Romi
"Tell me something," Sketch continued when I didn’t take the bait. "How is it fair that my brother, my twin, my best friend, and the best goddamn person that ever walked the earth, is rotting in the cemetery in Pocketful, while the spoiled little princess that put him in the ground is roaming the halls of Newton-Willis, free as a fucking bird?"
That was a recurring question that I was tired of answering. Cops. Prison guards. Judges. Social workers. Reporters. Parents. Teachers. They all asked the same questions.
For a moment, I debated telling him that I was far from free, but I doubted it would go down well. Then I considered telling him that what happened to Chris wasn’t all my fault, but that was an even worse idea.
So I said nothing.
Words couldn’t bring Christopher Capaldi Jr. back.
Words couldn’t heal the hole in his brother's heart.
Words couldn't absolve me of my sins.
Of my memories.
"Protect him, Romi," Chris choked out, struggling to breathe. "Promise me that you'll keep my brother safe..."
"You think a six-month stint in juvie makes us even?" Sketch sneered, walking so close to me that our sides were touching. Goosepimples prickled my bare legs and his close proximity caused a rippling shiver to roll through my body. "Nah, killer. Not even close."
Hearing the boy I'd been joined at the hip with since the age of five call me a killer hurt worse than any of the other shit people said about me – and to my face.
It hurt worse than being thrown off the cheerleading squad, or being banished by my friends and turned into the town leper.
It hurt worse than having his mama come to the detention center the day I was released and slap me across the face.
It hurt worse than my father's barely concealed disappointment.
It hurt worse because Sketch was my best friend in the whole world – or at least, he used to be.
I had grown up living right next-door to the Capaldi twins. The three of us had been inseparable since kindergarten and while Chris had been my boyfriend since Christmas break of sophomore year, Sketch was the first Capaldi brother to lay claim to my heart – all the way back in our first week of kindergarten when Brett Brady snatched the picture I had painted and tossed it into Mr. Jones, our class tarantula's, terrarium.
I'd cried so hard, and even though Chris had bravely reached inside and saved my painting from the icky spider, it was ruined. I'd been devastated and expected Chris to cuss Brett out, but he didn’t.
That was the thing about Chris; even back in kindergarten he was a peacemaker, too kind and forgiving to argue and pick fights with the other kids.
Later on, during outdoor recess, Brett pushed me down in the dirt before stealing the red ribbons holding my braids in place, making a mess of my hair and destroying all of my Mama's hard work that morning. All of the other kids laughed and pointed and I lost my temper. Furious with the big boy in my class for making me look silly, I climbed to my feet and charged him with my small fists swinging, hitting him with all my might.
When Brett Brady knocked me back down on the concrete with a fist to the cheek, Sketch, the mean twin with the dark hair and angry eyes, the one who never joined me and Chris when I came over to play, jumped down from the monkey bars and pounded him into the dirt.
Chris was horrified with his brother's outburst and ran inside to get the teacher.
Meanwhile, I was mesmerized.
Sketch didn’t stop hitting on Brett until the boy was crying and apologizing to me. He even peed his pants a little when Sketch snatched my ribbons out of his chubby hand and threatened to beat him harder if he ever touched me again.
Then, with an angry scowl etched on his face, Sketch held a hand out for me to take. Without a moment's hesitation, I slipped my small hand into his and let Chris's twin brother help me to my feet. When he thrust my ribbons at me, my belly did this weird flip-flip...
"Thanks for getting my ribbons back," I said shyly as I trailed after him.
I knew I should leave him be. Daddy was always warning me off the younger twin because he was so cranky, and Mama said he was too dangerous to play with. I hadn't even seen him until last week. He never came out to play with me and Chris before. His Mama and Daddy kept him inside all the time and I thought that was really mean. Chris said it was because there was something wrong with his brother's brain, but I didn’t care about any of that. Sketch Capaldi had real nice eyes and I was curious.
"Mama would have been really upset if I came home without my ribbons again today," I explained, following him over to the monkey bars. "He did that three times this week. Mama cried 'cause she thinks I'm getting bullied."
"Brett is a bully," Sketch replied, giving me his back as he returned to his perch on top of the monkey bars. "But don’t worry," he added, sounding so much tougher than the other boys at school. "He won't be taking your stuff again. Or being mean to you."
"Really?"
"Uh-huh."
"How do you know he won't be mean to me again?"
"'Cause I won't let him."
"What are gonna do to stop him?" My eyes widened. "Kick his butt again?"
He rolled his shoulders. "Whatever it takes."
