Chapter 30 OLIVIA
OLIVIA
My spine tingles with something unlike anything I've ever felt before. I want to run, I need to scream, but I can't. I’m stuck, trapped. It’s not like the dreams, but it feels like a nightmare.
I watch as Jensen lifts himself in front of me.
I can sense an entire shift in his demeanor. Like Jekyll and Hyde.
The person in front of me is not the man I’ve known all these years. The man I let myself get close to.
Jensen watches me and I can feel the hatred pouring from his eyes. He hates me, my pulse shatters in my neck when I realize that I might actually die tonight.
Alli starts to cry, or maybe she's been crying and I've just drowned her out under the thunder of my own heart. So this is who she was talking about. This is who instructed her to . . . what? What did he make her do besides dragging in Sage.
“Pl- please don’t do this to us,” she begs.
Jensen turns to her, the annoyance clear as day on his face.
"Oh, shut the fuck up, cunt. Stop having a fucking pity party for yourself. You only did what I asked because you thought it would save yourself from your guilt. But you said what you said, Alli. And you did what you did. And you deserve to be punished for it." My body stiffens when I hear the nature of his words, the tone of voice and the way he looks at her. It’s evidence that he’s gone crazy, that he’s changed.
But Alli doesn’t stop crying. Instead, her cries get louder and I try to warn her, try to get her attention somehow but with my hands bound and my mouth taped shut it’s no help. I can’t do anything but watch as Jen pulls a gun from his waist and doesn’t hesitate, shooting it right into Alli’s side.
I jump in horror, gasping as she falls to the floor. The sounds of both the bullet and the thud of her body dropping make my stomach sick. I don’t even hear her scream because the muffled sound of my bloodcurdling cry fills my ears like thunder, dry heaving against the tape on my mouth.
“Shh, shh. It’s okay, Liv. It’s okay,” Jensen coos, rushing to me and running his fingers over my cheek.
“She just wouldn’t shut up, you know?” His voice haunts me.
Nothing about it is comforting or relaxing.
Nothing about it is familiar. But I don’t want to piss him off.
I don’t know what he’s capable of doing, what he’s already done and why he wants me?
And then it hits me. The memory of when I first kissed him. The way he found me. The moment he must have witnessed. He had to have seen it. It’s why he was so calm. I blacked out when he found me, when he comforted me. He took advantage of that. And after all this time, he knew.
I let my body sag against the chair, feeling helpless as his finger drags against my skin.
“You know now, don’t you, Sunshine? You remember.” I want to scream. I want to ask him why. Why is he doing this?
I look over at Alli who lies next to the others.
I can’t do anything, say anything, as I watch my friend bleed out on the floor.
She groans in agony, holding her stomach where he shot her and I try to stay calm, but nothing about this situation warrants calm.
He's crazy, he's fucking crazy and I don't even really understand why.
Jensen stands up and I panic; nervous he’s going to shoot me next. He points his gun at me and I freeze, tears falling relentlessly down my face as I hear his voice twist from this feign calmness to a threatening and unforgiving tone.
“Now, you’re going to fucking listen, okay, Liv? I’m going to talk and I don’t want you to make fucking sound or I’ll shoot your pretty little face, got it?”
His warning terrifies me, hearing the tone in his voice like nothing I’ve ever known.
I nod frantically, eager to show him that I’ll cooperate.
I hold completely still. Jensen walks over to the old T.V that sits on top of a dresser nearby and he picks up the VHS next to it, sliding it into the VCR.
He grabs the remote, gun still pointed at me and flicks the T.V on.
“I have the best birthday present for you, Liv. I know how much you love scary movies, Liv. So let’s watch a new one, shall we? This one is called, The Assholes That Killed the Girl I Loved.”
I shiver as he steps aside, standing right next to me with the gun at my head.
But then he shifts and I only dare to watch him from my periphery as he reaches for Sage and forces him to sit up next to me, leaning him against the bed behind us.
He rips off his blindfold and Sage groans, looking at me with fear in his eyes.
But there’s something else there. Hope, like he thinks we’re going to be okay.
