Page 19 of This Blood that Bonds Us

Take care of them. I know you will.

Love,

Luke

I let the letter fall to the ground, and Presley snatched it.

My heartbeat was in my ears.

“Aaron?” Kimberly called, but the room was fading around me. “What does it say?”

That was his plan all along. To disappear and go back to The Family and . . . stay there? He didn’t plan on ever coming back. He didn’t want us to follow. There was no map, or coordinates or cellphone number. My brothers were out there, and we had no way to find them. It finally hit me.

I may never see either of them again.

No one would hand me a grand plan of how to fix it. We were on our own in the middle of nowhere.

“They want us to stay here. This is it. That’s all it really says.”

It all fell into place. What should have been obvious but I’d never fully realized. The reason Luke constantly asked about our five-year plan. He never had one. Neither of them did. The Family was their plan. Their fate. Their future.

“I opened it after the first three days of waiting,” Mom said, “and I cried all night. Your brothers didn’t think they were ever going to outrun what was chasing them. Now I know why.”

I shot to my feet, feeling hot all over. That couldn’t be it. There had to be more.

“Aaron?”

“He didn’t give you anything else?” I snatched the envelope to make sure it was empty.

“No. Just this letter and some money.”

My chest burned. The room was spinning. It couldn’t be it. Why didn’t he give me anything else? How could that be it? It was nothing.

“Are you okay, honey?”

All of them stared at me with wide-eyed worry. My whole body was flushed with emotion I couldn’t place.

“Can I have a second alone on the porch?”

“Of course, honey.”

Without grabbing a coat, I went out the door into the freezing night.

Eight

Aaron

Being alone never helped anything, neither did punching trees. I’d trudged straight through the snow that reached my calves, and hit the largest one I could find till some of the emotion rocking through me ran its course and my clothes were soaked from the avalanche of snow that had fallen from the tree.

I’d moved to the porch where snowflakes fell in a light frost covering the deck. The cold air was harsh on my skin, and I stared out into the vast wilderness.

They weren’t coming back. My brothers were gone. I’d thought for sure they’d give me another clue. A way to find them. Something. But that was a child’s way of thinking. I was still expecting them to come and save me but scoffed at the absurdity of it. I wanted them to save me so I could save them.

Burying my head in my hands, a gnawing emptiness hollowed my chest. When I thought of them, it got worse. I wasn’t sure I’d ever been so angry before, and I’d directed plenty of anger at my brothers in Blackheart. I replayed it all in my mind. That night at the carnival or any time I’d blamed them for everything that was wrong with my life. They let me paint them as the bad guy and yell and scream.

I thought I’d been angry then, but none of that compared to the anger I felt toward myself. I’d been so naive, letting them believe in a world where they couldn’t be saved, and this was the consequence. I’d let them shoulder everything, and I didn’t realize I’d done it the entire time. Since I was a kid, I’d let them do it and didn’t think twice about how it felt to be responsible for everything.

I thought over our last moments together in Blackheart. Before The Family showed up and ruined everything that day in the forest. They wanted to stay together. We were all going to be together, and they wanted it too, then they had to watch as it all got stripped away from them.