Chapter Thirty-Seven
Now
It was so quiet, though I could feel it in the air; the weight of the confession, after all this time, lifted from me, swirling with the impending storm.
I glanced down at the dirt, the flowers—planted by my mother, I knew now, in some quiet repentance—tethering me to the ground, keeping me afloat. Beside me, Rig was out cold.
“I started the fire. It was all my fault, but—”
Thunder boomed throughout the forest, and Margo’s sneer was vicious with hatred and a dangerous promise. She took a single step toward me—and then, her features went slack. She dropped to the earth like a lead weight, and I looked around wildly, but the woods were quiet now, and unnaturally still.
Then, I saw him. Wes, on the other side of the clearing. He’d heard our screams and come running. Relief flooded me, like nothing I’d ever felt. “Wes, thank God—please, get someone, get Chels, we need to call nine-one-one right now, there’s something wrong with…”
My words tapered off when I realized he wasn’t moving toward Margo, toward any of us. It may have been the shadows playing tricks on me, but I thought he might have been smiling. My arms prickled with an unnamed fear, making me shiver.
And then I realized, what my body had sensed before my brain had caught up. He was holding a gun of his own.
“Wes?” I said again, less confident now. A new thought sliced through me, violent and without warning, like steel in my gut. “Was that—did you—did you shoot her?” When he didn’t answer, I made myself ask, “Did you follow Margo out here?”
He was crossing toward me now. So slow. So unbothered. Like we had all the time in the world.
“No. I followed you.”
His words and expression were calm. Entirely at ease. He was passing the gun back and forth between his hands like it was a football. But I was sure I could see it in his eyes—excitement. Then his mouth quirked up, and he laughed. He actually laughed.
He was happy. How was he happy? Wes had just shot Margo, and he was happy about it. Nothing made sense, and I felt dizzy. I had my knees in the dirt, but I reached around blindly, desperate for something to lean on.
“What’s going on? What are you doing?”
Margo gasped, then went still. Tears blurred my vision, and I crawled over Winona’s desecrated grave to the sound of her voice, scrabbling through the dirt.
“You’re all right,” came Wes’s voice, much closer now, and a chill shot up my spine. “Stand up. You’re just fine. Don’t worry, I’ve got you.”
All I wanted was to get to Margo, feel her pulse. I didn’t know where he’d hit her—she might be dying. She might be dead.
I stood up slowly, on shaky legs, feeling the heat of Wes’s gaze on the side of my face, sensing the gun hanging at his side.
He took another step, and I flinched, almost falling back again. But his focus was on Margo now, too. He pressed the toe of his shoe into her back, and I stiffened. She stayed quiet, motionless, as he walked around her slowly, like a predator assessing his prey.
After an unbearable few moments, his chin dipped in a nod. “This actually makes things much easier.”
“What?” I whispered. “Makes what easier?”
“It’s perfect, actually. You did great. Here’s what happened: I heard you scream and ran to find you.
Margo had just attacked Rig. You tried to stop her, but you couldn’t.
She was having some kind of breakdown. I got here just in time, and I shot her.
Subdued her, so she couldn’t hurt you. Makes all the sense in the world.
” He gave me a crooked grin. “Don’t worry.
I protected you then, and I will again now. ”
All I could hear was the steady drumbeat of my pulse, the cicadas singing.
“Then? What do you mean—from what?”
He took a step closer to me, crowding me against the tree at the very edge of the bluffs. My back bumped uncomfortably into the trunk.
“All of it. I saw you that night, in the woods. I saw you drop the lighter.”
My jaw trembled, but I made myself keep my eyes on him. “You knew? Why didn’t you say anything, why didn’t you—”
“Didn’t you read my letter?”
“What?”
Wes was so close now, I could smell the cool mint of his breath.
“My email. On the anniversary of the fire. You didn’t read it?” There was a sour note of surprise laced in his words. His smile faltered.
You fucking idiot, I said in my head. Because of course I hadn’t read it.
