by Callie Rose
Mr. Bettencourt’s face tightens with something like embarrassment, and he suddenly won’t look at River, but the boy with slate-gray eyes and messy brown hair doesn’t spare a glance for his father either. He keeps his gaze on the detective, and he looks so calm, self-assured, and confident that my heart swells with a burst of pride.
His father may be ashamed. But River isn’t.
“I see.” Dunagan looks at the boy beside me again, and I wait to see some sign of pity or dismissal in his eyes. But the only thing I find is a bright gleam of interest. “And what did they say? I’m assuming they were unaware you could eavesdrop on them like that?”
“Yes, sir. I think so.” River takes a breath, speaking carefully like always. “Niles said Hollowell was more trouble than he was worth. He said first it was one teenager they had to get rid of, now five more. I got the impression they pressured Hollowell to kill Iris after she found out about them. Then he asked one of his men if he’d taken care of the car that killed Iris.”
My spine stiffens, my stomach flipping over like a floundering fish as I turn to stare at River. Holy fuck.
He never mentioned this. Not that there’s been any fucking time in the whirlwind of events of the past several hours. But now I understand how he knew Niles planned to kill us.
And the car. The car that killed Iris…
“What did his man say?” Dunagan’s pen hovers poised over his pad of paper, and he’s watching River with an unblinking gaze.
“He said it hadn’t been destroyed yet. That it was in the warehouse on Chapel Drive. Then Niles told him to deal with it as soon as they dealt with us.”
Dunagan makes a note, scribbling so fast I can tell his brain is outpacing his hand. Then he glances up again. “Anything else?”
“No, sir. That was all they said before they split up to get in the cars with us.”
“All right. And then what happened?”
We continue on with our story, detailing our arrival at Hollowell’s house and what happened after the judge arrived back home. The guys do most of the talking, because my mind is stuck on one thing.
A car.
There’s a dark sedan in a warehouse somewhere with Iris’s DNA on it.
A car that’s not my mother’s.
I try to tamp down the surge of desperate hope that rises up in me, but it seeps up through the cracks in my resolve anyway, infusing my body with a buzzing energy.
The boys slow down again toward the end, and I tune back into what they’re saying as they haltingly describe the moments after Mitch tried to execute us. The whole thing probably only lasted a minute or two, but so much happened that it felt like a hundred times that, and everything so was chaotic that it’s hard to paint a clear picture of what went down.
Between the four of us, we’re able to sort out the timeline of events pretty well, and when we finally stop talking, the room goes completely silent. The guys’ parents all look like they’re in fucking shock, and even the cops look a little rattled.
Detective Dunagan finally nods, casting a glance down at his notebook before looking back at us, rubbing his fingers over his temple. “That was incredibly dangerous. Monumentally stupid. You know that, right?”
“Yes.”
All four of us speak without a moment’s hesitation.
He blows out a breath, shaking his head again. “Well, as long as you know.”
The officers ask us a few more questions, and Dunagan warns us to be prepared to go over the story several more times, because that’s just how things go in investigations like this. Then he slides his chair back from the table and gets up, sliding his notebook back into an inner pocket of his jacket.
“We’ll be looking into this. Chapel drive dead-ends at Hennepin, so there aren’t too many places that warehouse could be. We’ll find it.”
He dips his head, then turns and heads for the door. Before he can reach it, I lean forward. “And if you find something there? If you find the car?”
He stops with his hand on the knob and turns to look back at me. “We’ll run forensics on it. If it truly was the car used to kill Iris Lepiane, there should be DNA evidence for us to find.”
“And if you find it?”
His expressions softens just a little, so imperceptibly I could almost convince myself I imagined it.
“Then I imagine the charges against your mother will be dropped.”
27
“You’re fidgeting.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Uh, yeah, Low.” Chase chuckles. “You are.”
“I’m nervous.”
Linc’s arms wrap around me from behind, his warm, solid body enclosing mine as his breath fans over the back of my neck. “You have nothing to be nervous about, baby.”
He’s right. I know he’s right.
But my stomach is still in knots, my heart tapping out an erratic rhythm as we stand outside the Fox Hill Correctional Center waiting for Mom to be released.
A new wave of nerves hits me at the thought, and I wrap my arms over Lincoln’s, holding him closer to me as we stare at the entrance to the prison. The guys all offered to come with me to pick her up—even Chase, who was just released from the hospital and is still a little pale and tired looking. I worried a little about him overexerting himself, but I could see in his eyes how much he wanted to come, so I didn’t put up a fight.
And now they’re all here.
About to meet my mom.
That’s one of the reasons for the nerves wreaking havoc on my internal organs right now.
The other is an unreasonable fear that someone will stop her before she can step out into the sunny, crisp air as a free woman. That Detective Dunagan will call and say it was all a mistake, it wasn’t Iris’s DNA they found on that car in the warehouse on Chapel. That a paternity test hasn’t revealed her unborn child to be the offspring of Judge Alexander Hollowell.
