“I said that to Crystal, too,” I say quietly.
Silence falls over the car. We don’t say her name. For almost two years, no one has spoken it aloud. Not to us, and not among us.
But I got used to talking about her to Harper. At first, it hurt in the way that makes you want to say it again just to see if you can, to see if it’ll hurt as much the second time. After a while, though, it became almost normal. Like something I could drop into a conversation, and it wouldn’t shut my brothers up for five minutes straight.
“What are you saying?” Baron asks at last.
“Now you’re not done with her?” Duke asks.
“Did it seem like I was done with her all summer?”
“I thought you were just worried about her body being found,” Duke says. “Or that she’d go to the police.”
“I found the link to theOnlyPicsvideos,” Dawson pipes up. “I sent it to you so you’d know she was alive.”
“You mean, you sent it to your sister?” I ask. I would feel angry if I could. But tonight’s not the time for anger.
“I knew Lo would go to you,” Dawson says. “That’s why I showed it to her. If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t even know she was alive.”
He has a point. I’d stopped going by her house. If he hadn’t shown us the video, I wouldn’t have been driving by the day I saw Preston’s truck parked across the street from her house.
I wouldn’t have followed her to his house. And she wouldn’t have tried to fucking kill herself. Rage swells inside me when I have to come to the realization all over again that she’d be better off if I didn’t know she was alive. But it’s too late now. I do know, and I’m going to make it right. Somehow, I will.
Baron sighs. “It doesn’t matter if she’s alive as long as she didn’t go to the cops. She disappeared, just like Mabel. She was taken care of. Why are you digging this shit up?”
“That’s all we ever want from the Darlings, right?” Duke asks. “To chase them out of town. You even said that once they’re gone, we don’t follow them. You said that after Mabel left.”
“And when you were done with Mabel, did I fucking bring my friends to have some fun with her?” I ask. “Or did I pull her out of the river so she couldn’t die on you, because I knew youweren’tdone with her.”
“But we were,” Baron says. “We didn’t go after her.”
“You didn’t drop out of school and chase her to another state,” I clarify. “But you know where she is. AndIknow you’re just biding your time. Don’t try to fuck with me like I don’t know you, Baron. I’m not one of your experiments.”
“If you know me, then you know the world is my experiment,” he says.
I glare at him in the rearview as we pull through the gate, but the asshole looks cool and collected as always. It’s fucking impossible to ruffle my brother. I was born with a temper and a burning urge to destroy that’s closer to Duke’s urge to destroy by burning than Baron’s level-headed, analytical way of making sense of this bullshit called life.
“So we were supposed to know you weren’t done with Harper?” Duke asks. “How? You told us to take her and do whatever we wanted. You saw what we did. You were the one who wanted to watch, to make sure we knew she was really ours.”
“She isn’t like Mabel,” Baron says quietly. “Mabel didn’t do shit to us. Harper would have ruined our family if we hadn’t stopped her.”
I pull up in front of the Walton’s house. I can’t even look at it. They’re all snakes, as bad as Darlings. “Go get your car,” I say to Dawson. “We’ll follow you.”
“Where are we going?” he asks. He doesn’t move to get out. He sounds scared, like a pussy. But I know he’ll obey, because he’s not even as strong as a pussy. Cats have claws. Dawson is a sheep. He has no mind of his own, no edge, not even an instinct for survival. He’s stupid and soft and weak, the kind of person you can’t help but want to crush from existence.
The only reason he ever had anything at our school was because we let him. We allowed it because we’d wronged his sisters, and enduring his friendship was our penance. Because he played football and could fit into our crowd. We let him be one of us, sit at our side like he’d have our backs. We let him on the team so he could get the girls we didn’t want. And in return, he fucking touched the girl I did want—the only girl I ever wanted.
He will pay for that.
A few minutes later, we’re back on the road, following Dawson. I knew he’d come back. He’s not even going to try to run. The dumb fuck doesn’t even know we’re not his friends anymore. He didn’t have my back. He touched my girl. All ties were cut the moment he made that choice, and no amount of showing us she’s alive can erase what he’s done.
He’s fucked my girl.
He should know he won’t walk away from that mistake.
We stop at the bridge, where I told him to go, and I grab a bag from the back seat. Dawson climbs out of his car like an obedient little dog when I tell him to. I can see him sweating in the warm night, can smell the stink of his fear.
“What’s going on?” he asks, his voice high with alarm. I gesture for him to follow, and I walk to the center of the bridge. He’s not going to fight. He’s the type to think if he keeps following orders, if he keeps obeying, it’ll make it better for him. He should know. Nothing can change the outcome of this night, the consequences of his actions. Nothing can make it better.