Page 79 of Overkill

He stared at me, his jaw clenched, and I almost believed that the glassiness of his eyes were tears and not just illusion caused by the rain that soaked me to the bone. Seconds turned to minutes, and his fingers twitched, like he wanted to reach out to me.

I refused to let him touch me, though. Because if he did, I’d crumple. I’d fall into him.

I shrugged. He could talk if he wanted to. I couldn’t stop him.

“I was hired as a PI to find out what happened to Luke Gray.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.” My voice came out a grimaced scream, because there was nothing that could make any of this better. There was nothing he could say that wouldn’t make me an absolute fool.

“Baby, I swear to you, I would never hurt you!” He reached for me. When I recoiled, he said, “God damn it!”

“Yes, it must be soooo upsetting. Me, finding out that all your little games were bullshit.” I was sobbing, unable to breathe.

I couldn’t do this.

It was too much.

There was too much going on, and not enough fucking bandwidth for any of it.

It had been one hit after another, and the moment I felt any relief, it was all ripped out from under me. I couldn’t do this anymore. I couldn’t keep taking on the pain. How many hits did I have to take before it was enough? Before nothing was worth anything anymore?

“Baby, if I could kill the man who hurt you, I fucking would,” he said through clenched teeth, his hair plastered to his face with the rain.

“There’s no one to kill.” I laughed like a crazy woman in a fit of hysterics.

“I know!” He slapped himself in the chest, like he was angry that he hadn’t been the one to do. Like he wanted to be the one to have done the killing. “Because you already killed him.”

I froze.

He knew.

Greg stepped forward, and I stood my ground even though I wanted to fall apart and die. I wanted to crumble. He knew. It was over. This…was it. The end of life as I knew it.

I could already feel the handcuffs digging into my wrists. The rain hid my tears as I tasted the salt on my lips that pulled back in a grimace.

His face was so close to mine. I wanted to push him away, but I couldn’t move. I was a frozen deer in headlights, too stupid to run for my own good.

“If I could have been here, if I could have stopped him. God, baby.” He grabbed his hair, tearing at it until the locks tumbled from the hair tie and fell to his shoulders. “If I would have known. If I could have been here…If I could have come a year sooner.”

He spoke like he could have stopped it. Like he would have tried.

As if anyone would have tried.

But everyone knew. Everyone saw something at some point and kept quiet. Denied it. Turned away and pushed it into the recesses of their minds, because the lauded, holy Grays could not possibly have done anything that went against their precious image. Everyone knew that anyone who dared to see what the Grays did would be ruined and ostracized in a campaign designed by that family to run them out of this stupid, small town.

Ethanuel Gray built this town for his descendants, and they had done a remarkable job keeping the rest of us peasants in line.

They let it happen to me in order to protect themselves from the single big fish in this tiny fucking pond.

“I wish I could have added him into the hundreds already etched into my body count, Melody. I wish I could take that from you, but I can’t. I can’t!” He fell to his knees, the water splashing around him. “I would if I could. Protecting you now is what I can do. It’s what I’m doing.”

I scoffed.

Because I had once hoped someone would help me. I’d hoped someone would see, acknowledge, reach out.

How fucked was it that when I finally heard the words I’d always longed to hear, they came from yet another man on a Gray’s payroll?

Of course, this would happen to me. I found the perfect man…but it was all a lie.