“Wiser…” Amick murmurs. “What did you do with the letters we sent you?” Amick asks.
“Destroyed them like you told me to.”
“Every one of them? As soon as you got done reading them? And you checked under your pillow first thing when you woke up?”
“Yes, as soon as I…”
His eyes grow wide, and he runs his hands down his face before cupping his mouth.
“What?” Amick asks impatiently.
“The night he killed my mom was the same night you sent the original location and said two days. I didn’t see it until the middle of the next day.”
Thayla and Yemi both gasp and cover their mouths, and I tighten my lips at that awful reminder.
Sevryn’s mom was way more of a mom to him than what we ever experienced.
On the night he’s referring to, she tried to take him and run.
She was caught.
They almost made it out, though. They were gone for hours before his dad realized they were missing.
“Fuck, I’m an idiot,” he grumbles before he starts pacing in his place. “He was so calm, collected, and I was a fucking wreck. He grabbed my shoulder, with this cruel smile on his face, and asked, ‘You wouldn’t ever run from me, right, son?’ I said no. Fuck. He said, ‘Wise choice.’ He set it up. He already went through my room looking for me when he was told she was gone.”
My mouth parts, but no sound comes out. I can literally picture his father in my mind doing that. The God of Pain loves mind games. He likes to work you up as much as he can before delivering his final blow.
He’s almost as cunning as our father.
“He found my letter first. Told our father, then sent you another letter with a different location, stating it was from Creed, but kept the time the same to see what you’d do. You were distraught over your mother’s death and didn’t question it at all. You showed up at the location he gave you. Our father showed up for us.”
Thayla squeezes her eyes shut and reaches over to grip Amick’s forearm. Everyone picked up how insensitive that sounded. Except for him.
But it’s the truth.
For twenty years, we thought our only friend betrayed us and he thought we left him. This whole time, our fathers played us. Again.
Fuck. I did leave him.
I left him in Hellveilious. Not that I knew he was there, but if I had been going down there like I was supposed to, I would’ve found out sooner rather than when I did.
“Well, damn. You didn’t betray us,” Riven says.
“No, I didn’t. You all didn’t leave me.”
“No, we didn’t,” all four of us say.
The weight of our words settles over us, heavier than the scars that were left behind and the marks left on our souls.
Our shoulders drop, and we stare at each other as the truth unravels years of anger in a single heartbeat, a collective breath.
Just like old times. Five teenage boys, huddled together, just trying to survive and figure out how to escape our fathers.
Sevryn eventually rubs his hands down his face once again, then perches them on his hips as he glares down at the ground.
“I think I’ve had it for one night.”
“Then let’s go kick Havar out of the bed,” Yemi whispers, reaching her hand out to him tentatively.
