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“What’s wrong?” Eli asks, wrapping an arm around my shoulders as if he feels I’ll collapse.
“You…did you see a homeless woman just now?”
His brows dip together and my heart plummets.
“She was wearing a puffy jacket, a torn skirt, and a hat that looked green but was originally yellow and…” I trail off because my voice is turning panicked with every word, and my breathing becomes so shallow, I’m panting.
“Hey,” Eli does something I never thought he would and rubs my arm in soothing circles. “It’s okay.”
“No no no no no no no, it’s not okay!” I scream as panic floods my bloodstream. “Oh God no, no, please, please, please.”
“Ava…Ava…” Eli stands in front of me, his firm hands clutching my shoulders and his face blurred out. “Breathe, come on, I need you to breathe. Mimic me.”
He sucks in a deep inhale and I follow with my shattered one.
“She…she was real, right? Right? Right?”
“Exhale, come on.”
“Right.” I release a long breath. “She must’ve been real. This is real.”
“It’s all real, beautiful.”
“You?” I touch his face as I blink away the blurriness. “Are you real or is this whole thing a hallucination?”
“I’m always real.”
Slowly, my breathing goes back to normal, but I’m so drained, so ashamed, so unable to face him after my epic meltdown.
Closing my eyes, I sag into his welcoming embrace, knowing, for some reason, that he will prevent me from falling.
The world disappears from beneath my feet as he carries me to the car.
He said he’s always real, but a depressing thought keeps banging on the walls of my sanity.
What if everything is still a figment of my unruly imagination?
16
ELI
“To what do I owe this touching heart-to-heart displeasure?”
I narrow my eyes on my cousin through the huge monitor in my home office and stare at his nonexistent soul.
A step below mine, or maybe above.
Proving who’s superior is a competition neither of us would forfeit, but it’s a known fact that Landon breathes chaos and would sacrifice his firstborn to watch the world go up in flames.
Appearance- wise, we’re similar and share the King genes. Especially the straight nose and frosty eyes that unconsciously prompt people to shake in their boots.
The similarities end there.
His brown hair, courtesy of his mother, and blue eyes, the only thing he got from his father, distinguish him from my better genes.
He’s also tragically less refined than me, considering his casual gray T-shirt and finger-raked hair. One more reason why the parasite doesn’t fit King Enterprises’ image if I have any say in it.
Rain patters outside, barely reaching my ears through the double-glazed windows as I stretch my legs beneath my desk and cross them at the ankles. “Your recent plans to start trouble. Maybe I need to sit you down and break the unfortunate news that Hannibal Lecter isn’t real.”
