The truth is going to kill me.
I realize that after listening to Liesel’s second story. I didn’t think she’d get this deep with her stories this quickly, but she dove in head first. She flirted so closely with telling the complete truth, but twisted one tiny detail to make the story dig in like a knife to my heart.
It wasn’t so much a lie as an omission.
She didn’t include me in her story.
I noticed her when she showed up at school. I had been waiting for weeks to get to see her in one of her slinky school dresses.
My mouth almost fell open when I saw her in jeans. She still looked hotter than sin, and her muscled legs looked fantastic in her skinny jeans, but I knew something was wrong.
I thought she was pissed at Enzo.
I thought they were together.
I thought he had moved on and dumped her for Bridgett like I knew he would.
Then Liesel disappeared.
She didn’t show up in any of our classes.
She didn’t come to her locker.
She didn’t sit with us at lunch.
She was gone.
I had to find her, clearly something terrible had happened.
I ran back to the club where I worked for Enzo’s father. I pulled up all the security cameras I could find. But I didn’t find her at the house, the club, or any of the properties Enzo’s family owns.
She wasn’t at the guest house or the house she grew up in either.
She was gone.
There was only one place she could have gone—the ocean.
It took me all day to find her.
When I did, she was passed out. Blood spilled from her wrist onto the sand.
I had killed before but never saved.
Until then.
That night I saved her.
“I regret it,” I say.
“What?”
“I. Regret. It.”
We stare into each other’s eyes, and we both know what I’m talking about without saying it—I regret saving her. I wouldn’t be in this mess if I had just let her die. If I hadn’t searched for her that day. If I hadn’t found her.
“Me too,” she snaps back.
I nod.