He’d go into full-on protective mode, from Labrador to Rottweiler, and try to drag me away from the cold-blooded murderer. Maybe he’d be right to, but I can’t believe that. I can't give up on Landon just yet.
“I can't run,” I finish. “Steve, I know you’re upset with me. I’m sorry we lied. We were seriously just riding on this high of a new thing and not thinking. It wasn’t that we didn’t trust you, we were just drunk on ourselves. Being young and stupid and wrapped up in each other. I know you're looking out for me. I know what Landon is, and how hard it is dealing with him. But you’ve got to let me decide this for myself.”
Steve just watches me in silence, his brows knit together, his eyes dark with worry. I feel like he’s still seeing the girl I used to be, awkward and nerdy and always hiding behind his status as that popular football player everyone loved for his easy nature. He’s always been my buffer, deflecting so much of the cruelty people hurled my way.
But I can’t hide behind him anymore.
I need to handle Landon Strauss myself.
And it’s then I realize I can’t be gone when he comes home.
No matter how much I want to run away. I told him he couldn’t chase me off, and I’d meant that as a promise. Now, I have to fulfill it.
I won't be yet another person who lets Landon down, when so many have before.
Especially when he feels like he’s let himself down plenty.
Steve watches me with his eyes dark and haunted and sorrowful, a low sigh escaping his lungs. “Damn. Guess I can’t change your mind, then?”
I shake my head. “No. I...” I bite my lip. “Maybe you should go. I've said enough. Agree to disagree, and I don’t want to fight anymore. I’m sorry we lied, but you had no right to come barging in like that, either. We’re adults. What happens between us is between us, you know.”
I know it’s cold. But I need to shut this conversation down or I’m going to break and lose my resolve.
And if I break in front of Steve, he’ll never let up. He'll try to convince me to leave with him, get out, while the going is good.
He just stares at me, his gaze oddly flat, though it’s not hard to see he’s still hurt. It’s not hard to see that he can tell, too, that I hurt him on purpose to push him back to the other side of the invisible boundary of thorns around me.
What the hell am I doing?
Maybe Landon and I really are right for each other.
Sometimes, I’m more like him than I want to admit.
Steve shrugs, slipping off the barstool, moving slowly, like he’s nursing an injury. “Whatever,” he says, voice quiet and empty. “I’ll go, sis. It's your life. If that’s how you want to be about it, fine. But be careful, Kenna. You can’t trust Landon.”
“You can’t trust Landon. Maybe I can.” I shake my head. “I don’t understand how you can have so little faith in him. How would you feel if it was our father killed?”
“Look, I loved the hell out of Micah Strauss like a second dad myself. You don’t see me acting like Landon.”
“You have no freaking reason to beat yourself up!” I flare. “Landon does. He’s been carrying that inside him for so long. I saw Micah right before he was killed. So did Landon. When those men rushed him and his crew into their cars and –”
“What?” Steve stills, his blank expression turning bewildered. “What're you talking about, Kenna? Micah was alone when he died. It was in all the papers. Police report confirmed it, I remember.”
I blink. “But I remember. All those black cars. It was his whole team, a bunch of men in suits. They went rushing out. I watched them through the window as they pulled out of the driveway, and I remember seeing Landon standing in the door of their house. And then...and then no one saw Micah again. Not until they found his body.”
Steve blinks. “You're sure you aren’t mixing that up with one of your stories?”
“That’s cold, Steve.” My ears burn; my jaw sets tight. “Screw you. I know what I saw.”
“If you say so.” He holds his hands up. “Jesus, I’m not starting a new fight with you when we’re still not done with the old one. Can't change what happened years ago, anyway.”
“Maybe we're not done with the fight, but I think I’m done talking to you right now.”
He sighs, shoulders sagging. “Yeah. Sure. Just...”
“Just what?”
But Steve only shakes his head mournfully. “I’ll talk to you later, Kenna. Maybe when we’re both ready to forgive each other for being jackasses.”
I don’t say anything. I feel too messy right now, and he’s right.
We're both being jackasses. Both too spiky, too defensive, just now.
But I have to look away, because I can’t stand to watch my brother walk away the same way Landon did.
For the longest time, I stay there. Curled up on the barstool, propping my feet against the edge and hugging my legs to my chest.
I can't shake the last bit of our conversation.
Digging through my memories feels like trying to remember the plot of a book I read years ago.
I know what I saw, don't I? My memory’s pretty good, and I can still see it.
The strained, urgent look on Micah’s face. The grim men in suits around him, many of them in sunglasses that turned them all nearly identical, so that in my memory they’re all just copies of the same man.
Except one. I remember a scar on the back of his hand, that hand curled just a little too tight against Micah Strauss’ shoulder, guiding him into the back of a large black Escalade.
And Landon. Standing in the door helplessly, this darkness and confusion hovering over his brow, the first shadow of that dark seed waiting to take root. His father yelled something back at him. It had to be something like “stay!”
I hadn’t realized it then, but I was looking into the future then. Head-on at the man Landon would become.
I don’t feel right.
Something sticks with me, and it's making me sick. Just like something else, the story about the fire at the beach house doesn’t add up.
This mysterious pile of brush that shouldn’t have been there...but it’s somehow just an accidental fire.
The men who were with Micah Strauss, but who mysteriously were never mentioned anywhere.
Something vile chews away inside me, and I'm trying to find just the right place to click the edges together and make this little logic puzzle make sense.
I’m not sure what I’m thinking, but it’s ugly. Scary. Suspicious.
And I’m not sure what drives me outside into the fading sunlight, but I want to have another look at the beach house.
Obviously, I’m no forensics investigator. I don’t even write crime fiction.
But I’m learning to trust my instincts, and my instincts say we missed something about that fire.
My heart drums too loudly in my chest as I cross the grass to the beach house. My palms are tingling and sweaty. I think some part of me expects another shadowy figure to come crashing out of the trees, and this time there’ll be no Dallas here to sweep out of nowhere and save me.
My entire body hums, adrenaline drunk, on high alert.
The beach house is the same, with large tarps strung over the burned-out areas of the roof. I circle the house slowly, taking in the scorch marks up the sides, the bubbled and blistered paint. Where the worst of the damage is, an entire black-edged section of the house has been chewed away.
There’s a pile of ash near the wall, the remnants of a few twigs in it. Obviously poked and raked through by the firefighters.
It looks almost like the remnants of a bonfire, almost too perfectly placed.
Like it was set intentionally.
I can’t breathe. Every time I try, it kind of bounces off my lungs. My chest is tight, my pulse frantic, and I rub at my chest as I lift my head, looking around, wide-eyed and throwing sharp looks everywhere.
The beach house is almost fully surrounded by open space. So, how could someone get up here to set a fire without being seen? There’s only a small wall of bushes leading out into the trees and –
Wait. The bushes.
The bushes with their branches broken out in one place, as if someone had forced through them on a path from the trees to the house.