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That’s right. I could never quite seem to do it, no matter how the smell of that perfume tortured me…
Until I found the thing that finally made me dump Gideon for good—a used condom on my side of the bed.
I held it in my hand, lifting it up to check if it really had been…used.
Now the chicken does come up in a rush of hot vomit, spattering on the filthy floorboards.
I wipe my mouth on the back of my hand, groaning.
“You sick fuck—you left a condom in my sheets.”
“Yes,” Jude says, and something in the way he looks at me makes me want to puke all over again.
It’s like the look on his face when he saw the stitches on my thigh.
“You’re not afraid of blood,” I mutter, another puzzle piece clicking into place. The so-called vegetarianism, the way he’d stare if he saw something violent on TV, then leave the room to go to the bathroom or his own bedroom… “It turns you on.”
Jude’s lips twitch.
“I’m not afraid of anything,” he says with chilling calm.
“Why were you fucking with me when we moved into the house? Why did you want me to think it was haunted?”
Jude makes an irritated sound.
“At first, I was just annoyed with you for making me sleep in the car. But then you brought that redheadedamoebahere, and I could tell it was going to be Gideon all over again…” He pauses, his expression darkening. “I didn’t realize you were fucking the wife-murderer on the side.”
“You sawed through the boards. You made Tom fall through the ceiling.”
He smiles, pleased with himself. “That was partly for you, and partly to get back at that little Emma cunt—bringing her fucking blueberry muffins over just to spite me.”
“You tried to kill Tom over a couple ofmuffins?”
“He didn’t die,” Jude says though it’s perfectly obvious he wouldn’t care if he had.
It’s like he’s a different person. The expression on his face is like no expression I’ve seen on him before—flat, devoid of emotion. It really is like a mask. Only I get the feeling it’s the other expressions he wears that are the masks—this is what he actually looks like underneath.
I can’t believe it.
And at the same time…I finally do believe. Because I can see what I should have seen all along.
My brother’s an asshole.
No, strike that. He’s a straight-up psychopath.
Let’s call a spade a spade for once in my damn life—it may be the last chance I get to be honest with myself.
“You killed our parents.”
I don’t expect him to admit it, but in a strange way, my brother almost seems proud to tell me these things. It’s like he’s been waiting for years to finally brag about how clever he is.
“Ding ding ding!” Pinpricks of light glitter in his dark eyes. “Though I guess you could say they got the last laugh.”
“I don’t think they’d see the humor.”
“Why not? Even I had to laugh at myself after I went to all that trouble just to find out they were broke.”
That’s what he says, but Jude doesn’t look amused in the slightest—actually, he seems deeply, bitterly angry. Like it was my parents who fucked him over, and he’s the innocent victim.
