by Callie Rose
And tonight’s a good night. I hardly dream at all.
I wake up late on Saturday morning, feeling fully rested for the first time in a while. After showering, I twist my hair into a loose knot on top of my head and throw on a long knit top and a pair of leggings. The world outside is gray, and a few little white flakes dance around in the air outside my window—snow is threatening, but I don’t think it’ll actually stick.
It’s weird. I’m not used to having such drastically different seasons, and I can already tell I’m not going to love winter. I’m more of a “t-shirts all the time” kinda girl. This “bundling up” thing blows.
The Blacks keep their house nice and toasty though, and I’m about to settle into the comfy chair by the window with one of my textbooks when I hear another knock at the door.
I freeze.
Shit.
Lincoln Black is persistent, I’ll give him that.
“Harlow? Low.”
I don’t say anything.
The same dull thunk from last night comes again, and then he knocks again. Harder. More demanding.
“Dammit, Low. Open up. I need to talk to you.”
My heart pounds hard in my chest as I stare at the door.
No. Not after what you did.
I don’t even say the words out loud, but my silence says what it needs to. He waits for another few minutes, then bangs on the door again and tries the handle.
Locked.
I hear him mutter something that sounds like “goddammit”, and then his footsteps move away. I’m just about to breathe out a relieved exhale when the door on the far side of the room—the one that leads to the laundry room, the one I stupidly forgot to lock, stupid, stupid—flies open, and Lincoln bursts inside, slamming it behind him.
An angry yelp escapes my lips, and I jump up, clutching my textbook to my chest as if he walked in on me naked instead of fully clothed.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
I expect him to make a beeline for me, but instead, he walks to the bedroom door, flipping the lock and yanking the door open. Dax and Chase are on the other side, their postures almost identical—hands in their front pockets, heads tilted slightly to the left. I might think it was funny if I weren’t so shocked and pissed off.
“I said, what the fuck are—”
“Yeah, I got it the first time.” Lincoln turns to me, his hand still on the doorknob and a hard look on his face. “You don’t want to talk to me? Fine. Fucking fine. But you will talk to someone. You need to hear this.”
He pulls the door open wider, and the twins step inside. Before I can utter another word of protest, he walks out, slamming that door behind him too.
The room grows suddenly quiet and still in the aftermath of the mini-tornado that just tore through here, and I have a very strong suspicion that Lincoln is standing outside with his back pressed against the door, prepared to keep the three of us in here indefinitely until I listen to whatever Dax and Chase have to say.
I press my hands to my face, blowing out an angry breath. “Jesus. Can he ever do anything the fucking normal way?”
Chase cocks an eyebrow. “Linc? Yeah, uh, no. Not likely.”
“In his defense,” Dax drawls, slipping his hands back in his pockets and leaning against the door just like Lincoln is probably doing on the other side, “you didn’t give him a lot of choice. He’s been trying to talk to you all week.”
“Yeah?” I toss my biology textbook down on the cushion of the easy chair. “Well, I don’t want to hear what he has to say.”
“Not even an explanation?”
My head snaps up, my gaze locking on Dax’s green eyes. They have just a hint of blue in them—the exact opposite of his twin, whose eyes are blue with a touch of green. And right now, they’re serious, the teasing light that usually dances in them nowhere to be found.
Swallowing hard, I dart my tongue out to wet my lips.
I’m sure Dax doesn’t know that in my dreams, he’s always the one holding me back, preventing me from helping my mother, from exposing the man in black, from doing anything. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t like it if he did know.
“Isn’t an explanation just another word for an excuse?” I demand.
He thinks about that for a second, then nods. “Can be. But you won’t know until you hear it, will you? Whether it’s an explanation or an excuse?”
“Low, we know you’re pissed. And we get why.” Chase steps forward, and when he sees my body tense like I’m about to run or fight, he holds his hands up, palms out, and takes a seat on my bed facing me.
“It shouldn’t have gone down like that,” Dax adds. “But we had no choice.”
“That’s bullshit!” I blurt.
The shock at their sudden invasion of my room is fading, and although I spent a week refusing to talk to any of these guys, it turns out I’ve actually got a lot I want to say.
“There’s always a choice! Linc didn’t have to erase those fucking pictures from his phone. You all didn’t have to lie about what you saw! You could’ve backed me up! You could’ve told Detective Dunagan what we saw, and maybe if all four of us told the same story, he would’ve looked into it! You had plenty of choices. So don’t pretend like you didn’t.”
Chase shares a look with his brother, doing that strange twin thing where they seem to have an entire conversation with no words. Then Dax pushes away from the door and comes to sit next to Chase on the bed.
“Yeah, okay.” Dax dips his head in a nod, running a hand over the back of his neck. “We did have a choice. And the option we chose was a shitty one. But out of all the choices we had in a fucked up situation, it was the best one there was.”
I blink at him.
That’s not what I was expecting him to say.
I expected more platitudes, more denials that they did anything wrong. I never really expected him to admit that what they did was awful. That they hadn’t wanted to do it.
“Why?” I whisper.
