ALEC
My arms dropped by my sides, my eyes widening with tears as the pops echoed through my ears. Mom collapsed to the ground, a puddle of blood forming underneath her as the light left her eyes for good.
“You tried to kill my fucking sister?!” Oliver screamed, dropping the gun and snatching Mom’s corpse from the ground. He hurled her to the other side of the room, her blood splattering all over the white walls. “I fucking loved you, and you tried to kill her?!”
I stared at them in horror, not knowing what to feel. Oliver had loved her? Mom was dead. I could barely process what had just happened. But all I could think now was that Maddie was safe from the people who had tried to hurt her.
At the thought, I relaxed my shoulders and let out a low sigh. Maddie is safe.
While Oliver continued shouting at Mom’s corpse, I pulled back one of the accent chairs and slouched down into it, throwing my head back against the cushion, my nerves coming out in a belly laugh. I must’ve looked—and sounded—crazy, but I didn’t care.
If Mom had really been behind all of this, then had she planned my rape? Had she planned for it to happen again and wanted to watch? I had so many questions that I would never find the answers to now that she was gone.
I would have to live with the unanswered trauma.
But at least Maddie was safe.
Another laugh escaped my mouth. She was all I cared about.
After a couple more moments of letting this all sink in, after staring emptily at Mom’s paling body, I finally raised my gaze to Oliver, who paced around the room while running his hands through his hair.
“Go clean up,” I said to him. When he didn’t make a move toward the bathroom, I stood and gripped his shoulder. “Oliver, go clean up. Wash the blood off your hands and take a shower if you need it. It’s going to be okay.”
Tears welled in his eyes. “I thought … I thought she loved me.”
“She was using you,” I whispered. “She was using all of us.”
“Why?” he choked out. “Why’d she want to kill Maddie? Why would she do that?”
“I don’t know,” I said, nudging him toward the bathroom. “Go clean yourself up.”
A sob escaped his mouth, and he dropped his head. Then, suddenly, his arms came around my shoulders, and he pulled me into a hug. “I’m sorry for everything, Alec. I’m sorry I screwed up our relationship and yours with your parents.”
“You didn’t ruin anything,” I said even though he had.
But I didn’t want him to feel bad about this. I needed him to think clearly because I needed his help with our next steps.
How do I explain this to Dad? Should I hide her body? Burn it? Bury her? What happens next?
After another moment of clutching me hard, Oliver walked to the bathroom. As soon as the door closed, I let out another breath and stared down at Mom, who had three holes in her forehead, the blood seeping out of all of them.
“What’s going on here?” Dad asked, freezing.
I whipped around and stared at him through wide eyes. When did he get here?
“Alec?”
The gun sat at my feet, Mom’s body smeared with blood on the floor.
I stared at Dad, who wasn’t innocent in any of this either, and stepped back with my hands raised. “Dad, I … I can explain. I didn’t—”
Dad’s gaze dropped to Mom, his eyes widening. “Alec! What’d you do?!”
“Nothing!” I said, taking another step back. “I didn’t do anything.”
Within a moment, he crouched next to her and pulled her into his lap. “She’s dead!”
I continued to back up, my legs moving on their own until I hit the nearest wall. My heart and mind raced uncontrollably. I hadn’t planned on him returning home tonight, and I had completely forgotten about Mom’s stupid dinner.
What am I going to do? What can I say to him?
I had planned to kill Mom, but I couldn’t do it myself. Hell, I hadn’t even had the chance to do it before Oliver swiped that gun out of my hand and shot her dead.
“You killed her!” he sobbed.
“No, I didn’t,” I said, shaking my head. “I didn’t kill her.”
“Then, who did, Alec?” he growled, snapping his gaze to me, Mom against his chest.
I hated the way that he held her now because he hadn’t held her like that when she was alive in a long, long fucking time. If he had cared about her while she was living, he wouldn’t have slept around with other men. He would’ve broken up with her to respect her if he really did want to cheat.
Hot, angry tears burned my eyes. I balled my hands into tight fists by my sides. I hated him almost as much as I hated Mom and Piper. Dad didn’t give a fuck about his wife. This was a lie, a facade, shock.
Not love.
“Huh?” Dad shouted. “If you didn’t do it, then who did?”
Oliver walked out of the bathroom, wiping his bloody hands on a rag, his hair sticking up from how many times he had run his hand through it. Dad looked from him to me and then back, a bewildered expression crossing his face.
“You?” Dad asked in disbelief. “You did this?”
Oliver stared at him, then at Mom’s corpse, his jaw twitching.
“Call the police, Alec. We need to get justice for your mother.”
But when I hadn’t had the balls to murder my own mother, Oliver had. He had shot her to protect his sister and the woman I loved. And I couldn’t throw him under the bus. While we’d had a falling-out, he had still been there for me more than Dad ever had.
“Oliver, call Poison,” I started, staring in guilt at Dad.
“Screw Poison. We need the police!” Dad shouted, clutching his wife like he’d ever cared about her. He might have at one point, but he couldn’t love a woman that he never saw. He couldn’t love a woman who was now dead, one that he hadn’t cared about in life.
“Once you’re finished calling Poison, get the police on the phone.” I pressed my trembling lips together. “Tell them that we walked in on my father standing over my mother’s dead body with a gun in his hand.”
Dad snapped his gaze up to me. “Alec, you wouldn’t. You did this!”
While I didn’t believe in fate, this was the closest damn thing to it.
“You had a secret love affair with two guys from Redwood,” I whispered. “You didn’t love your wife anymore. You hadn’t loved her for years now. She found out about your affair, and you wanted to keep it a secret. You had to get rid of her, Dad.”
“Alec!” Dad shouted through tears. “You can’t do this to me! Nobody will believe you.”
“I believe him,” Oliver said, squeezing my shoulder. This time, it wasn’t to hold me back or to convince me to think through what I had planned to do with that gun. This time, it was to support me. “I fucking believe him.”