Page 35 of The Casualty of Us (Philosophies of the Heart Duet #1)

He nods at the end of his words, dropping his bag as well, but there’s something there, though. Something hiding behind the warning that’s telling me I’m hitting close to home with this one.

Something almost like fear.

“So we had to read The Prince for debate, right?” I start carefully, waiting until he leans against the kitchen counter to really get on with it. “We got into it in class because she was arguing for Machiavelli’s theory of using fear to control the people, which I opposed.”

“Naturally,” he snorts. “Because you’re a masochist.”

“Right.” I roll my eyes. “But then when we kinda hashed things out, she said that the prince should fear the people too.” His mouth drops a little, face going slack, and I shoot him a questioning look while finishing.

“That she would never want to be him because she knows that sometimes she can forget that the means matter and that she knows it’s a flaw. ”

“Oh.” He closes his mouth with a quick nod. “Interesting.”

I wait another couple of seconds for him to elaborate before glaring. “Seriously?”

“What?” He immediately scowls back.

“No way.” I shake my head, quite literally standing in the face of their twin games. “You gotta give me more than that. I brought it up. Now break it down for me because I’m sitting here reading about a guy named fucking Heathcliff—”

“Goddammit,” he groans, lifting a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Fine, just shut up about the books already. I get enough of that from O.”

Silence falls between us as he drops his hand back down despite his words, though. Something aggressive filling the space that’s only ever been there when it comes to one topic. Not that I can really blame him.

“You know O’s really fucking smart, right?”

“Yeah,” I scoff. “I caught that.”

He looks down, shifting on his feet a little, and I track the move, immediately picking up on the mannerism because it’s similar to someone else’s. A nervous habit.

One they share.

“Wait.” I narrow my eyes at him. “What do you mean?”

“Not like…” He heaves a sigh. “She’s like really fucking smart, dude.”

“Like how smart?”

“Like when we started school, they wanted to pull her out and send her to some special school for geniuses or something, but she refused to leave me.”

His gaze finally lifts back to mine and I just stare at him for a beat before muttering dumbly. “No shit?”

“No shit.” He nods. “Her IQ is like one-sixty or something.” A scowl fills his face, and he shakes his head quickly. “I don’t know, she got mad the last time I asked for the exact number.”

“No,” I start to argue, even knowing he wouldn’t lie to me but…it can’t be that. I can’t have missed something that should have been so obvious. “But she’s always complaining about math and how she has a B—”

“Exactly.” He cuts me off with a short laugh. “Do you know what grade Ophelia has gotten in math ever since we started school? On every test? On every piece of homework she’s ever turned in?”

He lifts his brows at me when I just continue to stand there, mouth hanging open in shock as what he’s saying slowly starts to sink in.

“It’s a B,” he scoffs, scowling at me all over again. “I tried to tell you, man, you have no idea how smart my sister is.”

“Holy shit,” I finally manage, swallowing hard. “But that’s…”

“Yeah,” he agrees, pausing long enough for some of the warning in his eyes to bleed across his face.

“She can get a little lost up there sometimes.” The words are an uneasy admission and one that I can tell he’s not used to making.

“It can fuck with her head, I guess, make her closed off.” He shrugs.

“It’s worse when she feels threatened.” Another shrug leaves him more tensely than the last, and he rolls his shoulders with it.

“But you know O, she’s good, just needs a little upkeep is all. ”

I stare at him as silence falls again, finally placing a name to the thing that’s hiding behind the warning written all over him. The thing that’s riding the tension in the air between us. It actually is fear.

He’s scared. Maybe of my reaction, but my gut says it’s mostly about her.

Then he nods at me like everything’s all good. As if he’s trying to convince himself right along with me as dozens of moments of Ophelia fly through my head, and it hits me then. What the fear is.

He’s scared of losing her to whatever the fuck she has going on up there.

He’s scared whatever the upkeep is won’t be enough.

That maybe one night not even her own twin will be enough to get her brain to shut off.

“When she feels threatened…”

She used to trust herself more.

Fuck.

“She’s amazing,” I declare softly, uncaring if he punches me again this time because it’s true. “That’s gotta be hard, though.”

A beat passes that feels a lot like judgment, and I hold his gaze until he nods slowly. “Yeah, it can suck for her sometimes.”

“How?” I push back, grasping for anything more of her.

“She sees a lot more than regular people.” He frowns at me. “Picks up on little things that most people miss, and she rarely forgets anything so you’ll never be able to fake your way through one of those books, just so you know.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.” I interject.

“I think it’s harder for her because she genuinely cares about people, or like, humanity.”—he circles the bottle through the air quickly—“as a whole, but…” His words start to trail off, and I tense up. “The individuals are what can trip her up.”

Right. Like me.

He pauses again, and I nod at him to keep going even though every new thing he’s unearthing is just digging my grave deeper without me even having to do anything.

“So for example.” He exhales suddenly, eyes dropping to the book on the table with unease working its way across his face.

“When they brought her to the hospital after the kidnapping.” I go still at the mention of the mostly forbidden topic.

“She wouldn’t do anything until someone gave her something to write with, just kept asking for them over and over again.

