Wicked Love | √

Twenty Eight

PRESTON finishes telling me everything. From the moment he saw me sitting by the streetlight reading. To the moment he struck the match that set the fire that killed a boy. To the moment he asked my little brother to lie for him. To the moment their friend went to jail.

Everything.

The knot that has been growing in my stomach suddenly explodes until the nausea overwhelms me to the point I have to lean over and throw up the entire contents of my stomach.

Everything I didn't want to believe is true is. My mind is reeling with all this new information. The generic details I knew. The overarching story I had already put together. It's the little things I didn't. The little things I didn't want to put any belief behind.

But now I can't run away. The truth has been laid before me. The real question now is what I do with it?

"Are you okay?" Aiden asks from behind me. I stand up and wipe my mouth trying to settle the nerves rattling around in my stomach.

Everett offers me his flask and I take it without hesitation. I swallow a large gulp of whiskey and let it burn a hole in my chest. But the sting of the liquor is easier to focus on then the truth I can no longer ignore.

"You were there," I whisper knowing that he was but needing to say it aloud for the first time. I can't help but stare at Preston with wide eyes as his words reply over and over in my head. "You did kill that boy."

"It wasn't his fault," Lawrence defends him with a harsh glare narrowing his blue eyes.

"No," Preston argues. "It was our fault," he agrees with a somberness overtaking him.

"And you got away with it," I say as another wave of nausea rolls through me. But this time I use the flask from Everett to help relieve some of the emotions that are swarming wildly throughout me.

"I fucking knew she'd run as soon as you told her," Lawrence states as if brushing me off and vivid anger tears through the mess of emotions already running rampant within me.

"I'm not running!" I yell at him. I'm over his half-assed assumptions about me. "I'm not going anywhere," I say standing tall.

"You're not?" Preston questions in shock as his dark eyes hold me close.

"No," I answer truthfully. "I just...I just need some time," I finally get out. It's not much, but it is the truth.

Because everything has changed. In the span of a night everything is different. That night isn't some rumor in the dark anymore. It's doused in light now and it hurts to know someone that I care about actually had a hand in killing someone. Taking a life that should still be here with us.

My eyes then fall to my brother. How he could agree to be their plan and be their alibi I'll never know, but he tied himself to these men for the rest of his life. And ultimately to Nathaniel who I just learned how crazy he actually is. How capable and scary he has become.

The rational part of my brain knows it was Nathaniel who ultimately killed that boy. He brought them there. He had the idea to start the fire. And he accelerated the fire until it overtook the entire house. That was never the intention of Preston or the others.

But even if it was their friend's fault they were still there, and that makes my stomach churn and my heart drop to the pit of my stomach.

"Well if she's in...then she's in," Lawrence declares as he walks up to me.

He leans down to get in my face. He's the tallest heir and makes me feel the smallest by the way his eyes always look down on me and everybody else as if we are in-sequential nobodies. As if everyone is lesser than him.