Chapter Twenty-two
Brynn
Inevitably, I’m on the brink of running late by the time we get to school.
I hate being late.
I feel out of sorts and stressed as I fall into my seat at exactly 10:30. The professor glances my way since I’m never running late like this, and I shoot her an apologetic grimace as I settle into my seat.
It’s a test day, so the good news is my entire day isn’t irreparably thrown off. This is the only class I had to panic about getting to. Now I’m here, I can take my test and probably leave early, and I like to hit the athletic center and get in a little gym time on Wednesdays. Between that and lunch, it’s the perfect way to fill the gap until my humanities seminar at two.
I also know if I don’t work out on Wednesdays, I probably won’t do it at all. I usually do a short pilates routine on my mat at home on Mondays, but this week with Killian, my routine has been thrown off a little.
Thankfully, I feel well-prepared for the test, and despite almost being late to class, I do get to leave early.
I feel a thousand pounds lighter now that the test is over.
Now that I’m finally in my tiny slot of scheduled free time, I start making my way toward the gym, but I pull my phone out so I can text Stacie. Last I heard, the locks on our apartment were being replaced today, and I should probably see if she’s heard anything because I haven’t.
I’m surprised to see a couple of notifications of missed texts from Victor, and it takes me a second to remember I changed my mom’s name to that in my phone. The visible message says, “Are you okay?”
Probably because I never responded to her other text, but you’d think she’d know I’m not going to by now. I swipe the screen clear and go to my texts, tapping the text two beneath hers and pulling up my message with Stacie.
“Hey roomie, any update on the locks?”
I keep my phone out to watch for her response, but I don’t hear from her until I’m at the athletic center changing into my workout clothes.
“Locks have been changed, but we need to talk.”
“Okay, I’ve got some time now if you’re free?”
“Not via text. I don’t want to talk at the apartment, either. When is your last class?”
“My humanities seminar ends at four. Is everything okay? You sound… weird.”
“I think it’s kind of weird that you don’t,” she answers.
I frown at the screen, now thoroughly confused. “Are you mad at me or something?”
“No. I’ll meet you on the bench outside the building at four.”
___
Since I didn’t get to do my hair and makeup at Killian’s place this morning, I take advantage of the athletic center showers after my workout. I usually bring a change of clothes, but I don’t like showering in communal spaces, so I would wait until I get back to my apartment for that.
As I’m brushing on a second coat of mascara, the girl at the sink next to me realizes hers is out of soap and asks if I mind her using mine.
“No, of course not.” I move my junk to the side. “Sorry, don’t mind me.”
She flashes me a smile as she brings her hands over to get a little squirt of soap from my dispenser. “I remember you. Brynn, right?”
My eyebrows rise in surprise, then I realize I have seen her before—at Zeta house during rush. “Wow, it’s really the ghosts of rushes past this week, isn’t it?” I murmur.
She frowns, uncomprehending, so I flash her an apologetic smile.
“Sorry, just talking to myself. It’s been a weird day.”
“No kidding,” she says solemnly, shaking her head. “It’s a shame about the Rho Kappas. I couldn’t believe it when I heard. I’ve been to a party at that house before. It’s just crazy.”
The Rho Kappas?
My confusion must be written all over my face because her eyes widen. “You haven’t heard about what happened?”
“No?” I say uncertainly.
She appears scandalized, but there’s also a weird aura of secret excitement that she gets to break the news to someone new. “Oh my god. Let me show you.”
She pulls out her phone, swipes and taps until she has a video pulled up on social media. I lean over to look, and my heart just about drops out of my body at what I see.
Someone can be heard when the video starts saying, “Holy shit,” but the visual speaks for itself.
The Rho Kappa fraternity house, the same one I fled just a few nights ago, is engulfed in flames. Smoke billows up in the dark night sky, and bystanders on the other side of the sidewalk watch as a firehose shoots at the flames without making a discernible difference. On the sidewalk directly in front of the house, a Rho Kappa I recognize from the party sits with his hands on his head, staring up at the horrifying sight before him.
I… have no words.
“We’re hosting a fundraiser for them this weekend,” the girl tells me. “Since the fire was started in the middle of the night, all their belongings were inside the house. The guys who survived lost everything.”
I didn’t think it was possible for my heart to drop any lower, but it does. “The… guys who survived?”
Her eyes widen again as she realizes I’m unaware of the juiciest morsel. “Two of the guys died. At least two. There’s a third presently unaccounted for.”
Oh my god.
“Which two?”
“I don’t know. The names haven’t been released yet.”
