Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 145038 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145038 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
The world rotates around me. She didn’t lie. She hasn’t lied. I twist to Rocky, and his jaw is set in a hardened line. I’ve hated her for the deception, but has she even deceived me?
Hailey flips another page, and her chin trembles before the papers slip from her fingers. “Shit,” she curses. “Shitshitshit.” Rocky drops to his knees, and I follow suit, quick to gather up the pages from the sand before the wind carries them into the fire.
I pause on the paper that Hailey must’ve just read. It’s her results. “Hails,” I breathe out, my insides kneading. Rocky leans into my shoulder to read it.
“What does it say?” Trevor asks.
Hailey swipes the tears under her eyes. “I’m not related to anyone.”
Oliver squints in confusion. “Not even Addison?”
Hailey shakes her head. “No one.” The way she says it sounds so tortured, like she appeared out of thin air.
“You’re related to someone,” Rocky tells her, his voice edged. “You’re not an immaculate conception, Hails.”
“She is pretty divine, though,” I offer with a friendly nudge to her shoulder as I rise to my feet. It doesn’t draw a smile. Her gaze is lost in the fire. We’ve all known the only way to break her obsession over this is to find answers, and I wish our positions were reversed. I wish Addison was her mom—if only to splinter her hyperfixation.
“What about you?” Trevor asks Rocky.
I shuffle through the papers in my hand, but I don’t have Rocky’s results. They must be on one that he pried off the sand. Sure enough, when I turn to him, he’s reading a page. His eyes carry nothing. No pain. No lament. No happiness.
They’re just void.
“It seems like us Tinrocks are all the same,” Rocky says and hands it off to Nova.
My brother reads it with furrowed brows. “You’re not related to anyone,” he confirms. “So what does this mean?”
“It means Elizabeth lied to my face,” Rocky says, then looks to me. “To yours. She told us that Hailey and I were biologically Addison and Everett’s.”
“Why would she do that?” I say, pained again. “She knew we were already questioning Trevor’s paternity.”
“She thought we wouldn’t go this far,” Rocky says, scratching at the tag at the back collar of his shirt. He rips it off.
Nova crumples up the paper into a ball. “I don’t think any of them thought we’d ever go this far.”
“The triplets,” Hailey whispers in a haunted daze. “The perfect shills.”
Her words hang in the air agonizingly. She’s right. Why would we question Rocky’s and Hailey’s identities if Nova, Oliver, and I are so clearly related?
“So are we all adopted?” Trevor asks.
Rocky raises and lowers his shoulders. “Who the hell knows? But if we ask them, they’re going to feed us another round of bullshit.”
“I can dig harder for answers,” Hailey says with a determined, anxious nod.
We all share a collective worry. “I think you’ve been digging hard enough, Hails,” I tell her. “Maybe let go of the reins a little on this one?”
She slips a blonde hair behind her ear, the lobe and cartilage covered in studs. “No,” she says. “I’m in charge of being five steps ahead. My role. My responsibility.” She spins around on her boots and heads back for the street.
“Hailey!” Rocky calls out. “Fuck.” He’s the first one who chases after her, and Trevor follows behind, careful not to stumble in the sand. The Tinrocks disappear in the night together.
Nova balls up all the results and chucks the papers in the fire. My brothers and I watch them burn.
TWENTY-SIX
Rocky
Five Years Ago
Between Jobs
Appalachian Mountains
Passing through. It’s what we’ve been doing the past couple of weeks. Hopping from motel to campsite to budget inn like vagabonds. I yearn for a mattress not covered in piss stains. AC that works. A smell other than sewer or mold. Simple fucking things I always take for granted between jobs.
Sometimes I wonder if our parents eke out these “between” days as a grisly, sordid reminder of what our lives would be like without conning. If I asked, my mom would just tell me we can’t rush the planning process.
I’m not even sure what our next job entails. Hailey and Trevor have been in Athens, Georgia, hanging around the university’s campus while they help the godmothers construct the con. If I had to guess, we’re ripping off either a rich college student or a tenured professor.
“Two hundred it’s a professor,” Oliver tells me after I express the theory.
“Not taking that bet.” I stuff my jacket in a duffel bag, then check my burner phone again. “The odds are too even.”
No missed calls. No texts.
The yurt stinks of dog piss, so the faster we can get on the road, the better. Oliver’s long legs stretch across a cot. It’s not terrible accommodations for a state park, but I’d rather be at a five-star hotel right now than breathing in the warm, stale air that’s barely circulating from a box fan.