Page 100 of This Blood that Bonds Us

He stood in front of the cliff, the hills and the entire mountain waiting to hear.

“The next time we come here in the spring, it won’t just be the three of us anymore. We’re going to come back to this exact spot and look out on the unfrozen lake. All five of us.”

Kimberly nodded with a soft smile.

“You brought us up here to say all that,” I said.

“I brought you up here to spend time with you and to initiate this.”

He presented a crumpled piece of paper and a pencil.

“Are we writing love letters?”

“No, we’re starting a list of things we want to do when this is over. I figure once we don’t have a cult on our backs anymore, then we’ll have a lot of time to spend together, so I started a list. A forever list.”

The vastness of the mountain swallowed me. I was ready for winter to end even more so if it meant Zach and Luke would be standing next to us. I missed normal. I missed Blackheart and all that stupid stuff we used to do. It was brief, but it was everything I’d ever wanted.

Suddenly, I wondered what spring would hold if my brothers came back. The image of them in the photo was carved into the back of my mind.

Would they be different? Would everything be different? Could it ever be as good as what already passed?

The thought made me feel sick to my stomach again. Like the nausea that had transferred in the bond from Aaron to me. Now I was the one making us both sick.

“I know it’s hard to see now, but it’s going to happen,” Aaron said to me, and I pushed down anything else snarky that came to mind. “I already started. Number one: go back to the lake. You guys pick something. Nothing is too far-fetched.”

“We could all go to Italy. Like the summer trip I never got to have.”

There were a couple things I hadn’t let myself daydream about since my brothers were taken, and any thought of vacations was one of them, but Aaron’s excitement had my mind turning with the thought of us all on the beach lying in the sun. Visiting the museums . . . riding in the gondolas . . .

“That’s good!” He placed the paper on his leg to loosely scribble it down.

Aaron’s excitement jolted me out of my previous gloom and into the present.

“What about you, Kim?” I nudged her.

“Sometimes . . . I imagine we’ll buy a piece of land and have our own cabins. We could build them and decorate them all and live close to each other, kinda like we do now, but it will be ours. Not sure if everyone else likes the idea.”

“It’s great. I’m adding it.”

“You’d really want me close to you guys, asking you for things like milk and sugar?” I joked.

“Yes. Always.” She squeezed my shoulder.

“Will you help me decorate?”

“I’ll try my best.”

I loved the idea more than I wanted to admit. All of it sounded exciting.

After a few minutes of admiring the view and adding random things to the list—I added skydiving, and Kimberly looked at me like I hit her—she added us making our Halloween costumes, and Aaron mentioned we should head back before we got caught in the dark.

Just as I went to start back on the trail, Aaron stopped. He stood in front of Kimberly and kneeled on one knee.

“Holy shit.” The words rushed out of me.

“First . . .” He gazed up at Kimberly with a few hairs in his face. Admittedly, he looked too cool to be my older brother.

Kimberly’s cheeks flushed. “W-what are you doing?”