Page 21

This is too much. I don’t do emotions. I don’t do the boyfriend shit, and I’ve given her no reason to fall in love with me. I’ve treated her like shit. I even fucking hurt her.

I’m poisonous.

I push her off me and open the passenger door and slip out to take the driver’s seat, making sure the keys are tightly gripped in my hand. “We’re done, Olivia. Let me drive you home or back to Maison. You don’t really love me; you just think you do.”

She scoffs and doesn’t say anything. If it’s at all possible, her eyes look even more glazed, her pupils taking over her entire eyeball like she’s on mushrooms or something. She leans and peers out the window, finally understanding what I’m saying. She’s so drunk, she can barely lift her head up now. I let her pass out. It’s better than what just happened between us.

I slip the keys into the ignition, then run my hands through my hair, debating on where to take her. I should take her back to Maison, but I don’t want him to see us together. And I can’t take her home because I don’t know where the fuck she lives.

“Olivia, you have to wake up and tell me where you live. I can get you close, but you have to tell me what house you live in, okay?”

Silence. Not even a moan escapes from her.

I reach out and grab her shoulder to coax her awake and jolt her, but her head is sunken low and lifeless.

Still nothing.

I hit her harder as I look for a place to safely pull over on the dark country road, and she still doesn’t move. “Olivia, wake up. I have to take you home.”

I pull over and lean over the console to check on her, and a twinge hits my gut when I see her lifeless eyes staring back at me. Deep emerald eyes—with no fucking life in them. I reach for her neck to feel for a pulse, anything to tell me she’s still with me. There is nothing, no pulse. Her skin is still warm.

Just like that—she’s gone. It’s over.

I ignore my racing pulse and weakened muscles; I ignore my inability to breathe. I just stare at her, and the horror of this situation hits me.

She’s fucking dead. This pretty girl, who was so full of life, died within minutes of me fucking her. I grab her body and her dead eyes stare back at me, and I cradle her in my arms. Did she really drink that much?

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” the screams come out of me in a way I can’t control. I lost control of the situation. I lost control with Olivia. I’m not sure I ever really had any to begin with. I lost it the night I slept with her without telling her who I really was.

And that decision got her killed.

I’m out of breath by the time I pull onto the road, pulling my dark hood over my head in case anyone drives by and sees me. I didn’t kill her, I’m positive about that, but will authorities believe me? Especially if they do a test and see my DNA inside her. I’m fucking doomed. No one can find me with her like this. They will fucking crucify me.

I swallow hard and look over at Olivia’s slumped body as I drive into the night, away from town as far as I can to think … figure out what the fuck I’m going to do. My whole body is shaking like I don’t have any control over it.

Dumping her body might work. No one saw us together; she would just be reported missing.

NOPE. Can’t do that. It will implicate Maison since he was the last person to see her.

GODDAMN IT … Maison. Did you give her something? It wouldn’t be the first time he’s done that.

I’m in a dark haze by the time I see the headlights heading straight for us. I go to swerve, then an idea pops into my head. I slam on the brakes and spin the wheel at the last second, losing control of the car. Tires screech, rubber burns, and the car slams into a nearby tree and the car beside us whizzes past, honking like crazy as it misses me by an inch.

My head snaps back and then forward, and the airbag explodes in my face. It was the exact impact I was looking for.

The brutal, near-death kind.

I pause to take a breath and orient myself as the world comes into focus. I realize I’m still alive, and maybe I don’t want to be.

I crashed to kill.

The wind is knocked out of me, and my chest feels like it’s about to explode, when I register what I heard during the impact. I look over to see Olivia missing from her seat. The impact was hard enough that her dead body slammed right through the glass, shattering it, and now she lies lifeless at the bottom of the tree we smashed into, the headlights shining right on her.

My body trembles as I undo my seat belt and jump out of the hissing car to crawl to her. I shouldn’t be moving. My neck and ribs are searing with pain, but I know someone will be here soon, and I must control the sight they see.

The narrative they tell the police.

I grab onto her and huddle over her, cradling her in my arms. I don’t even bother to close her eyes. I’m still holding her dead body as someone approaches me from behind. “Holy shit, is she dead?” It’s a woman’s voice, and I assume it’s the lady driving the other vehicle that almost smashed into us.