He pulled him against his chest. “We don’t need another Little Dicky running around.”
I laughed. “No we do not. One Little Dicky is plenty.” I yawned.
“Come here.” Miller put his arm out so I could nestle into his side.
I rested my head against his shoulder.
“Look at what we made.”
I looked up at Miller instead of at Jacob. “I love you.”
He looked down at me. “I love you.”
I blinked the tears out of my eyes. “If something ever happens to me, you’ll keep him safe, right?”
“What are you talking about? Nothing’s going to happen to you.”
I blinked faster. “She’ll eventually find me,” I said. I looked down at our son. Isabella would find me one day. She’d kill me. I’d always had nightmares about it. But they’d been worse recently. Like I could feel her wrath all around me. Like I could feel her anger. What bothered me the most about it was that it made it seem like I was connected to her somehow. Like maybe thisbond we had as sisters somehow made me know she’d lost her mind again.
Miller was quiet for a moment. “I need to tell you something. And I need you to promise not to be upset.”
“Let me guess. You installed cameras all over the hospital?” I looked back up at him.
“No. But you don’t have to worry about Isabella anymore. She’s…dead.”
“What? How? How do you even know that?”
“That day we thought she showed up at the restaurant? I set up a Google alert for her name. To keep an eye on her. To make sure she was nowhere near us. I didn’t tell you about it, because I remembered you’d told me you just wanted to picture everyone from our past living happily ever after. I figured keeping tabs on her went against that. I’m sorry, I should have told you ages ago.”
“I never wanted Isabella to live happily ever though.” I swallowed hard, the guilt catching weird in my throat. “I wanted her to die.”
Miller was quiet.
“I worry sometimes. That I’m just like her.”
“What? No.” Miller pulled me closer to him. “She was crazy, Brooklyn. You’re not crazy. You’re kind and passionate and lovely.”
“Then why aren’t I sad that my half-sister is dead?”
“Does it help if you know that I’m relieved too?”
I took a deep breath. “A little. How…how did she die?” I doubted it was kidney failure. Surely my dad would have stolen some rando’s kidney for his daughter if that was the case.
“She fell out of a window in a hospital.”
A chill ran down my spine as I sat in my hospital bed. “Like…a mental hospital?”
“No. A normal hospital. I don’t know all the specifics, but the article I read made it seem as though she kind of lost it when her marriage to James started falling apart…”
“James?”
Miller was silent.
“James Hunter? He married her?”
“Yeah.”
Oh, James.I put my hand over my mouth. I’d always hoped he’d go down a better path than that. Like he’d wake up from the fog of drugs and booze. Like he’d make a choice for himself. It broke my heart that he hadn’t. That he’d married that monster. And it broke my heart more, remembering him proposing to me. Remembering Rob saying James had to marry a Pruitt.James.