But all those things are true, and with Hollowell no longer manipulating things behind the scenes or paying off dirty cops to plant evidence, the truth has finally come to light.
I shift in Linc’s arms, and River leans down to plant a kiss on my lips. “We’re here for you, Low. No matter what.”
His words are soft, and I close my eyes and nod as he pulls away. They know Mom knows about them, but I can tell the guys are a little nervous too.
Or maybe “nervous” isn’t the right word.
Protective.
They want my mom to be okay with us, not for their own sakes, but for mine. They know how much I love her, how close the two of us are, and they want her blessing for my sake. Although I would never break up with them just because my mom didn’t approve, I so, so badly want her to be okay with this. To understand it.
Despite the boys’ affectionate teasing, I can’t stop fidgeting as we wait for several more minutes.
But the moment Mom steps through the door, every bit of my nervousness is forgotten.
She’s wearing the dress she had on at the Black’s cocktail party the night she was arrested, and although it’s a little incongruous on a Wednesday afternoon, it’s such a fucking relief not to see her in orange that I almost burst into tears.
Linc’s arms release me, and before I even give my legs the command to move, I’m walking toward her, then I’m running, and she’s running toward me. We practically knock each other over when we collide, but I don’t fucking care because it’s my mom, and I’m hugging her, I’m finally hugging her after way too long.
She’s laughing and crying at the same time, and I can feel her body shaking against mine. I pet her hair and press my face into the crook of her neck, breathing in her soft scent.
Mom.
She’s back.
She’s free.
We keep almost letting go and then clinging to each other again, and when she finally pulls back, she cups my face in her hands, her cheeks flushed and stained with tears.
“Let me look at you,” she whispers.
Even thou
gh we just saw each other a few days ago, I know what she means.
This is the first time in months we’ve seen each other without a plexiglass partition separating us, and it’s like a fucking veil has been lifted. I can see the little flecks of amber that dapple her brown irises, can see the small laugh lines around her eyes, the flyaway strands of dark hair that frame her face.
She’s beautiful.
And when I tell her so, she throws back her head and laughs. Then she wraps her arm around my waist, securing me tightly against her, and turns toward the two waiting cars and the four boys gathered around them.
“Come on. Let’s go say hello to your fellas.”
Mom’s step is light, and I feel a sort of manic, exuberant energy radiating from her that makes me think she could run all the way back to the Black’s house without even breaking a sweat right now, as if just being outside the prison walls has given her a massive shot of adrenaline.
Maybe some people would hold on to their bitterness and anger after the kind of shit she’s been through. But that’s never really been Mom’s style. She looks forward, not back, and even though she has ups and downs, she always come back to hope in the end.
Lincoln, River, Dax, and Chase all step forward as we approach. They’re grinning, all of them happy to see me so happy, and when we reach them, I disentangle from my mom and stand between her and them to make the introductions.
“I think you’ve all met before, and I know you know Linc, Mom. But these are the—the guys I’ve been seeing.”
I curse myself for the little hiccup in my voice. Generally speaking, I don’t give a shit if people look at us strangely when we’re all out together, trying to figure out which guy I’m with before slowly realizing I haven’t picked just one of them. But I do care what my mom thinks.
“Of course I remember Lincoln.” Mom smiles at him, then shifts her gaze to the others. “And it’s nice to officially meet the rest of you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
That’s true. Mom and I have had several long talks in the aftermath of Hollowell’s death. Finally free to tell her everything without fear of reprisal, I spilled my guts about all of it, not stopping until my voice was hoarse and my lips dry.
Hearing about everything that’d been going on shocked and scared her, and it took a lot of reassuring to convince her that it really was over, that I was no longer in danger.
I worried that on top of being weirded out about me dating four guys, Mom would blame them for what happened—hell, I did at first. But the truth is, they’ve done more to keep me safe than I could’ve ever asked of them, lifting me up and giving me hope and support when I needed it.
And I hope she sees that too.
She and the guys talk for a few minutes, and I slip between Lincoln and Dax as they do. I can feel Mom’s gaze bouncing back and forth between me and them, and I think it’s this, more than anything else, that wins her over.
I can feel it, and maybe she can see it: the way their bodies shift toward mine as if constantly pulled closer by an invisible force, the way they seem to arrange themselves around me unconsciously, protective and attentive.
A smile blooms across Mom’s face, different than the one she wore when she first greeted them. This one is softer and sweeter, a reaction to some private thought. She casts her gaze over the guys one more time, then claps her hands together, straightening her shoulders.
“All right. What do you say we get the hell out of here?”
Mom and I both move back into the Black family’s house.
Samuel’s offer to give her back her Executive Housekeeper position when she got out seems like a promise made a lifetime ago, but he apparently hasn’t forgotten about it.
She and I talked a lot before she got out of prison about what exactly we would do now. Honestly, I was a little torn about her going back to her old job, for reasons I could never quite articulate. Maybe it’s because I was worried I wouldn’t be able to see her walking around the mansion in her work outfit without thinking of the night she was dragged out by police officers.
