He’s always been more organized than me, but this is too much. Keegan has stripped the room from any evidence of Brad. There are a couple of boxes with Brad’s clothes inside the open closet. No picture frames or curtains, and Keegan even changed the bedding for new ones.
His travel bag is open at the foot of the bed. The shower stops running.
I rush to the bag, not even knowing what I’m looking for. I dig between shirts and socks, my heart thundering in my chest. A small notebook. I pick it up and flip it open. A sheet of paper falls from within. I open it with trembling fingers.
There’s an address on the upper side of town. Keegan wrote, “two kids, wife Andrea” beneath it. I blink, then read the name on top. My boss's name. Keegan has my boss's name, address, and details on his family.
My stomach lurches. The coffee climbs my throat with bile. Oh, my God. Did Keegan threaten my boss's family so I could get a raise? Did he force my boss to give us all a raise so people wouldn’t notice it?
No. No no no no.
I get to my feet and whirl around, abandoning the notebook, not caring for what Keegan will think when he sees the mess I made. By the nightstand, there are none of Brad’s picture frames or plastic wraps, but Keegan’s phone.
His phone. I reach out and grab it, clicking the power button. Shit, there’s a password. Of course there’s a password. I try 1234, and Keegan’s birthday. None of them match. What else? What else could matter to him?
It dawns on me painfully fast. The reason he’s been doing all this. The reason he could get himself arrested.
I type in my birthday. The phone unlocks.
Tears sting the back of my eyes. I open his search history, and it’s all there. My high school boyfriend’s name, his address. On the message app, I find some he exchanged with Brad. Threatening him.
Keegan did this all for me. All the men who once hurt me, who abused me, who took advantage of me… Keegan hit them. He hit them hard, made sure they’d regret what they did to me. My high school boyfriend disappeared for days. Maybe Keegan left him to die, but he survived. He had something on Brad, but the messages stop on the day Brad disappeared.
Keegan tried to warn me. He’s violent. I just refused to believe it was this bad.
His steps make me turn around. Tears stream down my face. I can’t even look him in the eye.
“Did you kill Brad?” I ask, my voice breaking.
He takes a painful beat. For a moment, I hope he will say he didn’t. “No. I just beat him up.”
I snap my head up, searching his gaze for answers. “Why?”
Keegan makes a sound deep in his chest. “You know why.”
I shoot him a glare. “Because you’re violent? Is that your excuse? When you said you’re violent, I thought you were referring to the fights. And the fights are hot, Keegan. But this?” And I shake the phone, my vision blurry. “This is a crime!”
“Aleida...”
“Did you threaten my boss's family? How could you go that low? He has children!”
“I didn’t—”
“You can’t say this was for me. It wasn’t, Keegan. You know that. It’s because you get off on violence, or something. I can’t believe for a moment this was for me.”
He frowns, stepping back. “Of course this was for you. They hurt you, Aleida. Do you think I didn’t notice how you reacted to Brad? You were afraid of him. He kept you on a leash because he knew you couldn’t afford another place. He treated you like a servant, and you spent every night wondering if that was the night he’d force you.” A shiver races down his arms, and I’m sure it’s out of rage. Keegan’s jaw is clenched so tight a muscle flutters on his cheek.
“So, you’re going to tell me you killed Brad, tried to kill my ex, and threatened my boss's children, all because of me? When I didn’t even ask you to do it?” I push him away and he lets me out of the room. My heart aches inside my chest, pain coming out of me in the form of huge, soul-shattering sobs. “I should have believed you.” And I race to the door.
When I look over my shoulder, he’s standing at the same spot, unmoving. “You should,” Keegan replies in an empty voice and I know he won’t chase me.
Whatever we had, it’s done. It’s over. It’s over before it even began.
8
KEEGAN
The pain on her face makes me falter. I can’t with the sight of it. Her tears are—each one of them—a knife piercing my chest, twisting, yanking back then burying itself again. Her pain is my pain. It’s so much worse because I know this is all my fault.