Thomas wiped the tear that rolled down his cheek. His insides churned as he tugged on these long-buried memories. “When I got back to school, Shane was waiting for me. He was sweet and attentive and everything I’d been lacking for the last two weeks, so when we were lying there in his bed, I told him exactly how I felt.”
“Which was…”
“I told him I hoped they died. My parents. His parents. I said I hoped they’d get in a car crash or their plane would fall out of the sky. I just wanted them gone. I couldn’t handle it anymore. He made a joke about it and I laughed, and after that, it just became a game. A way to blow off steam. We would joke about how we’d kill our parents and run off together.”
Thomas swallowed the lump in his throat. “I need you to know I wasn’t serious. I know it sounds sick and twisted, but I didn’t want them dead. Or maybe I did but I didn’t want Teddy or Thea to die. They were babies. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean it.”
“What happened?” Aiden asked yet again.
Thomas shook his head. “I made him mad.”
“You made him mad?”
Thomas nodded slowly. “Another girl came forward alleging he’d assaulted her. Shane said it was another lie. Another girl trying to get even with him. But I didn’t believe him this time. I could see the pattern emerging. Whenever he would get amped up, hostile, frustrated with me, he would disappear. It happened the night Holly claimed he assaulted her and then again the night this new girl made the allegation. I said maybe we just needed a break while he got things sorted.”
“And that made him mad?”
Thomas glanced over at him. “That made him furious. It was my first real glimpse at who Shane was. At what he was.”
“What he was?” Aiden echoed.
“Yeah.”
Aiden shifted in his seat. “Which was what?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Thomas asked. “Shane was a psychopath.”
A textbook psychopath, even. Cunning. Manipulative. Lacking guilt, remorse, or empathy. A psychopath who’d been left unchecked for years. No matter how many times Thomas ran the events over in his head, he couldn’t pinpoint exactly when the turning point was. Was there ever a period of time where he could have prevented his family’s deaths?
Thomas wanted to go back. He wanted to create a time machine and undo all the shit he’d said and done that led to him handing over his family to a fucking monster, but it was too late.
Aiden was silent for a long time, but Thomas couldn’t bring himself to continue. Finally, he said, “Tommy… Did Shane kill your family?”
A quiet sob escaped before he could hold it back. He took a minute to collect himself. “I ignored him. I thought if I just left him alone, eventually he would get it and leave me be, like he’d done with Holly. But that wasn’t the case. The more I ignored him, the more desperate he got.”
“He killed them for revenge.”
It was a statement, not a question, but Thomas shook his head. “If that was the case, maybe I could have found a way to live with it. A sick violent boy taking his revenge. But that wasn’t why he did it.”
“Then why?”
Thomas dug his fingers into his eyes, but no amount of pressure could stop the tears falling. “He said it was his love letter to me.”
“What?”
“He killed them for me. To make me happy. To win me back. He did it because, in his sick fucking head, they were all that stood between us. And he had found the perfect solution.”
“Tommy…”
Thomas shook his head. “He killed them because I told him, again and again, that they were the only thing that stood between us, and he took me at my word. They’re dead because of me.”
Aiden wasn’t sure what he was supposed to feel. Disgust? Sorrow? Empathy? He didn’t feel any of those things. What he felt was rage. This red, throbbing rage that blotted out logic and reason. Rage against the ghost of a seventeen-year-old monster who’d somehow managed to ruin multiple lives with his unhinged final act.
Shane was the reason Thomas had tormented himself—and Aiden—for years. He might as well have killed Thomas, too. It probably would have been less cruel. He wanted to hit something, tear it apart with his bare hands. He wished he had someone to kill in Shane’s place, but there was nobody.
Yet.
Whoever was blackmailing Thomas would make a fine outlet for Aiden’s fury and frustration. He just had to find them. And to find them, Aiden needed the rest of the story, even if Thomas wasn’t ready to tell it. They were finishing this today. Then they’d find the motherfucker who’d had the audacity to go after the Mulvaneys.
