I dump the contents of the envelope onto the desk with a soft thud and stare at it for a moment before I realize what I’m seeing. Before the names pop up. Before my name appears.
There are pictures.
There are testimonies.
There are unveiled secrets.
There is truth.
“Hello? Remi?” Pierce’s gruff voice inquires on the other line, startling me.
“Sweetheart.” He sounds like he is out of breath. “Is everything okay?”
I let the phone slip from my fingers, and it hits the desk with a bang.
It was all a lie.
He never wanted me.
It was all a lie.
He used me.
It was all a lie.
We’re nothing. Not even a secret. We’re nothing but sin.
Pierce is still talking, but all I can hear is the sound of my own heart in my ears. The fact that it is still beating is almost reassuring, because it’s hurting. Hurting so bad. Aching, breaking, slipping away. Suddenly, I’m weightless. Restless. I’m floating outside my body, and I look at everything that’s happened to me in recent weeks—in recent months, really, ever since I started my senior year—and clarity washes over me like electric shock.
I drop the phone, clutching the papers in one of my hands.
My legs carry me to the front door, where I stop. My feet are bare, and I’m still wearing his clothes. How far can you run when the only thing that fuels you is anger, secrets, and deceit?
I’m about to find that out.
Tonight, I do something I never thought I’d do.
Something I promised myself I wouldn’t do, in fact.
Tonight, I sleep on the street. Okay, sleep is a little dramatic, but I’m feeling pretty melodramatic right about now. I mostly just wander around until the sun comes up.
It’s not a conscious decision more than it is just the way things are. I cannot go back home—literally and figuratively. I need to let Ry calm down, I need to process all the information that I’ve just discovered, and the buses don’t run from Pierce’s neighborhood to mine in the middle of the night.
I kick little rocks and walk in what seems like circles for the longest time until I get to this gas station at an intersection in the middle of nowhere. I can see the city lights of Vegas twinkling in the distance. Gold, pink, purple, and green swirling around and around. It seems fitting that I was born in Sin City. I wonder what my mom would have said about all this. About what became of Dad and me. About Pierce.
I take out my phone that I found tangled up in the just-fucked blankets of Pierce’s bed—it’s not my camera, but it’ll do—and capture the moment a homeless person walks out of the food mart next to the station with a sandwich in his hand and gives it to a homeless woman who is sitting on the side of the road.
The papers I found in Pierce’s envelope made no room for misunderstanding. He sat on Ryan’s information a long time and produced everything that could incriminate him. I was confused, upset, and frantic to leave. I barely made it back to Pierce’s porch to put some shoes and pants on and grab the evidence against Ryan before I left. And now I’m wondering, was Ryan right all along?
He said Pierce was playing me.
He said Pierce had an agenda.
He said I was bound to get hurt.
All of those things happened. Pierce has hurt me more than anyone else ever did before, no matter how hard he pretended to want to protect me. My heart broke under his watch.
I walk over to the bus station the minute the clock hits six and get on the first bus back home. On the way there, I think about what I might find. Will Dad and Ry even forgive me? Is there anything to forgive, anyway? And do I tell Ryan everything—about Pierce’s insane agenda against him, why on earth is Mr. James after my brother, anyway?—or simply keep it to myself and make do with the fact that Pierce doesn’t have any access to all this evidence now.