He half-laughed. “Fuck you.” Then, a cocky smirk. “You can be goalie.”

I barked out a laugh and groaned right away. My ribs were hurting from that, too.

He raked his hand through his hair. “Okay. Yeah. I’ll drive and bring you back.” He said to Bren, “Don’t worry. I won’t work him over too bad. Can’t. The fucker’s half-incapacitated.”

She waited as he left before pressing both hands to my chest. “You sure about this?”

I drew her in, holding her. “Yeah. I didn’t see it till just now, but he cares. Guess I got a brother out of this after all.”

She smiled, and her eyes grew tender. “Guess you did. Brothers. Who knew we needed them until we got them?”

Or got them back, in her case.

I drew down, my lips to hers. “Come here.” She surged up, closing the distance, and she showed me her love in that kiss.

After that, I went and hung out with my brother. Voluntarily.

From: Tazsters

To: Brenners

Subject: I did a thing.

I might’ve totally lied and exaggerated about Cross’s injuries to Blaise.

Not sorry.

Like, at all.

But also, don’t tell him.

The Best Twin

We’re going back to FaceTiming again. It’s much more fun, but one last email.

BREN

“Talk about cryptic.”

Tabatha was half-laughing as she walked up behind me. I glanced back, not getting up from my position. I had called her here, and she sat down the next second.

“Seriously. Are we turning into stalkers now?”

I was at my new place, or my new place in Cain overlooking the houses.

I didn’t know the reason I came to stalk, just that it had something to do with my mom, but after my last realization talking with my dad and Maxwell Raith, I knew that was all bullshit.

I deserved a family. I had one, but I’d have one in the future complete with a husband and children. One day.

And happiness.

I’d have that, too, because I already did.

But to the reason I asked Tabatha to come find me here, I figured there was no reason to stall.

“You know, I couldn’t figure it out. It took me awhile, like a few days, but I kept thinking that Drake called me to tell me he knew the witness. We decided not to ask for the name and the next night, Tim Harper was kidnapped. In front of me. And I found out the next day that his dad was the witness against the Red Demons.” I turned to look at her.

I had my knees up, but she was sitting with her feet together in front of her, her knees angled out, and she was looking down at the ground. Her shoulders were hunched forward, her head down.

“It was you.”

I wasn’t asking. I already knew. I just didn’t know the how.

When she didn’t speak up, I added, “You’re my friend. That’s something I’ve been working at this whole year, since last year when you and Sunday informed me how I wasn’t being a good female friend. I’ve been trying this year. Maybe I’m messing up at it, I don’t know, but I think when I know that somehow you’re the connection, I feel like you should tell me how that came to be. It’s friend code.” A breath. “Or girl code? I’m sorry, I’m still trying to figure that out. I knew crew code and soulmate code, and I’m a fledgling for everything else.”

“Oh my God. Shut up.” Tabatha lifted her head, rolling her eyes, but she reached up and flicked away a tear. “You’re like a baby demon who’s all cuddly. I can’t take it, and yes, it was me. How you figured that out, I have no ide—”

“It was a guess.” That she just confirmed.

As if she realized this, too, her head went back down on a soft sigh. “Right.”

“Tell me why, Tab. Tell me how.”

Another soft sigh, but this one ended into a sob. “You know why. Harper was killing my mom. I mean,” at my look, she clarified, “the stress of him, what he was holding over my parents is what was killing her. I found out two things that day when I went home. I found out that Tim Harper, Sr. was threatening my dad if he didn’t pay his debts, and he had dangerous friends so he could follow through with any threats he was saying, and I found out that my mom has a heart condition. I didn’t know about either, and let me tell you, it rocked me. It rocked everything about me. The old Tabatha, gone. Done. She died that day, and when you hear a legitimate threat being made against your family and you’ve never been exposed to that world, everything looks different. You count up what weapons you have, what options you have, and when you come up seriously short, you reach a desperate level that you’ll never understand.” She looked over, another tear slipping from her eye, but they were hollow. And they were haunted, just like me, but I saw a bitterness underneath them.

Tab had changed, but it didn’t have to do with Harper, Jr. like we thought.

“What’d you do?”

“I had to, Bren. I know you guys were trying to help, and I know your brother was keeping tabs on my mom for me, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t going to be enough.” Her voice broke, trembling, before her face hardened again. She rasped out, “I didn’t know how to fix it, so I tried to figure out how to make it go away. That’s what I did.”

“Tab.” I was whispering. She was breaking me here. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t know who else to contact besides you and your brother, except… Drake. I contacted Drake.”

That’s how he knew.

The dots were starting to connect, but there were so many of them.

“Just tell me.”

Her head bobbed up and down. “I will. I promise. It’s just, it’s hard.” She flicked another tear away, and her voice dropped another decibel. “I got in contact with him, and he called me. I told him what was happening, and I asked if he knew or could find out anything to help me, help my family. That’s all I did in the beginning, I swear.”

And knowing Drake, even if he was in prison, that wouldn’t stop him.

“What else?”

“He said he’d ask around, see if he could find a solution to my problem. After that, nothing happened. Not for a long time until suddenly he called, the day before Jordan came to get Zellman, and he said that things were in motion. He was going to set things in motion and to be ready. That’s all he said.”

I frowned. “The day before Jordan went to Roussou?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Then the next day, he called again and he said, he had a name to help me out. But he couldn’t tell me over the phone because you know…” Because calls were recorded, and I nodded, knowing what she meant. “But he said he’d email and give me directions what to do.”

“That was the day Jordan went to Roussou?”

Another nod. She started picking at the grass underneath her. Pulling blade after blade up, running her fingers down it, smoothing it until she tore it in two. She sliced each one straight down the line, an almost perfect tear. “The day, but I didn’t know Jordan was coming when Drake called me.”

“What did he say in the email?”

“It was weird, but I figured it was coded again, because you know.”

Because they could read emails, too.

“He said, “I’ve thought about your problem and I think you need to go back with your boy. You need to take the advice of his crew, and you never know, the solution might be the most random.”

“That was it?”

“Yeah, and he also said he’d email again telling me what to do with what I got. So, it didn’t make sense until Jordan showed up. Then I got what he was saying. I was supposed to go back with Jordan, hear what you guys had to say, and then listen for some random thing. None of that made sense until I overheard Jordan and Zellman say that Drake called you, and you guys needed to have a crew meeting. After that, I mean, it was simple. I came here, waited for your meeting, and overheard everything. I didn’t know anything about the Red Demons or the witness. Then they asked if Drake said anything else, and you said…”

I was there.

I was remembering.

“He say anything else?”

I shook my head, then remembered. “It was weird.” I looked at Cross. “He mentioned Harper.”

“Harper?” Jordan’s head lifted farther up.

Cross added, “Said there’s a Harper on the prison board where he was, and knew he was from Cain. He knows Harper’s son, and wondered if we knew him.”

“The fuck?”

Cross nodded at Jordan. “I know, but with Drake, who the fuck knows what he was really after.”

“Harper.”

“Yeah,” Tabatha said. “I knew that was the name I was waiting for, but it didn’t make sense to me. None of it made sense. After that—”

I was remembering that part, too.

“You left. Went back to your sorority.”

“Yeah, and then I got another email that night.”

“What’d it say?”

“Just a name.”

I looked over, waiting.

“Kess Foster.”

I drew in a ragged breath, feeling as if I was just smacked in the face.

This was the second time since last year she popped up for me. “I saw her recently.”