April 11th, 2016
Choking fear clogged my airway and made it hard to breathe as Boyce wrapped his arm around my throat and put the blade of the knife against my skin.
A little droplet of blood trickled and tickled at my neck, and the first real visions of actual death washed over me.
There was a chance—a horrible, unfathomable chance—that I wouldn’t make it out of this alive.
The only thing grounding me to the moment was the thought of my sister, sleeping soundly in the back room.
She was an innocent bystander, a secondary character on the path of my life that had led us to here. All I needed—all I wanted—was to keep the focus on me and keep it off of her.
“Boyce,” I whispered, breathing shallowly. “Why are you doing this? I don’t…I don’t understand.”
His laugh was maniacal and otherworldly as he sliced the blade across my throat without an answer.
The bed rocked as I sat up abruptly, my breathing erratic and panicked, a silent scream disturbing the air as it tried to make it into my lungs.
My chest thudded wildly, and my eyes scoured the room for something, anything to make me feel better. Unfamiliar linens tickled at my fingertips as my eyes tried to adjust to the overwhelming darkness of the room and bring my heart back to a normal pace.
I wasn’t in the small house I’d rented while filming in Cold, Montana, and I certainly hadn’t been the one under the torturous strain of Boyce’s knife.
The soft sounds of a city teased outside and helped it all come rushing back to me.
Levi and I were at the Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills, and we’d been here for the last week and change. Camilla’s burial had come and gone, and all that was left was me, Levi, a hotel room, and a bottomless well of unresolved questions.
All at once, the agony rushed back, crushing and debilitating to the point that it felt like the actual blade I’d dreamed of.
I could feel the metal at her throat and the fear in her chest, and I ached to make it go away.
I needed air.
I needed answers.
I needed Camilla.
Oh God.
Why? Why did this have to happen to her? My sister. My twin. My best fucking friend in the whole wide world.
My skin itched and my legs danced under the blanket as I tried to calm the race of my heart. I wanted to rewrite history, turn it on its head and relive the night just as I’d dreamed it.
I didn’t want to die, but I would have given anything to do it if it meant I could take my sister’s place.
Levi’s breathing elevated as I thrashed back and forth next to him, and when I looked at his handsome face, it all became too much.
The history. The horrible way I’d treated my sister because of emotional avoidance when it came to how I’d felt about him.
I wanted a do-over. For all of it.
Swiftly, I threw the covers off my legs and jumped from the bed. The room was dark and relatively quiet, and the blackout curtains were meant to keep it that way.
For now, I didn’t mind, eager to escape myself and the feelings crawling under my skin.
Uncertainty was a horrible mask for grief, but it was the only thing I had to work with to occupy the hours. The more questions I asked, the more work I had to do to search for answers, and the busier it would keep me while I waited for the knife of reality to stop twisting.
Our hotel room was a suite, something Levi had insisted on so that security could be with us at all times. There were two bedrooms on the other side of the common living room area where they were staying and a small kitchenette by the entrance. We hadn’t actually used the kitchen at all, but the space had been nice long term.
The irony of having a house here that I wasn’t using wasn’t lost on me, but I’d shared that home with Camilla. I couldn’t even think about going back.
Not wanting to wake anyone else, I left the door to our bedroom shut and moved to the walk-through closet that led to the bathroom. In there, I could turn on the lights, splash my face with water—try to breathe again.
I closed the door behind me with a quiet click before flicking on the light, and I rested my palms against the marble of the vanity top.
Each breath felt wracked and broken, and it took me a while to calm down enough to even turn on the water.
Focusing on the cold tap only, I turned the knob and pooled my hands under the stream to gather some water, and then bent to the sink and splashed the cool, wet relief across my eyes and cheeks.
It chilled my burning skin and soothed the raw ends of my nerves, so I soaked in it, keeping my eyes closed and letting the excess drip into the sink like a song.
Cam’s playful laugh flitted in my mind as she scrubbed off my facial mask, avocado smear on her own in the most comical of self-made skin remedies. I could see her so vividly, no matter that the memory had been formed two years ago, and my chest squeezed.
She was the best sister I could have ever asked for, even when I wasn’t the same to her. Most times, I was demanding and spoiled and, fuck, I’d spent a lot of time chasing success instead of memories. It had been two weeks since she’d passed, but so far, no amount of time was making it any easier.
My hair drifted forward and into the water, so I shoved it back behind my shoulders and stood up straight.
The fluorescent lights were harsh on the lines of my makeup-free, red-streaked face, and my wild hair stood out past my ears. But in the first moments of recognition, in the middle of a mass of red mane, all I could see was Camilla.
Staring at me. Begging me for help and wishing for absolution.
A sob clutched my throat and kept ahold of it as I struggled to get my anxiety under control.
“Your twin,” I heard in my head. “You look so much alike.”
Words from the funeral, words that’d been on repeat in my head, all of them swirled into an angry plague over my heart and threatened to stop its beating.
“Why?” I yelled at my reflection, a hard burst of despair overwhelming me. “Why did it have to be her?”
With her eyes staring back at me and the pain on her face, I lashed out at once, ramming my fist into the hard plane of the mirror and screaming.
For her. For me.
For Grace. For Levi.
For anyone who’d ever been through the torture I felt right then.
With a splintering web, the glass of the reflection shattered, and I cried out into the otherwise silent night as I fell to my knees.
My heart was battered and broken; I might as well have the hand to match.