it splinter and crack when I heard nothing but excitement coming from the living room.

My footsteps faltered and slowed, and Jentry's brief, rea.s.suring touch on the small of my back was all that kept me going.

The final step, from the kitchen into the living room, seemed to freeze time.

The scene wasn't what I had expected to find, and I just managed to hold on to my waning confidence until I caught sight of Declan's face. He looked like he was seeing the sun rise for the first time. His excitement would have been contagious if it hadn't seemed so out of place among my fears and worries.

I felt Jentry's confusion as if it were my own, doubling what I was feeling and trying to understand. He didn't speak, didn't move, hardly breathed . . . but I knew he was studying every single person in the living room, taking it all in.