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It’s peaceful out here. The wind is gently blowing the leaves, rustling them against each other. The sky is a bright blue, sticks crunch under our shoes, birds tweet in the clouds up above, and the water calmly sails next to us.
The silence is deafening and I hate the uncertainty of it, but I also can’t think of anything to say.
After fifteen more minutes of silent walking, the lake turns into a wider pathway and crashes of water disturb the silence. I look around, searching for the source of the noise, until we walk into a clearing and in front of us is a huge, beautiful waterfall, one that looks so much more breathtaking than I remember.
My heart cramps and my emotions flare as I take in the sight before me, old memories bubbling to the surface and threatening to combust. I look over at King, who is staring straight ahead, and I can only imagine he’s thinking the same thing.
“I haven’t come back here since,” he says quietly but loud enough for me to hear over the spray.
“I didn’t know it was so close to your house,” I reply just as quietly. Quite frankly, I have no idea what to say. Why would he bring me back here?
“King, I can’t.” I take a step back.
Being here with him, it hurts.
“Theo,” he says, turning back to me.
“No, King. No.” I raise my voice. My eyes scan the waterfall as I recall that night nine years ago. “You said don’t go anywhere.Yousaid that!” I almost shout at him, remembering how he asked me to stay, but then he left me anyway.
“I know,” he replies. “Please just hear me out.”
“You’re kidding, right? Nine years is now deemed enough time to clear the air, is it?”
“Nine years has been way too long. Theo, I didn’t even know you still thought about us from back then. It’s been so long.”
“I tried, King,” I shout, losing all patience. “I waited for you. All night. I woke up on the fucking ground outside the gates. You never showed. You never answered my text to say you were bailing. You never replied ever again.”
“I know,” he repeats again.
“My mumdiedand even after years of no contact, I bit the bullet, knowing you’d know out of anyone how it felt, and you still didn’t reach out to me when I needed you!” My breathing gets faster as my anger boils. “I NEEDED YOU, KING!” I shout, left completely naked and vulnerable in front of him. I drop down onto the ground and hug my knees to my chest and bury myself, waiting for the ground to swallow me up.
My tears threaten to fall, but I keep them at bay. I’ve cried enough over him.
“Bonnie, my sister, died that night,” he says after a couple minutes of silence. “That’s why I never showed. My father had just shot her. Then threw me away for witnessing it.”
I stay silent, not knowing how to respond. I look up at King, still facing the waterfall, but his face is scrunched up with pain, his eyes glassy.
“My sister Bonnie, she was hidden, she was?”
“I know,” I say softly and he turns to look at me. “Puck.”
I couldn’t let him go through telling me. It looked too painful. He nodded and continued.
“I was with Puck when my father came in, beat him, and carried him away. I got knocked out and had no idea what was going on. When I came round, I was in my room, so I went to look for Bonnie and Puck. Instead, I found my father coming out of the cells, discovering what he’d just done.” His voice cracks and my heart cracks along with it.
“King, you don’t have to say any?”
“I do,” he says and sits down next to me, keeping some distance. “I confronted him and said I’d make him pay. He threw me in prison, which turns out is where he’d put Puck. Puck said that Carlo had said it was punishment for getting Bonnie pregnant and he’d have to live with the fact she was dead and he was rotting in a cell.”
I frown at King’s confession, saddened that Puck went through that. Puck didn’t give me the whole story and now I understand why.
“I was there until I‘accepted the way things were and was ready to go back and help my father run the District’. I sulked for a long time. So did Puck. It wasn’t until I received a letter from Dax, after around eight months of being in there, that I stopped sulking. I still have no idea how he got it there, but he filled me in on everything back home and that he’d learnt about the prison and would be ready and waiting for revenge when I got back.” King sighs and I sit silently, waiting for the rest of the story. “Me and Puck got sick of doing nothing, so we came up with a plan. I decided to wait it out a bit before confessing to my father that he was right to do what he did. Some stupid way of proving my loyalty. Eventually, after a year, he let me out. Me and Dax were going to take Carlo down, then Puck would be free and we could all try to move on as a family. Of course that didn’t happen. It was getting harder and harder for me and Dax to plot against Carlo. He was always watching his back against us.”
I think over everything he’s said and take it all in. It seems bizarre that they couldn’t kill Carlo considering they all lived together, but with Carlo already suspicious of them because of everything, it makes sense. He wouldn’t expect a hit from Theodora Harlow when he was watching his son so closely, his most likely assassinator.
“But that’s why I left you, Theo. I didn’t bail on you. I was forced away.”
I recall that night I fell asleep on the ground just outside my home, crying myself to sleep that I could be so foolish waiting around for King when in fact he’d just been a witness to his sister’s death and then thrown into prison.
