Page 15 of Cruel Lies

Rowan sighed deeply, a sound that held the weight of seven years of a secret he’d shouldered alone. "I didn’t know she washere.I knew she survived, sure, but I thought when she got stable enough to run, she’d take the money and the fake ID and go far from here. I didn’t expect she’d just cross the river and hide in plain sight."

"How does someone survive a fucking slit throat when they’re dumped in the fuckingriver?"I already knew the answer, but I wanted him to say it. I wanted him to admit to faking her death. Needed to know that the brother I thought I could trust had been lying to me, and to Angel, for seven years. About something this big, at that.

"I didn’t cut deep enough," he started, his voice low and filled with shame. "And there might’ve been a fishing boat under the bridge when I shoved her. He pulled her out of the river and took her home to heal."

He delivered these facts like they didn’t carry the weight of our entire lives with them. Like telling them didn’t completely alter how we viewed him—and each other. Like he was commenting on the weather.

"And you know all thishow,Rowan?" Angel hissed, reminding me of a teapot about to boil over. "Because you followed him? Because it was planned?"

His locs hung in his eyes as he hunched over and stared at the ground. "I didn’t plan to spare her, Angel, I swear. But from the moment we were told to kill her, it felt wrong. What did she ever do to us? All because her momma was rich and left her the money? How is that fair to her?"

"It wasn’t our job to determine what was fair. Father’s orders were to?—"

"Fuck father’s orders, and fuck you if you think you deserve to stand there and berate me for making that decision!"Now Rowanwas seething, something he rarely did. So often we saw him in rigid control of his emotions, almost to the point of coming off as unfeeling. Watching him devolve before our eyes was almost terrifying.

"You didn’t exactly step up to kill her, did you, Angel? Couldn’t even hurt a fuckingflyback then, you prick. And you wanna sit there and act like you could have done better, or would have?—"

Angel slid up next to me and yanked the tire iron from my grip, pausing for a second before swinging it wildly in our youngest brother’s direction. I sucked my teeth as I watched Rowan dodge it with ease, his eyes on the now feral middle child, wary and pissed.

They’d kill each other if I didn’t step in and stop it. Angel’s violet eyes were blown wide, hands clenching the metal rod so tight it was entirely believable he might break a finger from sheer force.

On his next swing, I grabbed the tire iron on his backswing and halted his progress, ducking as he brought a fist around, aiming for my jaw. I wasn’t as fast as Ro, though, and he caught me in the temple, ringing my fucking bell like Mike Tyson in the ring. I staggered to the side of the car, the world shifting on its axis as I tried not to fucking hurl, I was so dizzy. Thankfully, Angel’s fists couldn’t do as much damage as quickly as a tire iron, so Rowan stood half a chance now while I struggled to regain my equilibrium.Fuck, he could land a punch.

"I swear on my mother’s grave, Rowan, you’d better hope I don’t land a hit, because I’m not planning to stop once I start." He bounced back and forth like a fucking rabbit, his blonde hair half spilling from beneath his ballcap, a pale flag in the wind. Total darkness had set in, and I was only slightly more stable than I had been a minute ago. Still, I forced myself to stand all the way up and take a shaky step in their direction.

If I could get behind him and wrap my arms around himuntil he cooled down, maybe we could all have an adult conversation. Or maybe we couldbothbeat Rowan’s ass.

I hadn’t settled on what side I was on in this.

"Come on, Pretty Boy, I’ve got all fucking day to dance with you," Ro goaded, his grin splitting his face in half. "How long you think you can go before you give up and go home?"

"Aw, come on, you prick, you know damn well you’re pushing his buttons. You could stop, and we could all chill the fuck out?—"

"Don’t try to talk sense into him, Nash," Angel snapped, turning his gaze on me for a split second. "This fucker deserves to be beat. Helied to us,brother. Foryears."

"I know,Angel, believe me, I fuckingknow,"I crooned as I inched closer to him. "But think about it. He’s got a point. You and I were all too happy to step back and let him handle it. Can we really be mad when neither one of us had the balls to do it, either?"

"Of all the people to talk sense, why’s it gotta be you, Nash?" His arms fell to his sides, and I breathed a sigh of relief that I wouldn’t have to fight off his escape moves and the wave of nausea still working its’ magic on me. "Fuck, man-fuck!"

He kicked the replacement tire, knocking it onto the ground, and stormed off around the corner, hands in his pocket, hair flying free. A fucking skeleton of a man, literally and figuratively, his sugar skull face paint a mockery of his aquiline features and rage.

I nodded in his direction, looking at Rowan with the knowing older brother glare I’d perfected when we were younger. "Go on, you’ll worry about him if you don’t follow him home."

Rowan’s eyes settled on the Torino and then the spare tire. "You sure?"

My head bobbed in a nod, making me more queasy. "Yeah, I got this. I’ll bring her home once I’ve got this tire swapped out."

His eyes studied me momentarily, like he didn’t believe me. "Okay," he hesitantly agreed, but something lingered in the air after he’d gone that irked me. Like he thought I was lying.

The spare tire went on with ease, though tightening the lugs made my head hurt. Rowan, ever prepared, had a bottle of ibuprofen in the center console, and I yanked that fucker out and popped probably one more than I should have, but who was counting? Not me, that was for sure.

The Torino hummed to life, the dull roar of her engine a purr that aggravated my headache even more. I pulled out and just drove, and before I knew it, I was pulling into a parking lot that most definitely was not the asylum. I blinked in confusion, glancing around at my unfamiliar surroundings until my eye caught a single lit-up window on the building directly across from me.

It washer.She stood at her fucking window in the projects in a flimsy tank top and a pair of short shorts, toweling off her hair like some fucking misplaced siren, slumming it with the sea urchins.

Fuck. Harper fucking Daniels, alive and well—or, at least, surviving.

She was so close. I leaned back the seat, staring at her through my window, watching as she prepared for bed like three strangers hadn’t just attacked her in a dark alley behind her job.

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