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“I’m not sure about this,” I tell Neil.
“It’s fine. My parents are gone. Just stay here.” Neil glances towards the stairs. Morgan is upstairs showering, and being the good friend he is, he offers, “She can stay too tonight if she wants to. Did he…” Neil looks at his hands, still covered in mud. “Did he force her to…?” He stops again.
“No. He didn’t get the chance.”
“He would’ve though.” Neil looks to me. “You know that, right? He wouldn’t have stopped unless I stopped him.”
“Are you okay?” I ask again. To which he nods. “Really okay?”
“I will be. As long as you don’t think I’m a monster like he was. You have to understand why I did it. Every time I close my eyes, I see him tormenting me. He never stopped; even after he forced me to eat the fucking roaches.” Neil’s voice rises with each word. “He was never going to leave me alone.” He remains quiet for a few seconds, tears streaming down his cheeks as he looks to me. “Then when I saw Morgan… what he’d done to her… I knew he had to be stopped. Me. Her. Who would’ve been next? Savannah? It doesn’t even matter. Everyone was his target. And he would’ve kept hurting people. I had to,” he utters.
“I understand.” I really do. I wanted the bastard dead too after seeing Morgan. And with what he had done to Neil, I totally get his thought process. I just never thought Neil would be someone who would casually pull the trigger and then calmly help hide the body and destroy evidence of a murder.
“Savannah said that Ava knows.” He doesn’t meet my eyes. “But she said she isn’t going to say anything. She believes he was really going to kill Morgan and would have eventually gone after her since she knew about it.”
The thought of him hurting Morgan still makes my stomach turn. “I just need you to tell me if you’re not okay. Got it?”
“Really, I’m good.” Neil looks to me with concern. “I killed him, and I feel relieved. What does that say about me?”
“That you don’t have to worry about the monster lurking in the shadows anymore.” And that is the only part I’m happy for him about. I still plan to keep a close eye on him just in case.
“I’m gonna go shower and get rid of the rest of the evidence.” He points to his clothes then heads out.
When I get upstairs, I tap lightly on the guest bedroom door and peek in. Morgan is just walking out of the en suite, a towel wrapped around her. “Can I come in?”
“Don’t ask me. It’s not my damn house.”
Well, at least I know he didn’t break her mean spirit. I walk over to the bed and hold up one of my T-shirts and a pair of boxers. “I left these here for you.”
She doesn’t say anything, simply drops the towel, then pulls the shirt over her head. But not before I see the real damage he caused now that she’s not caked in mud and blood. “I really think you should go to the hospital. You don’t have to tell them what happened. Just get checked out.”
“Yeah. As if they won’t ask a million questions.” She waves her hand over her face. Her eyes are framed with bruising already, her lip busted and swollen.
“It doesn’t matter. I want to make sure you’re okay.” I have no other way of telling. As soon as she’d finished her sobbing breakdown in the hospital parking lot, she just went silent. And as crazy as I sound, I felt it then. I felt her defensive wall come back up. And I know it’s even more ironclad than before, as evidenced by the hateful stare she has on me now.
“Look. I had a moment of weakness. It was a lot. And maybe the adrenaline finally got to me.”
More like wore off and reality set in, but I keep that tidbit to myself. “You don’t have to pretend with me, Morgan.”
“Good thing I’m not.”
Yeah, this isn’t going anywhere. So, I approach differently. “I’m done.” I see her shoulders tense a bit before I continue. “With football. With your dad. With all the bullshit.”
That gets her attention and for the first time throws her off enough to look at me with confusion and ask, “What?”
I can’t tell her aloud. Not knowing her state of mind now. But the man who didn’t care a lick about his daughter when she was having one of the worst moments of her life, that’s not someone I’m going to play for. “I’m done. For you. If he makes it to state, it won’t be with my help.”
Her eyes blink rapidly as she stares to me for a minute. “I don’t want some empty promise. Some pathetic declaration because you’re in your feels after your teammate tried to murder me. I’m fine. I’ll be fine. When I said I didn’t need you, I wasn’t lying.”
I step forward and slowly pull her against me. Surprisingly, she allows it. But I think she’s exhausted and maybe still in shock. “I promise. I pick you. I’ll always pick you.”
She lets out a little laugh. “Now you’re the liar.”
I know she believes what she’s saying, but I don’t argue. Instead, I bend down and lace a tender kiss on her mouth before I look back to her. “Liar, liar, you’re such a crier,” I say as I stroke a thumb across her cheek.
It definitely strikes her as the wrong thing to say since she pulls away from me, but I think maybe it was the right thing. Because she only pulls away when she feels something real.
“Like I said, in your feels. Nothing’s changed for me.”
