Graham’s mouth goes slack. “Holy shit. What did Third—”
“It’s not about Third! Pay attention,” I shout. “We had to slap each other. Esme slapped me so hard, I’m shocked she didn’t knock a tooth out.”
“Why would they do that?” Graham whispers to himself. “Who—”
“Who? Your precious Four,” I ask and answer, and even the mention of him fills me with fury. “You know, I hooked up with him,” I snarl, because I want him to feel like I do. I watch the words land, and see his expression twist and I feel righteous. “I hooked up with your brother in the woods, at the bonfire.”
Graham gives a sad smile. “I know,” he says quietly. “But Four doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
“He has everything to do with this,” I accuse.
“Don’t say that,” he protests, his voice small. He sounds young. He sounds na?ve. He wants to not know so badly. I wanted to not know everything I know now. Mercy has long run out for me, and I hear Penthesilea loud in my ear. She was right about Pierce.
But Graham…
“If Pierce told you to let me die, would you?”
Graham stares at me like I’m crazy. “What the fuck kind of question is that?”
“I’m being serious,” I insist. I swallow hard as I take a step closer, jutting a finger in his face. “You’ve made it very clear that you would do whatever Pierce told you to do. Even though I expressly told you that I am not something to give. So, I’m going to ask you again and I want an answer: if Pierce told you to let me die, would you?”
“Fuck no,” Graham says. “And he wouldn’t want that.”
“I’m not so sure. And I’d rather die on my own terms than his,” I bite out.
“You don’t want to die. If you did, you would’ve let Esme get you, and you didn’t.”
Esme’s blood has dried a dusty red on my hands now, and my skin feels tight underneath. I scratch at it, bringing it up in flakes, my nails leaving red welts in its place. “Get it off, get it off, get it off,” I chant to myself, and Graham jumps to his feet, tugging me into the bathroom.
It feels like the first night all over again, like Hawthorne washing Esme’s poison from my skin. Hawthorne. Her howl still echoes in my ear, feral and mournful. I open my mouth in a soundless wail, wanting to swallow the sound of it, but I can’t manage it.
“Why didn’t you save Saint?” I accuse as he lathers my hands with too-expensive soap and carefully washes away Esme’s blood. The flakes swirl down the porcelain sink, sliding down the drain like they never existed in the first place.
“Besides the obvious, she had a better chance of getting away than you did.”
Graham judges my hands clean, reaching for a hand towel, but I see there’s still blood under my fingernails. I don’t say anything about it, though, as he shuffles me from the bathroom back into the dark expanse of his bedroom. He pushes me to sit down on the edge of his bed as he turns on the light on the side table and goes to his dresser, searching through it for something.
“I saved you because you weren’t going to save yourself. Not in that moment. Because you believed that whatever they did to you, you deserved. Which you don’t,” Graham explains. He makes a quiet sound of triumph in the back of his throat as he finally pulls out pajamas.
“Not because you care about tradition?” I drawl that word out like Pierce and Leighton and Third.
Graham kneels in front of me and I stare down at him, frowning.
“Fuck the Finish,” Graham says quietly as he passes me a T-shirt and a pair of flannel pants that are just a little too big.
“That’s easy for you to say,” I whisper. “It’s all so easy for you, isn’t it? You’ve been telling yourself that for a long time. ‘Fuck the Finish.’ Saying you’re helping me. Without doing anything about the Finish. If you’re not going to stop bad things from happening, then you should have the decency to watch it, eyes open.” Each word hits like a punch and each flinch is an earned victory.
Graham’s face is pale in the low light.
“Adina, I couldn’t—”
“You could,” I insist. “But you didn’t. You can’t see that your brother is just as bad as the rest of them, because if you do, you have to admit that all you taught him was that he can have whatever he wants because of his name. You’d have to admit that you did nothing because decency means nothing to you. You are a coward, and worst of all, you are selfish.”
Graham shoves the lent pajamas into my hands and I hold them loosely, a flannel pants leg dragging on the floor. “Adina—”
“You don’t want to stop this because it means standing up for something. And you are only considering it now because of me. You would’ve never tried this hard for Saint. Or Pen. Or… or Esme,” and my voice cracks on her name.
“You know why. If there’s anyone in this house who doesn’t deserve to be dead, it’s you, Adina Walker.”
No one deserves to be dead, I want to scream. Not Margaret. Not Reagan. Not even Esme. None of us deserves to be dead.
“Why me?”
“Because I love you, Adina,” he spits, exasperated.
I squint at Graham for a very long time, my brain slipping offline as I try to compute his statement. I don’t realize that I’ve started to giggle until I register the resignation on his face. I slap a hand over my mouth, trying to smother my disbelief.
“Adina, please,” he begins.
“No, I’m sorry, I—do you hear yourself?” I ask, and shake my head, trying to get myself in check again, all these emotions radioactive and reactionary, bringing me close to explosion. “It’s just… you don’t even know me enough to say that, Graham.”
“I could love you. I know I could,” he amends, though he sounds less sure now. When I just stare at him, waiting, he drags a hand over his face. “We should sleep. You should sleep.”
And I know that’s the end of the argument for Graham because he’s still afraid. He’s afraid, not of his family but of the truth of how he’s still a part of it. That he, too, plays their games.
CHAPTER 31
GRAHAM ISN’T EXACTLY BEAUTIFUL. NOT like his brother. But he does look softer, and even more so in sleep. I misjudged them, when they stood side by side, in the woods. Graham was more difficult and so I dismissed him. I mistook his acerbic nature for cruelty and was stupidly charmed by a low laugh and good bone structure. But I know better now. My fingers brush over his skin, and he turns in to the warmth of my touch, but he doesn’t wake. Not yet. Good.
I slip from the bed.
In the daylight, his room looks very much like him. It is messy, clothes strewn about. A knocked-over bottle of cologne lies on his dresser. A baggie of weed is next to it, haphazardly out for the world—and the maid—to see. There is a photo of him and his brother on the side table, but none of anyone else. That makes sense too.
I pad over to the first door that doesn’t lead out to the hallway. I expect to find the bathroom, but it’s a closet instead. I throw a glance backward, checking if he’s still asleep. Graham turns on his side toward the window, burrowing deeper, so I can’t help but snoop.