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Not that it would be a new thing. People can barely handle me when I’m at my best, but they all run screaming when I’m at my worst.
I’m used to being abandoned or shoved aside.
Maybe that’s another reason I cling to Brinley so tight. I can lose everything I have in this world, but I know if her hand is in mine, I’ll survive.
Once Tanner and Luca come close enough, I tug my little island of peace closer to me.
“Let me guess… I’m no longer a member of the group? When do you want to start negotiating buying out my share of the firm?”
Tanner shakes his head and refuses to look at me. His eyes remain on Luca like he’s afraid she’ll lose control of herself at any second.
She’s holding strong from what I can see. A little weak in the shoulders, her body tired, but her eyes blaze beneath the shop’s bright lights, even a deeper blue due to the red staining the skin around them.
Guilt consumes me.
I’ll admit it.
Although Luca and I have never been the best of friends, I’ve never had anything against her.
Clearing her throat, her voice is barely audible when she asks, “Can you tell me the details again? Of when you went to Georgia to mess with my father’s car?”
“I’m not sure how that’s going to help things.”
“Just tell me.”
Maybe she needs to cement the facts in her mind. Hearing them a second time won’t change things, but some people can’t accept the truth until it’s been thrown in their face repeatedly.
“About two days before your father died, my father dragged me to Georgia. He told me to lie about where I was and that he had a job for me to do. When we got there, he had me bleed the brake lines of your dad’s car, not so much that it would be noticeable or kill the brakes immediately, but enough that when he was driving they would go out and it wouldn’t be apparent in a crash investigation. It would look like poor maintenance or something that occurred because of the crash.”
She nods. Swallows. Then let’s out a long breath I assume she’d been holding in the entire time I retold the story.
“There was more than that,” she finally says. “You’d mentioned the type of car specifically.”
“It was a black Lincoln Navigator.”
Luca wipes at new tears breaking at the rims of her eyes.
“That’s what I thought,” she muses, more to herself than me.
Letting out another long breath, she glances at Tanner before looking at me again. I don’t miss how he squeezes her hand for comfort.
“I’m sorry for what I said to you before running out of the room today. You didn’t deserve it.”
I won’t allow her to let me off that easy.
“Not only did I deserve it, I probably deserve worse.”
She shakes her head, attempting a smile, but she can’t quite manage to complete it. She’s too heartbroken, her mind back in time when she first learned that her father died.
“You don’t deserve it, Shane. Because you didn’t kill my dad.”
Shock stills me in place, my fingers clutching tighter to Brinley’s. “Of course I did—”
“No,” she says again, “you didn’t. The black Navigator was my father’s car. But that’s not what he was driving when he died. He was in my mom’s car that night. She drove a silver Audi. I checked the police report again after you left, just to confirm, but I was right. He wasn’t in the Navigator.”
Despite the truth being written into the report she has, I still have trouble believing it.
“So, if it wasn’t me, then who… ? ”
