Life isn’t fair, my mother always says. But it’s seemed pretty fucking fair to her if you ask me.
She fucked a man once and got knocked up. I was here nine months later. The only reason she had me was because she met a wealthy, good-looking man who only wanted a one-night stand. She saw me as her meal ticket. Even now that I’m living with him, my father still sends her monthly checks. But those will stop soon. I’ll be eighteen and graduated. I don’t know the law exactly, but I had a friend whose father stopped paying for her after she graduated high school last year.
Then what will my mother do? Will she beg me for money? Have me ask him? It won’t happen. I won’t get her a dime.
“Take it out on Me” by Thousand Foot Krutch starts to play through the speakers. I reach over and turn it up to try to drown out my own thoughts.
It doesn’t.
I look over at him, and his left hand is on the steering wheel while his right is on the shifter. He wears his normal mask that hides his true thoughts and feelings from the world, but I see it. I thought it was anger, but after our talk earlier, I realize it’s pain. He’s hurting. He just refuses to let anyone see it. To see the real him.
He reaches out and turns off the radio. We sit in silence, and I wonder what he’s thinking. If his mind is screaming as loud as mine is.
I look down at my hands knotted in my lap. “You know I would never tell anyone about what happened.” He has to know by now that no matter what, he can trust me. He’s blackmailed me to keep my mouth shut, but I would never tell a soul that he wasn’t the one driving. He took that blame on his own for a reason, and I would never out him. No matter how much I disagree with it.
“Why did you take Jerrold’s laptop?” he asks, ignoring my statement.
My brows rise, surprised by that question. “You know why,” I say, not going back down that road. He doesn’t want to share, then I won’t either.
“I know why you are on our side when it comes to him. But I want to know why that dare? Why not something else?”
“It was the only dare I could think of,” I answer honestly. “I tried to think of things that you had told me about, and I wanted to help Eli’s sister. I thought maybe there was some info on there that you could use. You could get him arrested …”
His soft laugh interrupts me. “His ass isn’t going to jail, sweetheart.”
“Then what …?” My words trail off as I understand. “You’re gonna kill him too?” I ask wide-eyed.
“Of course.” He snorts.
Death too must be earned. He had said to me that day in his car as we watched Jerrold in his office. “You’re gonna get caught,” I say, fisting my hands.
“No, we won’t.”
“You didn’t even do a good job with Jeff.” I roll my eyes at his confidence.
He looks over at me for a quick second. “What are you talking about?”
“It took me twenty minutes to dig him up. It would take a full-grown man half that. You didn’t bury him very deep. And you weren’t very smart.” He opens his mouth, but I continue. “You left him dressed in the clothes that had your blood on them. You should be thanking me that I burned his body.” He shuts his mouth. “Plus, you buried him right next to where Eli’s sister is. Very poetic. But anyone who would consider someone close to her as a suspect, would go there first.”
I sit back in my seat and cross my arms over my chest as I look out the window, watching all the cars he passes.
“What would you have done?” he finally asks.
I turn back to look at him. He stares straight ahead. “Given the situation I was in, exactly what I did.”
He nods his head once.
“And if I wouldn’t have had the resources to set him on fire, I would have tied him to a couple of full dive tanks and dumped his body into the ocean.” His brows lift in surprise. “Sharks and other fish would have smelled the blood. He would had been eaten to nothing in a matter of days.” He nods to himself again. Slower this time. “But if I would have been part of it, I would have done it differently.” I’ve never killed someone but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t crossed my mind. The older I got, the more I despised Phillip. Every time he cornered me, I thought of killing him. Or at the very least chopping his hands off in a freak accident.