I turn toward the door. I need help. I need an ambulance. I need a lawyer. I need Oaks. I need something I don’t deserve. Forgiveness.
My hand reaches for the handle.
And then I see her chest move.
Barely. A shallow breath.
My heart pounds so loud I can’t hear anything else.
If she lives, she will destroy him. If she lives, she will tell everything. If she lives, Oaks goes away forever.
I turn back slowly.
The knife is on the floor.
My hands are shaking.
I pick it up.
“I didn’t want this,” I whisper, and it’s true and it doesn’t matter.
I step closer. She’s trying to breathe. Trying to speak. There’s no fury in her face now. Just shock. Just disbelief. Like she never considered she could lose.
I close my eyes.
And I stab her again.
It ain’t clean. It ain’t dramatic. It’s desperate. Her body jerks once, a sharp, terrible movement, and then stills.
The pawn shop goes silent except for my ragged breathing.
I drop the knife and back away, hands covered in red, glass crunching under my shoes.
I didn’t plan to.
But this time she ain’t getting up.
And Oaks is already in jail for protecting me once.
Now I have to decide who I’m protecting next.
Silence falls in the empty shop, like nothing just changed. Like Hell, Kentucky didn’t just claim another secret.
And I understand something in that moment that makes my chest hollow.
The lake didn’t take Bethany.
I did.
The first thing I remember after that is the sound. Not my scream. Not the glass. Not even Bethany’s voice. It’s the thin metallic clatter of the knife hitting tile, small and ordinary, like something harmless just rewrote my life.
I’m the one who calls 911, and that matters to me. It’s the last clean choice I can find in the mess, the last proof that I didn’t come into this wanting blood. My hands shake so badly I almost drop the phone, but I dial anyway, and when the dispatcher answers, I don’t cry. I don’t stall. I don’t lie.
“I stabbed someone,” I say, my voice thin but steady. “She attacked me. I stabbed her.”
There’s blood on the floor. On my shirt. On my arm where she sliced me first. It’s bright and real and wrong against the cases that used to hold wedding rings and watches and old coins.
Bethany is on her back.