“What did it say, Wes?” I said his name on a choke.
“I told you that it didn’t matter. I love you, and you love me, and that I did it all for you.
That I would be here, waiting when you were ready to come back.
” He pulled gently on a strand of hair that had whipped across my face, tucking it back behind my ear.
“They all said you wouldn’t come back. But I knew. I’ve always known.”
My stomach lurched at the touch of his fingers on my face. “What are you— Wait, you did what for me?”
“I protected you,” he said again. “From her.”
And that’s when I understood. When the awful, bitter truth finally surged through me like lightning.
“No,” I said through a sob. “No. Please.”
Wes raised his hand, and I flinched, but he only put it on the tree beside my head, using it as leverage to lean closer. “I heard you talking to Chelsea that night, at the beach. I heard you tell her that you were leaving. That Steph was taking you away.”
I shook my hand, frantic and claustrophobic. I could feel his hot breath burning my cheek. “She wasn’t taking me away. It was my choice.”
He wasn’t listening. No, he was only gathering steam. “So when you took off after that bitch in the woods, I followed you. I just wanted to talk. To set you straight. She brainwashed you, manipulated you into thinking there was something better out there. But you belong here, with me.”
Icy fear wrapped around me, nearly suffocating me. I had heard someone that night, behind me in the woods. A different Phantom.
That had been my fatal mistake. Believing that I had control of the problem. That it was Steph alone I needed to keep my eye on. That summer, I’d hardly thought of Wes at all. But he’d been thinking about me. Watching me.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Why didn’t you?” he countered. “I saw you jump, when the lightning struck. I stumbled back, and I knew you heard me. I didn’t want to scare you. But then you pulled out the lighter. I was going to warn you. But then—well, you know what happened next.
“The woods were on fire, there was smoke everywhere, and I couldn’t see you at all. I called your name, but you’d disappeared, and I was about to run back to the beach to look for you. To save you. But that’s when I saw her.”
The darkness that flickered across Wes’s face was unlike anything I’d ever seen before.
“She was stumbling around in the woods. Drunk and pathetic. That’s when I had the idea. I knew what I had to do.”
The tears were streaming from my face, dripping onto my shirt. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.
“She was going to ruin everything. Ruin you. All of our plans. Everything your family built, everything we were going to build together. But I made it fast. In the end, it really wasn’t so bad.
Not like it could have been. She died quickly.
So quickly that she probably didn’t even feel it.
Nothing like dying from a fire. It was more of a mercy than anything. ”
And then over Wes’s shoulder, I saw Margo move. Just a fraction of an inch. I forced myself to keep my eyes on him. I had to keep him talking, even if every cell in my body was demanding that I push him away and run like hell.
“But I left anyway. You didn’t stop me from leaving.” My breath hitched. “I’m still ruined.”
A slight dip of his head, as if in agreement. “That’s what you have me for, Greer. Don’t you get it? You’re so—naive. You’re too trusting. I protected you from her, and from him, and you still left.”
I blinked at him, tears clouding my vision at the corners. “What do you mean, you protected me from him?”
He clicked his tongue, frustrated now. “It was embarrassing, really. How obsessed you were. I couldn’t believe you actually broke up with me for some loser like Trevor fucking Townsend.
It was such a cliché, wasn’t it? Misguided girl breaks up with the love of her life, chasing the shiny object that will only hurt her.
And that’s exactly what happened, isn’t it? He hurt you.”
“I didn’t break up with you for Trevor,” I said, because I was too horrified to say anything else.
“He had nothing going for him,” he said, ignoring me. “I did everything I could to make you see that. He wasn’t cut out for this. For you.”
“What are you saying? What do you mean you…”
And then the realization slammed into me, so staggering my knees almost buckled. Everything strange that happened down at the waterfront that summer—the canoes, the life jackets. Steph had been insistent that it hadn’t been her who’d done those things.
Back then, I didn’t know what to believe. But now I understood. About that, at least, she’d been telling the truth.
“It was you? You were the one who…tried to drown those little girls?”
