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“What?”
“I killed Gunnar,” he admitted, his bottom lip quivering.
“The sheriff’s son?”
“He was my friend too,” he said, surprising me. “Well, we were in school. He was the guy who always played referee between me and Moreno. He would always break up our fights but he hung with both of us until he chose his side.”
“So you hated him?”
“No,” he said, honestly. “I really didn’t.”
“So why did you kill him?”
I sat down next to him on the edge of the bed, sneaking peeks at the bathroom door to see if Roman was going to surprise us.
So far, I hadn’t even seen his shadow near the door which meant he was keeping himself away.
“I didn’t mean to,” Tyler told me. “He got in the goddamn way of Moreno.”
I had to hide the anger at knowing he tried to kill Roman. I already knew he went down there to kill Roman but thinking it and knowing it were two different things. Tyler had always been such a loving cousin, the only one to visit me at St Augustine’s, and really the one who saved me from a lot of beatings as a kid but right now, I considered him my enemy.
He tried to kill my man.
How funny it was to have your whole world turned on its axis by one man.
“You need to relax,” I said. “And just appeal to the sheriff. I’m sure he understands this was all Roman’s fault, right?”
“He’s banished me,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion. “I have until dawn to be out of Verona.”
“So go.”
“I can’t,” he said. “This is my home, Jojo.”
He’d not called me that since I was a kid. If he thought pulling out my childish moniker was going to get him leeway, he was mistaken.
“I felt that way too but then I got sent away. You get over it, trust me.”
“I never liked that they did that to you.”
I shrugged my shoulders and stood up so he couldn’t see the bathroom door. I didn’t want him to accidentally see Roman. I wanted to make him think he was safe being here with me, maybe I could convince him to turn his back to the bathroom so Roman could make his move.
He stood up too, and sighed. I saw Roman’s holster which he’d shed off before, kicked under the bed. I made sure Tyler didn’t see it by standing in front of it.
“I’m over it, Ty.”
“I doubt it,” he said. “But it’s cool. I guess I have my choice, right?”
“I guess so,” I replied, keeping my cool to the best of my ability.
“Your dad told me to leave by midnight so I’m just doing the goodbyes I guess.”
He wanted me to tell him to stay, that I would forgive him. He wanted me to tell him it would be okay.
But I couldn’t do that. It was at this point, I knew what I was going to do. It was the only option. He wasn’t going to leave, I could see it in the way he was trying to manipulate me to tell him to stay.
I nodded. “I get it, but it’s not the end of the world.”
“You always did see the brighter side of life, cuz,” he said, smiling at me. “I’m going to miss that.”
