Chapter 30 #3
Maybe one or two. But possibly zero.
I took another deep breath. Then I pressed the heels of my palms against my eyes and made myself think about the brutality of the last week. The harpoon through Delia. Reid's decapitated head and hacked off limbs. Sloane's slashed throat. All the others too.
They were people. Terrible people who’d done something monstrous… but still people.
But Carly was a person too. She'd walked down to the lake that night, trusting all the adults around her, and none of them had hesitated long enough for the horror of what they were doing to reach them through the alcohol and group hysteria. Even afterwards, when they were all sober, they only cared about themselves. Never her, the innocent little girl whose life they’d snatched so cruelly.
Something twisted and cold settled in my chest then; a part of me that looked at everything Rhys had done and understood exactly how he’d gotten there.
Not the brutality of it, or the bloodshed and gore. But the fury behind it… I understood that now. Far more than I wanted to.
And worse, some dark, deep-seated part of me thought the Legacies deserved to be destroyed for what they’d done to Carly. Maybe not butchered in the woods, but certainly punished a hell of a lot more harshly than they ever would’ve been through the legal system.
I sat up slightly, staring across the dark cabin toward the faint outline of the sofa. I couldn’t properly see Rhys from here, but I knew he wasn’t asleep, because every so often the cushions creaked softly beneath his weight, like he was shifting restlessly too.
I pictured him lying there with his eyes open and his heart thudding, awaiting my decision. Then I lay back again and stared up at the ceiling as every vulnerable moment from the last few days suddenly replayed in my head in horrible, crystal-clear flashes.
Waking up tied to this bed while Rhys stood calmly over me with a knife in his hand. Falling asleep in this cabin knowing he was only a few feet away on the couch, fully capable of killing me before morning if he wanted to. Letting him touch me in the woods after he’d saved me from the others.
At any point, he could’ve snapped my neck. Could’ve put a knife through my chest. He could’ve made me vanish so completely that nobody ever would’ve known what happened to me. But he never had.
It was strangely unsettling and relieving at the same time, because I knew he wasn’t just some misunderstood good guy. He very much enjoyed killing people. And that meant every ounce of restraint he’d shown me wasn’t accidental. It was deliberate. Chosen over and over again.
And the choice he’d always made when it came to me was to protect me.
Obsessively. Violently. Ruthlessly.
But still... it was protection all the same. He’d kept me safe throughout everything and made it clear he always would. Even tonight, when I’d pointed out that my death would solve everything neatly for him, he’d rejected the idea without hesitation.
And then he’d done the most shocking thing of all.
He’d left his fate up to me.
That was the part I couldn’t stop thinking about. Not the murders, or the lies, or the chaos he’d caused, but the fact that he’d put his life entirely in my hands when killing me would’ve solved everything for him.
I pressed the heels of my palms against my eyes, frustrated tears burning behind them.
My brain was still trying to separate Rhys into pieces that made sense.
The killer. The liar. The man who’d killed four people to protect me.
The man who kept choosing me over and over again, even when it made everything messier for him.
But none of those pieces existed separately anymore.
They were all him. And somewhere along the way, despite every instinct screaming that I shouldn’t, I’d actually started caring about him.
Really caring about him.
The realization sat horribly inside my chest because it explained so much. Explained why I’d always looked for excuses for him. Why I’d noticed the softness beneath his brutality. Why I was still questioning my next move even when the right choice was obvious.
It was because I wanted him.
Not just physically, though that part was undeniable too.
I wanted him alive. Free. Beside me.
And right now, that was entirely under my control.
No matter what I did next, I knew Zach wasn’t leaving this cabin alive. That part was already decided. The only thing still undecided was whether Rhys walked away afterward or spent the rest of his life rotting in a prison cell.
When I pictured him doing the latter, something inside me recoiled violently.
I let out a shaky breath and stared up at the ceiling for another long moment before finally pushing myself upright.
“Rhys,” I whispered into the darkness.
The couch creaked sharply. A second later, Rhys was beside the bed again.
“Yeah?” he said softly.
I looked at him for a long time before answering. My heart was beating so hard it almost hurt. Then I inhaled slowly and forced the words out.
“I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ll help you.”