“Don’t say that,” she cries, shaking her head. “I’m sorry for what I did, but I had to make an impossible choice. There was no right answer. They were both wrong. I could let you think I was dead, or I could let Devlin really be dead. How could I choose that?”
“You couldn’t,” I say. “And I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry I said that to you.”
She sniffles and nods her head, wiping away the last of her tears. “I can’t change what I did, but I hope you can understand what it’s like to love someone so much you’d die to be with them.”
“I do.”
We stare at each other a long moment. “You love her, don’t you?” she asks.
I don’t know how to answer that. What I feel for Harper is so much more than that, more complex, deeper, and less trite. She knows me, and she still stays, even after I destroyed her. I didn’t believe someone could care, could accept even the monster, but she proved me wrong until I had no choice but to believe. She has tamed even the monster inside me, so he no longer has to shoulder the burdens I couldn’t carry alone. She helps me carry them now.
And I help her carry hers. Somehow, they’re easier to bear than my own. I know her, too, know how to make her lose control when she needs it, even when it terrifies her. I accept all of her, even the ugly and conniving parts. I know who she is, and I don’t separate the parts that don’t serve me. Together, we’re healing, stitching our brokenness together until scars cover the old wounds, sealing us together as one. I don’t know how to describe that to my sister, a girl who knows love in such a pure and uncomplicated way. There’s no simple four letter word that can begin to encompass all that Harper and I share.
“I tried to kill her,” I say at last. “And she still brought you back. For me.”
She nods. “She hates me, you know.”
“She hates what you did to this town,” I say. “She’ll come around when you start making things right here.”
“Will she?” Crystal asks, a shaky laugh escaping.
I shrug. “She wouldn’t have found you if she didn’t want you in my life.”
She nods, raising her tear-stained face to meet my gaze, her eyes pleading. “Will you?”
“Eventually.” I stare off at the skeletal lilac bushes between our lawn and the next.
“Please?” she says. “Just give me a chance. You wanted me to be alive, didn’t you? And I am. I’m here, and I’m not dead. Don’t act like I am.”
“You were never dead to me, Crystal,” I say. “Even when I believed you were dead.”
“Then can we start over?” she asks, her dark eyes bloodshot but so full of hope it kills me to look at her.
I have to look away. “I don’t think so,” I say. “It doesn’t work that way. But maybe we can start from here.”
She nods, slipping off the edge of her chair and onto mine. “Thank you.”
She lays her head on my chest and wraps her arms around me, scooting down beside me on the chair. For a second, I tense. But then I feel the forgotten shape of her against me, smell her same shampoo, and it’s so familiar it aches down to the marrow in my bones. Her tears start again, dripping onto my shirt and soaking through to my skin. They burn into me like acid, like shame and sorrow, regret and relief.
Harper once said forgiveness was a process, and I agreed with what she said because it was more than I deserved, but I didn’t really understand. I thought you could choose to forgive or not. But it’s not that simple. It takes time, time to find the broken pieces and reassemble them, not into what was, but what is now.
Even though Crystal and I have a long way to go to heal all that’s broken between us, I don’t add another fracture to our shattered family. We’re already picking our way carefully over the wreckage just to reach each other. So I put an arm around her, and I let her stay. Pressing a hand to her back, I savor the solidness of her body, so heavy, yet so much lighter than her ghost. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and feel her heart beating under my palm.
thirty-six
Harper Apple
“Damn,” I say, slipping my hand into Royal’s. “Is the entire town here?”
“Looks like it,” he says, his lips tight. He doesn’t pull his hand away like he used to, though. His fingers grip mine in a firm, possessive hold, and he pulls me into his side as we walk across the wet, brown grass of their enormous back lawn. They rented two hundred chairs, but there are at least twice that many people standing around the edges of the seating area, where every chair is filled.
I’m glad for the steady grip of Royal’s arm as he leads me to my seat. It’s not my imagination to think everyone’s watching. They always do when Royal Dolce appears. And now that I’m on his arm, I’m in the spotlight, too. Not only that, but I know I’m being judged—by his family, his friends, this town. They’re all weighing my appearance, my clothes, my expression, and deciding for themselves whether I’m good enough to grace his arm. And they’re probably wondering if I’m here for the money.
I don’t blame them. I’d be doing the same thing.
After all, I’m a girl like me, a girl from a trailer park, who landed a guy who just became the heir to a candy-and-drug empire. Apparently Alice wasn’t the first illegal substance to pass through Dolce Sweets empire. I’m still coming to terms with how comfortable Royal is with that, with murder, with all the things that come with the territory for him and his world. It’s not all champagne fountains and pillows made of money.
We make our way to our seat in the front row, with his family. A priest is standing on the grass in front of the small podium they have set up, looking somber and dignified and pretty fucking hot for a man of the cloth. Royal approaches and extends a hand.