Chapter 13
LANEY
I admired her muscular legs as she slid into the backseat beside me. A weight that I had carried with me, that had felt like it was halfway fossilised, was finally lifted. Kenna might just about be the only person who could fully comprehend my experience. It filled my heart with an edge of confidence I previously lacked.
But as Neenan started the engine of the SUV and the church came into full view, I yelled. “Stop!”
They both looked at me with concern, but I clambered out the car, heading toward the church again. All my attention had been on myself. About Logan and me, and then about Kenna and me that I forgot who this day was truly for.
Tilly.
When I reached her casket, I fell to my knees. Everybody had left. They left her, alone in a cold church. That thought alone brought tears to my eyes.
Neenan and Kenna hung back by the entrance, although I could still feel their eyes on me.
“Oh Tilly,” my tears already morphed into sobs, “I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve it— you didn’t deserve me coming into your life like a threat. I was going to tell you about a girl the day you died. You would’ve loved to hear about it, but you’d still roll your eyes as if it were teenage melodrama.” I chuckled through my tears. “We all miss you. You even got your father to finally hug your mother. It was devastating. Truly I— My world is bleak— I just—loved you and I need you. My girl, please—I.”
I stood and went to lift the lid of the casket off.
“Please, don’t,” I heard behind me, but it was not loud enough to register fully in my brain. No, because the revealed sight before me filled my head with screaming. Tilly’s skin was almost translucently white, and her hair was scattered neatly around her face. I tucked a piece of it behind her ear—only the left side, like she always had it.
I cried again.
“I’m sorry.” I continued, lowering my voice to a whisper, she heard my every private thought in life, it was only right that in death she knew my thoughts were of her. “I miss you already and promise you will never be forgotten. Georgia was wonderfully strong, I just wanted you to know that. The beautiful girl will take on your life and brighten the world with it. And no one will hurt you again, I made sure of it.”
My thoughts turned dark as I remembered the feel of blood spray collecting on my hand and dripping to the floor. It felt so much like the tears that fell now. My next words struggled to form on my tongue, but I had to leave her with my deepest darkest secret. Like best friends do. I dropped a kiss to her chilled hair, and said, “I killed for you.”
Suddenly, anonymous hands guided me back to the car. The warm hand that caressed my back was the same as in that school bathroom all those years ago. I revelled in the contact as I ducked to sit in the backseat.
In a quick motion, I stopped Kenna from closing my car door, instead, I jumped up to give her a quick peck on the lips before I collapsed back into my seat.
It wasn’t the right moment. God, it wasn’t even the right day or week . Without using words, I needed to say, ‘thank you’, and for some idiotic reason I thought that was the way. The girl didn’t even like me. I’m only here to get her off, I’m sure. But I didn’t believe it. Her jacket was around my shoulders.
Yet, I knew nothing about her.
First name and surname, yes. Brute strength, sure. But her family? Her background? No. Her feelings? Even less. It irked me. As the car rumbled to life again, my thoughts became louder. It wasn’t just about information, it was about trust, and I had trusted her with my anxieties, my fears and feelings and she gave me…nothing.
I’d given much more than she gave and if I wanted to keep her in my life, she better earn her place. Too often have I rushed to fantasise about the end when I never even asked questions at the beginning. Intimacy wasn’t a shared experience, it was trust.
“ Poor girl. I’m sorry for your loss, she must’ve been—” Kenna tried to say.
“Where do you come from?” She wouldn’t earn my trust so easily. A saviour’s act fooled me once, but I’m not a fool twice. I won’t let myself. I needed to know something. Anything about her so that I wasn’t in an informational deficit.
Her eyebrows furrowed before she answered. “Bilham, South Yorkshire.”
“You don’t have the accent?” I challenged. There was something I didn’t all the way trust in her polished stature.
“I was homeschooled, and often confined to the needs of the family business. I didn’t get out much.”
“Homeschooled, really? Don’t lie to me.” I narrowed my eyes.
“I’m not, swear to God.” There was something clinical in her responses. Obtuse. She defended her lie.
“Who taught you then?”
“My mother when I was younger, my father as I got older.”
“What was your favourite subject in school?”
Her gaze darkened at that. “ History.” There was an ominous edge to the word.
“Okay, okay,” I stumbled, remembering and working all the information in my head. I couldn’t think on my feet. “You have siblings?”
“Brothers.”
“How many?”
“Two.” She unbuckled her seatbelt.
“They nice?”
“They’re brothers.”
“Hmm,” I hesitated, I didn’t know anything about that.
“I’m going to kiss...”
Huh? “Who?”
“You.”
Then, she pounced.