"I like your voice," I blurted then. "It's real deep."
"I like yours, too," he replied, twisting around to face me. "You sound like you're singing when you talk."
"Really?"
"Uh-huh."
"So, you got any friends?"
"Nope," he replied.
"How come?"
He rolled his shoulders again, seeming to like doing that. "Just don't."
"Want some?"
"Nope," he said again.
I narrowed my eyes. "Why not?"
"Don’t know."
"Hmm." Tapping my finger against my chin, I watched him carefully, not ready to go back to Chris and my other friends. "You like the monkey bars? You always eat lunch up there." I frowned. "By yourself."
"I like the quiet," he explained, opening the brown paper bag that contained his lunch. "I ain't used to all this noise."
"Because your mama and daddy don't let you out to play?"
"I guess." Retrieving a sandwich from his bag, he took a small bite. "You always ask so many questions?"
"I guess," I replied. "So, what shape did your mama cut your sandwich into today?"
"Mama didn’t make this for me," he replied quietly. "Miss Cherry did. It ain't got no special shape, but it tastes real good."
"Why not? She always makes Chris's sandwiches," I protested. "He had smiley faces today."
"Good for him," was his quiet reply.
"Um…" I shielded my eyes from the sun and looked up at him. "So, can I play with you today?"
"Mama says I'm not 'posed to play with you," was his quiet response. "'Specially not when Chris ain't around."
I frowned. "Why not?"
"'Cause I've got rough edges," he replied with a shrug. "Least that's what my mama says."
"Rough edges?" I asked, eyeing him suspiciously. "Where?"
"Don't know." He shrugged again. "I've looked, but I can't find 'em."
"Is that why they never let you out to play?" I asked.
He shrugged. "I'm bad."
"Bad?"
He nodded. "Yup."
"Why?" I frowned. "What did you do?"
"Don't remember," he told me. "But it was something really bad."
"Oh." I stared hard at him. "Are you dangerous?"
"Probably," he replied. "You should go back to Chris now," he added quietly. "Don't wanna get you in trouble."
"Well, I don’t care about your rough edges," I told him. "I still wanna play with you."
"Your mama don't much trust me with you," he pointed out, saying his words all wrong. "She ain't gonna like you playing with me. Not without my brother 'round."
"Yeah well, my mama's not here, is she?" I huffed, folding my arms across my small chest. "And I don’t wanna play with Chris today," I added. "I wanna play with you."
A smile tugged at his lips and it was the prettiest smile in the whole wide world. "Me?"
I nodded. "Yep."
"Why?"
Now I was the one to shrug. "I just do."
"What if you get in trouble for playing with me?"
I shrugged. "I'll take my chances."
"Yeah, alright." Hooking his legs around the bars, he swung down and reached for my hand. "Come on up."
"Just don’t cut me with your rough edges," I warned, slipping my hand in his.
"I'll try my best," he vowed, tone serious. "I don’t never wanna cut you, Romi Dillon…"
Before that day, our parents had always pushed me and Chris to play together, but after that day, Sketch and I were inseparable. It didn’t matter how much our parents disapproved, we weren't parting with one another. I pitched a fit every time they tried to keep us apart, which was constantly in the beginning, but by the first grade, they'd given in and allowed us to hang out.
In truth, growing up, I'd just assumed that Sketch and I would end up together. After all, he was the first boy I ever kissed. He was the first boy to put his hand under my shirt – and under my skirt. He was the sole proprietor of the first penis I'd ever seen in the flesh and he was the first boy I'd ever given my heart to.
We fooled around, both exclusively and in secret, from the ages of eleven to sixteen, starting with innocent pecks and developing into some seriously R-rated heavy petting.
It seemed so inevitable that we would end up married with a bunch of kids that I spent a huge portion of my teens living for the day that he would throw caution to the wind and tell the world, and more importantly our families, that I was his girl.
It never happened.
Sketch always insisted on us keeping our relationship quiet. He didn’t go out of his way to hide his affection for me when we were at school, but he never touched me when our families were around.
I knew why of course.
My father despised Sketch and had done so since he was a little boy. Daddy never had a good word to say about Sketch and was always chewing me out about how much time I spent with him. He was insistent that I spend more time with Chris – the good twin.
Trouble, he labeled Sketch. A no-good little prick and a waste of my time.
My mother, until her death, held the same opinion as my father when it came to Sketch.
Hell, even Sketch's parents were against us spending too much time together, and even though he'd lived next door to me his whole life, his early childhood was a mystery to me that no one ever revealed.