Oh my god.
She touches her phone screen, searching for some other video she wants to show me, but I’m no longer paying attention.
Vaguely, I see another video start playing, and I see the girl’s mouth moving, indicating she’s talking, but I can’t hear past the buzzing in my ears, the furious pounding of my heart in my chest.
The Rho Kappa house burned down last night?
The same night Killian had to go out on “Blue Blood business” and not come home until god knows when?
I feel like I’m going to be sick. The girl—Vanessa I think was her name—sees me looking pale and grabs all my things off the sink, tossing them back in my bag.
“Come on, sit down. Are you okay? I know it’s a lot.”
Too many thoughts and feelings circle me at once. I can’t process all of it.
The girl sits next to me on the little bench in the locker room area. She texts while my head spins and I fight the impulse to dissociate again.
Because I don’t want to deal with this.
I don’t want to process the implications of this.
Yeah, the guys who trapped me in that basement were unequivocally assholes, but what about all the other guys who lived in that house? The innocent ones who had no idea it was even happening.
It was one thing when Killian joked about having a body count. I don’t know why. I guess he was up front with me literally from the moment we met about who he was and what he was involved with, but it didn’t feel scary.
This feels scary.
The guy I’m living with may have gone out with his friends last night and burned down a fucking house full of sleeping students, and I really don’t know how to process that.
Unless…
I suppose it could be a coincidence.
It feels like I’m reaching, but I look over at the girl and ask anyway. “Did they say what started the fire?”
She shakes her head. “They don’t know. There will be an investigation and I’m sure they’ll figure it out, but it just happened last night, so obviously the story is still developing.”
And then there’s that.
What if they get caught?
Do I want them to get caught?
I feel like no, but I haven’t adjusted to the news yet. I need to take a beat. I need to think…
“Do you want to grab lunch?”
I blink at the girl who looks back at me brightly.
Lunch.
I guess I was just about to head to lunch, but that was before my world got turned upside down.
“Let’s do lunch,” she says, smiling and forcing me up off the bench. “You need a little fresh air, and it’s about lunchtime, right?”
I nod woodenly, but I’m lost in my own thoughts as I follow her.
I see Killian texting at the seminar last night.
I see Hex standing out in the hall, glaring at me.
I see Killian looking back at me without a word before he left.
I see him returning home in the middle of the night and deciding right then that he needed to fuck me.
Was it really some emotional need, or was it something else?
Maybe he knew I was going to find out about something really fucking violent he did last night, and he wanted to make sure I’d invested enough in him to overlook it.
He didn’t want me to come to school today, either.
He knew I would find out if I came to school.
Yeah, he told me he and his friends would handle the Rho Kappas, but I didn’t think he meant like this. I even remember wondering if he was doing anything at all, and now I feel really fucking stupid for that.
And now at least two guys are dead, and I don’t know which ones. Were they the guilty ones, or just a couple of guys unlucky enough to live in a frat house with a pack of assholes?
Vanessa orders us poké bowls, but I hardly pick at mine.
She chatters enough for both of us, so my silence doesn’t seem to matter.
She tells me more about the fundraiser the Zetas are hosting for the Rho Kappas this weekend and asks if I want to help out. I can’t think of anything I’d like to do less, but I also feel partially responsible for this, so I tell her sure, to sign me up.
We exchange numbers and she tells me she has to get to class, but she’ll touch base with me Friday.
I don’t even realize how late it is until she’s leaving, then I realize I need to get to class, too.
I get myself there and try to get my head in the game. I get out this week’s book and try to read it, but it’s no use.
I get myself in my seat in the classroom when I’m supposed to, and I sit there for two hours, but at the end of it, I couldn’t possibly recall a single thing that was said.
When class ends, I leave, and I would never have remembered I was supposed to meet Stacie on the bench outside, but thankfully she’s already there and the sight of her jogs me out of my trancelike state.
“Hey,” I say, taking a seat beside her on the edge of the bench.
“Hey,” she answers back, but she doesn’t sound happy to see me.
“How are you?” I ask automatically.
She shoots me a look and doesn’t answer. “Where’s your phone?”
Her question is unexpected, so I frown. “My phone?” I take it out of my purse and hold it out. “Why do you need my phone?”
She powers it off, then hands it back to me. “Because I’m pretty sure you’re fucking a Blue Blood, and I wouldn’t put it past him to monitor your phone.”
“Oh.”
