Page 97 of Fragile Facade
“Then what?”
I purse my lips together, but he just admitted to being afraid of his music, so… “Fuck, I’m afraid of being like them! My family.”
Killian barks out a laugh, and this time, I sucker punchhimin the gut, shoving him away. He buckles over, but he doesn’t stop laughing. I don’t know why I’m fighting a smile.
“Are you shitting me?” he barks with amusement. “Soren Fucking Sauder justhasto be superior to his own family members? Oh, god. I should have known. It’s so you.”
I can’t help it. I laugh with him. Because it is me. But it’s Killian, too, and if our roles were reversed, he’d feel the same way. He’s afraid to admit he fucked up with his brother and now his biggest fear is letting Krypt down again, and mine is being just as fragile as the rest of my family who fell prey to the curse. We’re a mess of god complexes and insecurities that create superiority issues, but fuck it. We can’t change who we are, and tonight, it’s funny instead of embarrassing.
“Fuck you.” I laugh with him. “Iamsuperior to them! I bet my brain scan proves it.”
“All hail King Soren, reigning supreme of the Sauder line!” He bows to me like a complete idiot.
But I like being bowed to, so I’m still smiling. “You’re such a loser.” I grab his hand and stand him up, letting our fingers twine all on their own. “Music lessons and staying superior to my family. That’s our new deal. Death chasing every other day of the week, yeah?”
When he answers, it comes smiling against my lips. “Yeah, sweetheart.”
I grin, kissing him back. “But tone it down on the soft shit, yeah? I’m fucking sick of it. And never kiss me in front of the Vile Boys again, you dick.”
When he laughs again, I slip out of his hold and into Janie’s Woods. This time, I let him catch me.
35
LOST THE MUSIC
RIOT
He’s evenquiet in his sleep. Peaceful, like he isn’t trying so hard to be above everyone else, letting himself relax into whatever he dreams about. While everyone else shouts throughout the house, complaining about Lockan Tate taking away their shot at Yates, Soren sleeps through it all like he doesn’t give a single shit about it, like the closed bedroom door blocks out everything unimportant.
And I like that. I like him like this. I’ve never seen him at ease before. He’s either insisting he’s on a higher pedestal than everyone else, laughing in the face of danger, or quick to anger whenever his authority is questioned, but he’s never calm. He’s never willingly vulnerable.
But his back is to me like he trusts me enough to be safe, and his muscles are pliant under his tattooed skin. The Misfits tattoos are still on his arms, but Menace is working on a design to cover them, and I know he’ll go right back to being a smug bastard as soon as the gang tats he’s been embarrassed of get hidden under his true identity.
Soren’s hair is a bit darker than Remi’s, a bit shorter, too. After he showered in my bathroom when we got back to Vile House, he went to bed with it wet, and it dried all fucked up. Short little sections sticking out at odd angles like a kid, adding an innocence to him I know he doesn’t possess.
Maybe he does, though. Because the calling card I found in my sock drawer earlier is a dagger straight through my heart. The skeletal torso on the front splashed with teal is pretty, but his handwriting on the back is chicken scratch.
I like salty snacks. Crackers. Chips. Nuts.
I don’t like being alone. My mind isn’t safe.
His mind isn’t safe, and he’s telling me through a calling card because he thinks I don’t already know that. It’s cute, and it shows he’s either delusional enough to believe his faults don’t show, or he really is innocent, thinking he’s hiding it better than he does. But the next calling card makes me laugh.
I like that Remi has Krypt and I respect how much he needs him.
I don’t like thinking I’ll need someone that much.
Oh, he already does, just in different ways. Soren doesn’t need a controller like Remi does; he needs a follower. Someone who will go with him from mood to mood and understand that he shifts his needs on and off like a switch. I don’t mind chasing him around because I know he’ll take me right where I want to go. My pride can take the hit because, in the end, it’s me steering him from behind.
I’m tempted to look for more cards hidden around my room, but I don’t want to wake him yet. I close my eyes, hold his cards on my chest, and let all my fragile facades fade away until I’m so empty I can finally start looking for myself.
Sinking deeper and deeper into the well of emptiness where my true self slumbers, I poke at the boy there and rile him into looking at me. His eyes are mine, but they’re glassy instead of riotous, and I don’t know what the look in them means. My mind whirrs, sorting through my history and coming up with nothing concrete. I don’t fucking know who I am or why I ended up this way. I don’t know when I started masking and manipulating, and I’m starting to wonder if I’ve done it from the very beginning.
Memories of Krypt, dejected in his room, his eyes turning into jail cells for the demons he started carrying. They come at me, and the longer I look at them, the more I realize I knew what was happening to him all along. I never did anything about it. I offered him company and a brother to talk to, but I didn’t do anything noteworthy to change his situation. The word sick was thrown around in the hallway as I sat with him in his dark room. The way our mom’s blond hair came into view every time her head whipped with the force of her hissed whispers.
No wonder he hates those things… Sick. Blonds.
Going deeper, I find the place where I lost music. No, I never lost it—I lost the ability to interpret it. In my early teens, I played with Krypt, and something about the song broke us. He split one way and I split the other, yet we remained tethered together in shared history and familial bonds. He kept playing, even after we killed our parents, but I never could. The notes came naturally, but they stopped making music. They were just sounds that expressed a feeling I could no longer name.
