“Yeah. Just forgot something. It can wait,” I answer when I turn back around.

“You sure? You look”—her eyes narrow and she cocks her head, scrutinizing me a little too closely—“weird.”

What? The panic swelling inside me like high tide is seeping out of my pores? Tightening my cheeks? Tingeing my eyes wild with fear? Imagine that.

“Always looking for something that’s not there, Bluebelle.”

Her lips thin. My diversion falls flat. Once again, I briefly contemplate making a run for it, but fuck it. Delaying this conversation isn’t going to make it any easier. And it’s certainly not going to make this shit go away.

Grabbing her gently by the arm, I direct us to an unoccupied park bench underneath a large oak alongside the sidewalk. Fall is finally upon us and nature is helpless to resist. Leaves are already turning shades of copper and yellow. A few have dried and fallen early. They crunch beneath our feet as we silently walk.

I take a seat, relishing in the warmth of the metal seeping through my suit pants. In a mere moment, I’m afraid my entire body will feel as cold as dry ice instead.

“What’s up, Shawshank?”

I let her irritating childhood nickname roll off. Staring ahead, I watch the flurry of life on campus. I remember camping out like this between classes, watching the freshmen skitter by virtuous and unaware. Easily weeding through them to find the shameless so Noah and I could play with them later.

Back then had Willow walked by, she would have immediately been rejected. Too sweet, too tame. Far too innocent. And what a shame that would have been. To never touch her supple curves or her silky hair. To never feel her melt under the touch of my hand or hear the hitch of her breath when she’s coming undone under the weight of my body. Jesus, the thought of never hearing her whisper or moan my name is unfathomable. She’s twisted me in ways I didn’t know I could bend. She’s apparently the one I’ve been waiting for and I would have discarded her with a passing glance for the very thing that draws me to her today.

“What were you doing the night you got picked up for coke possession? And I need the truth this time, Bluebelle.”

I didn’t even look at her when I blurted out a question that slammed into her from behind with the force of a Mack truck. I know it did because I heard the breath whoosh from her lungs right before the sharp intake of air to refill them.

I turn my head to gaze hard at my sister. She’s staring at me with this shocked look on her face. I know why. This is a taboo subject between us. Hell, with the whole damn family. We all walk on eggshells, hoping they don’t crack beneath the weight of our steps. Never discuss how Annabelle spiraled out of control. It may upset her. It’s as if we’re all supposed to forget she is a recovering addict. Will always be a recovering addict.

But I’ve never forgotten. Neither should she. Neither should anyone who cares about her. And apparently neither has an outsider who is now hell-bent on taking what’s mine by using my love for my family against me. Little does he know it’s exactly my love for my family—and that now includes Willow—that will fuel me to steamroll right over him.

“Answer the question, Bluebelle.” I soften my tone only marginally, but the hoarse rasp in it gives away exactly how wound up I am. She’s keeping something from me. I see the secrets plain as day in her striking blues. They’re trying to dive below the surface, remain hidden.

Well, I’m dragging them back up to the top. It’s time to unearth old ghosts no matter how loud they howl.

“Why…?” She stops to swallow, and that guilt I always feel for upsetting my baby sister swells when her eyes gloss over. I fight my instincts to give her an out. I need this fucking answer. For me, for Willow, but honestly…mostly for her. That campaign asshole has something on her, and I need to find out what it is and make it go away. Maybe I can even bury it before Willow ever needs to know.

“Why are you asking now?” she husks.

The weight of what she didn’t say is so fucking heavy, the muscles in my neck give and my head drops. Clasping my hands together, I let them hang between my legs while working to control my breathing and my temper.

I’m at one of the biggest crossroads of my life here. Do I tip my hand and simply ask straight out or do I lead her with questions, like some goddamned cross-examination and hope she trips herself up enough for me to catch her in a lie?

This is excruciating.

I’ve never been a beat-around-the-bush kinda guy. I drill straight to the point, no time for bullshit. With everyone except her, that is. My emotionally fragile baby sister who I’d lay down my life for. But that ends today. It has to. I have to know what I’m facing. I can’t grapple in the dark and hope to blindly catch a lifeline.

Straightening, I turn to face her. The well of tears in her eyes is about to give way. “I’m asking now because it matters now. Were you on Schultz Bridge that night?”

The color in her cheeks fades and the dam holding that water back breaks. Tears streak down her pale skin as she continues to stare at me, unblinking.

And now I know.

My sister had something to do with the untimely death of Charles Blackwell.

Jesus fucking Christ.

