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“Stop lying to yourself, Brandon. You have no fucking clue who did it, admit it!” I get up from the ground too, pushing myself up to my knees.
“They left a fucking note, Dixie!”
“That could’ve been anyone,” I reply. “Anyone can fake a note.”
“Who?” Again, he points that gun at me as if it’ll make me change my mind about what’s the truth and what isn’t. “Who the fuck would do that?”
“Why are you asking me?” I spit back. “Last I checked, I was trying to salvage whatever the fuck was left of our farmhouse, along with my brothers and dad, who still happened to be fucking alive when you decided to burn down the place with them still inside.”
“It was an accident!” he yells back.
“Bull-fucking-shit!”
“You don’t fucking know,” he yells. “You don’t fucking know because you weren’t fucking there!”
“I saw you leave. That’s all I need. Just like I saw you leave the house after you murdered my brothers in cold blood.”
“That wasn’t me who did that,” he says. “And you know it.”
It’s hard to discuss on an equal level when there’s a gun pointed at your head, but I’ll bite.
“I saw you in that room with three other men, brutally murdering my brothers. It doesn’t matter who sliced them up. You were there, and you knew what you were doing.”
“We were supposed to punish them for killing my papa. Hurt them for hurting us,” he says, his gun practically shaking in his unstable hands. “They weren’t supposed to die.”
“Yet they did,” I say, pursing my lips. “And who’s gonna take the blame for that, huh? Who’s gonna repent? You?”
He paces around again, tapping the gun against his forehead as if it’ll help solve this shit. It won’t. Everything he did, he did for nothing. And he ruined us both because of it.
“Finally realizing you did it all for nothing, huh?” I mutter.
“Shut up!” he yells, still waving the gun like it’s gonna scare me.
It won’t. I wasn’t scared of his gun when he still wanted to kill me, and I’m definitely not scared of it now that he knows the truth.
“You hated me because of this? Your dad’s death and that fucking Zippo?” I say, cocking my head. “Because I gotta say … that’s pretty messed up, considering you’re the killer here, and the fact that I didn’t do shit, which I’ve been trying to tell you over and over.”
“I said shut up!” he yells, still using the gun to threaten me to be quiet.
It won’t work. I know he won’t use it against me. He already tried that when he still believed I was the sole cause of his papa’s death, and now that he knows I’m not, I don’t think he has it in him to ever kill me.
Not when we both know I’m innocent … and he’s not.
“You’re cruel, Brandon. All this because I broke your heart …”
“I don’t give a damn that you did,” he hisses, walking toward me with the gun pointed straight at my heart. “At least I had a fucking heart.”
“Says the murderer,” I say, glaring back at him. “Go ahead. Shoot me. Do it. Maybe it’ll end your suffering. Or maybe not since you know I’m innocent now and you murdered two innocent boys.”
He makes a face, his nostrils flaring as his eyes flicker with an ache I’m all too familiar with.
“You can threaten me all you want, but that won’t change the truth. Killing me won’t solve anything. I’m not your problem. You are,” I say to him as he grinds his teeth.
Suddenly, he starts shooting at the ground. My eyes close as bullets ricochet all around us. I’m lucky I didn’t get hit with any of them. Sadly, he didn’t either.
“Fuck!” he yells, pacing around again.
It’s quiet for a few seconds. I’m not sure whether I should say something or keep quiet. Part of me wants to confront him with his bad deeds. Make him see how evil he is, no matter the consequences. He can’t shoot me anyway.
However, another part of me is completely choked up right now. I don’t want to get it, but I do. He’s trapped in his own lies, and now that he’s finally seeing a way out, it’s blocked by his own pride.
In order to move on, he has to admit he was wrong. Not a lot of people can do that. And on top of that, he knows he hurt me in the gravest of ways.
What he did was unforgivable, and now he has to live with it for the rest of his life. He probably hates himself right now. That, or he hates me for telling him the truth.
Either way, things can’t get any worse as we’re already at rock bottom.
The question is … how do we get out?
When I look at him, all I see is pain. As if he’s begging for release from the prison that keeps him in chains. But I can’t give that to him. I can’t because that would be an insult to my brothers’ legacies.
