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The doorbell rings, but I ignore it. Anyone who’s supposed to be here is sitting right here. About thirty seconds later, it chimes again, breaking my focus and igniting my anger.

Standing, I walk down the hallway of the condo when someone rings the goddamn thing again. I don’t look to see or ask who it is. I yank the door open with such force that it nearly hits me.

My eyes widen in surprise. “Lwalida.” I’m thanking every power above and below that I didn’t curse.

“Son,” my mother greets, and I move out of the way so she can step inside.

“Mom. What are you doing here?” Cooper asks as he approaches.

She arches her brow. “This is how my sons greet me. Did I not raise you better than this?”

Cooper and I fumble over our words, scrambling to apologize. We each hug her and kiss her cheek.

“Is everything okay?” I probe. My parents don’t make impromptu visits, so her unannounced presence is troubling.

“You mean outside of the fact that neither one of my sons has been home in weeks?” she scolds.

Cooper’s lips part to respond, but she holds up her finger. “We can deal with that later. Right now, I want to know why neither of you told me Evie was attending school here.”

Fuck!

My gaze meets Cooper’s. We hoped to at least get through this year without her or Dad finding out.

“Lw—”

“Don’t you mom me, Colter Emirhan Jacobi,” she snaps, cutting me off. “Eva has been through enough. She doesn’t need either of you pouring your pain into her festering wounds.”

Cooper coughs to try and cover up his laugh, but fails miserably. Mom wheels her glare at him, and he bites his lip to stop.

It’s my turn to smother my amusements. “Don’t think because I’m not looking at you, I can’t feel you smiling,” our mother warns sternly.

“You have nothing to worry about. We have every intention of staying out of her way. As a matter of fact, she won’t even know we go here,” Cooper announces.

“See that it stays that way.” Then she looks both of us in the eyes.“If I hear one report or even get an inkling that you two are harassing Eva, I will pull you from Groveton so fast that no one will know either of you was ever here.” Then she turns, exiting swifter than she came.

Massaging my forehead, I survey the room to ensure I didn’t hallucinate her. The wide open front door is the only evidence Jalila Jacobi ever stood before us.

“Are we aborting the mission?” Cooper inquires.

A plan is already forming in my head—the perfect loophole.

Slowly, I peer at my brother. “Of course not. We’ll ensure they never find out.”

8

eva

“Why can’twe just stay here?” I ask Farrah as we lie on the deck chairs by the pool of my family’s beach house. We didn’t feel like playing the “how many places will sand magically appear” game, so we opted for chlorinated water instead. However, with sand being its usual annoying self, I’m sure there will still be sand somewhere on me when I go to shower.

Farrah’s head angles in my direction, her Chopard sunglasses blocking the brightness of the day.

“Alas, the world would suffer a great loss if we were to dwell here,” she quips in a very aristocratic manner while arching her left brow.

Chuckling, I retort, “For the world would be asunder. The Horsemen of the Apocalypse surely would be about, wreaking chaos in honor and in our stead.”

We both burst into laughter at our obvious ridiculousness. Summer is at its end, and it’s back to the stuffy halls of Edgewood Academy, where Samantha ‘nasally nosed’ Davenport, and others like her, thinks she rules the school with an iron fist.

Sighing, I glance up to the sky, soaking up the sun.