Pen and paper, pen and paper,” he mutters quietly, something about the whisper making my stomach twist. “She wrote down everything she could remember about it.” His eyes rise back to mine.

“She filled three notebooks full of details, and that was only the stuff she remembered clearly.” He scoffs, delivering bluntly, “She didn’t include anything that she deemed questionable because of lack of sleep. ”

I can’t help the way my hands clench at the picture he’s painting, and when the bottle he’s holding gives a loud crack…I know he’s fighting the same thing—the urge to go hunt the fuckers down who did that to her.

“She wanted them to be caught,” I interject, because that’s pretty fucking understandable.

“No.” He gives me a hard shake of his head. “No, Hayes, she needed them to be caught.” The bottle gives another crack as he pauses before his voice quiets again. “And I think part of her still blames herself because they weren’t, like somehow she missed something.”

“I think that’s what scares me the most some days. The after of it all. The second-guessing.”

Her words float through my head before aiming straight for my stomach with a kick that just has it twisting harder. Knowing I was just a great fucking addition to that.

“She didn’t even acknowledge anyone until she had it all out, though.

The only thing she did besides write was squeeze my hand.

” His gaze holds mine like he needs me to understand something as badly as she probably still needs them to be caught.

“Then she closed the last book, looked at me, and told me to remind her that after sixty million years, it’s the pangolin that walks by as the elephant mourns its baby, and somehow, goodness prevails. ”

My brows drop as I try to untwist her words, but I’m too caught up in the picture of my girl in that fucking state to even ask what a pangolin is before he scoffs.

“Then she passed the fuck out for thirty-six hours.” His eyes fall back down to the book, fear flashing front and center again. “I thought she really fucking lost it there for a minute.”

“What does it mean?”

Because with O, it has to mean something.

“She explained it when she woke up.” He shrugs.

“How out of sixty million years worth of creatures it’s the pangolin that’s survived.

” He finally releases the bottle with a twist as he snorts, “Not the sabertooth or the mammoth, not the strongest or the biggest, but the pangolin.” He shakes his head, mouth pulling up into something too sad to be a smile.

“A creature whose only defense is to curl itself up into a ball outlasted them all.”

“And somehow, goodness prevails,” I mutter softly, brows dropping, and try to work through it like she would.

“Despite the odds, even in something as brutal as nature.” He gives me a single nod, sighing wearily.

“Ophelia needs things to make sense. She needs there to be a reason. A logic to the world.” His mouth quirks up with a roll of his eyes.

“It used to really freak her the fuck out when we were little and she couldn’t make sense of something. ”

“I can imagine.”

Because with all the pieces he’s added to the ones I’ve already memorialized of her in my head, it makes sense why she wouldn’t give me an inch until my lunch table confessional. Why she might never stop looking at me the way she does now.

“She’s the smartest person I know, and my money’s on her, always, in any room.

” He clears his throat, and I manage a nod to let him know I’m still with him.

“But you have to remind her sometimes. To fight it. She’ll push herself until there’s nothing left otherwise.

” His eyes start to drift, and he mumbles, “Madness in the great ones must not unwatched go.” He shakes his head. “It’s from—"

“ Hamlet .” I nod, the phrase churning up what’s left of my stomach and making me have to swallow before adding quickly, “I know.”

He pauses, tension returning to his face. “I always hated that our mom named her after that girl.” The words end on a sharp breath and he seems to catch himself before delivering with finality, “But that’s my sister, Flynn.”

And there it is.

He thinks I can’t handle it, that maybe it’ll even make me run, and maybe…

Maybe some part of him is even hoping it will.

Thinking the same stupid-ass shit that led me here in the first place.

“I’m honestly surprised she brought it up with you.” That sour look flashes across his face again with a twist. “It’s not something she usually talks about.”

“I don’t blame her,” I cut back in, holding his gaze.

“But like I said…she’s amazing,” His mouth turns down with a frown, and I shoot him a smirk while sitting my definitely doomed ass back down.

“In fact, I wouldn’t change a single thing about her.

” I grab the book off the table before tossing back. “Right, Ollie?”

Fucker.

His jaw twitches before he grumbles, “Whatever.”

“By the way.” I lean back on the couch. “You’re late for practice now.”

His eyes blow wide, and he jerks his head to look at the clock on the stove. “You piece of shit,” he shouts, grabbing his athletics bag off the floor as he hauls ass for the door. “I expect fucking pizza when I get back for this!”

“Yeah, yeah.” I mutter, settling in and opening up my literary damnation again. “I’ll go grab some later.”

“And remember what I said, Flynn!”

The door slams shut behind him, and I stare at the page, whispering to myself as the words start to float around it. “Which part?”

The stay away from her part? That part where we’re both very much aware that she’s twenty-four karat while I’m fucking gold-plated? Or the part where she’s the girl who came out of a kidnapping and asked to be reminded that the world is worth saving?

That the pangolin survived…just like she did.

Because I’m definitely forgetting one of those things, and Ollie’s going to be fucking pissed when he finds out which.

Now I just need to look up what the fuck a pangolin even is.

Maybe it’ll help me make her smile again.