We Are Us

Chapter 56 New York City

“I can’t believe I did that.” Striding back into the kitchen, Sadie pulls up short when she sees what I’m holding. “Poppy, I…” Her voice trails off as I lift my gaze to hers, my eyes glistening with tears.

“What? Are you going to say you can explain? How can you explain having a credit card with my name on it? How can you explain having this when, not two minutes ago, I told you it was the reason they think I’m behind Tucker’s—”

All of a sudden everything comes together and I drop the card. “Oh my God, I’ve been so stupid. It was you.” The words leave my throat in a toxic whisper, burning the lining of my esophagus on their way out.

I sag against the kitchen counter, my head spi

I wait for her to deny the accusation. There has to be something I’m missing, some explanation to put my world back into perspective. Come on, Sadie. Tell me I’m crazy.

As the seconds tick by, emotions flash across her face like the screen of a drive-through movie theater. Hatred. Jealousy. And then I see something else, too. More than just a twitch of her lips, a glimmer in her eye. Pride.

A wave of nausea slams into me. Tucker and Sadie. Tucker and Sadie. Tuckerandsadie.

Tuckerandsadie.

But then she blinks, and for a moment I see past all of it. I see my sister. The one person I’ve always felt closest to, like we are two halves of the same whole. The only stability Sadie and I have ever had has been each other. Growing up, I shielded Sadie. Cared for her, protected her. And for the past year, during my pregnancy and after, when I was broken and empty, I thought she was doing the same for me. Returning the favor… in spades. Out of love.

When did her motivation change?

Because this, whatever this is, goes beyond mere sibling rivalry. Sadie isn’t looking at me like a sister now. I am an obstacle in her path. A barrier to be breached.

An adversary.

“Yes,” she finally confirms. “Someone had to step in. You lost your mind, remember? Could barely get out of bed, certainly couldn’t be the wife Tucker deserved. I needed to do everything for you. Buy your prescriptions, force you into the shower, practically spoon feed you, for God’s sake.

“Some of the drugs you were prescribed couldn’t be picked up by anyone but you. Kinda hard when you refused to leave the apartment. So Tucker got me a credit card in your name and borrowed your license. All so I could take care of you.

“You thought you were so smart for getting into Worthington, so special for landing a guy like Tucker. But you didn’t deserve him then, and you still don’t. You got drunk and threw yourself at him, then you acted all holier than thou and treated him like a thug. How dare you!”

I feel like the wind’s been knocked out of me. I never told her about that night. “How do you—”

“Tucker told me. He doesn’t keep secrets from me, unlike you. It used to hurt when you kept things from me. But you know what, I stopped caring. I’ve had a secret of my own for months now, and you haven’t even noticed. Serves you right, sis.”

Spreading my palms flat on the cool marble countertop, I am so stu

Sadie, in a small speedboat, appearing out of nowhere. Tucker and I had been talking. Or rather, I had been talking to him. He was distracted, and I was trying to get his attention. I wanted him to agree to a divorce.

I lift both hands to my face, massaging my temples as though I can rub away the pain slicing through my skull. “It was you,” I repeat, as if by saying it again, the awful truth will sink in. “This whole time. It was you.”

“Of course, it was me. I swear, I can’t believe you never figured it out. Actually, no,” Sadie says with an almost manic chortle, “what I can’t believe is that Tucker was ever into you in the first place.”

Her condescending tone is a spray of salt on my wounds. “So you decided to take my place?”

“Ha! That’s where you’re wrong. I’m not a replacement. I’m the newer, better model. You couldn’t hold his attention, or his babies. It was only a matter of time before he got rid of you, anyway.”

Sadie’s words are well-aimed arrows, the sharpened tips dipped in poison. Penetrating to the bone. Worse, so much worse, than the shards of glass doctors had spent hours picking from my skin. Those wounds will heal, most not even leaving a scar. But the cuts Sadie is inflicting now, these will stay with me forever.

The room blurs and I begin backing up, wanting to keep the kitchen island between us. “You really know how to kick me where it counts, Sadie.”

She shrugs. “It’s your fault we’re in this mess. If you had just gone with us like we wanted, none of this would be happening.”

“What do you mean? Why would I go anywhere with either of you?”

“Tucker tried to tell you about the business, about what would happen. But you refused to listen. He made plans, for all of us. New identities. Plenty of money. We would have had a nice life.”

“A nice life, on the run from the US government and the criminals Tucker stole from—with my cheating husband and sister? Really?”

“You’re so fucking selfish. Everything has to revolve around you.”

Another memory, an extension of the other one, appears like a ghost, whispering at the edges of my mind.

Raised voices. Breaking glass. Falling. Pain. Then darkness.

“So you hit me in the head and pushed me into a pile of glass?”

“No one hit you. You tried to take control of the boat and you fell. There was blood everywhere. Tucker tried to pick you up and bring you into the other boat, and his hands got cut up from the glass too. The only way he would leave was if I agreed to drop him off and come back for you.”

I scoff at her attempt to rewrite history. “Don’t even. I was found alone, remember?”

“Only because the yacht captain was worried about a weather pattern coming up the coast. He sent his crew out looking for you and Tucker. By the time I came back for you, you had been airlifted to the hospital.”

I chew on the inside of my cheek, trying to organize Sadie’s self-centered commentary and my scattered memories into a cohesive timeline. “Why didn’t you leave then? Why bother coming to check on me?”

“I thought about it. But I decided to find out if you had said anything first. And when the nurse told me you’d been unconscious since you were found, I decided to stick around and convince you to stay quiet.”

“But… I didn’t remember anything.”

“An unexpected stroke of good luck. But then you had to go and hire Reese Reynolds. Making noise about Tucker faking his own death and having an accomplice. Fuck, Poppy. If it wasn’t for you, I would be lying on a beach somewhere with Tucker right now.”

She puts a hand to her belly, the corners of her mouth lifting into an eerie smile. “I’m giving him the family you couldn’t.”

The breath leaves my lungs in a rush and I lean against the nearest wall, quickly, before my trembling legs give out. My sister is going to give birth to Tucker’s baby.

And yet somehow, her betrayal isn’t as sharp a surprise as it should be. “You told me this. On the boat.”

“Yes.” She releases a humorless laugh. “I think that’s when you knocked the champagne glasses out of the basket.”

An uncomfortable silence descends. Where do we go from here? Except the we in this situation isn’t me and Sadie. Her allegiance is to Tucker now. And if she wants him, she can have him. Which is exactly what I say. “You can have him, Sadie. Just go.”