Open When I'm Gone

33. Come Back Up.

The house is dark when we pull up in Jolie's red SUV. The shutters are pulled on all the windows, looking abandoned in the eerily moonlight of the January night.

There's a car parked in our driveway, gold and fairly new, looking at the paper license plate.

"Who's here?" Jolie whispers, like we're in covert operations not going in my own house.

"Abby's boyfriend."

Her eyes widen, moth puckering into a little 'oh'. "I didn't know she had a boyfriend."

"I've never met him." The words come out sharper than I intended, but it's true. They've been dating for months from what it seems, and I've barely even seen a glimpse of him leaving the house.

I didn't think twins hid things like that from each other.

Although it's not like I've been around enough for her to even try to tell me.

I don't know if I'll ever be able to make it up to her.

The door creaks as we push through, the house dark as night, silent as death.

"Are you sure she's here?" Jolie whispers.

I nod, the faintest light peeking under the door down the hall from my bedroom.

Our footsteps are swallowed by the night as we walk up the stairs, thieves in the dark.

Her bedroom door is shut tight, but a dim stream of light slides out from under the door, the only light in the whole house.

I raise my fist tentatively to knock, my hand shaking.

This is stupid. I shouldn't be as nervous as I am. It's Abby, for crying out loud.

The same Abby I abandoned, the same Abby who thought she wasn't enough because I shut her out.

The creaking of the door startles me, both Jolie and I jumping back as we meet the eyes of a young man on the other side of the doorway.

His hair is dark, almost black, matching his tan skin perfectly. He's dressed in a long pair of black cargo pants, an oversized t-shirt filled out by his muscled frame.

But it's his eyes– the same piercing green that's haunted my dreams for months– that really catches me off guard.

"Hanson?"

His smile is weak, the bags under his eyes making him look much older than his mere sixteen years.

"Hey Simon."

Information spirals in my brain, working overtime to try to fit the boy in front of me with all the things I know.

I almost didn't recognize him with all the ways he's changed over the past months since Eddy. His once wiry frame is now filled out with muscle, his once sporty style traded out for something more mature. His dark hair is cropped short to his head, his green eyes void of the light that I always admired in them.

He's not the same boy I left all those months ago.

He's most definitely not the same boy who watched his sister die.

"You're Abby's..."

"Boyfriend." He replies quietly, his eyes not daring to meet mine. "Yeah. Why don't you guys come in."

He kicks the door open slightly so Jolie and I can walk in.

The curtains are pulled tightly over the window, abnormal in the fact that Abby hated when her window was closed. She always said it blocked her from the outside world.