Chapter 20
ARCHIE
What. The. Fuck?
I didn’t move.
Not because I couldn’t, but because my body hadn’t decided what to do yet. It was waiting for my brain to catch up.
Good fucking luck.
The words Henry confessed didn’t just sit between us—they slid under my rib cage and stayed there, curling tight around my heart like something that was always meant to live there. That kind of thing didn't fade once it found a place to stay.
Maybe it should've scared me.
It didn’t.
Because if that was the weight he’d been carrying all this time—if that was the shape of the thing that had carved him into who he was—then I didn’t want him holding it alone anymore.
He killed them.
Not in theory. Not in some distant, abstract way I could file under bad things happen to bad people and move on from.
“Tell me what you’re thinking, Rabbit.”
A flicker of something cold slipped under my ribs, sharp enough to make me inhale a little deeper, and for a second I thought—this is the part where you pull away. This was where a normal person would take a step back and reevaluate everything.
I wasn’t fucking normal.
Because if I knew who took Abel… if I had a name, a face, something real to aim all of that grief at instead of letting it sit inside me and rot—I might do the exact same thing.
The realization sat heavy in my stomach, twisting in a way that made it hard to breathe for a second, because that wasn’t who I thought I was.
But love…
Grief…
Whatever this was that lived under both of those things…
It didn’t feel rational.
It felt like something that would burn through anything in its way if it had somewhere to go.
“Rabbit.” Henry beckoned, grabbing my chin. “Tell me.”
“I’m not justifying murder, per se. But I am saying that a lot of teens are probably safer that they’re dead.”
All the lines in his face seized with his wince, and he tore his hand like he shouldn't have been touching me in the first place.
“I shouldn’t have put this on you,” he spat.
Frowning, I reached for him. “I’m tough enough to handle it, Henry.”
He didn’t look convinced.
Which… rude.
I pushed myself up then, shifting off him, not leaving but changing the space between us so I could actually look at him.
“I mean it,” I added, steadier now. “You don’t get to decide I’m fragile just because you’re used to carrying everything alone.”
Sitting up, he ran his tongue along his teeth. “That’s not what I’m doing.”
“No? Good.” I brushed my hands down my thighs like I was resetting myself, even though my heart was still doing something chaotic in my chest. “Now, tell me everything about Dean Randolph.”
Because if someone was coming for my daddy… I was about to come right the fuck back.
Pushing to his feet, Henry dragged a hand over his face, thumb and forefinger pressing into the bridge of his nose as he exhaled.
“I’m supposed to protect you,” he whispered, eyes lifting to mine. “Better than I did him.”
“Daddy.”
Heat gathered between my eyes, and I blinked hard, trying to keep it from spilling over. Something split straight down the center of my chest and pressed there. The space I’d made for Henry stretched wider than it was ever built to hold—and then refused to give.
“Don’t take that and twist it into something that’s yours to carry. Philip isn’t gone because of you, and I’m not going anywhere either. So you can stop bracing for it.”
I took a step toward him. “Let me do this with you, Henry.”
A breath passed between us. “Fine. But I draw the line at you murdering people.”
I blinked at him.
Then rolled my eyes.
“Wow. Good to know,” I muttered. “Really solid rule. Thank you for clarifying that, Daddy.”
His mouth pulled at the corner.
I smiled back, and his body swayed as though the simple act of my smiling was enough to knock him off his feet.
“Fuck, you’re pretty.”
The tips of my ears burned. I hadn’t ever been called pretty before, but I liked it.
A lot.
Chest to chest now, Henry caught my face and took my mouth in a firm kiss. When he pulled back, his thumb stayed at my cheek for a beat longer, then dropped.
“Come here, baby.”
He turned toward the desk, gathering the yearbooks from the floor as he went, stacking them in his hands before spreading them out across the surface. Pages opened under his fingers, worn from how many times he’d gone through them already.
“Dean Randolph was on the faculty when I was a student at Ashford,” he said, flipping one open and flattening it with his palm. “He taught literature. Upper level courses. He kept a low profile, but everyone knew him.”
I stepped in beside him, my shoulder brushing his arm without thinking about it.
“His name wasn’t in the records I found in the annex, but that sure as fuck doesn’t clear him.” He scanned the page like he’d memorized it already. “Maybe he was careful. Or his role didn’t require documentation.”
“Are you sure it’s him?”
His nostrils flared. “He’s the only connection to Ashford that makes sense. Randolph stayed in the academic system. Built a career. He moved through Ashford before ending up at Wexley.”
