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“I thought about turning to the police and telling them about the whole thing, but by that point, I knew it was me against the world. Besides, it became personal. I knew what I was going to do. I had a plan. But as I moved toward it, I guess I became hardened. Too hard to notice everything that was beautiful and soft around me.”
Enter Emilia LeBlanc. I knew what was going to leave my mouth next and I tried to convince myself that it wasn’t a terrible mistake. Emilia wasn’t my girlfriend. She wasn’t even technically my friend. And I was going to admit something to her, knowing I was putting my balls in her hands, hoping she wouldn’t squeeze them to death.
“There was a game to be played, and I played it well. When you and I saw each other for the first time, Daryl had already stopped showing up at my house. He was coked-up again, and my dad had told Jo to take his keys away. Anyway, he hadn’t abused me in a few years. I was big by then. Maybe six two, six three, and a baller. He was just a frail junkie who was losing hair, but he thought he could still intimidate me. When I found you outside the library, I thought you’d heard too much, and the worst part was, when I looked at you, all I saw was Jo. You had her lips and her hair, her eyes, and her posture. It made me want to hate you.”
Emilia wiped her silent tears with the back of her hand and nestled her head in the crook of my shoulder. I let her. I took a deep breath of the fresh air, closing my eyes. I was going to do it.
“After you left Todos Santos, everything got worse. We were no longer in high school, and I was no longer a king. No one to play Defy with anymore, which made my frustration with the world simmer. Especially toward my stepmom and her brother. I wanted to kill Ryler. To fucking end him. I showed up at his house. I didn’t even have to kick the door in. He was in the backyard in his hot tub, relaxing, his eyes shut.”
I told her how I killed him. How I strode nonchalantly toward him, sat on the edge of his hot tub and dropped his phone, which was on the wooden deck, into the water.
The autopsy said Daryl drowned to death in a drug-induced stupor. It was an airtight story. It was also the right one. He had drowned…but I gave him the drugs to put him out.
After I was done, I stilled, not even daring to inhale my next dose of oxygen.
She didn’t stand up and walk away.
She didn’t scream at me.
She didn’t make a sound.
She just tensed next to my body and brushed her hand along my arm, prompting me to continue. I released the breath I was holding in my lungs and did just that.
“Then it was time to deal with Josephine and Dad. The gold-digger deserved to lose what she’d schemed so hard to have. The fact that my dad got sick took care of most of it. My plan for simple. My dad worked himself to death to create a business legacy. All I wanted was to confront him before he died. Let him know I knew all along about my mom and that I was going to get rid of what he’d built, starting with the mansion I hated. ”
“You burned down the house,” she finished gently.
I nodded, my chin digging into her temple. I felt lighter, somehow. I hoped it wasn’t going to bite me in the ass the next time Emilia and I went against each other, which was bound to happen, because that was the way we operated. She jerked her head from my chest and stared at me. And I let her. Because I had nothing to hide anymore.
“You did so many horrible things to avenge your mama,” she whispered. A tear escaped her right eye.
I nodded. I’d have said I was sorry, but that would’ve been a lie she didn’t deserve hearing.
“And you’re telling me this because…?”
“Because I trust you. Because I want to know if there’s still a chance you can know who I am, who I really am, and still…” Don’t say love me, don’t say love me, don’t say love me. “Be with me.”
“I want to be with you,” she confirmed without hesitation, and fuck, it just got a whole lot warmer. “I know that they damaged you, and I still want you. I don’t even want to fix you. I just want you as you are. Broken. Misunderstood. Jerk. I want the real version, the dark version, the one who made me the saddest I’ve ever been in my life, but also the happiest.”
