Chapter 25 – CARTER
25
CARTER
G overnor Vaughn was a punctual man. When he said the money was mine as soon as I took the deal, he meant immediately. He set up an anonymous fund that covered the full cost of my mother’s current treatment at the hospital and any other treatments she could ever possibly need. The other funds were dropped into my meager checking account, prompting a slew of calls from my bank asking me what I intended to do with my new ‘inheritance.’
That was three days ago. Now Ma was getting her treatment, I wasn’t under arrest, my father had been scrubbed from existence, and I was left to plan my revenge.
I was scared every morning that when I woke up, it would all be a scam.
Just an elaborate plot to get me in jail on worse charges and eventually a convicted murderer on a lifelong sentence. I was barely sleeping, scared that any footsteps I heard through the flimsy door were the cops coming to get me. Or Hudson Vaughn’s men.
It hadn’t happened yet.
“Do you want something to eat? How are you feeling?” I asked Ma hollowly, bending forward in the chair next to her bed.
“How are you feeling?”
“Me?”
“About your father,” she said.
I flinched. She didn’t know the truth. Hudson’s people had it all cleaned up as though it never happened by the time she was ready to come back from the hospital. The official story was that he died in a hit and run. Some kind of big rig truck must’ve rolled right over his head.
I swallowed back bile. “Can’t say I miss him. I mean, can you?”
It’d been three days but she had known the guy longer than I’d been alive. Maybe they were…I don’t know, bonded or something, if not in love.
“I’ve missed him for a long time,” she said wistfully. “I miss the man I married. The one who I fell in love with.”
“I well… I guess I never met that one.”
She sighed and crossed her arms, running her hands up and down her biceps like she was cold. I pulled her blanket up for her.
“Anyway, he was still your father, I just thought…”
My jaw clenched as I worked to stuff down the memories of that night. They were still so fresh. So raw.
I could still smell his blood as if it were stuck in my nostrils. I could feel the grip of the hammer in my hands as if I were still holding it. What I did to him was… barbaric …but when he said in a drunken stupor that maybe it was better if Ma were to die—that he could make it look like an accident and then the hospital bills would stop, I just…I saw red.
I couldn’t even remember picking up the hammer. Not really. By the time I was lucid again, I was hovering over the beaten pulp of his head and Hudson Vaughn’s men were already breaking through the front door.
They held me down while they took photos. While they waited for Hudson himself to arrive. They’d been waiting weeks for something like this. Something he could use against me to force me to stay away from Anna, and I handed it right to him.
What kind of man did that make me?
The sort of man who could be bought.
A killer.
The kind of man that shouldn’t be anywhere near a girl like Anna Vaughn.
“I just can’t believe he’s gone,” Ma said in a rough voice.
“It’s just you and me now, Ma. You and me against the world. I’ll go see what we have for food.”
I hadn’t had time to grocery shop and while it was easy to explain away a charitable donation for her treatments, I wouldn’t be able to explain my sudden ability to afford takeout for every meal.
I closed her door and went to the kitchen to see what we had. First chance I got, I was going to fill this thing to the tits with all her favorites. Shit, my favorites, too.
Our rent was already pre-paid out for the next three months. After that, I intended to move us somewhere better. Closer to the hospital so she wouldn’t have to travel back and forth so much.
Anna’s face filled my mind and I screwed my eyes shut, slamming the fridge closed.
All this freedom for what?
What was it worth when I couldn’t share it with her?
My thoughts were loud but empty like an echo. The weird, empty feeling in my chest hadn’t gone away since I’d taken the deal.
It had to eventually, right?
It wasn’t like I’d live the rest of my life like this.
I checked the time. It would be dark soon. Any other night, I’d already be chomping at the bit as I waited for 11:30 so I could sneak out the front door and head for the beach.
Someone knocked at the door.
I jumped, stared at it like it might swing open itself. The light was on so it was obvious we were home. A terrifying montage of my arrest and sentencing in court for murder played in my head. I took a few shaky steps toward the door. They knocked again. I didn’t want my mother to hear it. She was well enough right now that she’d come out here and answer it herself if I didn’t.
My stomach turned as I opened it.
“You’re home,” she said.
Ice spread through my core. I looked over my shoulder and quickly stepped out onto the cement stoop, shutting the door firmly behind me.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered angrily. Even in a loose hoodie and jeans, she stuck out around here. Her skin was too flawless. Hair too shiny. Sneakers too obviously brand name. And she was alone by the look of the empty streets devoid of black sedans in either direction.
Fucking hell, did she take the bus? A cab?
“Why haven’t you been answering my texts?” she asked, her round eyes pleading.
“How did you find my address?” I asked, ignoring her, still angry as fuck that she’d come here alone.
“Your work. They gave it to me. I went there last night when you didn’t show up.”
“It’s not safe here after dark,” I snapped.
“Then just tell me why you’ve been ignoring my calls and I’ll go home.”
I scoffed, pinching the bridge of my nose when a throbbing started behind my eyes. This was it. I’d been avoiding it for days but I couldn’t anymore. She was forcing my hand before I was ready.
“Because I didn’t want to talk to you,” I shoved the words from my throat.