Apparently, when Sketch was little he had a lot of emotional problems. It really bothered him to talk about it when I asked, so I tried not to pry.
All I knew was that Sketch had been a problematic preschooler, caused some sort of incident in his home, and had spent the first few years of his life in treatment for issues that no one ever spoke about.
Either way, I never cared about his so-called issues, our parents' disapproval, or their efforts to push me and Chris together. I was too in love with the younger Capaldi twin, too enthralled with his so-called rough edges, to see any other boy.
We continued our relationship behind our families backs all the way to sophomore year of high school, and I was ready to give it all up to him. My heart, my body, my future…
One moment we were cutting class to hook up in his truck and sneaking through bedroom windows because we couldn't bear to be apart for longer than a fricking hour, and the next Sketch slammed the brakes on our relationship without a reason or explanation.
He dropped off the face of the earth without so much as a phone call or a text, and when he finally came back to school almost two weeks later, it was with fresh bruises and bad news.
It was over and we were done.
For weeks, I tried to get to the bottom of his drastic change of heart, knowing in my gut that my father had somehow managed to get to my boyfriend, but he insisted that he hadn't.
Sketch assured me that we were still best friends, he cared about me the same as he always had, but he didn’t want to mess around with me anymore because it was getting old.
Mess. Around.
Getting. Old.
Like that's all we'd been doing our whole lives.
When I demanded the truth, not buying into that bullshit, he caved and admitted that he was bored of being with the same girl all the time.
Bored.
He wanted his freedom, to dip his toes in the ocean, see other girls, and he couldn’t do any of that with me clinging to his coattails all the time.
Those words had stung deeper than anything else he could have said, so when Chris asked me out a couple of months later, I accepted just to get back at Sketch for blowing me off and crushing my heart.
Being honest, I had hoped that my actions would light a fire under Sketch's butt and force him to get real about me.
That didn’t happen either.
When Sketch didn’t react to my relationship with his brother, and continued to act like we were nothing more than platonic pals, I felt even worse.
Honestly, for the first few months of my relationship with Chris, I'd plotted all of the ways I could get out of it without hurting him.
When I couldn’t take the guilt a minute longer and finally broke down to Chris and told him everything, his patience and understanding with me was humbling. While Sketch was off whoring and touring with his football buddies, I had a really great guy who was willing to take everything at my pace.
Chris made no secret of his feelings for me; showering me with open affection and giving me a level of commitment that I'd never had with his brother. He made it clear that he was dedicated to making our relationship work and that he was in it for the long haul if I was.
I didn’t fall in love with Chris Capaldi overnight. It happened over several months' worth of nights. But it happened. Slowly, I felt my feelings change and deepen for him.
He gently nudged his way into my heart. And now that he was gone, I felt like a piece of me had died with him.
"Are you deaf now or something?" Sketch demanded, dragging my attention back to him. "Did you break your brain in the wreck as well as your ability to speak?"
I shook my head, feeling confused. "Huh?"
"Jesus," he growled, clearly more frustrated with me than before. "I asked if you thought six months in juvie made us even."
"No," I strangled out, heart thudding hard in my chest as I hurried away from him. "Of course not."
"Good. Because you know how I roll," he shot back. "An eye for an eye – or a life, in your case."
"Do you want to kill me, Sketch?" I finally asked, stopping in front of his shiny, black truck. A truck that possessed a back seat that I was achingly familiar with. "Will that make you feel better?"
At 5'1, I was at a serious height disadvantage to his 6'3 frame, so I forced myself to tip my chin up, but kept my gaze trained on the collar of his shirt and his limply hung tie, unwilling and unable to look him in the eyes.
"Because I'm right here." Swallowing deeply, I added, "Put me in your truck and drive me somewhere remote. Slit my throat. Set me on fire and toss my body in the swamp." I sighed wearily. "I honestly don’t give a shit anymore. But decide now because I'm not standing around all day. Do it or don't."
"I want to know what happened that night," he bit out, breath coming hard and fast now. "And not the bullshit story you fabricated and fed your lawyer." He stepped closer, suffocating me with his presence alone. "I want the truth. I deserve it."
"I told the truth," I replied, still numb, still empty.
"That's a goddamn lie and we both know it," he snarled, visibly shaking with tension. "I know you – or at least I used to, and I definitely knew my brother. Your story is bullshit. There are holes, killer. Gaping holes. It doesn’t add up. So, I'm asking you again to tell me the truth."
I shrugged.
"Look at me."
I refused.
