35
Jess
Nothing Will Ever Be The Same
Idon’t bother lowering the volume on my radio when someone knocks on my bedroom door. I don’t want to talk to anyone. I don’t want to pretend I’m okay. I don’t want to be shamed for loving – and consequently mourning – a criminal.
I just want to be left alone.
I love my family, and they love me, but they don’t understand.
So I’m done telling them I’m okay.
Kane Bishop was a good man. He did bad things to bad people, but he was never bad to good people. He’s not governed by the law I study, but the law he lays down –laiddown – for himself was solid.
Bad people do bad things to good people all the time.
That wasn’t Kane.
He was a good person in a bad person’s body. In a bad person’s world. But he was as good as they come.
“Jessie?”
“Alex.” I clear the croak in my voice. I haven’t talked yet today. Literally. They’ve tried, but nothing they say can bring me back to them.
Everyone is going about their lives, though not quite as many jokes are being told. Thanksgiving dinner wasn’t loud, but as far as my family are concerned, their sisters are safe and the criminals took each other out.
Jules just loves it when they take each other out.
His lips turn up into a small smile.Pretend everything’s normal. Pretend the criminal never existed. She’ll get over it eventually.“Can I come in, honey?”
Tears burn the backs of my eyes. Nodding, I turn my head away and wipe my nose on my sleeve. “Yeah, X. What’s up?”
The bed dips in where he sits down by my knee. Our family are touchers. Huggers. We show our love physically – with loving hugs, or angry fists. But with my ribs stitched up all over again, my arm patched and bandaged, and my legs wrapped in moist bandages to help with the blistering from my jeans, he’s lost as to where to touch me.
“You okay, Jess? What are you doing in here all alone?”
I move back to sit against the wall, slide a hand under my pillow, and finger the frayed corners of Kane’s manila file. My touchstone. Proof he existed.
Proof I loved.
I still sleep with him under my pillow, because the magic still exists. For ten hours a day, I spend my time with him in my dreams.
I used to sleep five or six hours a night at the most. Too busy with work, too busy with studying, too busy running around with Kane. But now I have nowhere to be. No case to study. No office to go to.
I’m off workindefinitely. Jules wants me to stay off to recover. To study for my exam. To not come back until I’m truly ready.
So I stare at textbooks for a couple minutes here and there, and I stare at Kane’s file the rest of the time. Then when I can’t breathe through the agony anymore, when I can’t live another moment without him right here spooning me, I lie down and visit him in my dreams.
I don’t want to wake up anymore.
I don’t want to be without him.
I’m supposed to want to live for my family. For my twin sister who’s in her own version of mourning, and for Luc, who’s freaking the hell out even more than that time he and Alex had a giant gun-toting fight.
The text chat between my best friends continues to blow up, but Laine and I are noticeably absent. Kari and Britt aren’t trying to be insensitive, they’re just trying to coax us out of the shells we’ve burrowed into.
You’d think, as twins, we’d burrow together. We’d seek solace together.