No wonder she was drunk when we got here.
We should all be drunk. We should all be a mess, like Emily. We should all be locked up in the fucking nuthouse after what happened to us.
But we aren’t, are we?
We are all successful, thriving, happy—as far as I can tell.
Just like they promised we would be.
Camille untangles herself from Sofia and re-tangles herself with Bennett. “You were so nice that night.”
He was, I realize, thinking back. Because I was there. I saw the whole thing. Was forced to write it all down in the book as it happened. He was slow, and never raised his voice above a whisper. It took all night to finish their task. All night lying on that cold, hard floor to convince Camille that they had to do this.
And me, my shoulder aching from the surgery I’d had just one week earlier. High on painkillers, sitting on the cold stone floor, leaning against the jagged stone wall, trying to balance the notebook on one bent leg because I couldn’t use my left hand. Scribbling…
Bennett draws in a deep, deep breath and when he lets it out he says, “I wanted there to be no misinterpretation. I wanted you to feel loved. I wanted to make sure you felt… I don’t know. Not good, because I know you didn’t feel good. You were scared to death. But I wanted you to know that I was being careful. Not for them, either. Not so they’d know my answer. But for you. Because if you were my partner in this nightmare, then fuck them. We were getting out together or not at all.”
Bennett’s place in my friend hierarchy just jumped about ten thousand levels at this admission.
“Sofia and I were up next,” Connor says, glancing at her. She offers him a small smile.
So by this time the room had a couch. I asked for a chair and blankets because I was cold too. I didn’t want to sit on that floor any more than Camille wanted to fuck on it. I think Bennett asked for the bed—or maybe that was just thrown in with my chair. Either way, by the time Sofia and Connor came to the tower it was partially furnished.
Camille definitely had it the worst, I decide.
Well, that’s not true. I did get shot my first time out.
“I got a note as well,” Sofia says in her soft, almost whisper-like voice.
“Shit,” Connor says, raking his fingers through his hair. They lock eyes for a few seconds and everyone can feel Connor’s fear over what that note said.
“It wasn’t about you,” Sofia admits.
“No? Who then?”
Her gaze shifts to me. She sighs. “They told me to make you…”
I wait for it, but she doesn’t finish. “Make me what?”
She swallows, closes her eyes, shakes her head.
“Sofia, spit it out,” Hayes says. “What did it say?”
“They told me to make Kiera join us.”
I furrow my brows. “And what did you get out of that? They were gonna let you go? Because…” I pause to look over at Hayes for some reason. I don’t know why, exactly. But I don’t want him to know what happened between Sofia, and Connor, and me.
Too late now, that little voice in my head sneers. It’s all written in the book.
Right.
“Because,” I continue, “I did join in and you guys still had to show up every month for your night.”
I don’t look at Hayes. I deliberately ignore him.
Sofia is still shaking her head. “No, it wasn’t a get-out deal. It was a let-you-live deal.”
I look at Connor, but he’s looking at Sofia. “What?” he says.
“Don’t you get it? They were going to kill her. And I really thought they would, Con. I did.” Her eyes meet mine again. “I’m not saying those things I said to you were fake, Kiera. I want you to know that. I mean, I didn’t really know you that first night, so maybe some of them were lies. But…”
She doesn’t finish.
Everyone goes silent again. We are stuck in some bizarre alternate reality. One where everything we thought was true isn’t. One where the one thing we all thought we had in common wasn’t even real.
Fake.
Everything about that year was fake.
I stand up.
“Where are you going?” Connor asks, grabbing my wrist.
But I yank it away and walk over to the windows.
“Kiera,” Hayes says.
But I just shake my head and say, “I thought that was real. I thought I took one thing away from that horrible fucking year. I thought we were real.”
“We were real,” Sofia says.
“Fuck you,” I say, looking out at the trees and the houses that are, in reality, so close to this stupid mansion, but also worlds away.
“I had to. I thought they were gonna kill you. And you were still recovering from a fucking gunshot, Kiera. What else could I do?”