Then Jensen grabs Alli, doing the same thing, sitting her up right next to Sage. She cries, her breathing hoarse as he moves her. There’s so much blood that it makes me sick.
He kicks Broden, who doesn’t move. I've known he’s dead, but something sour forms in my throat when I realize just how fucking real this is.
“Shame he doesn’t get to see his starring role. He’s pretty much the reason we have a story to begin with,” Jensen says before returning to my side. And then, the movie begins.
The T.V displays a static video, and I have to squint my eyes through the burn of my tears to get a better look.
Dread lumps in my throat when I realize that this is the party.
“There’s no sound,” Jensen says enthusiastically. “So I hope you don’t mind the narration.”
I watch the camera moving through a sea of people in a dark, crowded room before it pans to a group of familiar faces. Tyre, Jett, and Broden.
They’re gathered around, laughing and smiling, throwing back drinks. But then, Seren enters the frame, with me close behind her.
My heart aches, seeing her smile that night.
But now that I think about it, I could tell that she was feeling a little off and with the knowledge I have of what she wrote in her journal, I know it’s because she was irritated with my brother.
With the back and forth they seemed to have been going through.
“Are you all paying attention?” Jen says as he waves his gun from me to the two who are struggling to even stay seated upright. “This is where the important part of the story begins.”
But I can’t seem to focus. My vision is blurred, my head is spinning, and I feel faint, like I might pass out. Adrenaline eats at me as I try to focus on the grainy video, watching as Broden steps away from the group he’s standing with and…
“Do you see that? He roofied her drink,” Jensen announces, narrating the video.
Broden analyzes the moment Seren isn’t looking before he slips something into her drink.
And right as she turns around, so does he, acting as if he didn’t do a damn thing.
My heart sinks knowing that, now, that’s what got me sick that night.
I drank from the same cup. But I only took a sip, she drank the whole thing.
Then there’s the smell of Broden’s rotting body permeating and suddenly I don’t feel so bad about it.
I squint my eyes when I watch Seren take a big drink of the liquor, and then her eye seems to catch on something, causing her to stop and hand her cup to me.
I take it, and then she leaves. That was the last time I saw her at the party.
I take the last drink of her cup and wandered off, I assume to find Trace.
I didn’t know why she left so suddenly, but now, as the video plays out in front of me, I know why.
She was following Declan.
“I never understood what she saw in him. I mean, sure, he liked her. Who didn’t.
But Declan was never going to be capable of handling a girl like Seren.
And look at her, she’s so love sick that she would do anything for attention.
Attention that I was willing to give her but she was so hung up on the star quarterback.
” Jensen’s voice rings wicked, deranged.
He’s salty and annoyed about what the video is showing.
But then the video pans over to a hallway where Seren enters a bedroom and not more than a few minutes later, Deck follows.
The camera walks in closer and my stomach drops when the camera man chances to open the door a crack. Deck and Seren are on the bed, he’s on top of her as they make out.
I turn my head. I don’t want to watch this. I don’t want to watch my brother in bed with my best friend. But then something hits me on the side of the head.
“Pay attention, Sunshine,” Jensen demands and I can see him reel back his gun. My ears ring and my eyes burn but I do my best to straighten up, feeling tears slide down my skin.
The video is too much. Decklan and Seren are now having sex.
I feel my heart racing knowing that the shaky hand behind the camera has to be Jensen.
And he’s fucking sick for doing this. For keeping this video.
For making me watch it. But more so, I realize that as Deck climbs off of Seren when he notices that she's losing consciousness, I know that I’m about to watch something even more sickening.
Jensen seems to push the door open and slides in as Decklan walks toward the bathroom in the room.
“I heard footsteps coming down the hall here. I didn’t want to get caught so I fancied myself a place in the closet instead.”
The video shows my brother coming back with a little cup of water and a towel.
Seren is laying half naked on the bed, eyes closed and her face looks drained of blood.
I watch as he smacks her face a few times, but she doesn’t respond so he goes back to the bathroom for something but when he comes back out, it’s too late.
Tyre and Jett are already stripping off their clothes, and when Deck seems to rush at them, yelling with concern on his face, Tyre shoves him back and my brother falls to the floor.