I pull out my phone again, pressing until her voice spills out. Low, and coaxing, and everything I thought I once wanted.
Except her words are poison. Drip, drip, dripping.
“Only you. I only want you. You and me, Brett. Just like we always planned. Okay? This is the only way we can be together without them interfering. You know I’m right. They don’t want us to be together. They’ll ruin it, like they always have. I don’t want any of them to ruin what we have.”
And my brother, his voice shaking.“Do you mean it?”
“Together.”Crooning, toxic words.Wrapping around my neck and cutting off my air, like they do every time I hear them.“Take my hand, and we’ll jump. Nobody will ever separate us again.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
“Tell them. So they know.”
A pause.“I don’t want you. Any of you. I only want him, do you understand?Just leave us alone. Don’t come after us. Leave us alone.”
The room is silent when I cut off the voicemail. Only the sound of my breathing registers. “That’s who Kennedy Traylor is. Who she always was. She drove my brother to his fucking death, and the proof is here.”
She pushed my brother to throw himself from that ledge, thinking she was there beside him. But she left him there instead. Left him to die alone, at the bottom of that ravine while she walked away without any damned consequences.
“So what now?” Jake asks roughly. “Where do we go from here?”
I have to know. I have to know what happened. What made her leave him, gasping for breath and broken. What happened in his last moments. “We get answers.”
It’s all I want. And she has the power to give that to me.
I hate that she has that power over me. But I need those answers if I’m ever going to be able to breathe again.
“We’ll go tomorrow,” Oscar says quietly. “If that works for you.”
My head jerks in agreement.
“I didn’t get the groceries.” Oscar runs a hand over his face, beneath his glasses. “Sorry, Max. I’ll go tomorrow.”
“No bother. Diner for dinner, then?” Max straightens. “I could eat a burger. Jake?”
I let their voices fade out, still staring at the phone.
One more day.
I can do one more day.
Kennedy
Ialmost forgot how much I hated working here the first time around.
I plunge my hands into the now greasy water, grimacing as I pull out the plug and let it drain away. Beside me, Mick drops another stack of scraped plates and huffs. “Don’t waste hot water.”
“If I wash any more in this, they’ll be worse than when they went in.” I start running the faucet again. “Ever heard of a dishwasher?”
He only rolls his eyes, jerking his thumb toward the customer area. I can hear the noise from where I’m crammed into the corner of the tiny kitchen. The two chefs shout at each other from the grills, both of them studiously ignoring me as they have all night. “I might need help clearing up out there.”
My hands pause. “I thought I was back of house only.”
He clicks his tongue. “Nobody will notice you picking up a few glasses. Mandy called in sick, so we’re rushed off our feet. You want to get paid, you’ll go where you’re needed.”
Great.My hair sticks damply to the back of my neck as I twist it, trying to stretch out the lingering ache. “I’ll finish these first and I’ll be out. There’s no space otherwise.”
