Page 26 of Freedom’s Inferno

“So, why didn’t you just leave him? Why murder?”

I tossed the spent remains of the joint over the railing, and wrapped my arms around myself. “You wouldn’t understand. Just leave it alone.”

“Help me understand.” His voice was firm, but not aggressive, setting a boundary. He wanted to know.

My insides coiled, intestines knotting.

I am not going to have this conversation.

“You don’t get it. Richard would’ve never let me go.”

“Dickie was stubborn, but if you had filed for divorce he would have accepted it.”

I laughed, absent of humor. “Would it make it easier for you if I just say I killed him for the money? Does it justify your hate for me?”

“Money’s been a motivator for you before.” He turned an Oreo over in his fingers before shoving it in his mouth.

I turned to face him, abandoning my cookie on the railing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

His jaw worked, chewing longer than the cookie warranted. “You chose Richard. I think we both know money had something to do with that.”

I blinked, his words landing like a foreign language. “Excuse me? Chose Richard over what?”

“Over me.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. The joint had slowed my thoughts enough that it took me a full second to understand what he was saying, and another to believe he actually meant it.

“Charlie,” I said carefully, “I was already dating Richard when I met you.”

Something crossed his face—quick, sharp, a door swinging open before he could stop it. “Funny. You seemed to know me well enough in the Branford basement. Tongue and everything.”

I blinked at him, mind piecing together foggy fragments of memory. “That was you?” The words came out barely above a breath.

“That was me.” The muscle above his left eyelid twitched.

“I was drunk,” I shot back. “I couldn’t remember who I kissed that night. It was a stupid college party. The fact that you’ve spent a decade resenting me for it says a lot more about you than it does about me, Charlie. God forbid I be human.”

The vein in his neck bulged. “Drop the ‘Charlie’ bullshit. You sat one row in front of me in Ethics. I wasn’t a stranger.”

“I’m sorry. Did you think because I was nice to you in class that meant I was obligated to, what, exactly? Christ, Chuck, not every woman who laughs at your jokes is sending you a signal.”

He went still. A flush crept across his cheekbones, pale pink in the moonlight. “Why did you pretend to not know me when Richard introduced us? You looked me dead in the eye and acted like we’d never spoken.”

I studied him for a moment, something clicking into place. Then I let out a short, dry laugh that had nothing to do with humor. “Richard was jealous—even then—and he was especially jealous of you. He knew you were smarter than him, and it got under his skin. I wasn’t snubbing you. I was trying to keep the peace.”

Something shifted in his expression, like he was trying to imagine it from the other side. Then his face hardened. “I’m just trying to understand why you had to kill him.”

There it is.

My heart pumped sludge through my veins, everything thick and slow. He looked at me with those depthless eyes, a grieving man who needed answers. Answers that would only make everything that much worse.

“I didn’t! I made a choice. That’s your problem, Charlie, you think everything that happens is forced on us. I don’t know if that’s the reason for the chip on your shoulder, or if it makes you feel better about your own sins to tell yourself you never had free will when you committed them. Well, I have a reality check for you: Every. Single. Thing. you have ever done was a decision you made freely.”

He stared at me like I’d shot him in the chest.

My eyes bounced over him, catching on the ruined purple skin of his left wrist. My gaze lingered on the scar, and for a flicker of a second, I wondered how he’d earned it. And what it had cost him.

He opened his mouth to speak, but I cut him off. “I told you that you wouldn’t understand, now let it go. Asking a woman why she killed a man is incredibly rude!” I said this like I was calling him out for body shaming, my tone serious.