“Literally?” I joke, wiggling my eyebrows.
He pauses before laughing so hard that his head falls into the crook of my neck. “Ah, my Little Devil… once you find out who I am, you’re both going to run.”
“Kyrin… we won’t be going anywhere.”
“We?” he asks, staring down at me while running his index finger down the side of my face. “You want it to be a we, as in three?”
“Don’t you?”
He runs his tongue over his bottom lip. “Can’t say I’ve ever tried, and to be clear, I don’t do relationships, and I’m pretty sure Eli doesn’t—”
“—Eli does not,” Eli interrupts from somewhere behind us.
We both don’t move, and Kyrin nods in understanding.
“Well, were either of you going to ask Lilith? Because Lilith doesn’t either!” I snap at both of them.
Kyrin rolls off me as Eli drops down on the other side, his legs now hanging over the jetty. I hang my legs over the edge again, my heart now relaxing. I feel like the plate between two scales. One bad, the other wicked. Kyrin remains lying on one shoulder as Eli’s arm wraps around the back of my neck.
“So we leave this comfortable, but open…”
“We leave it as it is,” Kyrin says, standing to his feet. “No one will get hurt.”
“What makes you think any of us would?” I ask, turning to face him.
He’s kind of pissed me off, I just don’t know why. I don’t want to search for the reason either, afraid of what I might find.
He stares down at me, his eyes going between both Eli and me. “Because it’s inevitable.”
I watch them both as they sleep. Lilith is curled under Eli’s arm, her mouth slightly open and lashes fanning out over her high cheekbones. Both of them. Two fucking codes I haven’t quite cracked.
“You know you’re fucked, right? You’ll have to choose…” Cartier slides into the chair opposite me, just as we hit turbulence. The plan was to fly to our motherland in two weeks, not fucking two days.
“You should have stayed home.” I widen my eyes at her. Not one person walking this earth knows me to the extent of my sister. It isn’t a good thing.
She leans forward so that only I can hear. “Kyrin, you cannot choose either of them. You know this…”
“Shut up, Cartier.” I don’t bother looking at her when I answer, mainly because I can’t take my eyes off Lilith and Eli, but also because I don’t want to have this conversation with her right now.
“I don’t like her.”
“You don’t know her,” I snap, and then close my mouth when I realize I may have just given her something to be worried about. “Or him.”
“Well, I didn’t say anything about him…” She flicks her nails, and if she weren’t my sister, I would reach forward and snap her fucking neck just for being so fucking condescending. It’s bad enough that I’ve caught Perse being a bitch to Lilith, but I won’t cop it from someone who shares the same blood as me.
“First of all, you so much as bat your bitchy little fucking lashes at Lilith and cause any problems with her, you’re fucking dead to me.”
She flinches, and I watch as pain flashes over her eyes before finally resting on the color of her cheeks. She’s angry now. Good.
I lean back in my chair. “Second, again, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Whatever bullshit Perse has filled your head with is just that—bullshit.”
Cartier raises one eyebrow. “Really, Ky? I mean, really? I knew you were going to pick her, but you aren’t even quiet about it.”
I finally snap and bring my eyes straight to hers. I keep our contact locked until her lip quivers slightly and she shuffles in her chair. She knows she has pissed me all the way off. “I didn’t choose. I won’t choose. They’re both fucking mine. Now are you done?”
Cartier stands from her chair. “Kyrin, why do you think I’m here?”
“I don’t fucking know, Cartier. Why the fuck are you here?” I grind out, my eyes on hers. “This has fucking nothing to do with you.”
She leans down until our noses touch, and I swear to all fucking Christ, I always want to hit her. “Because you’re about to make a mistake.”
I lean backward as she storms off, angrier than what she was before she sat down. Fucking King and his big mouth telling Perse our Kiznitch shit. I knew Cartier suddenly wanting to join Mayhem wasn’t about our parents trying to get her away from her pathetic boyfriend. Our mother would crush him with her Valentino boot if he so much as breathed in Cartier’s direction wrong. Too busy being caught up in Eli and Lilith, I let that shit fly over my head. The fact she’s right only further pisses me off.