“Yeah,” Rabbit insisted. “If I’d known they were from you, they would have meant even more. I missed you.”
“I missed you, too,” he said, but before Rabbit could take any comfort from that added, “That’s why what you’ve done is even worse.”
“What did I do?” Were they still referring to the situation that night, or something else? Rabbit tried to think about any other possible transgressions he could have made, but was drawing a blank.
“I heard what you said to Ludo,” Oli revealed. “Quit? You can’t quit, Rabbit. What gives you the right? With less than a thousand of us left you owe it to the rest of us to keep playing.”
“I’ve spent my entire life living for someone else,” he reminded. “I’m done doing that. Even if you’re the one asking. I’m sorry, Oli.”
“I may not have died that night, but that doesn’t mean I came away unscathed.” Oli held up his hand. It looked fine on the outside, but there was clearly more to it. “Severe nerve damage. I can barely hold a stylus let alone play an instrument. Your mother took that from me. She took my name, my music, mylife.Everything. And then she ran off and played famous socialite on every planet in the galaxy but this one.”
Rabbit felt awful about all of that. It wasn’t fair, and he hadn’t deserved it. “She’ll pay.”
“Of course she will,” he agreed. Then he reached behind him and pulled out a blaster he’d had tucked into the back of his pants. “I waited an entire year for her to return only for you to say something that immediately chased her away. If I can’t get to her personally, then I’ll have to hurt her the only other way I know how.”
Rabbit slid a step back and then froze when Oli aimed the gun at him. “She doesn’t care about me, you know that.”
“Not you,” he agreed. “But she does care about your future and how it’ll help boost her popularity.”
Rabbit stared at the barrel of the gun and almost laughed. Was this how his mother had felt yesterday when he’d pulled one on her? Unsure and conflicted? On the one hand, he didn’t want to believe the Oli he knew was capable of shooting someone. On the other, this wasn’t the Oli he knew.
“What happened to you?” he asked again, sure there was more to this that he was missing.
“I came back different,” Oli surprised him by answering. He circled a finger near the side of his head. “Something about my wiring being funky after the head trauma.”
“So you were professionally diagnosed? Have you been staying with someone?”
“Your idiot mother had the funeral home run that ad to trick you, Rabbit,” he stated dryly, like he thought he was the biggest moron on this side of the galaxy for having fallen for it. “She didn’t file any paperwork with the city. That would have required work and an explanation. Not everyone can be paid off. Some members of this city are in the pockets of bigger fish than December Trace.”
“Wait,” Rabbit couldn’t believe what he was hearing, “are you saying you’ve been living in your old apartment all this time?”
“I saw you walk by now and again,” Oli said, voice softening some. “You didn’t see me, but I saw you. I know you aren’t lying when you say that you missed me. I know that the old me had feelings for you—I wrote about them a lot in my journal. But that’s the thing, Rabbit. That was the old me. The new me only cares about one thing and one thing only.”
“What?” He was certain he did not want to know.
“Revenge.” That glimmer in Oli’s eyes dimmed as soon as the word was out, as though he was dropping the friendly mask altogether and showing Rabbit who he truly was beneath it.
An empty shell.
“Goodbye, Rabbit.”
“Wait!” He threw up his hands. “You won’t hurt her this way! Think about it! The only child of December Trace is murdered at school before he can graduate from college? The press will eat that up. She’ll be sobbing in front of cameras, secretly relishing all that attention and you know it!”
“Sure,” he agreed almost nonchalantly. “But she’ll have to come back home to throw the funeral.”
“No.” Rabbit’s shoulders sunk as the realization that there was nothing he could say to stop this hit him.
Oli was going to shoot him.
He was going to die here.
On the same day as Baikal’s father.
He squeezed his eyes shut, silently apologizing to Void in his head for that, so he wasn’t looking when the blaster finally went off. He did, however, flinch at the loud bang.
Only…he was never hit.
Peeling open one eye, Rabbit checked and then gasped.
