What would Ella’s mom say if she could see me likethis? What would my dad say? He’d be so fucking ashamed of me. He’d expect better, and so do I.
“Guy—”
I keep striding away. “Just leave me the fuck alone, Lina.”
“Let me explain, please.”
I whirl on her. In the shadowed forest heavy with humidity, sweat and guilt clings to my skin, and I don’t think I’ll ever wash it off.
“I don’t want your explanations. I don’t want fucking anything from you!” I bellow, and she stares at me, eyes convincingly sad. “Do you understand what I’ve sacrificed for you? I turned a blind eye to the senseless murders in my home. I didn’t report you when you confessed about Richard, or when I put together what you did to Seth Sinclair. And now this!” I thump my chest, my anger spitting and bubbling through my veins. “I was a good man. A decent, honest man.”
“I didn’t ask you to,” she says, her voice small.
“You knew I would! Why else did you fucking come to me?” My voice echoes through the forest, bouncing off trees until it’s swallowed into the dark. “I did it because I cared about you. I did it because I thought you could change, do better. And you know what you did for me in return? You broke my fucking heart!”
It’s the first time I’ve said the words, maybe even the first time I’ve really admitted it to myself, but it’s painfully true. She hurt me. Used me and vanished without explanation, and whatever the reason was for leaving me behind, it doesn’t matter. All I know is that it was more important than me.
Tears gleam in her eyes, but I won’t watch them fall. I won’t waste another damn minute on her.
“I’ll turn myself in.”
I shake my head and keep walking. “Go away, Monty.”
“Guy, I will. If that’s what it takes to prove to you that I’m sorry, I’ll do it! I’ll confess to everything.”
“You’ll incriminate me in the process!” I shout back at her.
The crunch of leaves tells me she’s running after me, and her small hands wrap around my wrist to tug me to a stop. “Please, Guy.”
“What do you fucking want from me?” I stop, pulling myself free from her grip. “I tried to make you leave, you insisted on staying. I asked you to stay, and you left! Why do you keep fucking with my head? Are you enjoying this?”
She wrings her hands together. “I’m not … I’m not fucking with you. I didn’t lie to you. I care about you; everything I told you I wanted was true! I left that night because there was someone who had to die. I had no choice but to do it. I was going to come back, try and explain, hope you’d forgive me but?—”
“But what?” I challenge. “Tell me. Tell me why you fucking left!”
“Because you deserve better!”
The echoes of those words don’t die quick enough. They hang around, they taunt, and they make me pause when I shouldn’t. They make me foolish when I know better.
“You want to know me, Guy?” she asks, tears falling. “You want to know the kind of woman I really am? Do you want to know Lina Fox?” She steps forward, her bottom lip trembling. “My parents are dead because I killed them.” The heat of the summer evening becomes a cold snap against my skin, and I watch her. “And not in a way that I feel responsible. Iamresponsible. I shot them both in theirsleep. They didn’t abuse me. Didn’t hurt me. They loved me, and I murdered them.”
I shake my head. “You’re lying.”
“No, I’m not. I planned it all out. Made sure I was at a sleepover, and I drugged my friend so she wouldn’t wake up and find me gone. I left her house in the middle of the night and ran back to my home. I took my father’s pistol from the safe, and I shot them both. My father in the forehead, my mother in the back of the head. She didn’t even move. She was always a heavy sleeper.” Her voice becomes monotone, and her tears stop falling. “I stole some of their more valuable things, and as I ran back to my friend’s house, I dumped everything in a condemned well. No one even knew it was on the property. Not my parents, not the gardeners. I’d found it one day when I was playing hide and seek with my sister.” She keeps her eyes on me. “They never suspected me. Never knew what I did. I had the perfect alibi, and I cried just enough, and I didn’t touch a dime of their money when I inherited it. I donated everything. It was the perfect crime.”
She’s so cold, so distant, so fragmented that I almost don’t know what to say.
“Why?” I ask, aghast. “Why did you do it?”
“Does it matter?” She moves closer, leaves and twigs crunching underneath her feet. “I killed Kate before she killed us, and you’re still horrified. Is there any reason I could give you that would excuse me killing my family? I’m no better than Richard Mason.”
She’s right. It doesn’t matter. If there was a good enough reason, her sentence would be lighter, but she’d still go to prison for this.
Lina wipes the sweat from her brow, wincing again, but this time I don’t ask what’s wrong.
And when she walks away, I don’t follow.
I don’t knowhow long I wait in the forest, attempting to process what Lina told me. I’ve always known she was capable of darkness, but killing her parents is far beyond anything I could have imagined.
