Page 6 of Twisted Trails
We round a corner, and Luc stops outside a waiting room, eyebrows shooting up at the raised voices coming from within.
Dane and Greer have their backs to us, and Greer is standing statue-still with his arms crossed tight over his chest, shoulders hunched, teeth chattering loudly enough that I can hear them from across the room.
“What did they say?” Dane’s signature Crews intensity is locked in, drilling into Finn like he’s trying to extract the truth by force. “Why didn’t you call soo?—”
“How is he?” Luc asks, cutting Dane off as he steps into the room.
I follow right behind him.
Dane turns around and glares at us. “What the fuck are you two idiots doing here?”
Luc just crosses his arms over his chest. “I asked you a question.”
“I don’t fucking know. I just got here too,” Dane snaps, jerking his chin toward Greer. “Finn flew in with Al.”
My head whips toward Greer. He had already finished his race, so how the hell did he get back up the mountain that fast?
What the fuck?
A nurse steps into the room, clipboard in hand, eyes sweeping across the four of us. “For Crews?”
“Yes.” Dane stomps toward her.
The nurse’s eyes widen as she takes him in, and then the rest of us.
“Who’s family?”
Finn steps up beside Dane without hesitation, but Dane doesn’t spare him a glance as he says, “I’m Dane Crews. I’m her brother.”
Her?
“Is there news?”
Brother.
Suddenly, I’m not standing in the sterile, too-bright waiting room. I’m back at yesterday in that pocket of trees where Mini Crews cried into my shoulder, telling me Greer acts like asecond big brother.
The nurse shakes her head. “That would be for the doctor to tell you, but your sister is awake. You can go to her room now, and the doctor will meet you there.”
“Yoursister?” Luc hisses at Dane.
It hits me hard all at once. The realization is like a freight train to the skull.
Weeks of moments collide into something new in the span of seconds.
Dane Crews’ sister.
Allen. Al.
Alaina.
Every inch of my body goes still andcold,everything inside me crashing and malfunctioning as the realization slams through me.
The short kid with a strange voice that never quite fit the bravado. Too-long lashes, wide brown eyes, that impossibly pretty face that always looked like it belongedsomewhere gentler than this brutal sport. The way he flinched when I got too close, the tension in his body when my hand got near his chest.
His obsession over his bike, trusting me with his pain before I even earned it, and looking at me like I wasn’t poison.
Thatkid.
