Cecil is dead, and I killed Roderick.
I have nothing left to live for, so instead of fighting to fill my lungs with air, I slump into the hollow of a tree trunk, pull out my pocketknife, then drag it up the veins in my wrists.
It is only as the blackness starts seeping in do the pretty green eyes of a beautiful mixed-raced lady fill my head. I was meant to save her, and in a way, that is exactly what I do when the blood pouring from my wounds eases the pain on my chest enough, I can take my final breath without hindrance…
Jae’s frantic swipe of her cheek draws me from my thoughts. The first tear dribbled from her eyes when I confessed to finding Cecil hanging in the woods, then they flooded down her face for every other word I signed after that. “What happened?” she begs, her lips quivering so bad, she must sign her question as well to ensure I can understand her.
“I woke up in a cabin deep in the woods,” I explain like it isn’t as shocking now as it was back then. “My wrists and shoulder were bandaged, and my ear was patched back together.”Jae’s shocked breath fans my cheeks when I pull back my hair to show her my mangled ear. It is as fucked up as my back. “I thought my savior had merely delayed what needed to happen.” She rapidly shakes her head, unwilling to acknowledge how badly I wanted to die. “Then I found this stabbed to the back of the cabin’s door with my pocketknife.”
I pull my wallet out of my pocket, grimacing when the name printed on my driver’s license is the first thing I see. I am not Colum Junior Petretti. I am JR Bassett, Cecil Bassett’s son.
With the paper not aging like my wallet’s lengthy stay beneath the floorboards of Cecil’s cabin, it puffs out the worn leather material in an obvious manner.
Jae’s hand shoots up to cover her mouth when I unfold the last document Cecil ever handled. It is the will and testament he had the clergy at the hospital witness when he recognized Jae from the newspaper articles I had shown him when we shared stories about the women we had met, loved, and lost.
“When I saw he had included you as a beneficiary, I went to Saint Frances, assuming you were next.”I huff out a laugh. “I was wrong. You walked straight past them. They just let you leave.”She leans into my touch when I brush away the tears clinging to her beautiful face instead of repelling away when I admit, “And so did I, because it was then that I realized they didn’t know Cecil had changed his will.As long as I was alive, you were safe.That’s why I kept living.”
Jae presses her lips to mine before murmuring, “Thank you,” with so much gratitude I feel her words in the vibrations of her breaths.
I issue my thanks in the same manner before slowly pulling back. I’ve shared a lot, and I need to make sure lust doesn’t have her forgetting she’s sitting across from a murderer.
“For the first couple of weeks, they searched relentlessly for me, but within months, the search crew dwindled down to two, and I was left to fend for myself.” It’s not the right time for a grin to tug on my lips, but it can’t be helped when I remember my shock of a white convertible sailing over my head when I was hunting for something better to eat than deer meat. “I don’t usually hunt on that side of the mountain, but something drew me there that night.” My smile is wiped from my face when I disclose, “The tree we hid in was the tree where I slashed my wrists.You know everything that has happened since then.”
“Except where you went the night we fled the cabin.”
I bob my head up and down as memories of how kickass she looked holding a shotgun fill my head. “There was too much rustling on the horizon. The mountains on each side of the woods block the winds from that side, so I thought it might have been Roderick’s family coming for me since I announced on social media that I wasn’t dead. But it wasn’t. They were—”
“After me?” Jae interrupts.
I jerk up my chin. “I don’t know how TikTok works, so I assumed my video loaded, but from what the officer told me earlier, it didn’t work until your phone got reception as we approached the hotel.”
I’d give anything in the world to hear Jae’s laugh. I can imagine it would be a little ear-piercing, but in a way someone who’s never heard it would truly appreciate. “That’s what you get for dumping my work phone under a stream of water.”
After moving to the large bed in the middle of the extravagant room, Jae plops her backside onto it, then raises her eyes to mine. They’re flaring with worry, but I realize not all of it stems from my confession that I killed a guy when she mutters, “I attended Cecil’s autopsy.” She licks her lips before disclosing, “The ligature marks around his neck didn’t correspond with someone who had killed themself. He was also too weak to climb a tree. The amount of blood he lost from his head wound would have made him too woozy. He was too dizzy to walk, much less climb.” After brushing away a handful of tears, she says, “The coroner completely ignored my points. He ruled his death a suicide, and when no amount of arguing would change his mind, I went back to my old life the very same day. I wasn’t going to hide from corruption for a second longer. I was going to fight against it.”
When I nod, inspired by her strength, she murmurs, “And that’s why you need to fight the charges brought against you as self-defense, JR.”
I shake my head. “I killed him.”
“To protect yourself.” She stops the brutal shake of my head by standing to her feet. “He killed Cecil, so how do you know you weren’t next?”
“I wasn’t thinking about me when I beat him.”
“That’s right. You weren’t. Becauseyour mind had switched to survivor mode, it was doinganythingin its power to live.” When she reaches me, she gathers my hands in hers so if I want to continue arguing, I’ll have to use my voice. “You’re not a monster, JR. You arenotyour father, and I’m going to make sure the world is aware of that.”
She steals my ability to offer a comeback by sealing her mouth over mine.
ChapterThirty-One
Jae
With my breathing leveled and my feet barely touching the ground, I sneak out of the room I shared with JR last night. Excluding the time I grabbed the two plates of the creamy food Alex ordered, we didn’t leave our room. I don’t want to give JR a single second to doubt any of my responses yesterday afternoon. Nothing he said changed my feelings for him. If anything, they made them stronger. I was able to live a normal, safe life because he kept the scent off me for years, and now I need to do the same for him.
I stop tiptoeing across the cabin’s expansive living room when Regan mutters with a yawn, “Do you really need extracurricular activities after all the sexercise you did last night?” She finishes her yawn before finalizing her sentence, “You guys must be as exhausted as Alex.
She waggles her perfectly manicured brows. “Totally worth it, right?”
Since I can’t disagree, I bob my head.
