Chapter 50
Lily
I woke up with a lightness in my chest I hadn't felt in years, maybe decades, depending on how you counted time.
Everything that had happened the night before felt like a dream.
I had been able to save my brother from the path that would have destroyed him.
I had faced Oliver and walked away without blood on my hands.
Most importantly, I had chosen to be better than the person who had tormented us all those years ago.
We couldn't change other people's behaviors, but we could change how we reacted to them. We could decide to grow as people and be better, not because they deserved it, but because we deserved to become who we were meant to be.
And after seeing how Kyle had defended me, how he'd fought for me without hesitation, I knew Oliver wouldn't dare come near us again. The fear in his eyes when we left him on that street told me everything I needed to know.
All that was left now was to talk to Leo, to show him that life could still be beautiful no matter what secrets he carried. That there was nothing to be ashamed of because he would always be loved.
Things were going to get better for him. I would make sure of it.
I slipped out of bed and went to his room to check on him.
He was still asleep, just as he had been when I'd returned home last night.
The mental exhaustion of everything he'd been processing had clearly taken its toll, and I didn't blame him.
He'd been through more in the last twenty-four hours than most teenagers would ever feel.
Thankfully, my parents hadn't returned when I'd pulled into the driveway, so no one had noticed my extended absence. Everything was going to be okay.
After a long, hot shower that seemed to wash away the last remnants of fear and anger I'd been carrying, I made my way downstairs for some cereal. The only thing left now was figuring out how to get back to our timeline and hoping the changes we'd made hadn't disrupted our present too dramatically.
As long as my brother was free and had the chance to live the life he deserved, I was willing to face any consequences.
And I had Kyle by my side now. Really by my side, not just physically but emotionally. He had proven himself in ways I hadn't dared to hope for. Together, we could handle whatever came next.
Since I was the only one awake, I decided to take Bailey for a walk.
The morning air was crisp and clean, and the neighborhood was just beginning to stir with early risers heading to the church or walking their own dogs.
Bailey seemed to sense my improved mood, so he pushed me to take a longer walk than on other days.
We walked for nearly an hour, taking the long route through the park where children would soon be playing, past the coffee shop that wouldn't open for another hour, and around the entire perimeter of our neighborhood.
By the time we returned home, the sun was fully up.
I started thinking about plans for today, maybe getting some more sleep, getting ahead on some tasks, or watching a movie.
But as I approached our driveway, something made me stop short.
The car had a dent in the back bumper that definitely hadn't been there before.
"That's weird," I muttered to myself, walking closer to examine it.
My blood turned to ice when I saw what was mixed in with the twisted metal of the dent. Dark red stains that could only be one thing.
I ran into the house and grabbed a rag and a bucket of water from the kitchen. This couldn't be happening. I had been so careful. I hadn't hit anything, hadn't crashed into anyone. I had driven home slowly, cautiously, checking and double-checking every turn.
But somehow, there was blood in the car.
When I rushed back outside, Kyle was standing in front of the car, staring at the damage with an expression that made my stomach drop.
"I can explain," I said, my voice sounding very desperate. "It's not what you think."
My mind was racing through possibilities. Had I hit something and not realized it? Had someone else used the car? Had the damage been there all along, and I just hadn't noticed in the darkness?
But even as I tried to rationalize it, a terrible certainty was settling in my chest. Someone had used this car to hurt someone. And given everything that had happened last night, there was only one person it could have been used against.
"I don't know where this came from," I continued, hating how panicked I sounded. "I swear I had nothing to do with it. I drove straight home after I left your house. I was careful, I—"
"I know," he said. "But we need to talk. Something terrible happened."
He didn't need to tell me what. I could see it in his eyes.
Oliver was dead.
Kyle helped me clean the car while I tried to process what this meant for us.
We scrubbed away the blood and put the rags in the washing machine, running a hot cycle that would hopefully eliminate any forensic evidence.
The dent would still be a problem if police came investigating, but without bloodstains, we could claim it had happened in a parking lot or while backing out of a tight space.
When we finished, we went up to my room, where I picked up my phone, which I had left on the nightstand, and saw dozens of missed calls and messages from classmates, all sharing different versions of the same devastating news.
I still couldn't wrap my head around it. Oliver was dead. After everything we'd done to avoid this exact outcome, somehow we'd ended up in the same place anyway.
"Do you know what happened?" I asked, sitting in my bed.
Kyle stood by the window, looking out at the street. He seemed worried, conflicted, like he knew something he didn't want to tell me. Or maybe he wanted to believe me, but the evidence was making it difficult to do so.
The thought that he might doubt me again, that we might have to go through the same heartbreak, made my chest tighten with panic. So nerves made me start talking.
"I'm sorry I left your house without telling you," I said, needing to fill the silence. "I didn't want my parents to come home and find the car missing. Plus, I'd left Leo alone, and after everything that happened, I was afraid he might try to hurt himself while I wasn't there to stop him."
