Chapter 23 #3
“You killed your dad?” Theo’s face hardens, and his eyebrows jump up as he looks at me.
“It was self-defense, and he deserved it, believe me. That fucking meth-head piece of shit knocked up my mom when she was sixteen and used to beat the shit out of both of us. I don’t think anyone was that upset about it, honestly.”
I highly doubt that.
“What about your mom?” Theo scoffs and rolls his eyes.
“Oh, Melissa hates me. She fucked off to Florida while I was being held in juvie and didn’t speak to me again until last year, and she only talked to me because Nana left me everything.
The first thing she said to me in almost two decades was that it was unfair of me to steal her kids’ futures by keeping all the money for myself.
” He rolls his eyes again. “She conveniently forgot I’m also her kid, I guess.
And before you think I’m a total asshole, I offered to have Catherine set up a trust for her other kids.
She freaked out, calling me a monster and a financial abuser and all this shit just because I wouldn’t just give her the money.
Mother of the year, right?” His tone is almost joking, but I can tell from the tight, clipped edge of his voice that it bothers him a lot.
My brain seems to skip over the broader context of the conversation and focuses on that.
“I can’t imagine parents like that. It sounds awful.” He looks a little shocked at my response but rubs his thumbs across the back of my hands.
“Um, yeah, but Nana and Boss were basically my parents after that. They adopted me, actually. Melissa signed over her parental rights for, like, five grand or something.” He tries to smile, but his mouth is too tight.
“I was definitely a handful, but they were great. I know they would have loved you, especially Nana.” I have no idea what to say to any of this, so I just nod.
He looks at me, his face softening, his smile small and a little crooked.
“God, you’re so sweet. I’m so fucking sorry about today. Again, this is not how I wanted you to find out about any of this.” He shakes his head. “If I ever see Adam again, I’ll fucking kill him.” My mouth drops open in horror, and he holds up his hands. “I’m kidding! Bad joke, sorry.”
I don’t think he’s joking.
He runs a hand through his hair and stands up, pulling me with him. “Right, okay. Brunch.”
We don’t talk while he starts to make food.
I sit at the kitchen island and watch him, my mind reeling.
My stalker is a murderer who has a bad relationship with his mother, and the last woman he stalked meant less to him than I do.
Bailey tells me about all the true crime shows she watches, and this sounds like one of those.
This is bad. This is very fucking bad.
The one thing I keep coming back to is that he didn’t hurt Ashley. It’s the only thing keeping me from spiraling into a full-blown panic attack.
“Alex?” Theo looks at me expectantly.
“Huh?”
“I asked if you like orange or grapefruit mimosas?”
“Whatever you’re having.”
“What do you like?”
“Uh, grapefruit.” He smiles at me.
“You got it.” I stare at him, thinking hard. I need some answers or I’m going to completely freak out.
“Um, Theo, can I ask you some questions?” He sets the drink down in front of me, looking a little nervous.
“Yeah, anything.”
“Did you and your mom ever get along?” He freezes and swallows hard, nodding once and turning away from me, walking back towards the food on the stove.
“Yeah. She, uh…we were best friends when I was little. Jason went from logging to driving a long-haul truck, so it would be these long stretches of just me and Melissa, but then he’d come home, and it was a fucking nightmare.
” I feel a pang of sadness for him and try to quash it.
He’s going to kill me, so I don’t need to feel sorry for him.
I sort of do, though.
“Was it ever good?”
He shrugs. “Sure, maybe sometimes, but in general, having a meth head for a dad fucking sucked.” I frown. That sounds like an understatement.
“Why’d you kill him?” He shrugs again, his shoulders tense.
“He got really high and threatened to kill Melissa, and I fucking lost it. He was waving his gun around in her face, so I got it off him and shot him in the head.” My eyes widen, and I stare at him in shock. He did that at twelve?
“And she just left you?” Theo raises his eyebrows, shaking his head and sucking in a deep breath.
“Yeah. Never came to visit or answered any of my calls, and then Nana and Boss showed up and told me they’d be adopting me and that I’d be living with them.”
“Fuck.” He crosses his arms and nods his head at the pan in front of him, his eyes wide.
“Mmhmmm.” Something about the rigid set of his shoulders tells me I need to drop this line of questioning, so I pivot.
“Why’d you go for Kevin and not Ashley?” He looks up at me with a serious, pained expression.
“Come on, Alex. I never would have hurt her.” I can’t tell if I believe him or not.
He seems to believe himself, but I’m pretty sure I don’t.
“Do you feel bad about almost killing Kevin?” He looks away from me again.
“It’s…complicated,” he says, laughing humorlessly. “Honey, can we talk about something else now? I try not to think about this stuff.”
“I think I get to ask you these questions,” I say, trying to keep my voice even.
He lets out a harsh sigh. “You do, but I’m only talking about this shit because you feel like you don’t know me. I hate thinking about it, and I’m begging you to change the subject,” he says, the last words brittle.
“Don’t you have to talk to your therapist about this stuff?”
“Fuck, no. I talked about it in the past, and I’m fine now,” Theo says, his voice clipped and tense.
“You know that talking to a therapist doesn’t mean that you’re actually dealing with anything, right?” My tone is sharp, but the laugh that he lets out is sharper.
“How the fuck would you know? You don’t talk to anyone about anything, especially not your fucking feelings,” he snaps, and my anger flares in my chest.
“I don’t need to talk about my feelings. They’re my feelings, and I’m the only one who needs to know about them,” I say, and he shoots me a dirty look.
“That’s so fucking unhealthy,” he scoffs. “It’s also a shitty attitude to have in a relationship.” Anger and stress coil tightly in my chest and I snap.
“This isn’t a fucking relationship!” Theo closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, looking up at the ceiling and shaking his head.
“I know you’re upset with me right now, sweetie, but this is a relationship,” he grits out through clenched teeth. He lets out an aggravated sound and stirs something in the pan in front of him. “Whether you like it or not,” he mutters under his breath.
“I don’t!” I scream at him, jumping off my stool and stepping towards him. “If you ever fucking listened to me, you’d know that!” He rounds on me, his face frustrated and his jaw clenched.
“That’s bullshit!” Theo’s not quite yelling, but his voice is louder than usual. “I’d listen to you, but you’re constantly fucking lying to me, and to yourself, about your feelings.”
The implication that I’m the one in this situation who’s lying to myself makes something in me break.
I’m angry in a way I’ve never felt before, angrier than I was with Danny the night I ran.
Waves of heat and years of pent-up aggression course through my body, and I move without thinking, swinging my hand up to slap him.
Theo catches my wrist, and both of us stand still for a minute, shocked. His face goes blank, and his hand shakes slightly as his grip on my wrist gets so tight that it hurts.
He’s going to kill me now.
Maybe he should, if I’m the sort of person who would hit someone out of anger. My eyes start watering, and his face slowly changes into a look of deep hurt. He shoves my wrist out of his hand, and I step back from him, scared and ashamed.
He looks away from me, and his voice is quiet and ice-cold when he speaks.
“Get the fuck out.”
***
I don’t notice the walk home. I only notice that, at some point, I’m in the bath with a bottle of wine, sobbing.
I don’t know if I’m more upset about the fact that Theo might have been angry enough to kill me, or that I almost did something I didn’t think I would ever do to another person.
I should be more upset by one of them, but I don’t know which one.