“Why now, Ace? If you saw me, why didn’t you tell the police and clear my name?”
“We’re going to need a drink if we’re going to get into all of that, Hazel. Can you trust me enough to lower the knife? You can hold onto it if you want.”
He steps back and goes to my refrigerator, digging around in the freezer as if he knows what he’s looking for.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting ice for my arm.”
Sure enough, he produces a penguin shaped ice pack and leans back on the counter, eye boring into me. I take in his features from here, grip still tight around the knife.
“Here.” He struggles for a moment with his black hoodie, before it comes undone revealing a scarred but chiseled torso, and some sort of phrase tattooed along his chest. It reads,si vis pacem, para bellum.I wonder what it means, and where he received all those scars. He tosses the hoodie at me, and I catch it with my free hand.
“Put this on or I’m not going to be able to concentrate on anything.”
The material is warm with his body heat and smells like a forest. Pine, and something else. Cardamon, perhaps.
“Fine, but you need to stay all the way over there where I can see you, Ace.”
CHAPTER 18
ACE
27 YEARS OLD
Hearingmy name on her lips after all these years is music to my ears. She’s frightened, but taking the revelation of my identity a whole hell of a lot better than I thought she would. I was certain she’d not want to hear me out and take off, naked or not. She’s been running for over ten years, so the fact that she’s here, willing to listen speaks volumes to how far she’s come. I like to think maybe our little games played a part in it, but there’s no way to know for sure.
The pain shooting up my arm dulls as I place the icepack on the welt, letting the cold plastic numb my flesh. It’s already bruised and swelling up, but I don’t think it’s broken. Wiggling my fingers, my nerves scream out in pain, and I wince. Maybe just a hairline fracture. I’ve broken enough bones to know the difference.
“So?” Hazel asks, now covered in my hoodie. It hangs down to the middle of her thighs, covering all of my favorite areas on her body. Seeing her in my hoodie does nothing to calm this claim I feel over her.
Mine. I think, remembering how she felt under me, wrapped around my cock.
“Where do you want me to start?”
“The beginning.”
I sigh, feeling the counter digging into my hips before rummaging around to find the vodka I know she has stashed in here. “You know that we were taken to Kingston, just like you. Thrown in there because our father wanted to make an example out of us. His senate seat was won on family values, and Kyle’s and my teenaged existence threatened to topple his empire and dreams at cinching the presidential nomination.” I pour myself a large helping, letting the burn go down my throat. I offer her some, but she shakes her head no.
“Senator Dansbury?”
I nod. “He had a grand vision on how his life and ours would play out. Kyle, fell in step with that vision after Kingston, while I… I went my own way. Used as a source of pity for my father’s brand. But, that night, I didn’t realize that Kyle had turned into a puppet of my father’s making until it was too late. He was the reason we got caught. When I found out he was working with the school, helping to design a trap for us all, I tried to fight him, but the school counselors held me down. I managed to break free while they were dragging us back to Kingston Prep. That’s when I saw him. And you. And Sarah’s body.”
She swallows hard, leaning forward as if she’s hanging on my every word. Those beautiful eyes of hers look haunted, imploring me to break her free of the prison my brother placed her in. This torture she’s lived with thinking that she’s to blame for all these years. On the run from the law. The exhaustion and pain she’s lived with day after day.
“And?”
I close my eyes, remembering the way Kyle loomed over both girls. Hazel’s arms covered in dirt from digging. Sarah motionless and her body contorted at an unnatural angle.
“He had you digging in the wet earth. Close to the river. You were saying something, but whatever it was I couldn’t hear. It started to rain.”
She runs her free hand up her arm, still clutching the knife.
“I got closer, but when I was about to emerge from the trees, I saw Kyle take a stone and smash Sarah’s skull in. I froze. Unable to move. You didn’t see it because you were too busy digging. He turned to you then, the girl I’d been crushing on all year and hit you too. Right in the back of the skull. You slumped and I thought you were dead.”
She reaches to feel her head, fingers rubbing at a spot in the back.
“He threw you both in, and I fucking ran right into Dr. Ostroff. It wasn’t until later, until they’d taken us to the police station to cover their asses, that I realized that you’d managed to claw yourself out. But when he hit you, it caused you to forget what happened, so it was easy for him to spin whatever narrative he wanted.”
