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“Almost getting murdered makes me question all my life choices, frankly,” I say and he laughs, but my stomach is boiling and I come to a decision, one I don’t think I’ll ever be able to walk back. But it’s finally time. “I was there when Rosie died.”
He doesn’t move for a moment. Then he brushes my hair aside and kisses my forehead. “How’d it happen?”
“We were in the woods.” I stare out toward the forest where it all happened. It was so long ago but the memory’s still fresh. “I was out there like usual reading a book when she came stomping through the underbrush toward me. I tried to run, but she yelled and told me to stop. She was always chewing this gum, always had a big mouth full of the stuff. I panicked a little bit, and I threw my book at her, and I guess that pissed her off because she grabbed me by the hair and yanked me down into the dirt. She put a knee on my face and held me there and called me a disgusting waste of space, and that’s when I elbowed her in the stomach.
“She let me ago and I scrambled away. But when I tried to run, she chased after me. I was a stronger runner, faster, and I was used to the woods, so I put some distance between us, but after a minute I stopped hearing her coming after me. It was totally quiet, and I circled back, confused why she wasn’t chasing.
“I found her on her knees at the edge of the clearing, her hands around her throat. She was bright purple, her eyes red and bugged out. Choking on that gum. I watched her motion for me, begging for me to come help her, and I stood there, staring as tears streamed down her face. She tried hitting herself in the gut, but it didn’t help, and I didn’t move. I couldn’t move. I told everyone that I panicked and ran to the house but that’s not true. I wasn’t panicking, War. I wasn’t even upset. She was dying right there in front of me and I could’ve helped, I could’ve done the Heimlich or at least hit her on the back or something, but I just watched. Calm, not feeling much of anything. Mostly just resigned to her dying. All this time and I don’t know why I didn’t try to help, but she choked and choked and fell to her side, thrashing, struggling, staring at me with those wide and terrified eyes, and I watched her die. I said nothing, I did nothing. I didn’t scream or call for help. I watched her go still, watched her body shut down, watched her eyes go cold. I watched her die. Maybe I even killed her, I don’t know. I think if she managed to spit that gum out, I would’ve finished her myself.”
My story ends and I lean back in my chair. The last piece of my story clicks into place and, finally, it’s all out in the air, every word of it. Like my cousins tried to kill me the night before, I killed Rosie, and I’ve never felt a bit of guilt over it. Which I know is wrong and means I’m broken, but after what she did, I don’t care. None of it matters anymore. She’s gone, and I watched her die.
“We’ve all done things we aren’t proud of,” War says after a short silence. “I can give you a very long list of my sins.”
“Ever kill your cousin?”
“No, but I’ve pushed the plunger on an overdose of morphine for an old dying woman. I held a pillow over the face of an addict high on fentanyl. I’ve done horrible things, Melody. Things I’m not proud of.”
“Then I guess we have a lot more in common than I realized.”
His smile is bitter but I take his hand between both of mine and kiss his finger. He leans down and kisses my lips, lingering there. “I never should’ve let this happen,” he whispers and strokes a thumb down my cheek.
“Let what happen?”
“This.” He kisses me again. “I’ve avoided this for a really long time, but now, I think I’m falling for you.”
“You think?” I ask as a thrill runs down my spine. I just confessed to watching my cousin die and not trying to help her, and he confessed to at least two murders, and all I can think about is him loving me. That’s sick and twisted, and I can’t bring myself to care, because War’s like me, he wraps himself in stories and lies to keep the terrible things he’s done as far away as possible, and I want him in my life. I want him, and I’m falling for him too, and I don’t know where this can possibly end.
“I know.” He leans into another kiss and we hold it there, two killers, two sinners, two liars.
The door to the main house opens. I break off the kiss and look back at Daisy appears, pushing my father in a wheelchair.
I stand suddenly in surprise. My father looks emaciated, shrunken, barely sitting upright, but his eyes are lucid. He stares at me with a cold, calculating squint. War twists in his seat before climbing to his feet, and the look on Daisy’s face sends a cold horror into my toes.
She looks triumphant.
“Colton,” Daisy says, “why don’t you tell your daughter what you just told me?”
Dad clears his throat. “I didn’t want it to come to this,” he says. “I wanted you to come home, Melody.”
“What’s going on?” War asks. “Did you mention your little attack last night, Daisy?”
She ignores him. “Go on, Colton. Tell Melody what you told me about Warren here.”
I take a step back. War goes very still, his face flattening into nothing. The anger’s gone, the surprise is gone. The love and tenderness is gone. It’s drained and emotionless, and that scares me more than anything else.
“Warren’s been working for me,” Dad says. “I sent him to bring you home. I offered to pay him to keep you here.”
“I knew all that already,” I say looking from Dad to Daisy to War and back around again.
“Tell her the rest,” Daisy presses. “Go on, Colton. Doesn’t your daughter have a right to know?”
“The ranch is everything,” Dad says and sounds so defeated it breaks my heart. I’ve never seen him like this, shriveled and weak and small. “It’s all I ever loved. I hoped if you returned and set down roots, then maybe it might turn around.”
“But that won’t happen,” Daisy says. “She told me already. Over and over again. She’s not interested in staying.”
“I offered Warren a deal,” Dad says and struggles to sit up straight. “I told him to bring you back. I told him to keep you here. I told him to convince you to marry him, and then he could inherit everything I have left. He’d get you, and the ranch, and the rest of our money, if only he could marry you and convince you to take over.”
I blink rapidly and slowly look at War.
