Page 114 of Gilded Fake

I shake the offending bundle of gold thread to the back of my square cap. “Better?”

He shakes his head like I’m hopeless, but he steps over to me, yanking the brim of the cap down and arranging the tassel on the right side like his. A stitch of annoyance forms between his brows, and I fight the urge to smooth it out with my thumb, to inhale the scent of smoke and leather that wraps him in the memory of the most shameful night of my life. I wish I’d drank a little more, swallowed one more pearl and disappeared into wonderland, and I didn’t remember. Since I can’t forget, I pray Colt has.

“Get off me, you homo,” I say, my palms colliding with his pecs, hard under the hot fabric of his synthetic black gown in the sun.

He shakes his head again and turns away, then freezes solid. No one else notices. Cotton is laughing at something DeShaun said. The Dolce girls are fanning themselves and reassuring each other that their makeup is fine. Dixie is on her phone, as usual. I follow Colt’s gaze, and my own body turns to stone, a fault line rending open inside my chest.

There, strolling across the grass like he does it every day, is my twin.

His gait is casual, confident, unbothered, but his eyes are alert as always, watchful, a black hole absorbing everything in the vicinity. My gaze sweeps the area behind him, then the stands, looking for her. But there’s no sign of Mabel Darling.

Baron reaches us and steps into the group like he was never gone. “Hey.”

Before I know I’ve moved, my fist connects with his face. His glasses fly off, tumbling across the grass, and he stumbles backwards, a flash of bewilderment crossing his face. Baron always knew what I was going to do before I did, so it takes a lot to catch him off guard.

Conversation dies around us, and everyone turns to gape, taking a moment to register there are two of us, that the prodigal son has returned, that he walks among us once more.

“What the fuck?” he snaps, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth and checking it for blood.

“That’s for leaving without so much as a fucking goodbye,” I say.

“You’re mad?” he asks incredulously.

“Were you mad when Crystal came back?” I challenge.

“I didn’t fake my own death,” he grumbles, spitting a stream of blood onto the ground.

I can’t help but grin. “Yeah, true.”

My happiness overflows then, and I grab him and drag him in, wrapping my arms around him and pounding him on the back, feeling everything inside me settle into place as easily as he fits back into the crowd he always ran when he was here. Nothing makes sense without Baron.

He’s fine without me of course—Baron’s too cool to need anyone. He went off to build a better world for us, assuming I’d be fine too. But I wasn’t fine at all.

He should have known that.

I give him a minute to greet everyone else while I swipe his glasses from the ground, straighten them, and hand them back.

“You’re friends with Colt Darling?” he asks, slipping the glasses onto his face. “What the fuck?”

My eyes meet Colt’s, those blue eyes made of sky you could fall into like a well and never get out. They’re hazy now, not with drugs but with caution. He gives the slightest tip of his chin in acknowledgment.

I swing my gaze back to my brother and shrug one shoulder. “He’s not so bad.”

“Are you fucking with me?” he asks, glaring around our group like he’s trying to find who’s responsible for this outrage.

“Yeah, see, that’s what happens when you leave for five months,” Harper says from beside me, though I’m not sure how long she’s been standing there. “You don’t get to run shit while you’re gone.”

“You run shit now?” he asks her. “That’s why this limp-dick loser is hanging out with the elite like he’s not a scourge on this school?”

“There’s nothing wrong with my dick,” Colt says coolly.

I think I’m going to hurl as I wait for him to go on, to tell Baron that I would know, to reveal to the whole school what happened when he was gone and Dad was dead and I was fucked out of my mind on beer and grief and those fucking blue pearls. It’s the kind of thing he’d do, saving it for graduation and then pretending he’s a good guy because he waited until I wouldn’t have to see their faces in the hall at school anymore.

But he doesn’t say anything, just stares down my brother like he’s Baron’s equal—and then some.

“Where’s Lo?” Baron asks after a second.

“She went crazy,” Dixie says, looking quite satisfied at being the bearer of that news. “She was so mad that I took her place that she ran me over with her car!”

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