I wish I hadn’t dropped my textbook. I want something to hold onto, a buffer between me and these boys who get under my skin too fast, too easily. They break down my defenses as if the walls around my heart are made of fucking paper, and I can’t afford to get burned again.
Chase leans forward, spreading his legs and planting his elbows on his muscled thighs. He’s wearing dark jeans and a forest green shirt that draws out the green in his eyes.
“River was keeping as close of tabs as possible on what his dad knew about the police investigation. Granted, that wasn’t everything—it’s not like the cops call up the lawyer with every little piece of information they get. But Mr. Bettencourt was running his own investigation too, trying to dig up stuff the police missed to prove that Iris’s death wasn’t an accidental hit-and-run. That’s what the Lepianes hired him for.”
“Yeah,” Dax chimes in, picking up smoothly where Chase left off, as if the two of them share a damn brain or something. “And as far as River knows, his dad didn’t have any clue your mom was on Dunagan’s radar. Not until after she was arrested.”
“We didn’t keep anything from you, Low.” Chase shakes his head. “It wasn’t like we all saw it coming and lied to you about it or didn’t tell you. We were as surprised as you were.”
Something in my chest loosens a bit when he says that.
I got roped into this thing with them, dragged into the inner circle of this tight-knit little group because I was with them when they witnessed a murder. But for a long time, it felt like I was just “the girl who was there too”, the annoying little thorn in their side who they had to keep from doing anything stupid.
It took a long time for me to feel like they actually trusted me, and to start to actually trust them back.
The night we snuck into Mr. Bettencourt’s law office and dug around for information on Iris’s investigation, I thought something changed between us all. It was the night I found out about River’s hearing impairment, and I made the guys promise to sto
p keeping me out of the loop on things.
And I thought they had—until my mom got dragged away in handcuffs.
When that happened, part of me was sure the guys had all known it was coming, that they’d planned for it, and that they’d deliberately kept me out of the loop as they conspired to betray my mom.
So it doesn’t make everything better, but it sure as fuck helps to know that they were as shocked as I was.
Assuming Chase is telling the truth.
“How can I believe you?” I tug my hair out of the knot at the top of my head, running my fingers through the long brown strands. “You guys lied to me and kept me in the dark about so much shit. I found out from girls in the fucking locker room that Lincoln hooked up with Iris last year. He could’ve told me about that, and he didn’t!”
Dax rolls his eyes. “Yeah, well. Linc’s personal issues aside, I promise you, Low—we didn’t know. If we’d had any idea your mom was gonna get arrested, we would’ve told you.”
“And that’s the whole fucking point!” Chase adds. “Somebody set her up.”
Seemingly unable to contain himself anymore, he jumps up from the bed and strides toward me, grabbing my shoulders and steering me toward the easy chair. He presses downward gently, and when I perch on the edge of the seat, he crouches in front of me.
“Who do you think called in that tip on your mom?”
“What do you—?”
“The man in the black mask.”
My heart feels like it stops beating, sitting like a lump of clay in my chest. “What?”
“We don’t have proof yet, but that’s our best guess. I mean, think about it, Low. Why would someone frame your mom for a murder you witnessed? It all ties up too neatly to not be connected somehow.”
“Yeah.” Dax steps forward to join his brother. Their shoulders brush as they both crouch before me, two sets of blue-green eyes gazing up at me. “And Detective Dunagan said they got a credible tip. That means it had to come from someone who knew enough about the murder to offer a believable piece of evidence implicating your mom.”
“But…” I shake my head, sucking in a breath. “That’s even worse. If whoever killed Iris framed my mom, then—”
“Then they think they’ve won,” Chase finishes, cutting me off. “As long as she’s in jail with evidence piling up against her, the real killer will think they’re safe. It gives us time to keep looking—to keep digging.”
“While my mom rots in fucking jail!”
The words come out louder than I mean for them to, but I can’t help it. My volume control goes down when my anxiety goes up, and my nerves are like live wires right now.
“Yeah.” Dax grimaces. “That’s why I said this was the best of several shitty options.”
“Even if we all started raving about a man in black, if Lincoln showed that detective guy the pictures on his phone, and if we all claimed we were witnesses to the murder—it wouldn’t have been enough to keep your mom out of jail. It might’ve been enough to get Dunagan to look into it, but in the meantime, there would’ve been a pissed off psychopath out there who knew exactly what we knew. Your mom wouldn’t have been safe… and neither would you.”
Chase stops talking and shrugs, biting his lip as he gazes up at me.
I feel my jaw go slack as I process his words.
Fuck.
Fucking fucking fuck.
He’s right.
If they had backed me up, if they’d convinced Detective Dunagan to take me seriously, all we would’ve been doing is antagonizing a killer with no clear idea of how to stop him.
And if the cops hadn’t taken my mom away, if I’d managed to stop them, who’s to say the killer wouldn’t have gone after her next?
I slump back in the chair. The biology textbook is still on the seat, and it digs into my back as I slouch, but I can’t work up the energy to move it.
“How… how did you all see that when I didn’t?” I ask softly, thinking of the night they took my mom away—trying to remember exactly what I said, and exactly who was around to hear it.
