He frowns as he turns the water on and grabs his soap. I crank the water to scorching hot, prompting goosebumps to rise across my skin.
Coach tortured us today by dumping ice in the pool water. I swear to Christ, the method should be outlawed. It’s the main reason I’ve become a little bitch with cold water.
“So, how did he leave her a note?”
“There are two options,” I say with a sigh.
“The copycat,” Rogue supplies, but his unspoken question hangs at the end, having no idea who the second could be.
“Turns out, Lionel’s dating a student here. Roxi. She could’ve left it on Lionel’s behalf.”
“Hold on, I'm pretty sure my ears are clogged with water, because there’s no way you just said what I think you fucking said,” Rogue says, shaking his head, bewildered.
I repeat everything Reverie told me last night about Roxi and her relationship with Lionel.
Blows my fucking mind, yet it doesn’t surprise me. Women have obsessed over serial killers for decades, sending them love letters and hoping to be the one they’ll respond to. With Regina dead, it was only a matter of time before Lionel took one of them up on their offer.
When I’m finished, Rogue stares at me, his brows raised with incredulity as he silently mouths, “What the fuck.”
“Regardless, Reverie apparently cut off contact with him when she was thirteen or some shit. Claims she has no interest in reconciling with him.”
Rogue recoils in shock.
“Hold the fuck on a second,” he interjects, waving his hands in a time-out motion. “She told you all of this last night?”
“Yup.”
He stares at me, the wheels in his head turning. Rogue likes to play the part of a big, dumb oaf, but his 4.1 GPA says otherwise. “Sounds pretty fucking convenient.”
I glance at him before running my shampoo through my hair. “Yup.”
He hums, quiet for a few beats.
“So why did she go no contact? I thought she and Daddy dearest werebest buds,” he finally asks.
I shrug.
Lionel targeted a student specifically attending HCU for a reason. It’s a thinly veiled threat—he knows exactly where Reverie is.
What I want to know iswhyLionel’s threatening her. She’s still tight-lipped about it all, but whatever she’s hiding has something to do with it, and it’s driving me fucking insane.
She swore she didn’t take part in my mother’s death, and for now, I believe that. I wouldn’t be able to fuck her otherwise. But if she’s worried, it relates to my mom somehow, and that’s enough to put me on edge.
Christ, I’m tempted to find Lionel and ask him my goddamn self—just before I slaughter him.
“Says she’s always believed me and knows he’s dangerous, so she doesn’t want to see him. Obviously, he’s not listening. I know nothing more than that.”
I clench my jaw, still irritated by her saying she’s always believed me. She’salwaysbelieved me, yet she stayed silent for over a decade.
But that’s not what pisses me off most. No, it’s that she finally said the words my eight-year-old self dreamed of hearing, and it changed everything while changing nothing.
Reverie is still the Locksmith’s daughter.
I’m still the son of the Locksmith’s last victim.
Yet, the moment those words left her mouth, I hated her a little less.
Andthat’swhat changes everything.
