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Bear sat on the edge of the desk opposite me. He appraised me long and hard, and I didn’t shy away from his enquiring eyes.
“We didn’t kill him that night.”
“I know.”
“We—Wait. What?”
“I know. You don’t think I’d fall for a guy I genuinely believed to be a murderer, do you? Or fail to report it to the police if I thought I’d seen someone get killed. No story is worth obstructing the course of justice like that, and I never would.”
“You knew all along?”
“Yeah I—”
“Hold on, what do you mean, ‘fall for a guy’? You’re saying...”
“Come on, Bear, you’re smarter than that, surely?” I stared down at my hands for an extended time, feeling the weight of his questioning gaze. When I looked up again, sure enough, he searched my face, a pained expression contorting his beautiful features. “It’s majorly inconvenient because everything in my psyche is telling me I should hate you, that I need to hate you, as a matter of self-preservation. Yet as much as I try, I can’t.”
“So what are you saying?”
I couldn’t look at him “I’m... I... I’m in love with you. So...” I shrugged.
“So, what? What’s the end of that sentence?”
“I don’t know. I just needed to say it, to get it off my chest, I guess. So now we can go back to destroying each other.”
“How did you know? How long have you known for? Why didn’t you say something? About the initiation, I mean, not the other thing.” Bear barely took a breath between the rapid-fire questions.
“Which one of those do you want me to answer first, if at all?”
“How did you know?”
“I stayed in the room and saw what happened after the pledges left. I’d wondered why two of you hung back on the balcony while the other three left. It became obvious once everyone else had gone. It was a clever, but extremely cruel, trick. As much as I hate you guys, I have to admit that there’s a level of genius there—albeit of the evil variety—that in other circumstances I’d find admirable.”
“Thanks. I think. One of our guys is a bit of an engineering buff, and he found a tutorial on YouTube which was made for amateur film-makers—so kind of similar to our needs in that it needed to look real enough for people seeing it to the believe that the person had been hanged, without actually doing it. It’s a fairly complicated system of wires and trick levers. After drilling and testing it a few times, we came up with a way to rework it for our situation, and hey presto, one faked death!”
“Yeah, like I said, on a different day, I’d be impressed. In the actual circumstances I find it deplorable. To manipulate and deceive people that way, by preying on their emotions, is a low act. Never mind evil genius. It’s just evil. Period.”
“Okay, and I see your point to an extent, although, I should tell you that you really don’t know the full story, and probably never will. Even still, putting that fact aside, I really don’t understand your motivation to come after us, if you knew we didn’t kill anybody. You might not approve of what we did, but when you boil it down to its essence, it was just a prank. Kind of.”
“Well, that’s how you may see it, but speaking as someone who’s been on the wrong side of men like you, who abuse their power and influence to control, manipulate, hurt and ultimately kill others, I can’t see it as just a prank.”
“Whoa.” He raised his hands in surrender. “I mean, I can see how you might think it was mean spirited, but really, all the rest of that stuff? Where’s that coming from?”
“Ever heard of Leaders of the Light?”
“The cult? Yeah, of course, but what does that—”
“Those bastards ruined my childhood, and destroyed my family.”
“Uh... what?”
“Yeah. I mean, it’s a long story, but basically my parents fell totally under the spell of the two leaders, and let those people consume our lives, their livelihoods, and the foundations of our family unit. And ultimately paid for all of it with their own lives.”
“Whoa! I’m sorry. I’m just really having trouble absorbing all of this. Do you mind if I...?” He pointed to the couch. I shrugged, which he obviously took as an invitation. He strode across the room in a few large steps, then threw himself onto the sofa and swiveled to look at me. “Come sit. I need to see your face.” He patted the cushion next to him, then reached out for my hand, pulling gently, urging me down from the arm of the couch where I was perched.
I let myself slide down on the seat, then turned to face him.
I took a few steadying breaths. “My parents were... I don’t know... lost I guess? Burnt out by the corporate rat race and the constant stress of raising two young kids in a hectic city environment. I think they were tired of being on that treadmill of working to service a giant mortgage, and all the other trappings of the yuppie lifestyle, but never having time to enjoy the same, as they were too busy earning the money to fund it. Then if they did have time, they were too tired and cranky from working to take full advantage, and on and on the cycle went.