My sister played a part in the night that ended a man’s life: the father of the woman I love. My gut feels full of rocks. My lungs constrict as if someone’s wrapped a thick cord around them and yanked with all their might. I am utterly sick.

When she responds softly, “I don’t know,” I fucking lose it.

“You don’t know?” I roar, causing people to slow as they pass. “Or is it that you just don’t want me to know that you caused an innocent man’s death when you were coked up?”

“What are you talking about, Shaw?” she chokes.

Oh fuck no. We are not doing this here. I should have never started this line of conversation in a public forum.

Grabbing her by the elbow, I pull up her up and guide her to the car. By the time I seal us both inside, she’s a blazing mess of hotness.

“I didn’t kill anyone, Shaw,” she exclaims, her eyes wild. She’s unconsciously picking at a scab on her arm, making it bleed. “I swear it. I swear it.” She keeps mumbling those three words under her breath.

She’s breaking apart right in front of me.

I still the hand digging into her flesh, warm blood smearing underneath the pads of my fingers. She’s trembling. Her frightened eyes bulge and lock on me so tight it almost hurts. Pinching the bridge of my nose, I close my eyes and inhale nice and slow, exhaling the same way, thinking on what comes next.

“Tell me everything you remember about that night.”

She blinks a couple of times before dragging her attention out the front windshield. With each second that passes, I’m not only losing my patience, I’m losing my goddamn mind.

“Annabelle,” I growl.

“I don’t remember much,” she says without inflection.

“Define much.”

I give her fingers a gentle squeeze, hoping to jump-start her since she now seems lost in her own head. I tick off the seconds, one by one, ready to crawl out of my skin.

When she speaks at last, it’s monotone as if she’s disconnected from those events. “I was out with Hannah, Emily, and Lia. We got a little high before we went to a party in the Valley.” I keep my eye-roll internal. Rainier Valley isn’t one of the most desirable parts of Seattle. “It was still pretty early, but by the time we got there, the place was buzzing.”

If by buzzing she means it reeked of cooked meth, greasy hair, and day-old orgies, then I have a pretty good idea of what she walked into. I had to pull Annabelle out of one of those parties once when she was fifteen. It makes my stomach roil to think of her in a place like that, flushing her future down the toilet.

“When I walked in, someone handed me a woolie along with a beer. We vegged and listened to a couple of guys on their guitars.” She pauses a few seconds, before softly adding, “They were good. One was cute.”

My patience is waning. Fast. “Can we maybe get to the part you don’t remember? Because it sounds as if you remember a helluva lot.”

She shoots me a glare before the corners of her mouth lift slightly. They flatten out so fast I could have imagined it. With her free hand, she starts methodically plucking her jeans, and I know shit’s about to get bad.

“I had to hit the loo, so I was winding my way down the hallway when I heard him. Eddie,” her voice trails off.

Fucking Eddie Lettie. Her pusher, her supposed boyfriend, the bane of my sister’s existence.

“I knew I shouldn’t look. I knew I should just keep walking and forget I heard anything. But I couldn’t. It wasn’t the first time he’d cheated on me with some coked-out skank.” She stops to lick her lips. Her voice holds absolutely no emotion when she says, “He had a little old train going, getting pegged in the ass while he was fucking some whore.”

“Jesus, Annabelle.”

She’s my little sister. I changed her diapers, fed her bottles. Bandaged up her scrapes and wiped her nose when she was sick. I let her paint my nails bright pink and crawl into bed with me when she had bad dreams. I sure as shit don’t want to hear the words “sex” or “fucked” or “pegged” coming out of her sweet mouth. And I sure as hell don’t need to hear about Eddie’s sex life.

“What?” she says, finally looking at me with glistening eyes. “You wanted to hear what happened that night. That’s what happened.”

“He’s not worth those, Bluebelle.” I wipe away a tear streaking down her cheek. “Don’t give him that.”

“I know,” she answers, running her fingers along the same spot. “I know that now, but that night I’d gotten into another fight with Mom and Dad. I felt so alone, and I needed to be needed by someone. Anyone.” She blinks a few times and lowers her voice a degree. “God, he was such a smug bastard. I should have just walked away then, but I didn’t.”

Her gaze darts over my shoulder. I wait it out while she sorts through her memories.

