Chapter 43
XLIII.
Alex drops his hand and cocks his head like I’ve told him the sky is blue instead of calling him a murderer. “Interesting. What makes you say that?”
My arms tremble as I hug myself and back away from him. “You killed Gabe, and you let Nate take the blame. Nate died because of you.”
He grabs me by the shoulders and pulls me into him, his fingernails digging into my skin. “Who told you that?”
I break out of his grasp, rubbing my indented skin. “No one. I can see it for myself.”
He cackles. “I’m impressed. Not even the cops suspected me.
Mind you, I was good at playing the innocent victim.
” He raises his voice to a wail. “‘Not my dad! Nate, how could you?’ They didn’t even flinch when I told them I watched the troubled foster kid shoot him, then hid down here for my life.
They went up there, guns blazing. I mean, the most I’d hoped for was they’d lock him up. Them killing him was a bonus.”
Pressure builds behind my eyes. He’s the reason Nate went to Hell. The reason he’s about to go back. “Why did you do it?”
Alex gives a half-hearted shrug. “Dad loved me till Nate moved in. Then, suddenly, I was invisible, and a nobody foster kid who wasn’t even blood was his favorite son. It wasn’t fair.”
My eyes widen, and the breath dies in my chest. “You killed your own dad because he liked Nate more?”
He leans on the wall and stares out the window as a bird swoops across the sky. “I hadn’t planned on it. I did everything to drive Nate out—broke his stuff, shredded his clothes, threatened him daily—but he never got the hint.”
“He’s too good a person,” I say. “Nate probably thought he could win you over.”
He thought the same of me. Only he did win me over. And is now paying the price.
Alex doesn’t seem to hear me. He paces between the window and the doorway, his long legs crossing the room in three strides. “When Dad missed my first college game because Nate was sick, I snapped. I hit two home runs and won the game, and he missed it.”
I have no idea what a home run is, so I blink at him.
“I confronted my dad in his office, and he didn’t understand why I was angry. I reminded him Nate wasn’t related to us and told him he should kick him out. Instead of apologizing, he said he wished Nate was his son instead of me.”
“That had to hurt.” I say the words to appease Alex, but I’m not sure I blame Gabe for the thought after seeing the boy’s soul.
It must’ve torn Gabe up inside to know his own son was a brute.
Alex’s dark demeanor and hard edges are not comparable to Nate’s kindness and gentle heart.
Once Gabe saw the difference in the two, he couldn’t see anything else.
I know how that feels.
“Exactly.” Alex throws up his arms. “What kind of thing is that to say to your son? All I’d ever done was try to prove I was the best.”
Sure. What dad wouldn’t be impressed by all the stalking and the animal torture?
Well, okay, my father would, but he’s an anomaly.
“I don’t remember getting the gun from the safe,” he continues, his eyes faraway.
“It’s like I blacked out. The next thing I knew, I was standing over my dad with the murder weapon in my hand.
Nate called out to see what was wrong, and that’s when I decided to pin it on him. Two birds, one stone, and all that.”
His expression doesn’t change as he speaks. Goose bumps rise on my arms as though his demeanor is enough to chill the air.
If anyone belongs in Lot Thirteen, it’s Alex. And that’s exactly where he’s going.
But first, I have to get Nate out.
“You’re a monster.” I tense my jaw and stare up at him through narrowed eyes. “And you’re coming with me. We’re gonna have a little chat with my father and clear Nate’s name.”
He furrows his brows. “Is your dad a cop?”
“If that helps, sure. He certainly does his share of locking people up.”
“Well now the detective act makes sense.” He chuckles. “But I’m not going anywhere with you, little girl. Go home.”
His eyes mirror all the times Ferus mocked me, and rage boils from my chest down to my palms. Before I realize what’s happening, the boxes around me spark and catch. With all the dust and paper in the room, it takes seconds to spread.
Alex’s eyes widen, and he takes a step back. “What the hell are you?”
“The person who’s going to bring you there.”
I reach for him, but he darts out of my grasp and bolts up the stairs.
I chase him through the dark house, the fire crackling below me.
Sweat trickles down the back of my neck, and I cough as smoke drifts up from the first floor.
The fire’s followed us up the stairs already.
Whoever built this house didn’t insist on quality.
A shadow skitters in front of me, and I call out, “Alex! Stop!”
We have to get out of here. This house isn’t going to last long.
A crack pierces the air, followed by a scream. I run toward it and skid to a stop at the edge of a hole in the floor. Alex moans from below, the flames edging around him in a ring.
I spin on my heel. That takes care of that. Alex can burn with his house and go meet Father himself. Nice of him to save me the trip.
“Help…” Alex’s rasp claws through the floor and stops me as I’m inching open a window. He coughs and groans. “Please.”
