“You are drunk. And you broke your promise. You made a bad situation worse. Maybe you had good intentions, but you acted to make yourself feel better. You thought of yourself first and this is what happened.” The tears start coming now. They course down her face, a tsunami of unhappiness.
Embarrassment fights with remorse inside me. I don’t like what she’s saying and how these words are making me feel. I tried to do the right thing. Is it really my fault that her dad’s a first-rate jackoff? Is it my fault that he didn’t take the money? Is it my fault that he made up horrible lies about my mother and my father and some fucking asshole who’s not my father—
I start to get angry back. “I’m the one who tried to make things right for you. You were just going to run away and avoid the problem. At least I confronted him. You should be thanking me.”
“Thanking you?” she screeches. “Thanking you? Are you kidding me? You’re not the white knight in this picture. You’re the villain!”
“What? Me?” I’m pissed now.
“Yes, you.” She stumbles away, her black hair whipping behind her. “Stay away from me. I never, ever want to talk to you again.”
Her words sound so final. Panicked, I call after her. “Wait. Hartley, come on. Wait!”
She ignores me.
I take a step forward, and although her back is to me, it’s like she senses that I’d moved. She whirls around and jabs her finger in the air.
“Don’t,” she commands. “Don’t follow me. Don’t come near me. Don’t anything.”
She spins again and practically hurls herself at the rusted door of the ugly Volvo she drove up in. The rearview mirror isn’t even attached to the windshield—I can see it dangling at a weird angle through the window.
The sight of the beat-up car makes me sick to my stomach. I picture Hartley knocking on her downstairs neighbor’s door, pleading with him to borrow his shitty-ass car so she can come and stop my shitty-ass self from ruining her life even more than I’d already ruined it.
But she hadn’t gotten here in time. As always, Easton Royal screwed everything up.
I watch helplessly as she reverses out of the driveway. I want to shout for her to come back, but I know she won’t hear me from all the way over there. Plus, the engine of that Volvo is loud as fuck. And so is the squeal of tires from the other car on the road and—what other car?
I blink a few times.
Maybe it’s because I’m drunk that the pieces don’t fall into place right away. My brain registers each thing separately.
The flashing headlights.
The crunch of metal against metal.
The body lying on the side of the road.
My legs start pumping. I sprint, falling to my knees next to a girl that my mind dimly registers as Lauren. Why is she here? She doesn’t live here.
No, she does. She lives down the street. But right now she’s curled over on the pavement as she tries to shake my brother awake. He’s lying half on his side, half on his stomach, as if he dove onto the ground from a great height. His white T-shirt is torn and streaked with blood. There’s blood on the pavement, too.
So much blood.
I feel sick but somehow manage to choke down a rush of vomit.
Something digs painfully into my knees. It’s glass. The windshield, I realize. The Rover’s windshield is gone.
“Sawyer,” Lauren begs. “Sawyer.”
“It’s Sebastian,” I choke out. I can tell the twins apart in my sleep. Even when I’m drunk.
Lauren wails harder.
As my pulse careens wildly, I look at the Rover again to check for my other brother. Sawyer’s slumped over the wheel, the seatbelt cutting into his neck, the airbag pushing against his face. A line of blood drips from his right temple toward his chin.
I turn toward the Volvo. It’s mostly intact, except that the back door and bumper are completely dented in. My heart lodges in my throat when the driver’s door flies open.
Hartley stumbles out of the car. Her face is white, like Seb’s T-shirt used to be. Her eyes are wide, but there’s something almost vacant in them. Like she’s gone completely numb.
Her gaze lands on Sebastian. It rests on his terrifyingly still form. His bloodied, crumpled body. She just stares and stares, as if she can’t comprehend what she’s seeing.
Finally, she opens her mouth and a desperate, strangled scream comes out. And mingled in with her screams are three gut-wrenching words that make my blood run cold and my entire body feel weak.
“I killed him.”