Page 29 of Bury Me (Willow Heights Prep Academy: The Elite 3)

“You’ll never have to,” I whisper, leaning in to kiss him. “I promise.”

“You’ll never leave again?” he asks, his eyes searching mine. His gaze is so vulnerable it tears my heart open along the scars left from the last time, when I broke my own heart by walking away from him. This is the real Devlin Darling, the one only I know, the one who doesn’t want to hurt me any more than I want to hurt him.

“Never,” I whisper, sliding my arms around his neck.

“Good,” he says, stroking my cheek with his thumb. “Because even if you try, you’ll never get rid of me. You can break my heart into a thousand pieces a thousand times over, and I’ll still love you just as much.”

He breaks off, looking as startled as I feel, like he didn’t know he was about to say those words until they were already out. Suddenly, my heart is hammering so hard I can barely breathe. I wanted to make him fall for me, but I never imagined a boy telling me he loved me. It seemed like something that happens in movies.

“You love me?” I ask, my voice choked with emotion.

I expect him to deny it, to shove me off and disappear the way he likes to do when shit gets real. For a second, his eyes get that unreadable look, and I’m sure he will. I tense, ready to lift off him, but he slides both arms around me and squeezes me against him, not letting me go. “I’ve never stopped for even a second, not even when you told me I was just a pawn,” he says, his voice soft and smooth, sure of himself. “I’ll never stop. You’re not just my heart, Crystal Dolce. You’re my soul.”

“I love you, too, Devlin,” I whisper. I link my hands behind his neck, and our eyes meet, and it’s the most intimate, intense connection I’ve ever felt. He grips my hips as I begin to move, never breaking the connection. It’s different this time, something else mixed in with the frantic desperation to claim each other. Now, we’ve been claimed. I am his, and he is mine. I know in that moment that nothing will break us apart again. Not his family, and not mine. He broke me, and I broke him, but nothing will breakus.

Because now there is an us. Now, we’re fighting for the same thing. We’re on the same side. I’m no longer trying to pick up all the shattered pieces of myself, the ones Devlin broke and chipped away, and put them all back together somehow. Without him, it’s impossible. Our broken pieces have blended together, mixing until I can’t tell what belongs to me and what belongs to him. They’ll never be separated again. Even if I managed to build myself back up into something close to what I was, there would still be parts of Devlin always with me, little shards of him buried in my flesh, in my soul.

And in truth, I don’t want to be the girl I was. I don’t want to separate our broken pieces, to look at Devlin’s damage and hand it back to him. I want to take those parts and treasure them, nurture them, fit them together with mine. I want to take all our broken pieces and form something new with all of them, both his and mine. I want to form something beautiful, something uniquely ours. I want to put them all back together and buildus.

eleven

Crystal

Our love is impossible. It’s impossible that I could love a boy who’s done the things Devlin has done to me. It’s impossible that he could love a girl who hurt him in the callous way I did. Somehow, though, we’ve found a way. And if we can find a way to love each other, to forgive each other, despite those things, shouldn’t our families be able to do the same? How can they hate each other more than we’ve hated each other? Could our love bring them together? Or will it splinter them from within?

“Where’s that from?” Royal demands on Monday when I open my locker before school. A cookies-and-cream cappuccino sits in the front, a variation on the drink that’s been here every day since I came back. I already knew it was Devlin, even when he pretended to hate me. But now I know for sure. This is the drink I told him was the perfect blend of sugar, caffeine, and chocolate.

“Uh, Dixie got it for me,” I lie.

Because how can I tell him otherwise? How can I tell him that I love the boy he blames for hurting him? That on Friday night, while he slept in the next room, plagued by nightmares, his sweet little sister let a boy into her room, into her body. And I didn’t justletDevlin put his dick in me. I wanted it. I put it in and rode it hard and didn’t let him stop until he came so deep inside me that it hurt. I didn’t think about my family, or how it would reflect on the Dolces, or if it fit the image of a Dolce daughter. I didn’t give Royal a single thought. I took something just for me, and I loved every second of it.

How can I tell my brother that his twin is that kind of monster?

“Ooh, coffee,” Dixie says, tromping up to join us in her goth boots and black outfit. “What’d you get?”

Fuck.

Royal’s eyes narrow. “Dixie got you that?” he growls at me.

“I did?” Dixie asks, totally missing the frantic eye movements I’m making as I try to convey that she needs to go along with this, all smooth like Dolly would. But Dixie isn’t practiced in the art of artifice.

Royal snatches the coffee from my hand, his face darkening with anger. “Why the fuck is someone getting you coffee?” he asks, his dark eyes boring into mine.

“I don’t know,” I say, my heart hammering and my mind racing. I don’t know how to talk Royal down anymore, not like I used to. He’s a stranger now, the brother I no longer know, separated from me by a week missing and a million moments I’ll never experience with him.

“Who’s leaving these in your locker, Crystal,” he asks, his voice low and cold.

I shake my head. “No one’s said anything about them.”

“Who?” he demands, stopping in the middle of the hall, letting the crowd flow around us.

Dixie hangs back, her eyes wide as she chews at her lip with a guilty look on her face now that she’s caught on. I shake my head at her, not wanting her to witness whatever’s about to happen. Royal is seriously unhinged right now, and I finally understand the need my family has to keep it together, to keep up appearances. Because the thought of him blowing apart in the middle of the hall is humiliating, and I have this irresistible compulsion to calm him before Dixie or anyone else sees.

Dixie mouths an apology at me and scurries off, leaving me to face my twin alone. It shouldn’t be hard. I’ve fought with my brothers a million times. But this Royal, Royal 2.0, isn’t a boy I know how to fight.

He shakes the cup at me, looming over me with anger pulsing in his temple. “You said you weren’t seeing him anymore.”

I don’t want to lie to him, but the truth will hurt him too much. There’s nothing I can do that won’t hurt him more, and I’ve already done enough. So I don’t say anything. My hands begin to shake. My palms are clammy, my nerves are frayed, and anxiety crawls along the inside of my skin like a disease. I try to breathe, but Royal’s the boy who could always bring me back from the edge of panic, the boy who tethered me to reality. But he’s not that boy anymore. The rope has been severed, setting me adrift.

---