“You doing okay?” King asks quietly, studying me with way too fucking much intensity.
“Fan-fucking-tastic,” I say, switching lanes. “Not like I’m stuck in a literal pit of hell. Speaking of, why exactly are you visiting Arkansas in July?”
“I’m not visiting Arkansas,” he says. “I’m visiting you.”
“No one asked you to come,” I mutter.
“You don’t have to ask,” he says. “I’m your brother.”
“Lucky me.”
He sighs. “We’re still family, Royal. Eliza, too. She can’t travel in her third trimester, or she’d be here, too. We can’t bring the baby on the plane for a few months, and I don’t want to be away from them any more than I have to once the baby comes. I didn’t want to wait until Christmas to see you, and you didn’t come to New York this summer, so here I am. Whether you like it or not, I’m still a Dolce.”
“How the twins doing?”
I’d rather talk about them than myself. When they wanted to spend the summer in New York with Ma, it was a blow, but once they were gone, it’s been a relief. They needed to be out of harm’s way, and that means out of my way. They need distance from the guilt, or from the crime, if they don’t feel remorse. Getting them away from any suspicions that might arise in town was the best way to protect them, even if that meant I couldn’t watch over them. So I told them to go, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave.
We all needed time apart, anyway. A summer to forget, to put it all behind us, so it’s just another shadow lurking in our dark past. Or I hope that’s what they’re doing, that they’re not revisiting the place in their minds like I visit the place north of town, drawn back by some invisible cord tying me to the swamp. I found a dirt road that leads in behind it, so I don’t have to park on the side of the highway. No one ever sees me out there, and if they did, they’re probably backwoods rednecks who wouldn’t think twice about me tromping into the swamp in rubber coveralls that just about bake my balls after ten minutes.
The twins aren’t around to ask questions, to demand why I’m going there. They’re not around to talk sense into me and tell me not to go. I tell myself it doesn’t matter. No one’s going to find her now. And if they do, there’s nothing linking us to her. We burned her clothes, and I burned all my notebooks. I don’t write anymore. I don’t want to know what fucked up shit would come out. I still go to the Slaughterpen every Saturday night, but I don’t go to the Hockington. I’m a legitimate part of the Dolce empire now, with shares in my name and a spot on the board of directors.
King seems happy to fill the drive from the airport with tales of the twins’ exploits, so I let him talk. They’re off partying on our old stomping grounds and getting high on this Alice shit, and I’m here with Dad, learning the business I’ll someday inherit by day. By night, I wander the streets or haunt the swamps like some fucking forlorn specter of revenge.
It’s done. I killed her. So why can’t I forget her?
I’ve been by her mom’s a couple times, but I don’t want her or anyone else getting suspicious, so I stopped after the second time. I’ve also asked about her casually when the blue-haired girl who lives next to her was outside. I even tracked down Maverick, the piece of shit she used to fuck before me. She’s not anywhere.
“You should come back with me,” King says. “It might do you good to get away, too.”
My back stiffens, and I glance at him, trying to figure out what he means, what he knows. The twins swore they wouldn’t tell him what we did, but they trust him enough that they probably spilled it. Whatever. I’ll deal with it. It wasn’t doing them any favors to be around me right now. I’d die before I admitted it to anyone, but everything’s been shit since Harper. My insides are raw, jagged edges.
From the start, I only meant to destroy her life, not take it. But after what she did, what choice did I have? I did what anyone in my shoes would have done, what everyone expected of me. She fucking deserved to die. She didn’t just sell my darkest secrets and deepest shames to my enemy. She sold our relationship to him one dirty detail at a time. It was all fake. And she didn’t just play me. She didn’t just make me fall for her. She made me believe that someone could do the same in return.
That’s the lie I can never forgive.
And it’s not that I care if she’s fucking dead. It’s the fact that she vanished like that, without a trace, just like Crystal…
“Just stay the fuck out of my business, okay?” I say, weaving around traffic and pressing my foot harder on the gas pedal, ready to get home and out of this trap.
My brother sighs. “You didn’t have to go to Thorncrown. You could have gone anywhere to play football. Or hell, come back to New York if you’re not going to school.”
“I am going to school,” I growl. “Thorncrown U.”
He gives me a cool look. We both know it’s a bullshit school. No self-respecting university would be in Faulkner, Arkansas, and yet, the town somehow manages to have two shitty little colleges. I have no artistic talent whatsoever, so the liberal arts school was out. Therefore, Thorncrown it is.
“You could go to any university in the country,” King points out. “You’re a fucking football star, Royal.”
“I could’ve gone to the CBC,” I say, smiling at the thought. Ma would have an aneurism if I went to a Baptist college.
“You could be playing at a division one school.”
I shrug. “Just because I’m good at something, that doesn’t mean I like it.”
“But you do like it.”
“You liked it,” I remind him. “Are you playing D1 ball?”
He’s quiet for a long minute. Then he shakes his head. “I’m doing what I have to do so that you can all go to good schools.”