The Rivals - Dylan Allen Page 0,108

in despair.

“Maybe?” I shrug and think about it quickly. “I don’t know,” I say.

“Well, then, they’re not. If you had a murderer in your family, you would know it, trust me,” she says.

“Then, I don’t know that I would care. You’ve been shaped by the river, learned more from it than you did from the man who spawned you. You are not him. You have shaped me,” I tell her.

“Ha, right!” She laughs. I ignore her and press on. “You know the Mississippi River starts in Minnesota, right?” I ask her.

“Of course, I do,” she says.

“Well, at its mouth, it’s narrow enough that you can walk across it in less than a dozen steps,” I say.

She looks at me, eyebrows raised in question.

“You’re like that river. At least in the way you’ve affected me,” I say.

“How? Easy to cross?” she says morosely.

“Stop pouting.” I chuck her under the chin. “I mean that you started like that for me. A pin prick sized drop of water on the very still waters of my life. And the minute you touched me, you caused a ripple that blurred everything I thought I was certain of. The way I saw myself, my obligations, my future. And now, just like that river you love so much does, it winds its way south, you rush through me, and I’m drowning in you.” I kiss her quickly.

“I’m all for you loving me, but it’s not worth your life.” She uses the very same joke I made that night in the hot tub and I laugh.

“Actually, I can breathe deeply for the first time in a long time. I know we’re from totally different worlds, but I feel like we’re also from the very same one. We love our family—not just the ones who were born of our blood. My brothers, Stone and Beau, aren’t biologically related to me at all,” I tell her. “You’re not the daughter of a sadistic drunk and the sister of a killer. I’m not the scion of a line of philanthropic, but short-sighted men and faithless women. Our legacies—what we choose to leave of ourselves in this world—is up to us.”

She sighs…

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” I ask her.

She purses her lips and then she blows out a breath. “I don’t talk about it. No one in Amorel does. It’s our collective secret. We all like to pretend that Merle—that’s my dad—never existed and that Fortune is already dead,” she says quietly.

“And I’m ashamed of what they did and how I deny them. But to acknowledge them is to remind everyone not just that my brother killed my father, but about the blood that runs in my veins. It means something that it’s part of my history. And, in a way, that’s more than just a random moment. That it shaped me. Reduced me. Just like the river. Just like I thought Nigel had done. Just like I was afraid you’d do if I gave you another chance,” she says. I grasp her chin, a little more forcefully than I need to and turn her face toward mine.

“There is nothing that could reduce you. You wear your name like a crown, and it’s one of the truest things about you,” I tell her.

She sniffs dismissively. “It feels like a joke. And I’m afraid sometimes that it is. My brother Fortune is going to die on a table with a state-sanctioned, poison-filled needle in his arm. My brother, Happiness, ran away before he was thirteen. I can’t imagine that his life has brought him much of his name’s meaning.” She shakes her head.

“Well, first, I think you’re giving your parents a lot of credit. Your mother, I will say, seems lovely. But fortune teller didn’t seem to be one of her skills. They gave you a name they liked. You’ve made it your own. You can decide that what you’ve done with your life is worth less than some whim by your parents twenty-seven years ago. But you would be lying to yourself,” I tell her.

She looks up at me through her long lashes and smiles.

“You believe in yourself. Enough to see beyond your current situation and reach for more. That’s more than I can say for myself. I didn’t consider that your interest in me could be more than all of the things that I’ve used to define myself. But, I swear, by the time we left Italy, I knew I didn’t care what it said, and I knew that I