"You can't, can you? You can't look me in the eyes," he sneered. "Because you're a killer and fucking liar!" His nostrils flared, cheeks turning flushed. "Something happened that night, didn’t it?" He stepped closer until our chests were brushing. "You might have the whole town fooled, but not me. You did more than just wrap his truck around a tree and I wanna know what that something was."
I didn’t correct him. He could choose to believe whatever he wanted. Sketch's opinion of that night wouldn’t change the facts.
And the facts were that only two people knew what really happened that night and only one of us was still breathing. Even if it wasn't too dangerous, without Chris to validate my story, Sketch wasn't going to believe what I had to say. He would never believe my truth.
"I'm leaving now," I said quietly, feeling a heavy surge of devastation settle on my chest bone. "If you're not going to kill me then I'm going home. I have a curfew."
"You're going nowhere," he warned, pointing a finger in my face. "Not until you tell me what really happened that night. What did you do, huh? Why were you driving when he never once let you drive his truck before that night? What the fuck went down before you got behind that wheel? What happened to my goddamn brother?"
"I don’t know, Sketch, why don't you go ask him?" The moment the words were out of my mouth, I knew I fucked up. Not only had I pushed his button, but I had pressed the detonator on my own damn bomb.
My world was about to implode around me, and for the millionth time since that night last Christmas, I reminded myself that it didn’t matter. Chris was gone and I didn’t deserve to be here without him. I didn’t want to.
One minute I was standing on my own two legs and the next I was being slammed into the side of Sketch's truck.
"You killed my brother," he snarled, wrapping his large, calloused hand around my throat as he stepped closer, caging me in with his body alone. "Chris loved you. Fucking adored the ground your whore-ass walked on and you took his life." He tightened his hold on my throat, cutting off my air-supply. "You took him from me."
I didn’t try to resist or fight back. My vison blurred and my pulse hammered in my ears, but I didn’t budge. Not one inch. Instead, I remained motionless with my back flattened to the cool metal at my back.
With a little luck, he might snap my neck and put me out of my misery. Maybe, if he cut off my air supply for long enough, he could erase my memories.
"Fight back," he growled.
With his brow pressed to mine, he loosened his grip on my throat and I instinctively gasped for air, my body clutching for a life my mind wasn’t entirely sure it wanted.
"Show me what you did to my brother." He exhaled brokenly, exposing his emotions. "Show me how he got those marks on his body – the ones a car wreck doesn't account for."
I didn’t have it in me to fight back. Not when my whole world as I knew it was a lie. If Sketch knew what I knew, he would feel the same.
Pointlessly, I wondered what would have happened if it had been Sketch with Chris that night and not me. He wouldn't have died, that's for sure. Sketch would have figured out what Chris was up to. He would have stopped it. Saved him. Done something instead of nothing like I had.
Now, I was stuck with my regrets.
Locked in a nightmare I couldn’t escape from.
"Fight. Back," he repeated, tone thick with emotion.
"I…" Breathing hard and fast, I turned my face away and remained limp against the side of his truck.
"You what?" he pressed, tone deep and gravelly now. Clutching my chin between his thumb and forefinger, he tilted my face back to his. "You what, killer?" There was an urgency in his tone that overtook the anger. "Look at me." A pained groan tore from his chest. "Talk to me."
I couldn’t do either.
It hurt too much and there was too much at stake.
I tried to shake my head, my only way of responding, but he held my face still with his fingers alone. That's how strong this guy was. I was trapped and he knew it. "Nothing."
"It's not nothing." The anger returned to his voice and my chin trembled from the vibration shooting through his hand. "Tell me."
The hand he was using to clutch my throat drifted to my cheek. And then he was cupping both of my cheeks, his face so close to mine that he gave me no choice but to look at him.
The moment my eyes landed on his, whatever air I'd managed to draw into my lungs deflated in a shaky breath. "Sketch…"
"Tell me," he repeated, voice cracking with emotion.
His blue eyes pierced holes right through me and it took everything I had inside of me not to breakdown and spill my guts to the only person on this planet I knew I could trust.
"Please," he whispered, and the pain in my chest spread like a disease to every joint and limb in my body.
It was a cruel twist of fate that the only person I could trust with my life was the same person who threatened to end it daily.
Regardless of the fact that only moments ago his hand had been wrapped around my throat, my fingers itched with the urge to reach up and comfort him. I couldn’t help it. The pain in his eyes mirrored the pain killing me daily.
Whether Sketch realized it or not, we were kindred spirits.
We were both hurting.
We had both been irrevocably changed by the death of his brother.
And we were both in imminent danger.
If I talked…