He remained quiet, his back still turned to me.
"Please say something," I whispered. "Anything. I can't stand not knowing what you're thinking."
"Do you remember what happened the first time?"
Of course I did. Despite wanting to forget it over and over again, I could clearly remember the worst night of my life.
"I went to Oliver's house, we had a fight, he attacked me, and—" the words were barely coming out.
I didn't want to say it out loud. But I mustered up all the courage I had, and finally, the words came out, "he sexually assaulted me. "
Kyle closed his eyes. As if he couldn't believe what he'd heard, or as if the words he'd said had hurt him as much as they had me. I didn't blame him; Oliver had been his friend, and knowing that he'd done this was hard to hear. "And then?" Kyle pressed.
"And then I got in the driver's seat while he was standing on the street smoking, and I crashed into him.
I stood there for a few seconds watching him try to get up, glaring at me, and then I just sped off, left him there to bleed out or something.
.. But it wasn't me this time, I swear, I didn't kill Oliver, I came here to my house as soon as I left yours. "
Finally, he turned around to face me fully. "I know it wasn't you, Lily. Someone else did it after we left."
I blinked, certain I'd misheard. "What?"
"Yes, and I knew it thanks to this." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a phone.
"Whose phone is this?"
"That's Oliver's phone. The teacher confiscated it in class the Monday after the party."
My mind was struggling to make the connections he was obviously seeing clearly.
"Florece gave it to me after finding them in a compromising situation," he explained. "I couldn't crack the password at first, but after I found out Oliver was dead, I knew we needed evidence for what was about to happen."
I stared at him, trying to process what he was saying.
"My experience with software security from our present timeline came in handy. I remembered there were vulnerabilities in older operating systems that let me access the phone's gallery without knowing the password."
"And what did you find?"
"That Oliver and Florence were having an affair. And he recorded them several times without her knowing. I had seen them together in the classroom, but I thought it was nothing more than kissing until I saw the contents of the cell phone."
"She was sleeping with a student," I said, the full implications sinking in.
"And that's not all," Kyle continued. "Since I suspected you were going to Oliver's house on Saturday, I put a camera in my car before I went there. I wanted to have evidence that anything you did was in self-defense."
"You did what?" I said, a little mad about his confession, but also proud of him for thinking about that. "You were planning to film me committing a crime?"
He rolled his eyes, but kept talking. "My car stayed in front of Oliver's house all night because we left in your parents' vehicle, so I recorded absolutely everything after we left."
My heart stopped. "So we have everything that happened recorded."
"Yup," he responded. “Half an hour after we left, Florence showed up. I guess Oliver had been threatening her about their relationship, probably demanding something, or he’d expose them both. But they just ended up making out in her car. When he finally got out and let her go, Brandy went over to him.” Kyle’s voice was controlled, but I could see the tension in his shoulders.
“Brandy? What was Brandy doing there?”
“She was there before I even got here; she’d been planning to attack him, from what I could see in her threatening messages on this phone.
She was the one who killed him by running him over with her car, Lily.
You probably didn’t finish him off enough the first time.
You were never responsible for Oliver’s death. ”
The room seemed to spin around me. All these years, all this guilt, all the self-hatred and sleepless nights, and it had never been me at all.
I remember seeing him on the ground when I left that night, looking at me with disdain.
But he was alive. I thought I'd hurt him enough to be dead, but I never realized I didn't actually hit him as hard as I thought.
I started to think about why she would do something like that.
Kill a person because she was jealous. Would she have been that desperate?
I couldn't even judge her; I was going to do practically the same thing, only mine was defensive and accidental.
I didn't even mean to hit him. Which makes me wonder…
"Do you think that happened too in our timeline?"
"I'm sure about it. You never killed anyone, Lily. Brandy did it. Probably after seeing Oliver choose everyone but her, she lost control. She was the one who let Leo take the blame rather than face the consequences of her own actions."
I felt like I was floating outside my body, watching this conversation happen to someone else. The weight I'd carried for so long, the guilt that had shaped every decision I'd made, the reason I'd never been able to trust myself or anyone else, it was all based on a lie.
"I'm not a murderer," I whispered.
"You never were." Kyle sat beside me and pulled me into his arms. "You were just a scared kid who thought she'd done something terrible, and a predator used that fear to protect herself."
I buried my face against his shoulder and let myself cry, not the desperate, panicked tears I'd shed so many times before, but tears of relief. Of vindication, of a decade's worth of self-condemnation finally lifting from my shoulders.
"What do we do now?" I asked when I could speak again.
"I'm going to make copies of everything, the video, the photos from Oliver's phone, all of it. Then we're going to the police to make sure Brandy can't hurt anyone else the way she hurt your family."
"And finally get justice." For the first time since we'd been sent back, I felt like we were exactly where we were supposed to be.
"And finally get justice," he repeated, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. "For Leo. For you. For all of us."