Page 141 of Underground Prince

“Eighteen months where I had no one but myself to blame. I looked around for you, you know. Someone who could tell me we both could’ve been smarter, but circumstances took control. I didn’t put that deer on the road. I didn’t get so wasted that I had to pull my sister off a warm couch, a safe house, to come get me in the middle of the night.”

I cringed, but blinked fast, keeping the tears off my cheeks.

“But I was the one behind the wheel,” he finished, lower now. “Driving. Directing that chunk of metal into a tree. And coming out clean.” One side of his face screwed up, a disfigurement of pain. “And so did you. We were fine. And why was that? Who could I talk to? There were so many people. My family, friends, all these attempts to soothe and remind that there was nothing I could’ve done. But they didn’t know—they couldn’t tell me what every second was like in a crushed car, the reek of smoke and stench of gas. Cassie’s—” His breath wheezed. “I killed her.” The skin under his eyes was so tight it created a hardened sheen around internal torture. “To wake up every morning and remember that I was alive and she wasn’t. To live with a weight on my chest that never released, never let me breathe. To dream, hope, that one day I could face proper punishment and die like her. Take her place. Although, it wouldn’t be punishment, would it? It’d be my wish fulfilled.”

A gasp of noise escaped my throat.

“There was only one person who’d be able to pull me out of the self-loathing, the blame, the hope to die but the remembrance that I don’t deserve the escape. One.”

I unconsciously twisted away.

“To see the blood dripping off her forehead and know it was over.” He cracked, and when I focused on him, his eyelashes were wet. “You remember what we said to each other then?”

“She’s awake, it’s okay,” Noah said. He was trapped in his seatbelt, but not enough so he couldn’t find Cassie in the passenger seat, tuck his fingers in her matted hair and stroke until he had her attention.

“Noah…” My voice, a bite of sound, couldn’t cut through. “It’s too late…”

“Cass, honey, look at me. I’m right beside you.”

“Noah.” I was splayed out in the back, my legs trapped underneath my sister’s seat, my head lolling sideways. But I saw her, too, and an answer deep inside, a special tissue existing from forming together in the womb, from living with identical faces, knew. “Noah, she’s dead.”

His watery eyes found mine. “You stop that. You don’t say something like that.”

“She’s…”

“She’s not!” he screamed, his expression morphing into demonic grief. “How dare you! How fucking dare you say she’s dead when she’s looking right at you! Fuck—”

And he continued screaming until the ambulance came, cavernous roars as he was pulled out of the vehicle by first responders, echoing howls that blew through the trees and scattered night hunters. And I lay there until they could get me out, soundlessly crying and never turning away from Cassie’s stare.

I love you, I thought as blinding light illuminated us.

I love you, I reminded her as I was strapped up and aimed away.

“Cassie!” Noah howled.

Kept howling.

“Yes,” I said in crushing, clogging agreement. “I remember.”

“Not one person could help me because they didn’t live through it with me, except you. I needed you, Scarlet.”

“I was too hopeless to see it!” I said. “I thought that I had nothing, existed for no reason…” I almost buckled, holding it together with folded arms.

“And that’s just it. I felt the exact same way.”

He was much too wise as he regarded me, so much an old man, brought on by young tragedy.

“Please forgive me,” I choked out.

“Scarlet…” His arms opened, and he cloaked me in his warmth. “I’m not here requiring your penance. I simply want us to finally breathe.”

He held on, crying with me, my bones aching from his grip, from releasing the grief, the tension that had held me captive days and nights on end, an endless twine of thorns.

* * *

“So…” Noah said, both of us on the couch with dry cheeks and somewhat settled minds. “What really brought you to this point? Of coming here and saying all this? I’m not meaning to sound rude—”

“No.” I clutched my hands on my lap. “I know you’re not. Theo’s in trouble.”

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