Page 109 of Elusion

The magazine slips from Pete’s lap as he hits his feet. “Fuck.”

Covered that already. Several times.

Both of us look at Cate, humming on the floor. Connor wouldn’t leave her without telling her something. Maybe not anything specific, but enough that we might be able to figure out where he went.

When I lower down beside her, she beams up at me. “Hi.”

“Hi.” I smile back the best I can. “Do you know where Connor went?”

She puts her index finger on her chin, tapping. “Hmm. Let. Me. Think.”

“Or where he might go?” I ask, trying to prompt an answer. “When he’s upset or sad, does he go play basketball or go to a friend’s house?”

Her eyes widen. “He goes to get a blanket.”

I stare at her, unable to piece together any information from her off-the-wall comment. “Why would he get a blanket?”

Impatient, she huffs. “Because nothing bad can happen under the blankets, Jordan.”

She says it as if it were the truest statement ever made, and a sick feeling creeps into my gut.

“Fuck,” Pete says, pulling his hair. “He went to Graham’s. Right, Cate? He went to Cal’s room to get a blanket?”

She nods and returns to her coloring.

I crawl off the floor, even more confused. “What are you two talking about?”

Pete grabs at the back of his neck. “Cal has a blanket fort in her room from when we were kids. Whenever her parents got into one of their death matches, she’d hide in it with Connor. She promised him they’d always be safe there because nothing bad could ever happen under the blankets.”

Screw the sledgehammer from earlier. This time, a Mack Truck of realization obliterates me. Callie told me that the night she built the fort in her dorm room. She told me, but I didn’t understand. We were hiding under the pile of blankets so she could feel safe.

From him.

All the anger and annoyance, she uses it to mask how he really makes her feel—scared. She has been scared of him the entire time. And I fucking missed it.What if I could have prevented all of this?My vision clouds at the thought, every part of me burning. Anger. Sadness. Hatred. All clawing away inside me. I latch on to the closest thing to me—a magazine rack—and I hurl it across the room. Magazines spill over the floor before it crashes into a row of chairs on the other side.

“Jordan!” Cate jumps onto her knees and throws a red crayon at me. “Don’t. Throw. Things.”

Her gaze locks with mine, her jaw set in a warning for me to knock off my shit. Exactly what I need, apparently, because the self-control comes rushing back.

What the fuck, Waters?

“Shit.” I pull at my hair and rush to clean up my mess, pissed at myself for losing it in front of Cate.

I straighten up the chairs and set back the magazine rack. Pete kneels down to pick up the magazines. He shoots me a sympathetic look, letting me off the hook for my meltdown. I appreciate the understanding, but I need someone else’s forgiveness far more.

I go over and roll the crayon toward her with my shoe. “I’m sorry, Cate.”

She snatches it up and pokes me in the shin with it. “Just don’t let it happen again.”

“I promise it never will,” I say, and I mean more than just my temper tantrum.

Sure, I might have been able to do something to stop all this from happening if I’d noticed the signs sooner. But the facts are inescapable: I didn’t notice, it did happen, and no matter how much guilt and regret I feel or how many objects I throw, I can’t change any of it now. But I can make sure it never fucking happens again.

As Pete sets the last of the magazines in the rack, Trey walks in. One look at our faces, and he stops dead in his tracks. “Oh God, now what?”

“Connor stole my truck,” Pete says. “We think he went back to Graham’s.”

Trey ages ten years in front of us. His eyes close, and his chin lowers to his chest. Each forced breath heaves his shoulders, a weight holding them down. When he looks up, his lips press together. A familiar habit that enhances the resemblance between him and his cousins.

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