“I stood there like an innocent little girl, who didn’t know what she was witnessing. He saw me watching. He was strung out, I could tell. He laughed; pounded into the girl he was banging until she cried. Then he choked her until her eyes rolled into the back of her head. He told me I was up next. That it was time he broke me in good because he liked it rough and hard and painful. He told me to go do a bump and I’d be good and pliable by the time he and his sidekick took turns fucking my ass, making me bleed. He told me he wanted me to cry and beg for my life while he choked me until I came.”

The more she says, the more my vision hazes. It’s dark. So fucking dark I think I’m going blind with rage. I work to swallow but can’t. My throat feels swollen with violent thoughts of revenge. Did he do it? Did he follow through? Did he violate my baby sister with his sick and twisted threats? Is that why she was out of sorts that night?

If he did, if I get even a hint that he laid a single finger on her that night, Eddie Lettie is dead. Fuck that. He’s dead anyway for even thinking it.

“What else?” God, it hurt to push that out. Please, for the love of Christ don’t say he did something or I will call on every single person I know until I find one who knows the right people to gut him in his sleep, then make his body permanently disappear. Noah probably knows someone.

She chews her lip raw before looking at me with unease. My gut feels like it’s bleeding out. “Then he told me he knew I’d love it because he heard kinkiness ran in the family.”

That’s it. That motherfucker dies. Slowly, painfully. He’ll be tortured until he cries like a little pussy for his momma.

I’ve never given it much thought until recently, but my proclivities for sharing women with my best friend, Noah, have had a much further reach than I could have possibly imagined. They have hurt my family, tainted their reputations, even fed into deviances so depraved and disgusting it reached my baby sister at a time when she should have been enjoying football games and worrying about midterms.

“I’m so—”

“No. Don’t.” She waves her hand in dismissal. “He was talking about more than you anyway.” Lincoln. She means our brother who we both revere. “I stayed. I know I should have left, but I stayed and snorted a few lines until the euphoria set in. But I started to feel weird…weirder than usual. Like I was disconnected from my body. And I was scared because…”

Jesus, I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to ask. I don’t want to know. But I have to get to the after. I have to understand how she ended up on Schultz Bridge.

“Because what, Bluebelle?” I prod, gentler this time, belying the red-hot frenzy of hate and fury scorching its way through my veins.

When her eyes shift to mine, the look in them absolutely kills me. She tries to hide it. She always tries to hide it, but unlike Willow’s impenetrable shroud, I see right through my sister’s. Her soul is complicated. Ripe with self-loathing and shadows of demons I don’t understand. How I wish she were still little and I could protect her. She could climb on my lap again, painting my lips with my mother’s ruby red lipstick instead of painting my heart with this twisted inadequacy she clings to.

“Because I thought: maybe I am like them. Maybe I am twisted and fucked up and that’s what’s really wrong with me. Because I was actually thinking of letting him do everything he told me he would.”

“Fuck me,” I mumble, not able to hold her gaze any longer. She’s waiting for me to judge her. I am, and I don’t want her to see it. And I can’t possibly ask the question balancing on the edge of my teeth because I can’t stomach her answer.

“You don’t understand, Shaw. I was in some really bad headspace then,” she continues in that irritatingly even tone. “I just wanted to be loved, even if it was by some asshole who only pretended to care.”

“Annabelle…” My heart is twisting in agony. “You were loved. You are loved.” I grab her face between my hands and wipe away the tears wetting her cheeks. I want to shake some sense into her.

“You don’t need a worthless piece of shit like Eddie Lettie to feed your self-esteem. All guys like that do is feed off of it until there’s nothing left.”

“I know.”

Does she, though? She says all the right things at the right times, but most of the time I don’t think she believes a word of it. She’s still as confused and tormented by whatever started her down this destructive path, to begin with.

“Eddie came out of the bedroom awhile later with his jeans on but the zipper undone, and he…”

“He what,” I barely breathe. I loosen my fingers around her jaw when she winces. It’s hard. All I want to do is punch something until my knuckles split.

“He eyed me with this look that meant keep my mouth shut, then he grabbed me from the couch. The sick thing is…I went willingly.”

I have to let go of her then. I have to grab the steering wheel and wrap my fingers tight around it, fighting like hell not to pick up my phone, call Bull, and demand he put out an APB on this low-life fucker, holding him until I can personally choke the life from his rotten soul.

“He pushed me against the wall even before we got to the bedroom. He tore my blouse while telling me all the vile things he was going to do to me. But the whole scene faded in and out, like I’d accepted my fate and checked out of my body. I knew I didn’t really want what he was telling me. I knew I needed to fight but I couldn’t make myself do anything about it. He may have hit me. I may have screamed. I don’t know. It’s all pretty hazy.”

