I woke up on a couch, with flames dancing behind my closed eyelids. Rope burned my wrists. I tried to lift my fingers to my eyes, to brush strands of violet hair out of the way, but I found that the rope snaked through the belt loops on my jeans and held tight.
I opened my eyes to a living room with a stone fireplace, and two wide windows on either side of it. The sun was down, thank god. My head was swimming and the added light would only worsen it.
My ankles were bound as well, the extra rope trailing over the arm of the couch. "Mason?"
I turned, my eyes drifting over the room. There was a second couch, where I found Mason sitting upright on the cushions. "Hey," he said.
"Where are we?"
"The cabin."
We'd never been here, but the address was read to us the day our grandmother died. She had lived by herself in Montana, without the will to call or visit. Our mother tried several times to bring us all out here, but grandma refused. When she died, it was a week before anyone knew. It was our house now, willed to us by a benefactor we'd never known. Mason and I had always joked that the first thing we would have our captive do is clean the dead old lady smell from our carpets. "It smells fine to me."
Mason laughed. "Apparently the will designated some cleaning service to keep it tidy until we were of age. I don't remember that stipulation."
I didn't either, but it made sense. Grandmother never wanted her daughter or her son in law to set foot in this house. Of course she would find a way around that.
The fire snapped, bringing our eyes back to its billowing flames. It stretched to the stone funnel that was its only escape, the soft noises it made were like the sighs of a captive.
"Untie me."
Now it was Mason who sighed. He shifted forward, elbows pressing into his knees as he leaned to stare into the fire. "I don't know that I can. I thought you were on board, now I'm not so sure the role you play."
"I'm not your slave, I'm your sister."
He shook his head slowly, still not looking at me. I watched the way his hair, slightly shaggy, rippled across his scalp when he moved. It shaded his eyes, making them darker and more sad.
"You win this one," I said.
"What do you mean?"
"You've always been the one with crazy schemes, and sure- I help develop them. But you come up with our plans and our pranks. I am the one that perfects them, making it so that we will not get caught. Or that we have a plan B to fall back on. And before we ever started dreaming, we fought. We fight all the time. I wanted us to go to college, but you didn't want us to waste our time." I lifted my wrists as far as they would go, and wiggled my fingers. The both of us grinned. "Obviously, this fight is yours."
"You're sure we're good? You're not trying to trick me?"
I scowled. "Come on, Mason, really? I want this as much as you do."
"Good." He grinned, and stood up from his cushioned seat. He drew a knife as he passed the crimson rug spread between us, and knelt beside me to work at my ties.
"So where is she?"
"Taylor?"
"Who else?"
"Locked in her room." He glanced up at me, looking a little embarrassed. "I told her I needed time to myself, to think. She beat at the door for a while, it was all I could do not to barge in there and beat her."
"You waited?" My eyes widened and my lips spread into a smile. "No way."
"I did." Mason didn't seem as happy about this knowledge as I did, but he continued to cut the ties that bound me to the sofa. "I could've done it myself, but I didn't want to. I don't know what I would've done if you hadn't apologized... It's so dumb, I know, but you're a part of me Avery. And I thought I'd lost that part. It was devastating."
My wrists were free. I ignored the burn to lay my hands on his jaw, and tilt his face toward mine. "You are me, and I am you. We will never lose each other, it's not possible."