“I’ll try.”
With my head on his chest, I told him about my brother. How our mom left one day and we were on our own. I told him about how Thorne disappeared and why. And how I ended up behind that dumpster for Valhalla to find.
“What happened to the guy?” he asked, his voice tight with what I assumed was anger. Maybe rage with the way his arms tightened around me.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “It was the only time I ever saw Val kill someone.” My voice was barely a whisper as I remembered the blood that dripped from the gash in his neck. His lifeless eyes staring at me under the dumpster as I lay there shaking.
Val told me to close my eyes when she pulled me out. She didn’t want me to see the dead man lying on the ground. To this day, she didn’t know I saw him. She didn’t know that I knew what she did.
For me.
My eyes watered and my nose burned. I waited for the itch, but it never came. Neither did the tears.
The tears never breeched the surface. They pooled in my eyes, taunting me with their release. Always on the edge until they disappeared again saying,‘not this time, sucker.’
“What happened after that?”
I sniffed and took a breath. “Val took me home, and I became a Nyght Nymph.”
“What about your brother?”
“Val thinks he’s dead,” I answered, turning my head to the side and looking out over the town. I wanted to crawl inside Cash and hide from everything. He felt safe.
He felt like home.
That was something I hadn’t felt since before my mom left. It was something I wanted to cling to... to him and never let go. But I had my secrets. Secrets I couldn’t tell anyone.
“But you don’t?”
I shrugged, quiet for a moment before I answered, “We’re twins. I would know if he was dead.”
“What do you think happened?”
“Val thinks—”
“Rosie,” he cut me off. “I don’t want to know what Val thinks. I want to know what you think.” His lips grazed the shell of my ear. “Your thoughts are the only ones that matter to me.”
The tears came again. Pooling in my eyes, making it hard to see. But never filling enough to spill over. I couldn’t remember the last time someone told me my thoughts mattered. That my thoughts were important.
Val listened to all of us. We all had input on every woman and child we helped. Some ideas had merit and some didn’t. No one ever said someone’s idea was dumb, or that they didn’t know what they were talking about.
But no one ever said someone’s idea was important. Or that we couldn’t have done it without them. Val had a way of making us all feel valued and appreciated without having to stroke our egos with words.
But sometimes... I needed to hear the words.
“I don’t know. I want to believe that nothing but death would keep him from coming back for me. But I also don’t want to think about something happening to him.”
“I can talk to Nav. He can look for him. The things he can do, the people he can find, is nothing short of magic sometimes.”
“Sypher already tried. He has feelers out, algorithms. Whatever his tech shit is. But even he can’t find him.”
“Sypher,” he scoffed. “The kid isn’t all that.”
“Kid?” I asked, sitting up and turning to scowl at him. “You do know he’s older than me, right? Do you see me as a kid?”
“Rose—”
“Answer me, Cash. Do you see me as a kid?” I turned fully around and got on my knees between his legs. I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the first time we met on this very mountain.
