39. Hades #2
She rubs both hands over her face. “How far?”
“Not far.”
“Hades.”
“About a twenty-minute walk depending on which route you take.”
Her hands drop. “You were twenty minutes away?”
“Yes.”
“For weeks?”
“Yes.”
She stares at me like she's reconsidering every decision she's made since meeting me.
“Wilder lives there too?”
“Yes.”
She looks toward the window. Then back at me.
“If I go there, you're telling me everything.”
“Yes.”
“No deciding something isn't relevant.”
“I won’t.”
“No protecting me.”
“No. You’ll hear it.”
“No deciding I don't need to know.”
“I’ll tell you all the fucking horrific details. I won’t leave anything out.”
Her eyes narrow. “No fucking loopholes.”
That one nearly makes me smile. “No loopholes.”
She watches me for several seconds. Then she reaches for her purse.
My heart starts beating harder. “Follow me.”
She stares at me a moment, then nods. “I’m following you.” Her lips twitch. “This time.”
I stare at her.
Jesus fucking Christ. This woman gets me all fired up.
“Okay.”
She stands. I do too.
She looks at me. “I haven't forgiven you.”
“I know.”
“I don't know if I'm going to.”
“I understand.”
“This doesn't mean we're getting back together.”
“We were together?”
Her eyes narrow.
Fuck.
“Not the time for jokes?”
“Definitely not the fucking time.”
I nod. “Understood.”
She starts toward the door.
I stay where I am.
Presley reaches it before she realizes I'm not beside her.
She turns. “What are you doing?”
“Waiting.”
“For what?”
“For you to tell me.”
Something passes over her face. Then she pushes open the door.
“Come on.”
Only then do I move.
Presley parks behind my truck.
For weeks, I've crossed the woods to get to her. Tonight, she crosses the distance to me.
I stand beside my truck while she gets out.
She looks at the cabin, then at me. “This is where you've been?”
“Yes.”
She walks toward the porch. I follow.
At the door, she waits for me. I unlock it.
Wilder isn't here. I made sure of that before I left.
Presley steps inside. Her eyes move over everything.
The battered furniture. The repairs I've made. The romance novel still sitting on the table.
She walks over to it. Her fingers brush the cover. “You kept it.”
“Yes.” I close the door, but don’t lock it.
Presley notices that too.
“You can leave whenever you want.”
Her throat moves. “Tell me.”
No easing into it. No more delays.
So I give her the truth.
“My dad died when I was eight.”
She goes still.
“Wilder was six. Mom never really recovered.”
I lean against the wall because I don't trust myself to sit.
“She loved us. I know she did. But after Dad died, everything became hard. Money. The house. Raising us. She worked constantly and still barely kept us afloat.”
Presley doesn't interrupt.
“When I was eleven, she met Grant.” Even saying his name makes something ugly move through me.
“He was charming at first. Helpful. Fixed shit around the house. Bought groceries. Made Mom laugh.” I stare past Presley. “I hated him almost immediately.”
“Why?”
“I saw things she didn't.”
Little things. A look when Mom disagreed with him. The way his smile disappeared when nobody else was watching. The first time he squeezed her arm hard enough to make her wince and then laughed like he'd been playing.
“Cracks,” I say. “That's all they were at first.”
Until they weren't.
“The first time he hit her, I got between them.”
Presley's face changes. “How old were you?”
“Twelve.”
“Hades.”
“He hit me instead.”
Her eyes close briefly.
“I learned something that night.”
She looks at me. “What?”
“That if I could make him angry enough at me, sometimes he'd leave her alone.”
“Hades…”
“It worked.”
Not always. But enough.
“So I kept doing it.”
I tell her about the years after. About Wilder growing old enough to understand. Old enough to become another target.
About never knowing what version of Grant would come through the door.
About the drinking. Money disappearing. Late notices. Utilities threatening to shut off. Foreclosure notices appearing on the door while Grant insisted everything was fine.
She stares at me, horrified.
“Then Mom got sick. Pancreatic cancer.”
Presley's hand rises to her mouth.
“By then I was eighteen. I'd moved out.”
