Page 46 of Protect Me

Marco doesn’t.

“I’ll kill him myself first, don’t you worry,” I tell him. “There is so much more I don’t know. So much I don’t understand. How could my dad not know about Angel? Or did he lie again? How did—? I am so confused.”

“I’m so sorry, Olivia.”

I shrug. “I’m not. I’ve always wanted siblings. Now I have them.”

“Even Angel?”

“No, not Angel. Never Angel,” I laugh.

…

I call him that instant.

Right from Marco’s arms. I don’t care—let him hear everything. I’m not leaving the security of his arms, not for any reason. Guards try to approach us every few minutes, but I just look at them, and they stay back.

Angel answers at the second ring.

“You bastard,” I tell him.

“Yep,” he says at once.

“Is it true?”

“It is. You were right all along,” he says. “You are always right, O, if I remember correctly.”

Did he just call me ‘O’? He hasn’t called me that since we were kids. A lump forms in my throat. Gosh, he is so annoying.

Speaking of which…

“You remember correctly,” I say. “I was always right. And annoying.” Or so he thought.

“No, that was…” his voice sounds strange, strangled. It still takes some getting used to, listening his voice raw with emotion. I’ve heard nothing but a cold, dead robot voice from him for years now. “You never annoyed me, Olivia. I never hated you, although I sure as hell told you I did. It was easier this way.”

“Easier for whom?”

I hear him sigh. “For no one,” he says. “It’s just… that summer, I accidentally found out the truth about you and me. About your dad and my mom… It just wrecked me, you know? I couldn’t… I couldn’t face you afterwards. I shouldn’t have pushed you away like that, but I didn’t know what to do, and then I started getting angrier and angrier as the years piled on and the lies added up and…” he stops abruptly, his breath coming short. “I missed you, O,” he says, voice shaking.

“I missed you too,” I tell him. “I’m sorry, Angel. About your mom and about ruining your life, and…”

“Stop,” he interrupts me. “The only one who has ruined my life is me, ok? Don’t… I won’t let you shoulder the guilt for this too. It has nothing at all to do with you, it’s not even remotely your fault. Ok?”

I bite my lip. “I was the one who was punished, though. All these summers I missed you… I missed you so much, Angel.”

“I did too, Livy.”

He’s never called me that before. I could barely handle ‘O’. I don’t know what to do with ‘Livy’.

“Listen,” he says, his voice going all low and serious, “I regret all the damage the Rotten Royals posts did. I cannot tell you how much I regret it. I wanted to use the whole thing as a weapon. Originally, it was meant to stop the war, you know. Naïve, right? Well, I had heard about it, and I wanted to do my part to protect you, as much as I could. But I was way too late. By a few years, actually. My plan would have needed at least two years to unfold. It was… I’ll tell you later, if you care enough to listen. If you forgive me enough.”

He waits. It sounds like he’s holding his breath.

“I forgive you,” I tell him and he exhales.

“Thank you, O,” he says. “Thank you. I just… I just wanted to do something to help. As your brother.”

We both freeze. That word he said hangs between us in the air, and we don’t know what to do with it. We stay like that, silent, embarrassed, afraid, excited for a few minutes.

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