He pauses, glancing at me while he drapes his hand over the top of the steering wheel. “When Lennox killed the guy who raped our mom.”
We drive in silence for a minute, through the blue morning. A few cars are out, their bright yellow lights cutting through the stillness.
“I always knew it was a possibility,” I say. “You’re in a gang. People get stolen by rival crews. I wanted Lennox to do it before someone got me, but he refused. He had this obsession with saving it until the wedding. He said he couldn’t touch me without thinking about you doing it first. It made me like I was damaged, dirty, for what I’d done with you, even though we did it with him the first time. I swore on my life we never fucked, but he wouldn’t believe me. But it was like he thought if he didn’t fuck me until the wedding, I’d reset and be truly his. Like once we got married, what happened before didn’t count.”
“Sounds like Lennox.”
“He said he had something special planned, and it wouldn’t be as special if we did it first.”
“That part doesn’t sound like my brother.”
I run my finger down the inside of the windowpane, tracing the first streak of rain.
“I didn’t think we’d make it this long,” I say faintly. “I knew he could snap, that he might lose control and hurt me. At first, I was sure he would. Later, I wanted him to. Sometimes, I tried to get him to lose control just so he’d fuck me before someone else did.”
Maddox is quiet, and then he reaches over, taking my other hand. We turn into the parking lot at Thorncrown, the only Catholic church in town, which sits on the border of its private, namesake university.
I’m getting married here in three hours. Or I was. I don’t know how Lennox can marry me now, after what Maddox did to me.
Though it’s morning already, I’m not sleepy. I have this deep, peaceful stillness inside me, nothing like the last time we stayed up all night together. That time, I was torn and agitated, trying to figure out this infuriating, mysterious, dangerous boy.
Now I know. It’s over. There’s nothing left to be conflicted about. Once, I told him I wasn’t afraid of him, because I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. Now he has, but I’m still not afraid. He’s taken everything, left me broken like I always knew he would. He’s one of those snakes that sneaks into bird nests and sucks out the inside of the eggs. There’s nothing left inside me for him to take. He used me up until I’m nothing but an empty shell.
“I was scared every time he had the crew over,” I say, staring down at our linked hands. “Silly, right? I know they have the crew girls. What did they need me for? But I’d hear them downstairs, and I’d lie awake, just waiting. I thought if he didn’t want me, maybe one day, he’d give me to one of them. Or maybe they’d get in a fight and one of them would punish him through me. But mostly, I was scared the Skulls would take me to get to him. And I guess that’s what happened. I was always afraid someone would do this. I just didn’t think it would be you.”
I wait for him to make excuses for what he did, justify it, call it by another name, or say it’s different with him, that’s not what he was doing. I wait for him to say it wasn’t just about his brother, that it wasn’t to punish either of us, and that it meant something to him too. But he doesn’t say anything.
The rain outside comes harder, sweeping over the car and sending a wave of goosebumps up my arms. I watch it sluice down the window, too many tear tracks to trace, as if the sky itself can feel my anguish, the pain and betrayal. I lost everything, not just my virginity. I lost the twins too. Not just Lennox, but Maddox—the image I had of him, the idea of him. He’s not the boy who always protected me. He’s a man who will force another man to do something at gunpoint and then shoot him anyway.
I wonder where Lennox is, if Maddox had him killed. If not, how will he get here? What will he do to me when he sees me? To Maddox? What will Maddox do to him?
He’s right. I tore their family apart.
“Do you think he was punishing me too?” I ask after a while. “Is that why he wouldn’t sleep with me? He knew how much I wanted to. He knew it hurt me that he wouldn’t. I told him how it made me feel, that he didn’t want to fuck me but he’d fuck the Crossbones girls. Maybe it’s for what I did to you, to your mom, your family. Just like you did tonight. Am I done paying off the debt now? Or do I still owe him?”
Maddox shakes his head but doesn’t speak.
“Maybe it was the contract,” I say, running my finger along the bottom of the fogged window, where water is gathering on the outside seal. “Maybe he really was honoring it all this time. That explains it, right?”
Maddox drops his head forward, resting it on the top of the steering wheel. I wonder if he’s feeling guilty about what he did now that he knows Lennox hadn’t fucked me after all. There was nothing in the contract about accidentally breaking it because one of them thought the other one had. Will there be some punishment for him now? Or will that one fall on me, too?
Suddenly I remember the two bullets in the gun that Lennox had the night he finally got me. He said later they’d just been left in there, but I always wondered. If I’d rejected him, was one of those bullets for me?
“He was still fucking crew girls?” Maddox asks, finally speaking for the first time since we got to the church.
I press one fingertip to the glass, raising it and then circling down, then back up and connecting it, making a crooked heart shape in the steam. “He said he’d stop when we were married. But it’s part of your job, right? I mean, you kind of have to do it, don’t you?”
“I haven’t fucked a crew girl in over a year.”
“You haven’t?” I ask, turning to stare at him. “Why?”
His face is still turned down, his forehead resting on the wheel. He doesn’t answer, and when the reason comes to me, I feel like I’ll be sick. My eyes sting, and I have to blink hard to keep tears from welling.
“Scarlet,” I whisper, dropping my head back on the seat. We sit there in silence a while, listening to the rain drum on the roof and windshield. Goosebumps rise on my arms again, and I wrap my arms around myself, feeling as cold as if I were out there getting beaten by the pouring rain instead of inside the steamy cocoon of the car.
Maybe I’m a crow after all, not a tree. Maybe I’ve been inside an egg this whole time, one that Lennox never let crack. Now Maddox has come along and taken a sledgehammer to my shell, stripping it off and leaving me disoriented and reeling with shock. I don’t know how to go on from here. I thought I was putting down roots with Lennox, but now I’m standing in the wreckage of my life, once again a murder of one.
“Do you love her?” I ask, slowly sliding my finger down the middle of the heart I drew on the windshield. It seems more fitting. Maddox doesn’t break hearts. He slices them cleanly in half.