“You got away.”
“For a little while.”
“And Wilder?”
“I tried to take him.” My jaw tightens. “Mom wouldn't let me.”
She was wrong.
And I was wrong for leaving him there.
“Why?”
“She said he needed to stay with her. That Grant would never really hurt him.” I laugh bitterly. “She was wrong.”
I look down.
“I worked. Everything I made went toward Mom. Appointments. Treatment. Medication. Whatever she needed.”
“Grant didn't help?”
“No.” The word comes out hard. “He'd skip appointments. Say he couldn't afford something. Tell her the doctors were wasting her time.”
My hands curl into fists. “Eventually I couldn't afford my place and help her at the same time.
“So you moved back?”
“Yes.”
Back to the house I'd spent years trying to escape. Back under Grant's roof. Where Wilder still lived. Back into survival mode.
“Mom got worse.” I swallow. “Then she died.”
Presley's eyes shine.
I don't want sympathy. Not for this.
“After she died, I was trying to pay for the funeral. Trying to figure out how the fuck we were going to keep the house long enough to bury her without losing everything else.”
I look at Presley.
“And things stopped making sense.”
“What things?”
“The money.”
Dad hadn't left us rich. But he'd left something. Enough that the constant threats of foreclosure shouldn't have happened the way they did. Enough that Wilder and I should've had something when we became adults.
“So I started looking.”
Presley leans forward.
“And I found out Grant had taken it.”
Her face hardens.
“He stole your inheritance?”
“Mine and Wilder's.”
“What did he do with it?”
“Gambled.”
“Jesus.”
“He lost most of it.” I pause. “Then he got lucky.”
Her brow furrows. “What do you mean?”
“He won it back. And then some.”
Her face changes. “And he didn't tell you?”
“No.”
“He let your mother—”
“Yes.” I don’t let her finish. I can’t. Because that's the part that still makes my vision go red.
“He let Mom think we had nothing. Let me work myself into the fucking ground trying to pay for treatment. Let the bills pile up. Let Wilder live in a house with foreclosure notices stuck to the door.”
“Hades.”
“He had the money.” My voice goes quiet. “All that fucking time, he had it.”
I can still remember confronting him. The smell of alcohol. That smug smile. The things he said about Mom. About how pathetic she was. How expensive she became. How she would've died anyway.
Presley's face pales. “What did you do?”
I look directly into her eyes.
This is it. The part where I stop choosing which version of me she gets.
“I killed him.”
She doesn't move.
I continue before cowardice can find me. “It wasn't an accident.”
Her lips part.
“It wasn't a fight that went too far.” My heartbeat pounds in my ears. “I decided he was going to die.”
Presley stares at me.
“And then I made sure he did.”
Silence fills the cabin.
“What did Wilder do?”
Of course she asks that.
“He helped me afterward.”
Her face changes. “What do you mean?”
I sigh and run a hand through my hair. “He burned the house. Destroyed what was left.”
She gasps.
I keep going anyway. “Wilder always liked fire.” I glance toward the window. “Burning trash. Bonfires. Anything he could get away with.”
I look back at her. “That night, I put it to use.”
Presley is silent for so long I can hear the refrigerator humming.
“There was a body in the house when it burned?”
“Yes.”
“Grant’s body.”
“Yes.”
“And you planned it.”
“Yes.”
“Do you regret it?”
There are a hundred answers that would make me sound better. But I don't use any of them.
“No.”
Her eyes widen slightly.
“I regret what Wilder had to do.” I swallow. “I regret what my mother lived through. I regret not getting Wilder out sooner. I regret a lot of fucking things.”
My gaze stays locked on hers. “But killing Grant?” I shake my head. “No.”
I stand there, silently watching her.
I just revealed it all. The skeletons have been dragged from my closet for her to see.
Brutally honest.
She can walk out now. Leave and never come back.
Regret the day she met me.
Every instinct I have screams at me to stop her before she does.
But I don't.
She doesn’t say anything.
“I told you I'd give you everything.” My voice sounds rough. “That's everything.”
Presley stares at me. “Now what?”
“Now you decide.”