Page 163 of Burning For You

“Do what?”

“Don’t play that game with me,” she hissed. “You tried to kill me today. Not just me, but Sara. She thought you were going to get married. She thought you loved her. She thought you were cheating on her and that is why she came to me. That’s it. Do you even care about her?”

Sean held her stare. “She shouldn’t have been snooping around.”

That told her exactly what she’d thought all along.

“You have never cared for anyone but yourself. You’re no different from the two people who birthed us. You tried to say you changed, you tried to prove it and like an idiot I believed it. But you can’t change who you are. Ever.”

He snorted, his head going back. “Really? See, that’s it right there. You think you’re better than me. You got a home and I didn’t. And you couldn’t wait to put me behind you.”

“I was fifteen. I had no control over what happened that night. Nothing. It was an accident.”

He laughed. A sinister laugh. One that chilled her to the bone.

One that made her realize Sean had evil in him all along and you couldn’t push that out no matter how much you try.

That he just played with her. With everyone.

“Was it an accident?” she asked, her words slower than she’d thought they’d come out.

“It was.”

“But you caused it, didn’t you? You weren’t home that night. Or so you said, but no one even checked that out, did they?”

“They saw what they needed to see,” Sean said. “They saw me coming back down the street. I gave the name of the party I was at. People would have said I was there and wouldn’t have paid attention to when or if I left and came back. And trust me, the police checked.”

“Not well enough. Did you really kill our parents?”

How the hell could any of this be true right now?

“I hated them,” Sean said, his tone the same as if he were at a bar and ordering a beer. He said before that his actions didn’t show anger but his words were still there. She could see it now. “That night, I was sick and tired of everything. But that wasn’t the plan. It’d never been the plan.”

“What was the plan? How was this an accident then?”

And was it the fact that she came back doubting it that triggered even more? Did she cause any of this?

She’d never believed what they’d told her years ago. But no one listened to her.

And recently, when they listened to her, she’d been wrong.

“I came home,” Sean said. “I stole one of Mom’s cigarettes. Just out of spite. She freaking guarded those things like they were the crown jewels. Did you know, I took one from her years prior and she caught me smoking it?”

“No.”

“That scar right there on my forearm. That was Mom.”

“What?” She remembered seeing the scab one day. Nasty looking and wouldn’t heal, then blistered and finally scarred.

“She burned me with her cigarette and said the next time it’d be worse if I took another. I was fourteen. I went to fight back, but Dad came in and saw me shove her. Then he had some fun knocking me around. But never you. You never saw that side of things.”

“That’s not true. I had to deal with it just as much, but I didn’t fight back. I obeyed whatever they said so I wouldn’t get hit.”

“You did things your way and I did them mine. And that night, they were snoring away in their room and I took one of her cigarettes. Then while I puffed on it, I went to the kitchen and through the mail. There was a note from the school. They said I was failing, they were trying to get in touch, but Mom and Dad weren’t returning their calls.”

Because her parents just never cared enough.

“And what did you do?”