Page 2

1

DELILAH

T he beeping isn’t what wakes me. It’s the fingers stroking my cheek. My lashes stick together as I attempt to blink. While the person who was stroking my face gently helps me sit up and softly says, “You’re okay, Lilo.”

The nickname is familiar, even through the fog of unconsciousness that’s still lurking, but I can’t place it. All I do know is the eerie sense of death it invokes. There’s no comfort despite a part of my mind holding it in a memory.

It’s not until I open my eyes that I understand why. The heart rate monitor attached to me beeps wildly as I watch him hover at my bedside. The rest of the room doesn’t come into focus. Even though my vision is blurry, and it’s been over a decade, I know it’s him and my throat burns, turning my voice hoarse. “Kane?”

His eyes are the same light green that I could watch for hours. But they’re no longer bright—the spark behind them is missing—and his nostrils flare, darkening them further. He’s not seventeen anymore. He’s an adult. His muscles are more defined than the lean, tall boy he was and the small amount of facial hair he treasured has grown into neatly trimmed stubble.

“Asher,” he grits as he turns, giving me his back.

It can’t be. Asher’s dead. He’s been dead since we were teenagers. I look around the room for any sign of the Grim Reaper waiting to collect my soul.

Kane doesn’t look at me as he rakes his fingers through his midnight hair. There’s a scar between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. A scar in the exact same place Asher had one. He grips his nape, and it tugs the chain around his neck. The ornate clasp comes into view, and I stare at it. A golden hand, each finger curled around a Victorian mirror handle that attaches to the other part of the clasp.

What the fuck?

We buried him with the chain.

The beeping intensifies, showing I’m alive. But if I’m alive, how is a dead man standing in front of me?

My vision blurs further as he takes a controlled breath. Every muscle in his body tenses. His black t-shirt is pulled taut, and he turns to face me. His features are darker, and I know it’s Asher. He was once someone I thought I could love, but he warped my innocent feelings into something dangerous.

He’s older. Not the seventeen-year-old boy who thought he was a man with the world at his feet. He is a man now. Dark stubble shadows his jaw, and his hair isn’t styled. It was always meticulously groomed to be “presentable” as he called it. The boardroom look that’s timeless and shows that he’s powerful.

I don’t move, I don’t dare breathe, as he takes a step closer to me without blinking. His hand slowly lowers from his nape, a shiny gold band on his ring finger glistening under the harsh fluorescent lights, until the harshness splits into a smile and he lowers to his haunches at my bedside.

The hospital bed adds more confusion, but I’m not chained to it like the other times, so I can relax slightly. He strokes my hair back as his eyes turn glassy and the soothing tone doesn’t match my last memory of him.

“Hi, Lilo. You scared me, baby. I thought you’d never wake up.”

“Am I dead?” I whisper to the hallucination.

A sad smile lifts his lips, and he slowly shakes his head as he continues stroking my hair. “You’re very much alive.”

My voice lowers even further as I stare at him, attempting to make sense of how he’s aged and how he’s here . “So, why can I see you?”

I would have to die to be able to converse with the dead. Or I’m still in the hospital my parents sent me to and the drugs are making me see things. Again. But the corner of his lips lift into a half-smile. It’s the nervous one he’d give me when we were around our parents. The one that promised punishment for embarrassing him and it forced my mother to enact her own. Now it’s comforting as he strokes my cheek with the back of his finger because it’s something familiar. I don’t move away from him.

“You’ve always been able to see me,” his finger continues mapping my features as he pauses to lean in closer, “and I’ve always watched you. Remember? When you’d play the piano, you would captivate the room, and you would look at me too.”

His lips brush my cheek and my eyes close to stop the tears from spilling over my lashes. It all burns. An ache forms behind my eyes, deep in my skull, and I know I wouldn’t forget his funeral. Na?ve hope strengthens my voice as I ask after the person, my person, who has always been the secret of my heart.

“How did you do it?” The caress against my cheek stops and his eyes are fixed on the tear that slides over my temple and races into my hair as I continue. “How could you let him go to prison?”

Kane has been locked away from society for over a decade for a crime he clearly didn’t commit if Asher is alive. I knew Asher was sick and twisted, but there’s a different pain in knowing that he’s allowed his own brother, his twin, to rot behind bars all alone while living his life.

Thumbing the tear streak away, he tilts his head so that he’s fully in front of one of my eyes. His voice is slow, and concern creases his brows as he assesses me.

“Kane is dead, Delilah.”

My stomach constricts and the beeping turns erratic at his lie.

Kane isn’t dead.

He wouldn’t look at me the last time I saw him, and he ignored my letters.

But Asher cups my cheek and the cold band on his finger burns through my skin as his voice thickens. “He’s been dead since the birthday party, remember?”

Hope is a cruel bitch, and I can’t stop it digging its claws into me. It infuses my words as I shake my head and pull away from the dead man’s hand.

“He didn’t die. You died.”

Asher stands, letting out a harsh breath. I should run. He’ll be pissed, and I don’t want to deal with whatever punishment he’ll inflict. But I don’t. I’m not seventeen anymore, and he’s not alive.

“You died!” I shout as the beeping continues in the background of the tense room. “Not Kane. You faked it, didn’t you?”

My limbs ache and I can’t move my legs to get away from him or force him to answer me. But he doesn’t react with violence. His eyes turn red, and he holds his hands up near his chest as he says, “We’ve been through this before. Kane died. It hurts us all,” his voice cracks and he slowly blinks before he continues, “but it kills me when you get like this.”

“Shut the fuck up! You sadistic prick! You fucking died. Not Kane! You did this. I know you did!”

The hospital doors are abruptly pushed open during my screaming and an older man places his hand on Asher’s chest, moving him back a step. The scrubs show he’s a doctor, and he speaks in a soothing tone as I glare at the motherfucker behind him. It could be something I’ve made up again, like the dreams, and I never really left the hospital. That’s what happened and Asher isn’t in front of me.

“Delilah, you’re safe. Your husband hasn’t done anything.”

Why the fuck is he calling a spirit my husband? My limbs are still weighed down, making it difficult to escape, and my glare lessens as I watch the doctor’s hand touching Asher’s chest. You can’t touch hallucinations. But he’s touching him. The edges of the doctor’s fingers are pushing Asher’s t-shirt closer to his skin. He’s real.

My eyes close so tightly that the darkness behind my eyelids blurs as I shake and curse.

“It’s not true. It’s not fucking true. I was there. He died.”

Harsh fingers wrap around my wrist. They pull as I lash out. My limbs are sluggish, but it doesn’t deter me until Asher grips my shoulders and pushes me into the bed. Something scratches my arm—a familiar sting of a needle—and I fight harder. I won’t go back to that institution, not again.

“Stop doing this to yourself,” he hisses as his fingers dig into my bones.

More weight is added to the inside of my body, sinking my mind and dragging the sounds further away from my ears. The bed doesn’t just cushion me. It takes away my senses, and the last thing I have sentience of is the harsh hands pushing against me.