Mia waffles for a moment, glancing at me, and then back at the three boys. “Okay—” she says hesitantly. “But if you need me, call me, okay? For any reason. Promise you’ll call me.”
“I will,” I promise her. “But I’ll be alright. I just need to sleep.”For a year, maybe. Or forever.
“We’ll take good care of her,” Dean promises, touching my lower back. “I swear.”
Something passes between him and Mia, a look that I don’t fully understand, or at least can’t parse out right now. But Mia nods, giving me a quick, tight hug, and then she’s gone.
“Come on,” Dean says gently. “Let’s get you to bed.”
It’s tempting. But I shake my head, forcing myself to push through even though the conversation we need to have is the last thing in the world I want to talk about right now.
“We have to talk,” I say firmly, pushing away from the three of them and walking towards the living room.
“Athena, not tonight,” Jaxon says, grabbing my arm. “There’s plenty of time to talk about all of this. We don’t need to tonight.”
“We do.” I pull my arm away. “I’m done with this. I’m done playing these fucking games. My mother is dead, and we’re going to talk about why. Or why I think, anyway. And Jaxon—you’re part of this too.”
His jaw tightens, and I can see how badly he wants to not be a part of this. But I’m done. We’re going to lay it all out on the table tonight, and they’re either going to be with me or not. But one way or another, I’m going to end every fucking person who might have had a hand in my mother’s death.
“Just meet me in the living room,” I tell them, and then I go up to my room, and fish all of the articles out of my backpack. All of the research that Mia and I found.
When I walk back into the living room, they’re all seated there, just as I asked. It gives me a small spark of hope that this might go better than I’d thought it would. That maybe they won’t think I’m absolutely insane.
“Mia and I did some research into the founding of the town,” I tell them, spreading out the articles. I hold back the ones about Natalie, not wanting to bring that up yet. “And we found out all of this. How there used to berealsacrifices, and how later on it turned into the game you three played with me.” I put the photographs on the table too. “I found these in the attic.”
There’s silence for a moment, while the boys shuffle through it all. Slowly, I can see their facial expressions changing, from shock to horror and back again.
“Fuck.” Cayde swears, holding up one of the photographs, the one that I had thought looked slightly familiar. “This is my fucking mom. She was apet?Asacrifice?”
I feel a momentary resentment that he’s horrified at that, and not at the fact that the ritual exists at all. But I can understand the difference between someone he doesn’t know, and his own mother.
“So my father did all of this to my mother. Him—and others, too. Until he won.” Cayde looks sick. “Fuck, I don’t want to think about my mom like that, butshit. This is so fucked up.”
“I don’t see mine or Jaxon’s,” Dean says, shuffling through the photos. “But the rest of this—” he flips through the articles again, his face paler now, much like the night he told me about my mother being in the hospital. “We knew some of the town’s history. But notthis.”
“There’s more.” I set down the articles about Natalie, hating what I know I’ll see in Jaxon’s face.
It’s there immediately, the moment he sees the papers. His jaw tightens, his dark eyes full of pain that I’ve seen there before, and not understood until very recently. “I’ve seen these before,” he says darkly, turning away. “I know how she died.”
“You don’t know everything, though.” I lick my lips, my heart pounding in my chest. I don’t want to say any of this aloud, because I know it’s going to change everything. He might hate me, for not telling him before we fucked—before we did anything, really, for not telling him the moment I knew. He might never want anything to do with me again. And it would be hard for me to blame him.
I explain everything. I tell them—but mostly Jaxon—about how Natalie was my half-sister, about my father’s infidelity, about Bryce St. Vincent and everything that happened afterwards. I see Jaxon’s face change, hardening, full of an anger that’s almost frightening, and he pushes himself to his feet, glaring at Cayde.
“You know what Natalie and I were planning to do, the night she died? What I’ve never fucking said out loud to any of you? We were going to fucking leave this town. Just get the fuck out of Dodge, leave all this shit behind—the fucking game, the inheritance, all of this bullshit that our fathers have forced us into. We were going to run away—and then they fuckingkilled her!” He’s shouting now, his voice high and almost a scream. “I know that’s what happened, and I’m even more sure of it now. Because they could never let me go. I was never going to be allowed to leave.” He’s almost shaking now, looking at Dean and Cayde. “Do you believe me now? Do you?”
And then he spins on his heel, stalking out of the room.
A moment later, we hear the slam of the front door.
I run after him. I know I probably shouldn’t, after what I just confessed, but I can’t stop myself. I leave Dean and Cayde sitting there on the sofa, all those awful articles and photos spread over the coffee table and floor like a shrine to the rotten history of this town, and I run after Jaxon, yanking the heavy wooden front door open and bursting out into the night.
He’s standing there in the driveway, as if he barely made it a few steps off of the porch, shoulders heaving. It’s cold even for October and the rain is pouring down, plastering his dark hair to his head as Jaxon stands with his back to me, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.
“Jaxon!” I shout his name, running down the steps, and he whirls to face me. I can’t tell if what’s dripping down his face is rain or tears or a mixture of both, but I can see how twisted it is with pain, his eyes so dark that they look like black holes in his face.
“You fucking knew,” he hisses, every muscle in his body wound tight.
I want to ask him what he means, but I already know, and I won’t insult him by pretending otherwise. He’s talking about what I admitted tonight, that Natalie was my half-sister, and that I knew it when I came into his room. When I let him go down on me, when I sucked him off, when I let him fuck me up against his bedroom door. I knew all of it, and I didn’t say a word, because I wanted him more than I wanted to be honest with him.