“Because he fucked up!” he snaps.
“Again. Nothing we could have done with that.”
He fists his hands. “How the fuck did it get this bad?”
“Well, we all underestimated Austin, for one,” I offer. “You should have known she was gonna be more trouble than we bargained for when she pulled the fire alarm so you could go do your dare. And two, who would have guessed Cole was gonna fall for her?”
He snorts. “That’s what we wanted.”
“No.” I shake my head. “If I remember that first night in the clubhouse correctly, when she showed up in his car, you said she won’t turn on someone she loves. We wanted her to fall for him, so she would take the fall. Cole was never supposed to be on her side. He was supposed to use her. We needed him too much to get caught for Bruce’s death. We needed him ’cause he knew too much about us.”
“Whatever.” He stands and begins to pace in my parents’ family room. “I should have known he was gonna fall for her the moment he found out she had been abused.” He snorts. “Cole started feeling sorry for her … and then shit went downhill from there.”
My brows pull together in confusion. “Austin was abused?” He nods. “Like sexually?” He doesn’t respond. No one has mentioned this. Was that why Cole kept her so close? Maybe he knew Kellan’s true intentions from the beginning. Cole can be ruthless, but no one knows how dark Kellan could go. How dark his thoughts went. “By who?” I dig.
“Doesn’t matter. Now it’s all fucked.” He waves me off.
I let it go because Austin’s past doesn’t concern me. “I disagree. The plan still worked. Bruce may not be dead, but he’s in jail.”
“But Kellan is dead!”
“Because he jumped the gun,” I remind him with a sigh. “I listened to the recording, and he was planning on doing something to Celeste that night. Maybe not Austin, but he went there with a plan. He paid the price for being so foolish, and I can’t feel sorry for him over that.” Shane throws me a glare before he continues wearing out the carpet in front of the fireplace. “He shouldn’t have fallen for her too. He got greedy.”
He throws his head back laughing. “He liked her back when we were kids. That’s why he wanted her here in the first place. To piss off Celeste. Hell, he had been following Austin for the past few months on Facebook before she even moved to Collins. Ever since her mother called. She just never knew it ’cause it was under a different name.”
We all have spam accounts except for Cole. It took Austin challenging him for him to even make one Facebook account. But I don’t think the fucker has ever used it.
I roll my eyes. “He was out of control. And careless. Two things that in no way were gonna get him what he wanted. We saw the red flag when he gave Cole the dare to fuck Kaitlin. Then when she showed up at the party with Bryan, and he told Cole he still had to fuck her, even if that meant rape, Kellan was out of his fucking mind,” I remind him. At that point, Kellan was desperate to get Cole out of the picture. Even if that meant getting his ass throw in jail.
“And you …” He stops pacing and points down at me. “You were supposed to get Cole away from her. We agreed to slow it down when Kellan attacked her the night of her birthday party. She was no use to us if he killed her too soon.”
“I did,” I argue. “But by then, he was in too deep with her. I had to go behind his back to Deke. When he was on our side prom night, Cole backed off. Or pissed her off. Either way, she walked away from him.” The sorry bastard walked around school and practice like a lost little puppy without her. I actually felt sorry for him. He had finally found a woman he could tolerate while dressed, and we took her from him. “I’m not sure how he and Deke got involved the night Kellan shot her.” Well, that’s not true. After listening to the recording, I know she called him. But I’ll keep that to myself. The less Shane knows, the better.
“At least Cole won’t go to the police. Not now.”
“He wasn’t ever going to.” Cole isn’t that kind of guy. He takes care of shit himself. “You are panicking over nothing. He just wanted revenge on Bruce for raping his mother. Austin was just a bonus.”
“So now what?” he asks.
I sit up. “We drop this. The group is done. School’s over. They will move to Texas as soon as Austin is well enough. Cole will want her long gone from here. We all take our money that we collected from JJ’s Properties and never look back. They’ll never know what we had planned.”