Page 81 of Heartless Heathens

“She’s getting too close to it all,” he said, taking a drink from it without looking back my way.

“I’d be concerned if Santorini felt the same way. He doesn’t.” I shrugged, watching Sonny grab a bottle of water from the fridge and retreating to his room to more than likely spend what was left of the day reading.

“Don’t you think that makes him even less reliable?”

“No, it makes me wonder why you’re fighting this so badly. You’ve spent just as much if not more time with her than either of us. I don’t believe you don’t see what I see.” I challenged, pointing out the obvious differences in our dynamic with Romina.

“Who says I’m fighting it? Maybe she just knows which one of us is the better twin.” He always did that shit.

Found a reason to get down about himself. Found a way to feel like he was less than.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” I told him right as she walked back into the room.

She was clad in black leggings, that damn holster always strapped to her thigh with the opal-handle blade gleaming from the side. She wore a loose black tank top with no bra on and her lips matched with a dark, glossy finish.

“If that’s how you look for a walk, I might need to consider getting you a big, scary fucking dog to stay at your side,” I told her and she laughed.

“She doesn’t need a dog, she has you,” Corvin said without much amusement and I grabbed her hand to usher her out of the chapel.

“Where are we going?” she asked, following close behind me.

“You tell me, you know this campus better than I do.” She took a moment to think before pointing back to an area behind the chapel.

“That way.” We began a leisurely stroll towards the back of our home. “I thought you had soccer practice today?”

“I’m losing interest. It’s expected.” I shrugged. “Everyone’s got something that keeps them going, some passion, or hobby, or something they enjoy that they look forward to. The reason for not blowing their brains out.”

“Like what?”

“Corvin has his knives, and.. well, Sonny has his insanity.” She elbowed me in the ribs playfully. “Okay, Sonny hasThe Lord of the Rings.” We both laughed.

“So what do you have?” she asked, eyes beaming brightly at me like she didn’t already know.

“I could never focus on one thing. It’s been that way my whole life. I just bounced around collecting hobbies, ideas, versions of me that I wanted to be in that moment. None of it ever lasted.”

“What are you collecting now?”

“You, I think. I’m consumed by just the thought of you.” She shook her head like she didn’t think she was worthy.

“So, soccer isn’t that for you anymore?”

“It never was. I wanted it to be.”

“Maybe not everyone has something…” She lamented, making me wonder if she felt the same hollowness inside herself that I did.

“Holy shit,” I said after we’d walked through the tall thicket of grass, nearly half a mile behind the chapel.

Rusty metal fencing lined a small area as if it had been made for a garden, but as we walked closer, I could see it for what it truly was. A cemetery. Nearly fifty headstones surfaced from the ground, the writing on them long worn down and gone.

“Wicked. I didn’t know this place was here.”

“It’s been here long before any of us. I doubt even Father Frollo knows about it. He keeps himself blind to everything around him that doesn't serve him a purpose,” she said.

“But you, the brave little thing you are, just so happened to roam one day till you found it?” I asked and she shook her head.

“No. It called to me,” she answered and I frowned, “Like the quiet was somehow louder than everything else until I got close enough to feel it. There’s a certain kind of buzzing in my head that goes away when I’m here.”

“That’s because the dead don’t speak unless you ask them to.” I pulled her into my chest.