Total pages in book: 181
Estimated words: 181613 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 908(@200wpm)___ 726(@250wpm)___ 605(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 181613 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 908(@200wpm)___ 726(@250wpm)___ 605(@300wpm)
I shake my head.
It can’t be him.
It can’t be because that means all those filthy fingers, all that kinky fuckery, all those orgasms and all those kisses … were his.
Oh God.
I drop the knife in my hand. “No.”
“Fine, you don’t believe me? Then watch what he did to your half sister,” Grey growls, pulling out his phone.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Levi hisses, but Apollo keeps him locked in place.
“Let’s see what he’s got then,” Apollo says.
Grey opens a file and plays a video, and I stare in abject horror at the footage taken on the night of Mavis’s death. Right there during the scene of the crime, when Levi and Mavis were near the rim where we used to jump.
But the video is shot from the woods where I could’ve sworn I saw those two eyes flashing that night.
“You were there,” I murmur as I glance at Grey.
“Keep watching,” he replies. “Look at what he did.”
“Turn. That. Off,” Levi says through gritted teeth.
“Or what?” Grey taunts. “You’ve already made her hate us all. I warned you what would happen. Might as well give her the full fucking truth of what transpired.”
But all I can focus on is the video on his screen, replaying that night from an angle I’d never seen during a moment I was still fast asleep.
Levi grabs Mavis’s hand and dashes toward the rim with her. She beats him to the ledge, but when the moment comes when they jump, he abruptly stops, releasing her hand in the midst of her jump, and it causes her to lose her footing.
I slam my hand in front of my mouth, seeing my own half sister fall to her death from a distance.
A deafening silence follows the thud, while Levi hovers over the ledge like a ghost, haunted by the memory of a jump he never made.
He didn’t push her.
She fell because he let go.
And when I look up and look into the eyes of the boy who’s been haunting my soul instead, something in his eyes breaks.
Ghost
I was never supposed to exist.
All those years of pining for a girl who barely acknowledged my existence chipped away at my sanity. I never understood why she pulled away. Why our friendship eroded to merely small talk. The older we grew, the more withdrawn she became, as if something intangible drove a wedge between us.
But when Mavis Rivera died … a piece of me died with her, and along with it my will to exist. Mavis was Aspen’s heart, and I destroyed it.
Guilt ate me up alive.
There was nothing left except the widening chasm between us. A chasm I’d created by accident.
It was all an accident.
“I never wanted her to die,” I mutter.
I’ve lost.
I’ve lost it all.
This was my legacy. My only chance to do all the things I wanted to do before it all fell apart. Every demented, fucked-up fantasy I’d kept buried deep inside, every inch of my depravity, my unending lust for her, I let it all out through this mask.
I lied and lied until even I didn’t know who I was anymore. I left my own heart somewhere down there in the deep end and destroyed her existence inside me.
All that was left was the hungry monster … and I wanted her addicted. Addicted to the pain, the sick obsession of a phantom, a ghost of her past, of a life we could never have.
She was never supposed to find out.
Never.
But she played the game so well, and I couldn’t be prouder of my little firefly.
I jerk free of Apollo’s and Grey’s grip and pull away, even though her burning gaze is still upon me, still tearing me apart from limb to limb.
But it won’t matter anymore.
It’s done now.
It’s over.
This is the end.
Apollo
“Levi!” I shout as he rushes away. “Goddammit. Finally, he comes clean, and now he’s gone.”
“Let him go,” Grey growls. “He’s done enough damage.”
Two thuds make me turn away from my cousin running out of the cemetery. Aspen’s knees are on the muddy ground, her eyes glossy and unfocused, like she’s no longer here.
Grey goes to his knees in front of her and grabs her, slowly pulling her into his embrace. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for everything.”
“I don’t understand,” she mutters, completely out of it.
In the distance, a motorcycle races off.
But then she suddenly locks eyes with me. “Wait … you knew?”
“It wasn’t hard to put two and two together when he’s part of my society, Freckles,” I say.
“You should’ve told me,” she says.
I raise a brow. “Do you think you would’ve believed me?”
She frowns, but doesn’t deny it. We both know that the truth is far harder to accept than a few lies, and when the lies become so deep that they leave scars when revealed, there is no way out, no way to stop them from spiraling out of control.