Page 133 of The Wicked
I shrugged. “I guess we—we’re kind of, like, friends?”
His frown deepened. “Yeah… no.”
I laughed it off, backtracking. “I’m joking. He probably wanted to ask you, but you stormed off early, and he knows I know, and well—yeah, nothing serious.”
He eyed me. “You’ll stay away from him.”
“Are you asking or telling?”
“Neither. It’s a given. You don’t get close to someone like that.”
I became surprisingly uncomfortable. “You yourself said he wasn’t that bad.”
“Yeah,wasn’t.That’s until he tried to drown you and almost killed you; why are we even debating this?”
I blinked. “We’re not. Just—he’s your brother, and I thought you wanted to get closer to him.”
“Not anymore.”
“He cares about you.”
“He pointed a gun at me.”
“Devil—”
“Why are you defending him, Z.”
I hesitated. “I’m not.”
His eyes searched mine. “You will stay away from him, right? We do this one mission, and we’re out, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Zahra—”
“I will stay away. I have—I have no interest. I promise,” I lied.
He let out a sigh of relief. “You scared me with the whole defending-him thing. He’s not a good guy; he’s just very good at making people think he is.”
“Mmm.”
“Yo, quick team meeting, you shitheads!” Dog yelled from the window, and I snorted, glad for his interruption because I was close to getting the air sucked out of me with this damn conversation.
We both joined the rest in the living room. Upper was there, curled beside Milk, who was stroking his hair.
He still looked sleepy, like Dog had dragged him out of my bed.
Upper eyed us with a frown, but I smiled to let him know I said nothing. He visibly relaxed.
When Devil and I settled on a chair next to each other, Dog clapped his hand once, standing in the middle of the room.
“Great, the whole family’s here together. We have two options we can go through to clear the air and get our shit together.”
“What’s the first one?” Upper asked, and I knew it was to indulge him because we’d already cleared the air.
“I’m stoked that you asked. The first one is to talk. It’s very fucking boring, I know, but it might help if we all just—talked in the sense that—we tell each other one thing we’ve never told each other to rekindle our bond. We don’t ask questions; we just tell.”
Devil relaxed back on the couch, throwing his arm around my shoulder and pulling me back with him. “And the second one?” he asked.