“Oh? That’s it? Oh?” Her dark eyes are wide, her eyebrows rising in anger. “You went to a frat house over the weekend and came home wearing some guy’s shirt and telling me I was right about Kyle but not sharing details, and since then, some random guy broke into our fucking apartment and another group of guys—two of whom I’m pretty sure are part of some secret society of fucking psychopaths on campus—also burst into the apartment, all while I am vulnerable in my goddamn bed, Brynn.”
I flinch hearing her recount the details.
“And now that frat house has been mysteriously set on fire and some of the guys are dead, so while you have not filled me in on many of the details, I’ve gotta tell you, the ones I’m stringing together are not looking good.”
I’m still feeling a little hazy, so honestly, I don’t have the capacity to give her a proper explanation. I don’t even know if I cangive her an explanation at all.
Fragments of things Killian has said flood my brain, reminding me I have to play dumb about the Blue Blood stuff and never give the impression I know more than idle gossip. I shouldn’t even know he is one, let alone any gory details about them.
I think if I tell her anything, I would potentially be putting her in danger, so I don’t. And somehow, probably because I’m feeling a little mentally fractured today, that message seems to get lost in my brain and interpreted as “say nothing.”
So I don’t say a word.
Which leads to her staring at me in annoyed disbelief. “Nothing to say?”
I shrug helplessly. “I just found out about what happened at the Rho Kappa house. It’s terrible.”
I guess that wasn’t what she wanted to hear—or wasn’t enough—because she shakes her head. “Look, Brynn, I love you, and I know you’re attracted to danger for whatever reason, but it was one thing when the threat was… normal. When it was some asshole at a frat party. But this… this is too much. The Blue Bloods aren’t an unruly group of frat boys, they’re legitimately fucking dangerous. I’ve heard they won’t even consider tapping anyone who hasn’t killed before. They’re criminals who don’t get caught, and since they know they can operate with impunity, maybe they’re emboldened enough to do shit like what happened last night to pay back a perceived offense. Now, I don’t think anyone else knows enough to connect the two things right now, but I know a Rho Kappa broke into our apartment a couple of nights ago and Blue Bloods showed up who weren’t very happy about it. You know I have no love for the Rho Kappas, but what happened to them last night was immensely fucked up.”
I nod my agreement, but I can’t seem to find any words.
I want to say something. To defend myself.
I’m not attracted to danger.
Am I?
If I were attracted to dangerous situations, I wouldn’t feel so traumatized after them, would I?
She’s speaking again, so I try to shift my focus and concentrate on what she’s saying.
“Anyway, I really wish you luck with all this. I hope you make good decisions and stay away from dangerous men, but I can’t be involved. I don’t want to get mixed up with the people you’re mixed up with. I don’t want my fucking house to burn down next. I just… You can’t move back in.”
Oh.
Well… I guess that’s fair.
Except it leaves me with literally no alternative but to go home to a murderer.
Cool.
“If you want to swing by the apartment to get the rest of your stuff… I need it all out by this weekend,” she says, defensively awkward. “I have to move someone else in because I can’t afford the place myself. But I’ll return your half of the security deposit, of course.”
I don’t know what to say. I feel like I’m being dumped, and I guess I am.
I’m a little stunned, though.
I didn’t see it coming.
Somehow, I didn’t see any of this coming.
I swallow, then I look around to make sure no one is around to overhear us. No one is, so I look back at Stacie. “Don’t tell anyone else what you just told me. The stuff about… the connection you made with the Blue Bloods and the Rho Kappas. We’re the only two people who were in the apartment that night. We’re the only two people who know what we know, and they know I’m not going to say anything.”
Her eyes narrow, and though she doesn’t say anything, I can feel her opinion of me changing. I can feel her thinking I’m complicit.
And maybe this is me being complicit, but it’s also me protecting her the best way I know how.
“I know you don’t think anyone should operate with impunity, and I agree with you, but… that’s not the world we live in. Maybe some people can get away with more than others. Just don’t… attract attention to yourself by mouthing off about what you think you know. Please. I’m not saying you’re right about any of this, it all sounds crazy to me, but what do I know? If you are right, if some group of dangerous men is behind this… then the only way to make sure your house isn’t the next one to burn down is to keep your mouth shut.”
She looks at me like I’m a traitor and she can hardly stand the sight of me.
Then she shakes her head and stands up. “Goodbye, Brynn.”
I watch her walk away, but between the trauma fog, the swell of confused emotions I’m trying my best to tamp down, and my mind struggling to process this entire day, I don’t muster a response until she’s halfway across the lawn.
“Goodbye, Stacie,” I say softly.