Page 219 of Scrimmage

“Yinny!” Sinclair’s voice booms through the house.

They’re here with food. I try to calm my pounding heart.

“Sinclair and Alexi have keys. I’ll take them away if you don’t want it. I just needed their help.”

Heavy footsteps trample up the stairs, and the two idiots barge into the room. Sinclair takes a look at my face and he smirks. “Like my paint job?”

“I did those walls,” Alexi pipes up, pointing across the room.

Sinclair rolls his eyes. “No one cares.”

“Looks just like your pictures in first grade,” I smile.

Sinclair sighs dramatically. “I know. I’ve always been a prodigy.”

Koda heads downstairs, taking Alexi with him to do his ritual, no doubt. Sinclair eases himself down onto a blanket chest that’s been placed at the foot of the bed.

“Ya know, if you’re ready to be rid of him I’ll just kill them,” he says nonchalant. “Say the word.”

The thing about Sinclair, about any of us Vaughn’s, is that the threats are never empty. It’s the Vaughn family curse. That was what everyone called it when we were growing up. Stay away from the Vaughn’s. Don’t piss them off. That family is messed up. A long line of psychos.

“No.” I sit next to him. “I’m just feeling different.”

He furrows his brow. “Everyone discovering Stacy’s mom was pregnant by the pastor different or being on tour different?”

“Naming you Knox different.”

He nods his head, and I see that little boy that I love so fucking much that it hurts.

“Do you miss him?” Sinclair looks at his feet.

“Brin?”

“No,” he chuckles.

“Memph—”

“No,” he cuts me off forcefully. “Yang.”

I bite my lip and look around the room. We never talk about him even though he’s in almost every memory we share. Sinclair hasn’t seen him since he went to England, even though he knows Yang is the reason I’m alive. I saw him when I died, but it has only left me confused.

“There isn’t a word.”

He takes a moment to mull it over. “I was always jealous, you know.”

“Of what?”

“Of the two of you. I wanted to be close to you like that.”

I wrap my arms around him and squeeze him tight even though it makes my body stretch in uncomfortable ways. I’m not sure I’ll ever be comfortable again.

“I never wiped his ass,” I tell him.

“That’s surprising.”

We both laugh.

“We should eat. Koda will be done with his whole box thing by now. If we wait much longer it’ll be cold.”

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