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Chapter One – Brett
There were so many things running through my head. The main one being:Charlie was about to kill herself. If I wouldn’t have come… what would she have done? Would she have wrangled her nerve and actually gone through with it? Would she be bleeding out in this stupid treehouse right now if it wasn’t for my timely intervention?
I didn’t want to think about Charlie hurting herself like that. She’d always had those big, sad brown eyes—and I’d found that tiny blade tucked away in her desk when I’d first snooped in her room—but I didn’t think she’d go this far. I didn’t think she was that far gone.
I didn’t know the girl wanted to die that badly.
Sitting in that treehouse, holding her on my lap, my arms locked around her like chains that wouldn’t give an inch, I swore to us both that I wouldn’t let her hurt herself, and I sure as shit would never let her kill herself.
Her body was curled up, feeling even smaller than it was. And she was already pretty damn small—she had the body of a fifth-grade boy even though she was nineteen. She wasn’t pretty. Not really.
And that made it even weirder when she was all I could see when I closed my eyes. She wasn’t my type. She was too frail, too breakable, a person someone like me should steer clear of. I was a serial killer. I hunted for fun, because I needed to, because it was a part of me. Charlie was my opposite, my foil. It shouldn’t feel so right to have her in my arms.
But it did. Maybe I was only admitting this to myself because this was a vulnerable moment, but it did feel right. Charlie Mulanie wasmine.
I think that was why my head spun so much with racing thoughts. Was this because of that damned stalker? Had she tried to kill herself because of that asshole? Well, she wouldn’t have to worry, because I’d taken care of it.
Hence the other issue on my mind: her ex, AKA her stalker. I mean, I didn’treallyknow whether he was her stalker or not, but the stalking had started after they’d broken up, and her stalker had known exactly what to do and say to get under her skin… which, to me, told me he knew her more than a stranger would. Zak had obviously wanted to get back together with her, and stalking her might’ve been one way to keep an eye on her and try to make sure she didn’t start dating anyone else before they could reconcile.
I’d literally come straight from campus, where I’d just killed that asshole. His blood was on my hands as I held onto Charlie.
Okay, not his real blood. The metaphorical shit. I’d snapped that bitch’s neck like a twig, so there wasn’t any blood to speak of.
I didn’t know how long we sat there, me holding onto Charlie to try to calm her down, and Charlie trembling against me, but it was a while. Eventually her shaking stopped, and no more tears fell down her face. Her nose was buried against my shirt near my collarbone, and her small hands clung to me like I was her lifeline.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She’d hit me with her car the night I was on the run, and instead of taking me to a hospital, she’d taken me to a seedy motel, where she’d tied me up and told me she’d help me lay low and heal up if I helped her out with her stalker problem. Pretty straightforward, but everything got messy somewhere along the way.
Messy. That word didn’t feel like it described this situation good enough. To call this messy was an understatement. I was a serial killer with a vendetta against a little rich girl, and somehow I’d gotten trapped by Charlie and those big, brown eyes.
Once Charlie had regained herself somewhat, she whispered, “I can’t believe you came.” She probably couldn’t believe I’d detected something in her tone from her voicemail, that I’d known innately what she was going to do, and I’d come here to stop her. I’d bet anything she believed she wasn’t worth the hassle.
But that’s where she was wrong.
I had no idea what made her feel this way, why she was so goddamned sad all the time—and why no one else ever seemed to notice—but it had to be more than just her stalker. More than her breakup with Zak.
There had to be more to this, didn’t there? Maybe that was just me trying to make sense of a situation that didn’t necessarily have to make sense. I knew all too well sometimes people acted irrationally.
I… might have a history of that.
“Of course I’d come for you,” I whispered back, smoothing down her hair absentmindedly as I stared at the other side of the treehouse.
Charlie fit so well against me. I never wanted to move. But, even in my peripherals, the shiny edge of the knife kept catching my eye, and I knew we had to take that back to the main house before her parents got home.
In fact, everything had to be perfectly normal around here.
Charlie turned her head, resting her cheek on my shoulder. “Where did you go?”
I inhaled a large breath. I did it slowly so I could kill some time as I tried to think of something else to say. I couldn’t tell her that I went to her college. If I said I killed Zak, she’d probably flip out, even if he was her stalker.
I decided not to volunteer that particular information and keep it to myself until she realized her stalker hadn’t contacted her in a while. Once she brought it up, I’d tell her about Zak, and she could put two and two together.
Yeah. I wouldn’t tell her. If I did, she wouldn’t understand. She didn’t think Zak was the guy.
And, you know what? Even if he wasn’t, he needed to die anyway. He was a jerk who thought he could worm his way back into Charlie’s life, and I wasn’t about to stand back and let it happen. I wasn’t ashamed of killing him. I was a serial killer. I didn’t feel guilt over shit like that.
“I was still nearby, trying to decide what to do and how to do it to avoid getting caught,” I lied to her, and I hated doing it. This girl… I didn’t want to lie to her. A lie had brought us together in the face of the world, but to each other, there was no point in lying.
I might not feel guilty about murder, but lying to Charlie? Yep. That got me. Go fucking figure.
