Thomas was crying, but he didn’t appear to notice, clearly too busy swimming in his own guilt, or maybe drowning in his memories. Aiden itched to comfort him, but it wasn’t possible. There was no walking him back from the ledge, not until it was all out in the open. Every dirty fucking detail. No matter what that meant for either of them.
Aiden studied him for a few moments before finally forcing himself to ask, “How did he die?”
“Hm?” Thomas asked absently, staring into the flames.
Was he checking out mentally? Shutting down? Aiden wouldn’t blame him. It was self-preservation. He was still hiding something. Something he deemed worse than what he’d admitted. But what? What did Thomas consider worse than the slaughter of his family? “Did you kill him? Did you kill Shane?”
Thomas turned to him, eyes red-rimmed, expression grim. “I should have. I could have, even. Easily. He handed me the shotgun. My father’s shotgun. The one he kept in the closet.”
“He wanted you to kill him?” Aiden asked.
Thomas shook his head, his mouth twisting into a brief smile that looked more like a snarl. “No. He wanted me to kill his parents—my aunt and uncle. I think he thought it would be…romantic? Killing each other’s families. He called it ‘removing obstacles.’ That was what they’d been to him. Just things standing between the two of us.”
“Your aunt and uncle were there?” Aiden asked, trying to follow Thomas’s scattered thoughts.
“He’d called them. They were pulling into the drive when he handed me the gun. He said he chose the gun because he knew I wouldn’t be able to handle something up close and personal like strangulation. He said I wasn’t like him, that I was too soft, but that it was okay because I had him to protect me. To care for me. That I just had to point and shoot, like a camera. Like the hundreds of skeet we’d shot in my parents’ backyard.”
Aiden shook his head. “Why did he think you’d agree to this?”
Thomas scoffed. “It was my idea, wasn’t it?”
But it hadn’t been Thomas’s idea. Not really. Aiden had said a million times as a teen that he hated his parents. He’d wished bad things on his father more times than he could even remember. Kids were shitheads with poorly regulated emotions due to a barely functioning prefrontal cortex. Thomas knew this. He was a doctor. But, somehow, all his training seemed to go out the window when it came to this one thing.
“You had no way of knowing that he would take you seriously.”
Thomas laughed bitterly. “Didn’t I? I knew he was violent. There were signs. Things I excused again and again. Things I romanticized, even. His jealousy. His aggression. Hell, I was flattered to be the only boy he took an interest in. But I wasn’t a boy to him. I was a victim. Weak. Naive. Easily controlled.”
“You were special to him. He chose you for a reason. And not because you were weak or naive. If that was the case, he would have just played with you and discarded you like the others. You were special to him in some way. Maybe he saw you as a partner in crime? Someone who would let him role play whatever deviant fantasies he had? Killing his parents may have been his final test.”
It was all speculation on Aiden’s part. He wasn’t a psychopath. But he’d watched Thomas raise six of them. Each of them had latched onto their significant others with extreme prejudice. How had Noah put it? Like the werewolves inTwilight. Like a baby duck imprinted on its mother. Something in their psychopathy had seen their perfect match in their mate and chosen them almost on sight. Like Aiden had with Thomas. Maybe it wasn’t a psychopath thing, after all. Or maybe Aiden was a little bit of a psycho, too. But Shane had recognized and imprinted on something in Thomas, and he’d fully expected Thomas would play his game. But, clearly, he’d been wrong.
“What did you do when he gave you the gun?”
“I told him I wouldn’t do it. That I wasn’t going to kill anybody. That I hadn’t wanted any of this. I couldn’t wrap my mind around any of it. My family was right there in front of me, but they weren’t. They were gone. Just these vacant bloated bodies with sightless eyes. I didn’t understand.”
“What did you do with the gun?” Aiden asked, hoping he could guide Thomas out of whatever memory he seemed to be reliving.
Thomas wasn’t listening. He was on auto-pilot, shaking his head like he was back there in that moment. “I told him he was sick and deranged and disgusting. I said I hated him. That he should just kill me, and if not, I’d kill him. He yanked the gun away from me and pointed it right at my head.”
Aiden’s heart raced at just the thought of a gun aimed at Thomas’s head.
“I wanted so badly for him to pull the trigger. I wanted to be with Teddy and Thea. I wanted to stop looking at their bodies. I wanted to be gone, and death seemed a blessing. But I didn’t have the balls to do it myself. I stared right into his eyes, hoping he knew how much I fucking hated him, hoping it would be enough for him to take one more life.”
Once more, Thomas fell silent. Aiden gave him a moment before saying, “What happened next?”
“He obviously didn’t do it. Maybe he thought it was crueler to let me live. He was right about that. He lowered the gun and told me to run. I don’t know why I did. Maybe my sense of self-preservation kicked in. I was at the front door, staring at his startled parents, when we heard the gunshot.”
Aiden blinked. It was the only logical conclusion, he supposed, but it was still out of character. “He killed himself.”
Thomas nodded and scrubbed his hands over his face, then dug the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Do you know what a double barrel shotgun does to someone’s face when you tuck it right up under the chin?”
Given the hundreds of dead bodies they’d both seen over their lifetimes, Aiden assumed it was a rhetorical question. Besides, they’d both looked at those crime scene photos half a dozen times at least. “His parents…”
Thomas swallowed hard. “His stepfather—my mother’s brother—was rightfully horrified. His sister, his niece and nephew, his brother-in-law, all dead. Now, his stepson, too. He threw up. Sobbed. Rang his hands and paced. But Shane’s mother was emotionless. Not a single tear.”
That was interesting. Not shocking, exactly, but interesting. Perhaps the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Was she in shock? A narcissist? Did she simply have the ability to compartmentalize in a crisis?
So many questions. “Who called the police?”
