Shit.
I walk slowly toward my father, my gaze set on his, my feet floating as if I’m having an out of body experience. I’m about to take it all on the chin, lie upon lie, shoveling it out like digging my own grave but when I open my mouth, my heart demands to take a U-turn.
“I don’t know where Keith is. I didn’t give the press that unfortunate statement about Caleb. Someone posed as me and squeezed the truth out of his brother.” I close my eyes a moment. “I’m so sorry I lied in court all those years ago, Daddy.” A single tear rolls down my cheek. “All this time has passed, and I still think I did it for Mom, but I really did it for me and for Kam.” I can’t bring myself to look at either of my parents when I say it. “You hurt us all, and I couldn’t let you get away with it. I wish I could go back in time, but I can’t. And I can’t take back the confession I made to my friends a few nights ago. Whoever is doing this to me—they were listening in—they recorded the conversation. That’s how the leak got out. I pray I haven’t hurt you further. I would never betray you like that. I’ve grown. I’vechanged. I’m not the hurt little girl who would do anything for vengeance. I’m about forgiveness, acceptance, and protecting those I love.” I swallow down the brick in my throat. “I didn’t do this to Caleb either.”
“Then who did this?” Kam shouts, demanding. “Who hates you enough to run everyone you love into the ground?”
“I don’t know!” I scream it right back in her face. “Is it you, Kam? You’ve always told me that you wish you were me!”
“That’s because everyone bowed down to your idiocrasy! You had Mom and Dad wrapped around your pinky from the day you were born. You were, and, still are, their favorite.”
“Not true!” My father bellows.
“Well, guess who decided to keep quiet?” She shoots a dirty look to Mom.
My mother dives over her and gives Kam a violent shake to the shoulders. “Are you doing this to your sister?”
“No!” Kamryn stumbles and nearly falls out the opened door, and I block it with my body in the event she decides to bolt. “I would never hurt either of you.” She softens her gaze over mine. “I’ve missed you so much, Ken.” She glances to my mother. “And I missed you, too, Mom.” They wrap their arms around each other as my mother breaks into sobs, whispering her love for my sister over and over like a mantra.
I look at my father with that woeful look in his eye as he takes in the scene. That’s the look of a man who is very damn sorry he ever destroyed his family.
“Will you be here for a while?” I ask pulling him in and wrapping my arms around his thick chest, his heavy breath falling over my forehead. His cologne is zesty and spiced with a hint of rubbing alcohol layered underneath. It’s the same cheap cologne he’s worn for years. If my father is anything, he is a creature of habit.
“We’ll be up in a few days.” He breathes the words over my head. “I’ve got a lead in on Keith.”
“What? Is he okay? Is he alive?” My heart jumps to my throat. My first inclination is to call Caleb and tell him, but then I remember I burned that bridge to cinders. I still have his suit jacket. I suppose he’ll need that back. I wish he needed us back, and, ironically, I’m the reason we’re no longer together.
“I don’t know the details”—Dad tries to rub the fatigue from his eyes—“but, yes, he’s alive. I’m meeting with detectives and his parents this afternoon.”
“Oh, God. I’m going to be sick.” A heavy wave of nausea hits me, and I gulp down the chilled air streaming in around me.
“What now, drama queen?” Kam is relentless in her persecution of me and rightfully so. “You’re not knocked up are you? Any last minute secrets you want to let us in on?”
I turn to face them fully.
My mother steps in. “What is it, Kennedy?” The worry on her face breaks me. “Are you pregnant?”
“Good Lord!” Kam growls it out and rouses all the anger, the humiliation, that I’ve bottled up inside for so long. This family right here, these three people have brought me the most pleasure, the most pain.
“No, you little witch”—I get into my sister’s face with blood boiling in my veins—“I am not having anybody’s baby. And, if you all must know, there is one last secret I’ve been holding back.” My heartbeat races wild, beating against my chest so quick I’m half convinced I’m having a cardiac episode. The sounds of the world around me dissipate as my ears pump hard with the rhythm. “I did it.” Here it comes—the big one—the final truth shaking the walls of my lying heart just begging to be set free. “Keith may have deserved all of those horrible, stupid, downright petty things that happened to him, but I didn’t do a single one—except, of course, for the only one that mattered. But, then in my book, I thought that would have been enough. I’m the one who did it. I loaded everything to the Internet.”
“You put up those videos?” Kam takes a breath like she might be sick.
I give a single nod, closing my eyes in a brief show of remorse before bouncing right back into a rage.
“Ihadto!” I spit the words at her with venom. “Keith had them. He threatened to do it himself. I know for a fact he let his stupid, pig-faced frat brothers have at them. He was already humiliating me with other girls—and, by distributing something so intimate to his friends, it just proved he had no regard for me. There isn’t a punishment I could dream up that would supersede the fact he would do something so heinous. I figured it was already going to be done anyway—I took the power back from him. I did it myself. I uploaded every one of those damn videos.” There. I take a quiet breath, first one in months. This was the letting of a festering wound.
Dad bows his head in defeat while my mother clamps her hand over her mouth, her bug-eyed gaze set behind me. She wanted to mold me into her likeness, she wanted me to be the perfect debutant, and here I am, something just shy of a porn star.
Kam glances behind me, and I know.
It takes all of my fortitude to spin on my heels.
There he is—Caleb. Those navy eyes fill with a mixture of sorrow and rage—a storm brewing in each one. His lips twitch as if he might say something, scream at me. My heart drums in my throat, in my ears.
Caleb’s hard demeanor remains engraved over his features. Welcome to the new Caleb, the one who hates you.
I’d love nothing more than to comfort him—but I can’t.