I frown, one leg hanging over the windowsill.
Nate loved Gabe. He tried to love Alex, despite his foster brother’s faults. It’s why Alex’s attempts to drive him away failed, and why he never told me about the bad things his brother had done. In Nate’s mind, Alex could still be redeemed.
Nate hated being in Hell, but he wouldn’t trade his life for Alex’s, because that’s not who he is. I want Nate to be with me forever, but not at the expense of his own pain and guilt.
Dammit.
I hoist my leg back into the room.
Nate isn’t even here, and his do-the-right-thing mentality is still affecting my decisions.
Alex coughs again as I drop through the floor and land beside him. Gritting my teeth, I throw him over my shoulder, ignoring his cries of pain, and fly up and out the window. Sirens scream toward us, their blares echoing the fugitive alarms back home.
I drop Alex on the front lawn, and he groans as his body slams into the grass.
He’s barely conscious, his eyelids quivering rapidly, but I bend and whisper in his ear.
“Remember me, Alex. Remember I saved you when I should’ve let you die.
You owe me a confession. My father will be waiting to collect it. ”
By the time the emergency vehicles screech to a stop in front of the house, I’m in the sky, rushing to Nate.
He’s still in bed in a too-tight gray T-shirt with letters on it that spell “U.C.L.A” in yellow.
My mother must’ve changed his clothes. These are already drenched in sweat. Shivers course through his body, and he thrashes and kicks off the blankets piled on his legs.
Oh, Nate.
This isn’t the boy who told jokes in my check-in line. Who dug glass out of my back and called me beautiful. The boy who kissed me over and over in an ice palace.
And now that I’ve let Alex live, I’m not sure I’ll ever see that boy again.
My throat aches and my chest tightens as I take his hand. “Nate? Can you hear me?”
He doesn’t reply, but I continue, “I found him. The person who killed Gabe. It was Alex, your foster brother. I saw his soul, and it was awful. He has no remorse for any of it.”
My mother stands in the doorway but says nothing.
I push a lock of hair off Nate’s face and stroke his cheek the way I did before I’d kissed him the first time.
“I should have killed him, Nate. He belongs in Hell. I almost did, because I think that might’ve saved you, and all I wanted to do was keep you here with me.
But I couldn’t do it. I kept seeing your face, and I knew how you’d want me to do the right thing. ”
Tears fill my eyes, blurring him until they fall down my cheeks and pool on his shirt. My body shakes with the effort of holding myself together.
Even if he’s not fully here, I refuse to break into pieces while he’s still with me. There will be all the time in the world to fall apart after he’s gone.
For now, he needs the girl who carried him unconscious across a bridge.
“The thing is,” I continue, “I don’t know if saving him and losing you is the right thing. But I did get him to confess, so it’s in the universe, and I have to hope that’s enough.”
I clasp Nate’s hand, warming it with my own. “I wish you could tell me everything will be okay. Even when we were trapped in lots or running from souldiers or driving a boat across a river of blood, I always knew it would be okay because you were with me, and that was all that mattered.”
I lean forward and kiss him before sliding next to him and lowering my head to his chest.
His heart beats far too fast against my ear, and a tear slides down my face and pools on the L on his shirt.
“Thank you for believing in me when no one else did,” I whisper.
“You saw good in me even when I couldn’t see it in myself.
You taught me to see the good in others, too, and I’ll be forever grateful to you for that.
It turns out, falling for you wasn’t drowning like I feared.
It was flying. I love you, Nate. I’m sorry it took me so long to realize it. ”
I don’t want to lose one moment with him, but I haven’t slept since Mom found me on the bench, and despite my attempts to force my eyes open, I drift in and out of consciousness.
My mother comes and goes, the only sounds announcing her entrance the squeak of the door and the patter of her feet on the carpet.
At some point, Nate’s breathing slows, and I lift my head. “Nate?”
He moans, and his body jerks beneath me, then goes still. His heartbeat stops pumping against my palm.
No. No, not yet. I’m not ready.
“Nate?” I whisper again.
With a blink, his body disappears from my arms, and my tears puddle on the empty mattress where he’d just been resting.
What the—?
I feel for him but only encounter air.
He’s not gone, he’s not gone. He’s not gone.
I cry out, battering the bedsheets until my mother folds me in her arms.
I scream and try to push her off me, but she holds fast until I dissolve against her, sobbing into her shoulder.
She holds me as the day turns to night outside the window. The room darkens, but I don’t allow her to reach for the lamp on the bedside table. I’m comforted by the shadows. They remind me of home.
A clock in the next room chimes twelve times. In the back of my mind, I realize it’s my birthday.
I’m eighteen.
I made it to Earth in time to escape my fate in Hell.
But none of that matters now, because Nate didn’t make it out with me.