AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My friends just smiled.
Chapter 30
Jude
Charlie wasn’t surprised when I called him and told him I wasn’t going to wait until the next day. He said he’d figured as much. It only took a couple hours for us to get ready. I had on a wire, and everyone but Lucas was here with me. He stayed with Grace, Evie and Lena, and he’d never know how grateful I was he was there just in case.
After this, it would be a long time before I took anything for granted again. Especially Lena’s safety.
Most of our time preparing was everyone getting into position slowly and quietly, making sure they weren’t seen. Ben was at the garage. His car was there, and we’d seen him greet a customer once. He hadn’t left.
I wasn’t armed. This didn’t need to escalate, and I didn’t trust myself around him. If something happened, I was a good six inches taller and probably thirty pounds of muscle heavier. My chances were good in a fight. If, for some reason, I was getting my ass handed to me, it was one more reason I wasn’t here alone.
All of them could hear me, but it was one-way. I didn’t need a distraction; they just needed the signal. “Ready,” I said under my breath as I turned the corner. There was no point in knocking. Shoving through the door, I saw Ben standing in front of the open hood of a car, his back to me. There was one beer bottle on the floor, empty, and another on a worktable. It was barely afternoon, but that wasn’t a good sign.
“I’m surprised it took you this long to get here, honestly.”
“You knew I’d come?”
He huffed out a breath and turned, wiping his hands on a cloth. “Of course. You’re not stupid. If I’d been able to finish the job, you might have been more distracted. I don’t know what tipped you off about Deja Brew, but you got fucking lucky.”
I blinked. That was easier than I expected. At the very least, I’d thought he would deny it at first. And of course, he’d been watching to make sure she died. “So you did all this to get at me?”
“Yes.”
My hands curled into fists, and I forced myself still. “Why?”
“Because you got out. You’re still alive, and when you had the chance to save Isaac, you didn’t.” He shook his head and smirked. “But when I got here, you were so obviously miserable, it was easier to just leave you alone. You were doing an excellent job of punishing yourself. Better than I could have done.”
I swallowed. “But?”
“But then you came here with that stupid fucking car, and I heard you ranting about how much you wanted Lena and how you might actually go for it. Then when I was out walking one morning—to get coffee, I might add—I saw you drop her off and kiss her. You had the look on your face Isaac did when he was with Ellen, and he doesn’t get to have that anymore because of you. It’s not right for you to have it at all.”
The pain in his voice was one I recognized. The kind of pain that didn’t go away and didn’t get easier—you eventually just learned to live with it and tried to deal with it as best you could.
“You could have talked to me,” I said. “I could have told you the truth.”
“I’m not interested in hearing anything from you.”
“Really?” I opened my hands wide to show I had nothing to hide. “Because whether or not you want to, I think you need to. No matter how happy I’ve been or haven’t been, there hasn’t been a single day when I haven’t thought about Isaac. I feel the guilt about his death and grieve it every fucking day.”
He opened his mouth, and I kept going. This was my chance to get it all out, even if it didn’t end up making a difference. “I could show you my bedroom wall that’s made of more spackle and putty than anything else because I have nightmares. Of being tortured, and Isaac screaming. It used to be every night. I tore sheets to shreds and destroyed my house, fighting off enemies I still feel I should have been able to kill.
“And I still get them. It’s not every night, thanks to Lena, but I do. And the fact that he’s gone still tears me up. I’m never going to get rid of the guilt. Maybe I’ll be able to handle it better, but it’s never going to leave.”
Ben snorted, tossing the rag onto the engine of the car and walking away. “You’re still here, and he’s not.”
“I know, and no one knows more than me that it’s partly my fault. I’ve never left anyone behind. Not on purpose. And the fact that I didn’t have a choice destroys me. When they carried me out of that cave, I was barely conscious. If I’d had any piece of my mind free, I would have forced them to go back, and I would have made them carry him out of there with me.
“And believe me, I’ve wondered whether I could have helped him more once he was home. If I could have reached out more or should have noticed something nobody else did. I’ll be asking those questions until the day I die, but those questions are never going to bring Isaac back.”
The crash made me jump. Ben grabbed one of the metal tool chests and threw it over, sending tools and bolts everywhere. “Your guilt doesn’t do shit. Nothing you do makes any difference because he’s still dead and you’re still here. I want you to feel what it’s like to lose someone like that. And if it weren’t for that bitch, you would be in just as much pain. It was her, right? Fucking called and left me a message, begging me to come to the memorial and ride with you if I needed to.” He shook his head, looking less and less rational by the second. His hands shook, and he started to pace, agitated. “Didn’t get that message until after I got back from starting the generator. I could have saved it for another day, but she had to go and call you. Saved Lena’s fucking life.”
I needed to be careful here. “And Allison DeVries? How does she play into all this?”
“Convenience. Competition is a good motive, right? You wouldn’t believe the amount of research I did to fuck up things for your girl.” Ben sounded proud of it, and my stomach rolled. “I made a copy of the bakery keys once when her car was here, and it was easy.”
“Tell me.” I didn’t actually want to hear it, but the more detailed a confession I got, the more likely it was for him to do time for attempted murder.