Jesus fucking Christ.

“I get these snippets of fighting and yelling and glass breaking. The last thing I remember was stumbling down the steps outside and after that, it’s all black until I woke up the next day in rehab. If I was on that bridge, I honestly don’t remember. I don’t even remember you picking me up from the police station, Shaw.”

She stops talking. I’m not sure how long we sit in stone silence. She’s waiting for me to say something, anything I suppose, but I’ve got nothing. My heart is heavy. Breaking for her, breaking for what’s been done to her, for everything she’s been through in her short years already. But mostly it’s heavy because this conversation didn’t fucking help at all. I know little more than I did before, except I have another to-do to add to my ever-growing list.

“I’m sorry I don’t remember more.”

“Don’t be. It’s fine,” I lie.

She swallows hard. I hear it over the two feet that separate us. “Why do you think I killed someone?”

I look at her then. Her eyes shine. Her face looks sallow. Her lips are trembling. She’s picking at that damn cut again because she’s nervous about what I’m going to say.

“I don’t think you did, Bluebelle.”

“Then why did you say that?” Her voice is shaky and shrill and I feel as though I’m one-half step away from losing her to that sordid world again. I don’t want to lie to her, but I don’t know how honest I should be either. I have no idea how close she is to that invisible ledge or what will make her tip over it.

“It’s just a misunderstanding is all.”

Her spine straightens. “I don’t believe you. Something made you think that. Someone brought up that night, specifically Schultz Bridge, or you wouldn’t be here quizzing me.”

“It’s nothing,” I offer again, hoping she’ll leave well enough alone until I can figure this the fuck out. I’m already trying to plot my next course of action.

“I want you to tell me the truth, Shaw.”

My sigh is long and drawn out. She can’t handle the truth right now. Maybe not ever. “Annabe—”

“I’m stronger than you think, Shaw. Everyone always acts like I’m a baby and I’m stupid, and I’m sick of it. ‘Be careful what you say to Annabelle.’ ‘Annabelle won’t understand.’ ‘Annabelle’s too young,’” she mocks. “I’m a grown-ass woman now. Start fucking treating me like one. Whatever you tell me isn’t going to send me back there. I promise.”

“Isn’t it?” I challenge, turning toward her. Only minutes ago, she was falling apart. Now she’s suddenly strong as an ox? In about five seconds I’ll wish I hadn’t let her petulance goad me. “What if you were responsible for someone’s death that night and you don’t remember? What if that person happens to be the father of the woman I’m in love with? What if someone else knows that and is using it against me? Against our family to get what he wants?”

At the horrified look on her face, I reach for her hand, hoping my touch soothes the sting of my tirade, but she yanks it back.

“Is all that true?” she croaks.

Every fucking word of it, I want to say. Right down to the part where I’m in love. Jesus…I. Am. In. Love. Three months ago that was laughable. A big part of me wants that oblivion again because if this is what being in love makes you feel inside—unholy panic at every turn—I am in for a world of hurt.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out, Bluebelle.”

Her hand flies to her mouth, stifling a sob. She looks every bit the young naïve twenty-one-year-old she is instead of the mouthy, carefree one she tries to be.

This time I don’t let her recoil. I set my hand on the back of her neck and force her to me, throwing my arm around her in comfort.

“I’ll fix it. Whatever it is, trust me to fix it,” I declare. I don’t know how. I only know I have to.

Her small body shakes against mine. I feel like a heel putting her through this, but honestly, better me than the cops. I wouldn’t put it past that cocksucking campaign twat to try stirring up legal trouble for us as soon as it suits his purpose. And I hear that countdown clock ticking. It started the second I stepped outside his office doors earlier.

He didn’t throw out some idle threat. This I already know. All the pieces fit together too perfectly. A little too perfectly, if you ask me. He has to know I have connections. He has to know I’ll turn over every rock I can. He has to think I’ll find something and walk away from Willow, leaving him to scoop up the pieces of her broken heart. What he doesn’t know, though, is how deep my well of pure grit and determination runs when I want something badly enough.

He’s about to find out, though. I want Willow, and I won’t let him, or anyone else, take her from me. I decided on my way here that there’s something to be said about the adage keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.

I’m not saying a word about this to my father, something I think Mergen banked on. This news would absolutely crush my father’s heart. It would ruin his chances of reelection. Mergen knows that. The fucker thinks he can get away unscathed with everything he wants.

Only he won’t.

He will not threaten my family.

He will not steal my girl.

He will not take a single thing from me that is mine to protect.