“Get up, fucker. Hold your stomach and act like you got the shits or something. Better than looking high off your fucking rocker,” he says, muttering the last part.
I’m not going to do that, but I do get to my feet and manage to keep my eyes open as I walk out of the pool. Vaguely, I hear muttering from behind me, people likely wondering why I’m leaving.
It doesn’t take long for Olive to come rushing through the doors, her daughter’s hand gripped in hers, her brow pinched with concern.
“Are you okay?” she asks, stopping before me and firmly grabbing my jowls, squishing my cheeks together as she jerks my head left then right.
“Drugged on a fuck ton of sleeping pills,” Rogue supplies quickly, ensuring only she hears. “You got him? Or you need my help walking him to the car?”
“I got him,” Olive grumbles, releasing my face with an annoyed sigh. She’s glaring at me, and it’ssomuch fucking worse when there are three sets of eyes doing it.
“Mommy, what’s wrong with Uncle Kelly?” Junie asks quietly, staring up at me with concern.
“He’s just sleepy, sweetheart. Like how you get when you haven’t napped all day.”
“Ohhh,” she says quietly. She pauses for a beat, then says, “Yeah, this is serious then.”
“Tell me about it,” Olive mutters beneath her breath.
I grin sloppily. Junie’s known for having quite a few epic meltdowns when she gets tired.
Olive lifts my heavy arm and drops it over her shoulders, only to grunt and mutter a curse beneath her breath at the weight. She walks my sluggish body toward the exit while Junie’s little hand wraps around my fingers on the other side of me. I think she thinks she’s helping carry me, and it’s too cute to tell her otherwise.
I clock a few whispers on the short walk. There are families and people from the other teams milling about, and I’m positive several of them are theorizing what’s wrong with me. It’s definitely going to spread across campus and social media, which really pisses me the hell off.
“You gotta stop messin’ with that girl, Kellan,” Olive admonishes,keeping her voice low.
“Why?” I ask, putting all my attention toward keeping my feet from stumbling. “Your mother ish dead becaush of her father, too.”
“I know that, Kellan,” she snaps, shooting me a cross look.
I wince, instantly feeling like a dick. “Sorry,” I mumble.
Olive was nine years old when the Locksmith killed her mother, Olivia Benderman.
She, of course, heard about me when he murdered mine less than two years later and I accused Lionel of being the Locksmith. She admitted to being skeptical of him at first, especially when the copycat murders began after Lionel went to prison.
However, when I was twelve and started getting media attention for swimming, she grew more curious about me. Our mothers were definitively murdered by the same man, and she, like all the other Locksmith families, wanted justice, too. So, she needed to see for herself if I was lying about Lionel being the man who took her mother from her, or if I put away the wrong man like the rest of the world believed.
So one day, she showed up at one of my swim meets, watched me compete, then cornered me as I was coming out of the locker room after the competition.
It scared the shit out of me, and all I could do was stare wide-eyed at the fifteen-year-old girl with strawberry blonde hair and a pale face full of freckles looking through me with her cornflower blue eyes as if she had X-ray vision.
“Tell me the truth. Is Lionel D’Amour really the Locksmith? The one who killed my mother.”
She almost appeared angry, like she was daring me to lie to her.
“Yes.”
My voice was quiet and scared, but it was the truth. Because the truth was all I had to give.
She stared at me silently for a few long, tense moments. Then, she seemed to deflate, and her expression became sad.
“I believe you.”
According to her, she couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was about my response. She just knew I wasn’t lying. She knew it as confidently as she knew the color of her hair.
After that day, she loudly proclaimed to the world that she, too, believed Lionel D’Amour to be the Locksmith. As it stands, there'stoo little evidence to charge him with Olivia Benderman’s murder, but Olive has never had an issue accusing him of it, anyway.
