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I keep shaking my head. “Out.”
I leave the room without explaining more. I need to get away from all this. He’s being nice. He’s doing something sweet. He’s changing my life.
But he killed my father.
Stone is everything I shouldn’t want in a man, but Idowant him. That drives me crazy because if I let myself love him, and it turns out he’s just like everyone else—hidden agendas and pain beneath the surface—I don’t think I’ll be able to handle it.
I leave the campus, catch the same bus I’d been riding for years, and finally, I end up in front of my childhood home. It’s cold and lifeless now. The threat between those walls is finally gone.
When I try the front door, it’s locked. I walk around the side of the house, find the spare key under the flower pot, and let myself in through the back door.
Everything is just the way it’s always been—dirty dishes in the sink, a layer of dust covering everything not in use, dim lighting that falls through the window. But the house is just a shell of what it used to be now. There is no more danger.
Stone took care of it.
And I helped him do it.
I close my eyes and think back to that night. It’s a blur, but I know what I did. The pills in the baggy Stone had hidden away in his liquor cabinet—the one I’d glimpsed the first time was there—had held some kind of pill to create a crazy high. There was nothing dangerous about it.
It’s nothing like what Fentanyl can do to you.
I know what that can do because I saw what it did to my mom.
It was quick to swap out those pills for something that would cause the right kind of damage. He came back, almost catching me in the act, but it was done.
And now, thanks to him—thanks tome—it’s all over.
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. I don’t want to keep running. I don’t want to keep living in fear. I can handle myself, I can handle fear, but it’s exhausting. Maybe it’s time to stop running. Maybe it’s time to turn around and face the music.
How much better would it be if I’m not dancing alone?
“What are you doing here?” someone asks, snapping me out of my thoughts. A woman in a dress suit walks into the kitchen. I didn’t hear her come in. She looks harmless enough, with pale brown hair and a world-weary expression on her face. “You can’t be here. This house has been repossessed by the bank.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I was just saying goodbye.”
I step around the woman. She tries to call me back, to talk to me. She wants to know the story, but she won’t get it.
Before I leave through the now open front door, I put down the spare key on the table next to the door.
I won’t need it anymore.
Chapter 18
Raina
He’s in his room, but the music isn’t blaring. When he opens the door, I expect to see him drunk with a glass in his hand.
He looks sober. Completelycompos mentis.
“What do you want?” he asks.
“To tell you the truth.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “What truth?”
I step into the room, and he closes the door. He folds his arms over his chest, making his muscles bulge, and he leans against the door. He’s closed off, distant.
I don’t blame him.