Anna’s face flattened, the answer stopping her in her tracks.
“Why? Did I do something? Did something happen?”
No, she didn’t do anything. Besides being born to an evil, sociopathic megalomaniac, no. She was perfect. I loved her. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to have her. Shame burned in my chest knowing what I had to do.
“There’s no nice way to do this so I’m just going to get it over with. I’m done.”
Her face screwed up into a scowl and her gaze narrowed. “Done with what?”
I sneered, irrationally angry at her for not figuring it out on her own. For making me say it.
“ This . Summer’s over. You’re going to Yale. I’m not. It’s just not going to work anymore,” I said. She was silent for a few seconds.
“Is that it? We talked about this already. I’m not?—”
“It’s over, Anna. We’re done,” I repeated, louder, like she was hard of hearing, stupid or both. She was neither, but she needed to get it through that stubborn head.
Don’t make me hurt you, Anna.
Please. Just go.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
I looked away because if I held her stare for another second, I’d buckle under it and ruin everything.
“Would you at least fucking look at me?”
She put her hands on my chest, and I recoiled away, sucking air in through my teeth as my entire body sang with her touch as if shocked by an electric current.
Anna shoved me until my back hit the door. “No. We’re not doing this. Talk to me, Carter. Tell me what’s really going on. I know you wouldn’t?—”
“Stop!”
I’d never shouted at her, and I could feel her shock without needing to see it on her face.
“Just… stop . You need to go home, Anna.”
“You told me you loved me.”
I could hear the tears in her words and it was ripping me apart.
She wouldn’t let this go. I should have known that. It was one of the reasons I loved her so much.
I bit down on my lip hard enough to taste blood. If he knew that she was here, I was fucking finished. He’d pull his money, he’d pull the deal completely. We’d have to stop treatment, again. I’d end up in prison. No one would be there to take care of Mom while she withered away to nothing.
Chills ran through me, but I was sweating. She needed to go and I had to make sure she never came back. I blinked hard, grimacing.
“You’re not very smart, are you?”
“What?”
I forced myself to look at her, picturing her father and all the horrible, vile, wicked things I’d like to say to him. Projecting that hatred on her instead.
“You’re an idiot. You think your dad setting you up with connections and opportunities is him forcing you to do things you don’t want. Do you know how many people would kill to be in your position?”
Her head shook slowly side to side.
“My dad used to fucking skewer me with a hot chimney poker. What’s the worst thing yours ever did? Get you into law school?” I asked.
“Used to?”
The memory of the gore I made of my father had my stomach roiling. Hudson was right, I was deranged. A psychopath. Not for the likes of her.
Anna’s brows lowered. “Wait, Carter… I never said—I didn’t even?—”
“Did you really think anything was going to happen after this summer?”
“But we—Carter, you said you?—”
I laughed, harsh and loud enough to make her look around, self-conscious that someone had heard.
“Haven’t you ever lied a little during an interview before?”
The soul slowly drained from her eyes and my momentum stalled. “Oh wait, no, of course you haven’t, because you’ve never worked a goddamned day in your pathetic life.”
“Why are you being so cruel?”
“You don’t get it. You’re a clueless, entitled little princess. That’s why you think that when a person stops talking to you, it means come to my house instead of leave me the fuck alone .”
I was so glad the door was closed. She never made me feel bad about where I came from but I’d seen the other houses on the beach where she lived. This shack would fit in one of those place’s kitchens.
But she didn’t care. It bothered me more than it ever bothered her. Even if I wasn’t doing this, I knew it would have bothered me when we went out into the world together and the differences between us became even more obvious in the light of the day. It wasn’t a problem but it would’ve become one. Eventually.
Hudson Vaughn was right.
“You really…want me to…go?” she gasped every few words, starting to hyperventilate.
God. Fuck. Shit.
This needed to end.
“Yes, Anna. I want you to go.”
If I slapped her she couldn’t have looked more hurt. I restrained myself from going to her, wrapping her in my arms and telling her I didn’t mean it. Dropping to my fucking knees and begging her not to believe it. Any of it because it was a lie. Even as I tried to make myself believe it all to be true.
“But you promised.”
Her chin quivered and tears streamed down her face in a river that I was powerless to stop. I couldn’t speak.
“And I believed you and oh my god, I gave you my…”
“I didn’t ask for your virginity, babe, you practically threw it at me.”
She crumbled, hugging herself around her stomach.
“I wish I never met you.” She sneered at me, finding that fire through the rain and like it always did, her rage mirrored itself within me.
“That makes two of us.”
She staggered back. Her hand went to her mouth, choking on a sob.
“Did you ever mean it when you said you loved me?”
Every fucking time, with everything I had in me.
“No,” I said instead, the word tasing foul in my mouth.
That was it, she turned and bolted, her footsteps quickening to a full out sprint as she tore down the street toward the beach.
The instant she was out of sight, I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I slumped against the door, my legs completely giving out beneath me. My heart clenched so painfully I thought I might be having a heart attack. Hot tears streamed down my face and I couldn’t. Fucking. Breathe.
I swiped the tears away angrily and made myself get back to my feet.
Anna Vaughn wasn’t the kind of girl that a guy like me got to have. I got to be her mistake.