That felt… uncomfortably intentional.
Weight shifting, I studied the pages, trailing the rows of faces that made up Henry’s past. I wasn’t sure what I’d notice that he already hadn’t, but I was determined to—
Oh.
My attention caught on a page I hadn’t meant to look at twice. There was a pull to it I couldn’t explain, drawing me in until the rest of the room began to blur at the edges.
A photograph sat there, just another group shot at first glance, but the longer I looked, the more my skin started to crawl.
He was in the back row, half-hidden behind taller shoulders, the kind of placement that made a person easy to ignore unless you were actually looking.
I know him.
Not here. Not in this context. But I knew him—well enough that my brain started pulling pieces together.
The tilt of his head…
The way he stood just a little apart from everyone else, like he wasn’t really part of the group…
I knew that stance.
I’d watched it from across a yard.
From my kitchen window.
While he talked to my mom like he belonged in her space.
My fingers dug into the page hard enough to crease it, paper buckling under my grip before I even registered what I was doing.
A rush of cold slid through me from the inside out, settling low and heavy, like someone had dropped a brick straight into my gut. It didn’t move. It just sat there, dense and unyielding, dragging everything else down with it.
I tried to pull my eyes away.
I couldn’t even blink.
They stayed fixed on him, locked in place while my brain scrambled, grabbing at details, forcing them to line up.
The more I stared at him, the more everything else started to fall away.
The age difference didn’t matter.
The missing mustache didn’t matter.
Time hadn’t changed the way he looked at people.
“Wh—who is that?” I heard myself ask, but my voice sounded wrong even to my own ears.
“William Kellerman. P.E. He resigned after the fire.”
Henry’s voice touched my ears, but I wasn’t sure I was hearing him.
Not really.
Air wouldn’t sit right in my lungs. My chest pulled too far open, stretching past the point it was meant to.
“No. That’s—” I pressed my finger into the page until it hurt. “That’s Otto.”
Henry moved fast enough that I felt it first. One hand braced my jaw, the other steady at the back of my neck.
He was right there, but he wasn't close enough.
There was a layer between us I couldn’t push through, a thin, buzzing static under my skin that made his touch feel distant, dulled out by the panic clawing its way up my throat.
A small, broken sound slipped out of me.
His thumb dragged lightly along my jaw, nails catching just enough to sting—just enough to pull me back into my body.
“Baby,” he beckoned. “Look at me.”
I tried.
My eyes dragged to his, but they kept slipping, wanting to go back, to check again, to make sure I wasn’t…
“Henry,” I choked. “Th—that’s Otto. I know it is. That’s him. That’s—”
“Breathe, Rabbit.”
“I am.”
“You’re not,” he cut in, his thumb pressing harder under my jaw, grounding. “Try again.”
I turned my head on instinct, trying to drag in a breath like he told me to.
Right.
Because that was helpful.
Did he know what it felt like to be told to breathe when your body had already decided it wasn’t doing that correctly anymore? It was like telling water not to be wet.
My lungs weren’t cooperating.
They were stuck somewhere halfway, pulling air in just enough to keep me upright but not enough to settle anything.
“You can do it, baby.”
It scraped going in, my chest tightening around it instead of opening. There was a dull ache building right behind my sternum, spreading outward.
Sweat prickled along the back of my neck, my hands unsteady, fingers not quite doing what I told them to.
Another breath—if you could even call it that—hitched and stalled, and I swallowed hard against the nausea creeping up the back of my throat, my stomach rolling like it was trying to reject the entire situation.
For fuck’s sake.
I forced air down my throat, deeper this time, holding it because I did not trust my body not to waste it the second I let go.
“Okay,” I gasped. “Okay.”
“Good boy. Now, tell me what you saw.”
“It’s—” My words tripped over each other as they came out. “It’s Otto— or William—or whoever the fuck he is—”
“The neighbor?”
“Yes.” I nodded too fast, my vision still lagging a half-second behind everything. “Yes, the neighbor, the fucking neighbor. The guy who flirts with my mom. The one who fixed our sink, who—who waved at me every morning like he—”
Jesus Christ.
“He drove me to school, Henry. For four years. I sat in his car. I—”
My stomach lurched.
I swallowed against it, shaking my head, trying to force the pieces into place.
“He doesn’t have a mustache,” I said, grasping at it like it mattered. “And he’s younger there, but that’s him. I swear to you, that’s him.”
I looked at Henry, panic climbing again.
“Why is his name different?”