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Chapter 7
Kincaid~
At this point, I was going to start needing to snort cocaine to keep going. I hadn’t gotten any sleep last night, and it had taken everything in me to make it to my classes today. Coffee wasn’t cutting it any longer, and the idea of sleeping in tomorrow sounded divine.
After Fox had taken off madder than a hornet-rightfully so-I had gone back inside to remind Alexander that killing August hadn’t derailed me from finding out what happened to Apollo. When Alexander had seen me striding back into the cabin, he had wisely sent Jacob and Donovan on their way. Credit to him, I hadn’t expected him to be that astute.
Unfortunately for him, he had stuck to his story of Apollo’s death being an accident. He’d recited the same bullshit story that had been given when my brother had died. Warning him one last time, I’d left him with some food for thought. I had made it a point to let him know that I had slept like a baby the night I had killed August.
When I’d gotten home last night, I had wanted to call Fox, but I hadn’t. He’d been angry enough that I thought some space would be a good idea. I could own that it’d been a dick move to tell him what I had, but it’d been necessary. When everyone had announced that they had my back yesterday, I’d known that I was going to tell them about Apollo this weekend. Not wanting to go through it twice, I had put Fox off last night, so that it could wait until today.
However, when I hadn’t seen him on campus today, I had wondered if he would even show up tonight. I wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t, but that was a problem for another time. I had called this meeting, and I wasn’t going to flake out because of my issues with Fox.
“Okay, so we’re all here,” Rylee said. “What’s going on?”
“We’re not all here, though,” Sutton noted. “Where’s F-”
Just then, my front door open, and Fox let himself in, using my key. Avoiding my gaze, he looked stoic, but he was here, wasn’t he? I’d take it.
I glanced over at Saxton, and he gave me a quick nod to get on with it. Something told me that he was feeling the anxiety of what I was going to say more than I was. I loved that about him. Saxton and I didn’t have problems. We had problems. Mine were his, and his were mine. It’s always been like that.
“As most of you know, my brother died several years ago,” I began. “Eight, to be exact.” I could see everyone settling comfortably to hear my story.
Everyone, except Fox.
“We’d been told that he and his friends had been cliff jumping, and that Apollo had slipped, hitting his head on the way down.”
“Yeah, I’d heard about that,” Sutton remarked. “I recall the story had made the headlines, but not much else after that.”
“It had been tragic, and it had hit my family tragically,” I continued. “It’s still tragic and my family still feels the loss every day. While I lost my brother and best friend, my parents had lost a child, and that’s a nightmare I don’t wish upon anyone.” I kept scanned their faces as I told my story because this affected them all. “As with all deaths, we’d gone through all the stages of grief, only I had gotten stuck on denial.”
“What do you mean?” Rylee asked softly.
“When I was five, Apollo had been really into skateboarding,” I told her. “He’d been into it for a couple of years, but I’d been too young to appreciate it. Anyway, when I was five, I had taken his skateboard and had tried to do the tricks that I’d seen him do. Needless to say, it hadn’t worked out and I had ended up with a broken wrist.”
“Ouch,” she remarked, smiling.
I nodded. “Well, Apollo hadn’t taken it well,” I continued. “Even though he was eight years older than me, we’d been best friends. The panic at my broken wrist had really done a number on him, so he had enacted a pact that we would never do anything dangerous ever again. He couldn’t lose his best friend, he’d said.” It was hard to keep the emotion at bay, but I was doing it. After all, I was a pro at pretending that my emotions didn’t exist. “Anyway, when we’d gotten the story that he had fallen while cliff diving, I had denied the possibility. There was no way Apollo would have been cliff diving. There’s no way he would have broken his promise to me.” I shrugged. “Of course, everyone believed that I was just in some deep denial. That it was the grief speaking. Even my parents had patronized me over a promise made to a five-year-old.”
“I’m so sorry,” Hastings whispered.
“After a while, I could feel myself going crazy with the…helplessness,” I said, trying to do my best to explain. “No one would believe me, no matter how loudly I spoke up. When the autopsy came back, confirming that Apollo had died from hitting his head during the fall, that had been the end of it as far as my parents were concerned. Their son had died in a tragic accident, no more, no less.”
“So, what changed?” Ross asked.
I glanced over at Saxton, and he took over. “Kincaid was having trouble sleeping during…that rather painful time. She had practically become an insomniac. So, I had spent a lot of time with her at night, doing my best to make sure she got some rest.” Though it was grim, I still shot him a tender smile. “One night, I’d just gotten home from one of our late nights, and I could hear my father in his study, yelling at someone.” Saxton walked over from where he’d been sitting with Hastings and sat behind me on the couch. While I didn’t need it, his hand squeezing my thigh still felt comforting.
“Who was he yelling at?” Sutton asked.
“At the time, I didn’t know,” Saxton answered. “At first, I was going to ignore it because my father’s business dealings or whatever weren’t any of my business. But when I heard him mention Apollo’s name, I went to go stand outside the doorway to listen in.”
“Well, shit,” Stone muttered.
“Whoever my father was speaking with, he was yelling at him about a second autopsy report, and asking how the hell that happened, and…well, all kinds of other shit that was odd,” Saxton continued. “It was enough for me to question him about it.”
“Oh, God…what did he say?” Hastings asked.
“Whoever he was speaking with had seen the original autopsy. See, because Apollo was a Black, an autopsy had automatically been requested. Most people with money like to rule out foul play. Anyway, this person had seen the original, and when he had questioned it, its existence had been denied.”