He shook his head, impatient now. “No one drowned. I was just trying to show you that he wasn’t good enough for you.
He sunk his claws in you, and I had to step in.
Show you his true colors. He’s careless, Greer.
Careless with Dread’s Cove, and careless with you.
He never could have taken care of you the way I did. Don’t you get that?”
He laughed, and it was tinged with a mania that made my stomach clench.
“And then, well, when your mom decided to close early, I felt bad—really, I did. But it was for the best. Trevor would finally have to pack it up and leave, and things would go back to normal. We could finally go back to normal.”
A dark cloud settled behind his eyes. “Even though I took care of everything, you left anyway.” He gave me a blazing look. “But I forgive you. You came back, and that’s all that matters.”
Panic slithered up my spine, but I made myself hold his stare.
Behind him, Margo was trying to stand, much too slowly.
I groped in the dark for another question, anything to drag this out.
“So then why all those messages? YOU WILL PAY, breaking into my cabin? LEAVE, BITCH? Were you just trying to fuck with me?”
He furrowed his brow, and I saw the smallest glimpse of uncertainty pass over his features.
“That wasn’t me. Why would I try to scare you off?
” He ran a light finger over the shell of my ear, down my jaw, before resting his hand around the base of my throat.
“Everything is perfect now. We can get rid of Margo. We’ll say she was overwhelmed by all her feelings of being back here, that she couldn’t handle the grief of remembering her friend’s tragic death. She lost her mind.”
For the length of a heartbeat, I actually recognized him. I thought of a hundred nights all at once, lying in the grass, planning our futures together. My head resting on his chest, his fingers laced in my hair. But it was sour now, stale. Rotten to the core.
“What about Chelsea?” I asked wildly, just to keep him talking.
“What about her?”
“I mean—aren’t you guys together? Nadine said—”
He laughed, the sound low and cruel. “No. Of course not. It’s always been you. And now, we can finally be together,” he crooned. I couldn’t stop it; I turned my head and heaved, his hot breath on my face making me nauseated. “The way it was supposed to be.”
His hand moved slowly down the front of my body like a caress until he had one finger pressed into my sternum. For a moment, he didn’t move. Only his eyes flickered back and forth across the words on my T-shirt: Powell’s Fly-Fishing. Boulder, CO.
“This is his,” he said, so quietly I could hardly hear him through the press of the rain. I stiffened, my back going ramrod straight. I was wearing the shirt I’d put on this morning in Trevor’s room, in lieu of my own. The one I’d thrown on again without thinking after my nap.
We stared at each other for a long, awful moment. Then his hands were both around my throat again, crushing my windpipe.
I tried to push him away, but he was too strong. “I did all of this for you, and this is how you thank me?” The world began to go out of focus. His grip only grew tighter.
My hands were scrabbling at him, but I could feel my strength slipping away. “Please,” I garbled through broken breaths. “I didn’t—it’s not his.”
I couldn’t see Margo anymore; I couldn’t see anything. I just had to hope—with everything I had left—that she was there.
That she would end this.
“It’s you and me,” I forced out, with all the air I could manage, and he loosened his grip, just barely. But it was enough.
Something stirred in the depths, and I saw the Wes I knew for another fleeting second. It gave me the will to lift my own hand, slowly, so that he could track the motion, and raise it just enough to graze his chin.
When he leaned into my touch, I knew I had him. His hands fell away like he’d just been waiting for the magic words. For our long-lost promise, said now like an oath.
“It’s you and me,” I breathed again, quiet enough that he had to lean in even closer, our faces now inches apart. “It always has been. I’m so sorry. I haven’t done enough to show you. But I will. Let me show you how much I love you, Wes.”
He pressed his forehead to mine, both of ours sticky with rain and sweat, and I made myself finish my final performance. The best of my life. I didn’t pull away, even though every part of me was screaming, RUN. ESCAPE. DANGER.
Instead, I pressed my lips to his, just as Margo pulled the trigger.
And then he fell.