“I said no.” A touch of steel, deepening his voice, until he sounded more like a man than the rash, impulsive boy she remembered. A boy who was now the head of a multibillion dollar corporation, when she wasn’t even sure he could stop tearing himself apart long enough to notice the company crumbling around his ears.
“Dev…”
“I’m not arguing about this, Willow. I’ll take care of you. I should’ve taken care of you and your father a long time ago. That’s what family does.”
“Is it? I wouldn’t know.”
He let out a harsh, cracking laugh. “Yeah…fuck. Me neither. But I’ll get you the money, okay?”
She swallowed hard. “Okay.” Okay, because she couldn’t say anything else. “And thank you. But seriously—tell me the truth. Have you been okay?”
“Am I ever not?”
“Devon.”
“I get by.” She could hear the smirk in his voice: cynical, bitter. “I’ve got everything I could ever ask for. I’m sitting on Scrooge McDuck levels of bank, and every man in Boys’ Town wants to fuck me. What more do I need?”
A family. Not to throw yourself away. It won’t bring him back. I miss him too, but…it won’t bring either of them back.
But she only said, “Yeah…guess so.”
He remained silent for several heartbeats. “…it’s not fair, is it?”
“What isn’t?”
“How things went with Mom.”
“Yeah, well…” She shrugged. She couldn’t be bitter about it; she’d tried, but she didn’t have the heart, didn’t have the energy left. She didn’t have the energy for anything anymore. At twenty-four she was already a dry vessel, bled of everything that made her a woman, that made her alive…but still she kept tipping that jar over and shaking it, trying to squeeze out just one more drop. “No one makes Mom’s choices but Mom. Have you heard from her?”
“I don’t even know if she’s alive. Roan’s getting out of prison, though.”
Her heart beat harder—only once, but that once was an explosion against her sternum, the slam of a crashing fist. “I…oh. When?”
“End of the month.”
Her mouth went dry. “Should I…?”
“I think he’d like to meet you.”
She rubbed at her chest, and the ache that still pounded restlessly under her shirt. “I should have gone to visit him before.”
“He didn’t want that.” Devon’s voice softened. “He didn’t want to meet his sister for the first time from behind prison bars.”
“…yeah.”
Silence. A lingering and heavy silence that said she should hang up, because there was nothing to say. She never knew what to say to her brother; they lived in different worlds, worlds that didn’t intersect, and she could barely even see his high-rise penthouse in Blackwing Downs from the dingy little house in the Upper Nests where, if she made herself small enough, she could pretend she’d fade into the floorboards and become the nothing she so often felt like.
Devon cleared his throat. “So…how’d you lose your job?”
Her head came up. She blinked. “You haven’t watched the news lately, have you?”
“I try really hard not to. Half the time I’m in it. Pretty sure I’m the sole reason TMZ’s stock is so high right now.”
“Oh. Um.” She worried at the corner of her mouth, probing it with her tongue. “You remember that guy I was working for? Van Zandt?”
“Yeah. The nanny job. With that investment trust prick. What was the kid’s name? Eric?”
Especially after she’d lied to the police. She’d told them she’d gone to the bathroom for five minutes, and when she’d come back the woman—Clarissa, only the name was all wrong for her when she was Leigh, wild mad Leigh with that trapped, crazed look in her eyes—had been gone, and so had Elijah. She hadn’t told the police the excuse she’d made to Leigh about having to go get her father’s meds, when she’d only gone around the corner, sat in the park, stared and trembled and told herself she was doing the right thing. She didn’t tell them about the money Mr. van Zandt had paid her to watch Leigh—money that was the only reason she’d lasted this long since he’d put her out, slamming the door in her face.
And she didn’t tell them how long she’d stared at an empty swing, still swaying with the momentum of little feet, and counted the seconds until she was certain, when she went back, she’d have no hope of