He doesn’t answer.
“Or she doesn’t conform to what your version of a Willow Heights girl looks like?” I press.
“We don’t pick them,” he says quietly.
I let that sink in a minute. “You picked me,” I point out.
“Yeah,” he says, turning to smile at me. He slowly winds a strand of my hair behind my ear, sending a warm thrill across my skin. “I did.”
He leans forward and places a gentle kiss on my bruised forehead. Now that my nosebleed has stopped, my nose is still tender, but my forehead is the only injury that really shows.
“So, your grampa picks them?” I ask. “Or your secret society?”
He tenses, and I know I’m right, though he doesn’t say a word.
“Why do you do it?” I ask.
“Don’t you have to listen to the Don Corleone in your family?”
Devlin’s phone chimes, and he reaches over to pick it up. He thumbs it on and stares at the screen for a long moment before sitting bolt upright.
“What is it?” I ask, sitting up, too. I lay a hand on his back, wanting to be back under the covers with him, safe and immersed in conversation. My heart is suddenly slamming in my chest. I can feel the difference in the air, in him. Something is wrong.
He turns to me and links his hand with mine. “I’m so sorry,” he says, his fingers tightening and his eyes locking on mine.
I can barely force out a whisper. “What?”
“Crystal,” he says. “They found a body.”
thirty
Crystal
Devlin whips out of the driveway so fast I have to cling to the dash so I don’t roll out the door. I scramble to buckle my seatbelt, my stomach dropping with the momentum as the car shoots forward down the narrow drive through our neighborhood. He rolls down the window far enough to reach out and flip off the reporter who’s standing next to the gate before speeding away.
I can’t think of anything, can’t feel anything. I know I should. I should be screaming and keening like any sane person. Like a good sister, a good twin, would be doing. But there’s no shattering, no tearing pain as my heart is torn slowly from my chest. There’s only a cavity, a hollow space, where my heart should be. Because if Royal’s gone, my heart is already gone, too.
It seems only a minute later when Devlin skids to a stop at a construction site. A handful of police cruisers crowd the curb, their lights flashing in the blue evening. An ambulance sits halfway on the street and halfway on the curb, the back door open. A backhoe sits off to one side, and broken slabs of cement litter the ground inside the site like fallen leaves. I’m out of the car and running before Devlin’s even shut off the engine. I don’t feel the ground under my bare feet, don’t hear the cop yelling at me to stop. I only see the two men carrying a stretcher with a black bag on it.
An arm whips around my waist from behind, stopping me so fast that I fold in half. “Let me see him,” I scream, fighting like a wild animal against the arm holding me. “That’s my brother. Let me see him!”
I twist and hit at him wildly, my fist connecting with his jaw before I realize it’s not Devlin holding me.
“Take a deep breath,” Office Gunn says, still holding me in his crushing grip.
“I’ve got her,” Devlin says, reaching for me.
Officer Gunn releases me warily, as if he thinks I might attack him again. “What are you kids doing here?” he asks. “You shouldn’t be here, Dev.”
Dev.
Fuck. This cop is BFFs with Devlin’s father. Is he going to keep me from seeing what I don’t want to see, what I have to see?
“Yeah,” Devlin says, “You’re probably right. I just got the text, and I came.”
“This is a crime scene,” Officer Gunn says, motioning to the torn up concrete, around which a handful of cops are stringing yellow tape like ghastly Halloween decorations.
“I don’t need to go in there,” I say, straining against Devlin’s hold as the EMTs load the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. The lights are on, but the sirens are off.