Billy’s sigh and look heavenward tells me I was right.
“Come on, Mare. She doesn’t mean anything to me. She’s easy. She’s not like you. No girls are like you.”
“You’re right, she isn’t like me. I’d never do what she did to my friend. You’re both sick. You deserve each other and you know, I can’t decide who’s more pathetic, me or the pair of you. I wanted you to pay. To say you were sorry and admit what you did. I waited for it, but it never came. You both just went on your stupid fucking way together like I never existed. Posting on social media and pretending that you didn’t do anything wrong and the whole time I was dying inside. You’re evil.”
“I’m evil? You killed a guy and I’m still here. I’m willing to fucking take back the black widow of this town. You’re lucky I even want you. Do you know how many guys talk about what you did? How you’re going to end up killing yourself one day and no one is even going to know it until they smell you rotting.”
None of the things Billy tells me is new. That one though—I don’t know why but it stings. It hurts. Maybe because it’s close enough to the truth of what I wanted to have happen to me when I went after Brian. I wanted to end things. I really did. Maybe that’s why I attacked Mike, too. I thought he’d stop me. That he’d be the one to walk out of Vesper House, not me.
Both times I was wrong.
I lived.
“Shut your mouth,” I whisper. “Shut the fuck up.”
Billy smells blood in the water. He knows me well enough to know he scored a direct hit with that one. He gives me a mean smile and I know the next thing out of his mouth is going to be worse.
“Your parents,” he starts. Yup, so much fucking worse. “You’re lucky your parents died before-”
Julian’s fist slams into Billy’s jaw and he falls backwards. “Turn the light off, Maris,” he says quietly.
Fear spreads through me. Loud men are weak, they make noise because they don’t even trust themselves to do what they threaten, but a quiet man?
Those are the scary ones.
They’ll do what they say, and when they don’t say much you never know what they’ll do.
“You said you weren’t going to kill him,” I remind Julian.
“What thefuck?!” Billy yells. He’s trying to get up but Julian hit him just right and he’s dazed. He grabs onto the side of the house and ends up half landing on the porch swing before he falls back down to the ground.
“The light, Maris.”
“Okay,” I tell him and flip the light off like he asked. I don’t go though. I close the door behind me and stay. There’s enough moonlight that I can see what’s happening. Billy tries to get up, but Julian catches him with a foot to the chest that sends him flying backwards over the porch railing and into the yard.
Julian sighs. “I told you to plant your feet. Now look at the mess you’re in,” he chastises as he vaults over the railing after Billy.
I can’t see them anymore, but I can hear them.
“P-please don’t,” Billy rasps.
I lean back against the house and wait.
Thirty-One
JULIAN
“P-please don’t.”
It’s pathetic when humans say please. Like manners will actually save their lives. It’s downright disgusting when the worst kind of humans try to Emily Post their way out of fate when they’ve done nothing to warrant mercy.
I consider the human in front of me. Naturally, he’s an idiot. Even more so with the way he’s treated Maris but he does have audacity.
I crouch down next to him and grab him by the hair. I force him to look at me. “Turning up here means you’re either crazy or you really think you’re something. Did you think she was going to let you back in her bed?” He hesitates so I backhand him. If I wasn’t holding his head up he’d be in the dirt.
“Answer me.”
“Yes.”
