Page 115 of Kiss Me Like I Didn't Kill You

Chapter 39

Arlo

I know something’s wrong, I feel it in my bones as I tear through the streets of Elaris Isle, the engine roaring beneath me.

I was sure she’d run, but I never thought she’d leave the academy grounds.

I went to the stables first, thinking she’d be with Bellamy like she always is when her world starts closing in. But she wasn’t there, and I lost precious minutes searching.

I ran for the car. The driver told me she’d taken one of the school vehicles, for a second I wanted to wring his neck for letting her go in that state, but there was no time to tarry.

He’ll pay for it, eventually.

Now I’m heading for the port. That has to be where she’s gone.

My chest tightens into a knot of shame. After everything I have done, after every scar I’ve carved into her life.

I let my ghosts and jealousies swallow me, I let a poisonous certainty take root and convince me she had betrayed me.

She hadn’t.

She was the one who needed protecting. I was a fool for not seeing it.

Rocco was dangerous from the start. He first tried to kill me when we were two, our nanny stopped him and the doctors got involved soon after.

Father wanted it buried, to keep the Vass name intact. Between money and influence, the fact of twins was quietly erased, for the rest of the world, there was only Arlo Vass.

His illness never made him harmless. He had episodes, treatment helped sometimes, failed at others.

I remember, when I was five, finding a stray cat and bringing it into my room. The next day it lay slaughtered on the floor.

Part of me wanted to blame Rocco outright, a smaller, foolish impulse sought to chalk it up to illness rather than malice, because he was my brother, my twin, and I found myself hunting for consolations that simply did not exist.

Years passed and things did not improve.

Our relationship had frayed into something ugly.

And yet, against every better instinct, some old reflex, blood before all else, pushed me to protect him.

It was a stupid, automatic loyalty, trained into me by years of denial and habit, in that instant it made Ophelia the guilty party by default, when in truth she was everything I had ever breathed for.

How could I have put my brother above her? There is no honourable answer. It happened because it was the script I knew, twin, blood, obligation, automatic and unquestioned.

I failed to think.

I did not see the Ferrum mask, I did not account for medicine missed or madness unrestrained. I did not see how dangerous he could be with her until it was far too late.

He hurt her.

If I’d been there, if I’d kept my temper, I might have stopped it.

She should never have been put in the position of being hurt or forced to kill to save herself.

I would have done it for her.

Yes, I would’ve killed my own brother for touching her after she said no.

But that night, when I found him lying on the ground, not breathing, everything flipped in an instant.