Is it possible the man in black somehow found out about my rant? That he knows what we know?
Oh, fuck.
“Well, I didn’t see it.” Chase shrugs and elbows his brother. “And not to speak for Dax here, but he didn’t either. Linc’s always been good at thinking on his feet though, and he pieced it all together pretty quick. That’s why he deleted the pictures, and why he told Dunagan he didn’t know anything about the man in the mask.”
My brows pull together and I sit up again, leaning forward. “But you all backed him up. You all said the exact same thing he did.”
Their combined scents drift into my nostrils as they both mimic my movement, bringing our faces so close together we’re breathing the same air.
“Yeah, we did.” Dax rests a hand on my knee, and I feel the heat of his touch through the thin fabric of my leggings. “Because even if we didn’t know exactly why he was doing it, we trusted him.”
And I didn’t.
My mind flashes back to that night again, to me screaming at Detective Dunagan while the four boys stood impassively behind me.
Jesus. What the fuck did I do?
Chase must register the dawning horror on my face, because his hand comes up to my other knee, squeezing gently.
“Hey, it’s okay. Linc couldn’t get you to stop yelling without making it really fucking weird, but the good news is, pretty much no one was around to hear you. Most of the party guests stayed inside when all the shit went down, and they’re the ones we might’ve worried would spread rumors.”
Dax shoots me a lopsided grin. “And Detective Dunagan? Well, I’m pretty sure he just thinks you’re crazy.”
“Why didn’t you tell me all of this that night?” I whisper, but I already know the answer.
I was a fucking wreck that night. I was devastated, and more furious than I’d ever been in my life. If Lincoln—if any of the guys—had tried to tell me then that they’d refused to back me up as a way of protecting me and my mom, I would’ve ripped his head off with my bare hands.
I’m still mad. I can feel the anger bubbling under my skin like boiling oil, and it wants a target. It wants to land somewhere. It wants to blame the kings of Linwood for the shitstorm that has overtaken my family and my life.
But the truth is, they made the best choice they could in an impossible situation.
I drop my head for a moment, and I feel both Dax and Chase squeeze my knees harder. It’s such a strange feeling, being touched by both of them at once. It’s almost like being touched by one person—that’s how in sync they are.
My nostrils flare as I drag in several deep breaths, and when I rise to my feet, the twins stand with me. They follow several paces behind me as I cross to the door and open it.
I was wrong. Lincoln’s not standing with his back to it. He’s leaning against the hallway wall opposite the door, arms crossed over his chest. River stands next to him. He must’ve arrived while the other two were in the room with me.
Linc straightens slowly, his sculpted features impassive, his intense amber eyes focused on my face as if he’s trying to read my thoughts.
“Now do you understand?”
There’s something like a challenge in his voice, and I think I understand better why he’s been so pissed at me this week.
Because I didn’t trust him.
Even though he was trying to protect me. Protect my mom.
I hold his gaze and nod. “I’m sorry.”
Something in his stiff posture snaps, and before I can say anything else, he’s pushing away from the wall and striding toward me. His body collides with mine at the same time his arms wrap around me in a bruising hug, holding me up even as my legs stumble.
He tucks his head next to mine, his lips brushing my still-damp hair, his breath tickling my ear.
“No, baby. I’m fucking sorry.”
6
God, I didn’t realize how mu
ch I needed this. How much I fucking missed it.
I’ve been craving it all week, wrestling against my desire to bury myself in Lincoln’s embrace, to feel his strong arms around me and breathe in his spicy scent.
But the physical touch wasn’t all I was craving—it wasn’t all I missed. I missed the feeling of being enveloped by him, consumed by him, on the same side as him.
Same with all four of these boys, really, if I’m being honest.
I missed them.
Lincoln keeps holding me, breathing in my essence just like I’m breathing in his, his arms wrapped so tightly around my waist that movement is impossible. Not that it matters. There’s nowhere else I want to go anyway.
When he finally relaxes his hold on me, he draws back slightly to peer into my eyes, like he’s trying to verify that I really do believe him. I’m not sure if what he sees satisfies him, but he doesn’t get a chance to look for long, because as soon as his grip loosens, River pulls me into his arms.
He hugs me like he’s been waiting to do this ever since my mom was taken, like maybe he missed me as much as I missed all of them.
When we break apart, he keeps his hands on my waist, his blue-gray eyes churning like storm clouds. “We didn’t mean to cut you out, Harlow. Linc just didn’t know how to tell you what was going on without making Dunagan suspicious.”
“I know. I get it.”
His gaze flits down to my lips, and it lingers there even after I finish speaking. I suddenly become aware that even though we’re no longer hugging, we’re still standing so close together our chests are almost touching, and his fingers are still wrapped possessively around the swell of my hips.
I can feel all three of the other guys watching us, but I can’t read their expressions without craning my neck to look, so I just keep my gaze on River and pretend it’s perfectly natural to be touched this possessively by two guys in quick succession.
Lincoln pokes his head out into the hall, then turns to look at us. “My parents are gone for the day, but just in case one of them comes back early, let’s go downstairs. It’ll be more private.”