Shards of Us

I need to know if I can be with him.

So I slip the key into the lock, take a deep breath, and turn. It clicks, sending a jolt of fear throughout me. I reach for the doorknob, breathing heavily, but as soon as my hand wraps around it, I spin back around.

'Wait,' I say to Sebastian. 'Before I go inside, answer me something else.'

'What?' Sebastian asks.

'Why didn't you turn them in?' I blurt out. The question has been bothering me for so long, that it seems I might as well ask it now. 'The people you were supposed to kill but didn't. Why didn't you just let Marco take them, to save me and you? To save us both? Why did you care so much that you put us both in harm's way?'

I watch Sebastian intently. I'm still clutching the cool brass doorknob, waiting for answer. What I don't expect is for him to smile. Actually smile. Like a full-on, amused kind of smile.

My stomach drops.

'What?' I say, maybe too defensively.

'Nothing,' he says, still smiling. He shakes his head. 'I think you should go find out for yourself,' he says, motioning to the door. 'Your answer is in there.'

My heart starts hammering in my chest as soon as he says it, and I turn back slowly around to face the door. I take a deep breath, opening and closing my eyes, willing myself the strength to look inside. Every part of my body hums with a mixture of excitement and fear as, head throbbing, I twist the knob and step inside.

Cool air blasts me as soon as I pull the door open, coming out so fast it practically blinds me. The smell of death permeates through the air as well, and I step inside, looking around nervously, not wanting to see what's in here.

The room is an ordinary bedroom, like the kind you see at a hotel. A bathroom sits directly to my right, and a king bed with a bedside table and lamp around it is positioned just a little beyond that.

But that isn't what I'm looking at.

My eyes immediately lock on a man and a woman sitting at a small table at the end of the room, with the sliding glass door swung open, letting in buckets of icy air from outside. They're both holding red wine glasses and looking out into the distance.

My heart pounds furiously. This is the couple Sebastian saved, I realize. These two are the reason Marco is after us. They are what made all of this happen. I take a step forward, my head throbbing.

And then I guess they hear me, because all of a sudden, the couple turns around, ever so slowly.

I recognize them immediately. I recognize everything from the woman's wispy dark hair to the man's thick- rimmed glasses to the warm brown in both of their eyes. I recognize the brown suit the man wears, and the little black dress the woman has on.

I recognize them, and then I feel everything come crashing down.

'Mom?' I whisper, unable to believe my eyes. 'Dad?'

'Good to see you again, Crystal,' they say in unison.

Chapter Seventeen

Everything seems to slow in that instant. All of the air is sucked out of my lungs, and I look back between Sebastian and my parents, shaking all over. This can't be happening. This can't be.

My parents can't be alive.

They can't be alive and in Sebastian's house.

This doesn't make any sense.

I start shaking my head too, not daring believing that any of this is real. This must be a dream. Or a nightmare. Or something. I don't know what but this cannot. be. freaking. real. 'No no no no,' I say to myself, biting back tears.

My parents are dead. Dead. Because if they're alive… then, well, all of the pain of the last two years has been for nothing. Every time I felt hopeless and alone, it was for nothing. Jumping off that building two years ago and losing my ability to dance, it was for nothing.

Mom and Dad are standing up now, walking toward me, small smiles on their faces. Two years of pretending to be dead, and all they can manage to do is smile.

They look different than before, though. Older, I think. Their faces are more wrinkly, paler even, and in general somewhat… off. They don't look as warm as they used to be. Their expressions look fake, look wrong somehow, and as they approach me, I find myself backing away, my hands trembling at my side.

No no no.

They can't be alive.

They just can't be.

It doesn't make any sense.

I back so far out of the room that I crash into Sebastian's warm and muscular body. I stumble, losing my balance, but he catches me. His arms go around my waist, drawing me toward him, protecting me. 'I'm sorry, angel,' he whispers, trying to keep me together. 'I'm so sorry.'

My hands are trembling, but I let him hold me. Mom stops walking at the door. Frowns at me. Gives me that same disappointed kind of look she always used to give me when I was younger. 'I've been waiting for you, Crystal,' Mom says, taking a sip of her red wine. Her brown eyes seem warm and heartfelt, but I sense the coldness behind them, the usual silent manipulation. That's the thing about my mom: she wants something. She always wants something. I try my best to paint my parents in the best possible light after their death, to tell myself that I loved them, that I was happy with them, because that always made things easier to deal with. Facing the truth was far, far worse. It hurt too much to remind myself that my parents were horrible to me, to remember how they abandoned me and made me miserable all those years, and the only time they paid any attention to me was when they needed something from me.

But still, I clung to them, because I had no one else to cling to.

And when they died, I felt so bad I never told them I loved them, felt so guilty over all of the things I never did, but now that I find out they've been alive all along… well, the rage has started boiling inside of me.

Sebastian tries to wrap me up deeper into his arms, but I push him away. My body is still shaking, and I can't deal with this. I can't deal with the betrayal. This could be the one thing worse than Sebastian killing my parents: him keeping them alive without telling me.

And them going along with it.

I look into my mom's eyes, so full of false care, and I just want to scream. They have no idea how much they hurt me. They have no idea how leaving me in the dust like they did, and Sebastian covering it up, as he said so himself, left me more alone than ever before. Made me so depressed I almost fucking died, and not to mention lost the one thing in my life I cared about more than life itself: dancing.

But they don't realize that. My parents look at me like I'm supposed to be happy to see them again, when really all I feel is rage, hot and thick, bubbling up from somewhere deep inside of me.

Sebastian is the only one who understands me enough to notice that. He stares at me with such intensity, his face filled with a thousand apologies, but I can't even look at him right now.

'So you caused this,' I say to my mom in a low voice, clenching my fists at my side. 'You're the reason those men almost killed me. You're the reason Marco is after us.'

Mom sighs and glances back at Dad, looking for backup, like I'm back in middle school and we're arguing about some stupid shit again. It's sad, how our relationship has never grown beyond the push-and-pull of my middle school years.

'Why don't we sit down?' Dad says quickly, sensing the tension in the air, but I won't have it.

'Answer me,' I say harshly, my eyes trained on my mom. 'Are you the reason Marco is after us?' I swear my head is about to explode, but all I feel is fiery, exhilarating fear coursing through my veins.

'Angel,' Sebastian says behind me. 'Please. Let's talk about this, all right?' His voice is quiet and soothing, and it would normally work on me, but not today.

'Shut up, Sebastian,' I hiss, not even looking back at him.