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She shakes her head. “No, I—”
“Stop. Lying.”
She flinches. Then I see her eyes burn with hate as they stab past me toward Dahlia.
“She killed him,” she blurts. “She killed—”
“No, she didn’t.” I toss the knife away and grab her by the collar of her shirt, hauling her up to look me dead in the eye. “I did.”
Horror, pain, and anguish explode simultaneously across her face, like a haunted kaleidoscope.
“Hate me,” I growl. “You’re welcome to, and you’re entitled to it.” I leer close, snarling in her face. “Hit me.”
Allison flinches. “W-what?”
“Hit me. Expel your hatred for me, who took someone you loved away from you. I’m giving you permission, and I won’t hurt you back.” My eyes draw to slits. “But you only get one.”
She tenses. Her lips pull into a savage sneer. And then suddenly, she’s lashing out and delivering a closed-fist punch right in my face. She screams and lashes out again, but I grab her wrists fast, stopping her cold.
“That was it, Allison,” I growl. “That’s the only one you get. And now, you and I aredone. Your stepbrother was an utter piece of shit. He used you and how much you loved him to convince you to make that video, didn’t he?”
Her face reddens with shame as she looks away.
“He…he never meant it,” she says quietly. “Whenever he did bad things…”
And suddenly, I see it.
Fuck.
There were always rumors about Chase on campus. Yes, as the star quarterback and king of Para Bellum, it’s not like he was ever hard up for female company. But monsters who abuse and hurt don’t do it for sex. It’s not about getting laid.
It’s about power.
And if you looked in between the cracks of the golden veneer on Chase Cavendish, that’s what you saw: a black-hearted piece of shit who wanted power over others. Which is why no matter how hard he and his sycophants tried to squash them down, the rumors about one girl or another who woke up in Chase’s bed without clothes or any memory of how she got there kept popping up.
And now, I’m looking at Allison, and I’m seeing something I didn’t see in her before.
I see a survivor.
Like Dahlia. Like me.
I see it in her eyes: the warring emotions of a survivor who doesn’t know how to hate a victimizer they were supposed to admire and love.
“He did it to you sometimes, didn’t he?” I say quietly.
Allison’s face caves as her eyes dart to mine. Then she looks quickly away again.
Yeah, that’s a yes.
“When you know you should hate the person who hurt you, but that person is someone you’re supposed to love, it’s…confusing,” I growl quietly.
Allison blinks back tears. I reach a hand behind me and take Dahlia’s in my palm, squeezing it briefly before I reach into my jacket for my checkbook. Deftly, I fill one out, tear it off, and press it into Allison’s hand.
“I believe this is yours.”
She looks down and almost chokes when her eyes land on the million-dollar figure.
It’s the amount the “pot” ended up at for that fucked up contest of Chase’s back at school. All things considered, it’s not money I need to eat next week. And this girl, no matter how much anger I still have for the way she lied to Dahlia and then tried to hurt her, has been through a lot at the hands of those who manipulated her.