But it’s a good job, with good pay and a boss who appreciates her, who went above and beyond to help her daughter when she was arrested.
And she’s adamant about staying in Fox Hill, at least until I graduate. She says she likes this kind of work, and even if she stops working for the Black family eventually, she’s found her calling in managing staff and organizing events.
She takes over for Bri Marshall a week after being released from Fox Hill Correctional Center, and it’s almost eerie how quickly things settle back to normal. I have dinner with her every evening in her little apartment, and Lincoln sneaks into my bedroom most nights, or I sneak into his. His parents know we’re officially dating now, and they know about the other guys too.
I think Samuel Black is proud of his son. Not for the whole sharing thing, exactly—I think he’s still a little weirded out by that part. But for fighting for what he wants, for choosing me.
Samuel and Audrey’s marriage is dissolving, and I think Linc is right that his dad is heartbroken about it. I do feel bad for him, but I can’t blame Audrey at all for her choice. I hope he’ll be more careful with the hearts of the people he loves in the future.
A couple weeks after Mom’s release, Principal Osterhaut invites both of us into his office.
Part of me wonders if it’s just curiosity on his part—a burning desire to meet the woman who’s become fucking legendary at my school by this point. But, as it turns out, it’s for the much less exciting task of talking about my grades. My classwork in every single subject took a major hit at the beginning of the semester, and I’ve only just started to crawl out of the hole I dug for myself.
“We understand that you were going through something very… unique, and because of these unprecedented circumstances, it’s been decided that you’ll be allowed to do makeup work in all your classes to get a chance to bring your grades back up. You were a very promising student your first semester with us, so I have no doubt you’ll be able to make the most of this opportunity.”
Osterhaut leans forward, resting his elbows on the desk and affixing me with a fatherly stare that holds just a slight hint of interest—as if he’s hoping to pick up some little details about the ordeals Mom and I each went through but knows it would be impolite to ask.
Ugh. No way, buddy.
I’ve had to tell the story in everything from broad strokes to minute detail enough times that I hope I never have to utter a word about it again. Not to Osterhaut, not to reporters, not to any of the wide-eyed underclassmen who’ve staring at me and the kings as if we’re some kinds of celebrities.
“Thanks,” I say instead. “I’ll do my best.”
And I do.
It means that for the second half of the semester, instead of being able to relax and coast the way I feel I’ve earned, I have to buckle down and study my ass off. But I do.
The guys help, quizzing me on Calculus and finding… creative ways to reward me for correct answers. And the honest truth is, being buried in homework still beats being blackmailed by a psychopathic judge by a long shot.
With the spotlight thrown on the five of us after the story about Hollowell spreads, Savannah seems to realize that feuding with us is the fastest route to unpopularity she could take, so she backs off her threats to spill Linc’s family’s secrets or go digging for more dirt on the guys. We end up alone in the girls’ bathroom once right after spring break, and she turns to me, opening her mouth like she’s going to say something. But then she shuts it again and leaves.
I have no idea what she was planning to say. Whether she was going to thank me or find some way to accuse me of being behind the whole thing. But she stops glaring at me in the halls, and if a truce is the best I’ll ever get with Savannah, hey, I’ll take it.
There’s one thing that’s still bothering me though. That’s bothered me ever since the day Hollowell died. Something that takes me weeks to fully process, and e
ven longer to be ready to talk about.
“He saved me,” I murmur one night just before graduation. I’m curled up in Linc’s arms, our legs tangled together as I rest my head on his chest, absorbing the solid, reassuring sound of his heartbeat. “Hollowell. He saved my life.”
There’s a small pause, then I feel Lincoln nod. “Yeah. He did.”
“But…” I lift my head, draping myself over him a little more fully as I gaze at his face in the darkness. “Why? I mean, why would he do that? He’d already killed Iris. He’d already as good as threatened to kill me. And I honestly think he would’ve done it if he had to. So why save me? It was his last act. It was the last thing he ever did.”
Lincoln lets out a sharp breath, reaching up to run his fingers through my hair. “I don’t know, Low. I’ve asked myself that question more times than I can count, and I still don’t fucking know.” His hand halts its motion, his eyes flashing in the dim light. “I hate that motherfucker. I hate him for what he put you through—what he put us all through.”
Then he hauls me higher up his body, banding his arms around me and kissing me hard, like he’s trying to remind himself that he still can. That I’m still here. When we break apart, we’re both breathing a little harder, and I can feel his body shudder lightly beneath mine as he exhales a long sigh.
“But what I’ve decided is this: it doesn’t matter why he did it. Maybe he wanted to do one decent thing before he died. Maybe he was trying to save his own damn soul. Or maybe he just hated Niles D’Amato more than he ever hated any of us. I’ll never get the chance to ask him, so I’ll never know for sure.”
His hands skim up my body, drifting up past my shoulders to thread through my hair again as he cradles my face, holding it just a few inches from his own.
“But what I do know is, you’re alive. And I’m so fucking grateful for that.”
