I cast a look back at my car, but I follow him, away from the light of the car, where there’s only moonlight.
“Where are you taking me?” I ask.
“You’ll understand when you see,” he promises me, walking faster. He takes my hand and pulls me after him, and the cold is seeping through my jeans and into my bones. What is he doing? Where has he been all this time? Is he insane?
He’s smiling. He’s smiling so big, like there’s something I’m missing, and I’ve been missing it this whole time and he’s waiting to draw back the curtain and show me, but it’s all off, and I shouldn’t be here and I know it. But I don’t want to leave him. Not when I’ve finally found him.
“What’s going on, Alex?” I try to sound calm. I’m excited he’s okay. I am. But I have a feeling that’s like a vibration in my chest, and it’s crawling up to the back of my neck. I feel like I’m watching a horror movie, and I want to scream at the girl on the screen to stop, to turn away, to just, for the love of God, not look around the corner.
But I don’t.
He touches my shoulder. “I have a surprise for you, Riley,” he says. “That’s where I’ve been, you know.”
“Where?” My voice is casual. This is just like any other conversation we’ve ever had, of course. Like we’re talking about lasagna or cookies or poetry or how I won’t give myself to him.
I feel mad inside, like there’s something inside of me screaming.
“I’ve been planning.”
“Planning?” My voice has a funny pitch to it.
“Just wait.”
He speeds up, and I match his steps. The ground beneath our feet is hard and dry, and the cold air is full of dust. The earth has been begging for moisture, but it hasn’t rained in weeks—just drizzled pitifully for a few minutes one day last week before giving up.
“There,” Alex says.
And at first, I don’t see anything. But then a shape emerges in the darkness, large and hulking, the moonlight glinting off the glass of the windows. It’s a car, black, with rust around the wheel wells—and as we get closer, I see that it’s moving. Just slightly.
Rocking in the darkness, at the very edge of the cliffs.
Alex turns to me and grins. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small Maglite. He clicks it on before handing it to me.
“I told you it would be worth it.”
“What?” I ask.
But I’m scared of the answer.
“Come on,” Alex says, and we walk toward the car together. I look back at my car, which is still waiting, the headlights two beacons in the night, the door ajar.
And at the black car. It’s still moving, ever so slightly, in the darkness.
As I get closer, I realize why.
There are people in it.
People rocking back and forth.
But—why?
“Alex—”
He holds up a finger. “Wait,” he says.
We reach the car, and he opens the door grandly. It creaks, loudly, and the familiar chemical scent of gasoline reaches my nose.
Alex takes the Maglite from me and shines it inside, and there they are, blinking against the bright light and struggling against thick knots of blond rope:
Jacqueline Belrose and Rob Samuels.
Jacqueline sits in the passenger seat. Her ropes have been knotted through the steering wheel. She’s been gagged and a bloody purple bruise maps across her forehead, and she’s making small noises behind her gag. Noises like she’s trying to scream.
Rob is looking at me, throwing his head back and forth like a wild animal, his eyes wide and lolling. He’s already in some sort of pain. Alex has hurt him badly, and I can’t tell how. I can’t see bruises or blood, but something’s wrong. Something’s really wrong.
I have to get them both out of here.
Jacqueline, perhaps, wasn’t the crazy one. Maybe it was Alex all along.
He couldn’t just be patient. He couldn’t just do all of this the right way. He had to go psycho and put everyone in the car at the edge of a ravine.
I feel strange and ill. But I can’t throw up. I can’t. I have to be calm.
“What? Alex, what is this? What are you doing?”
“You wanted me to get a divorce, didn’t you? So we could be together?” He laughs. “You know Jacqueline would never leave me alone. She would have bled me dry just for her designer clothes and her stupid wine. But if she’s dead, she won’t be able to.” He laughs again, and it’s short and mad.
“And you don’t think blowing her up in a car is a little suspicious?” I ask faintly. “That doesn’t look like murder at all, does it?”
“I’ll be gone. They already think I’m dead, don’t they?”
“And what did Rob do to you?” I ask. Given, he’s not exactly my favorite person, and yeah, he’s been really touchy and awful in ways I haven’t appreciated lately, but blowing him up in a car?
Alex’s face darkens. He looks strange and unfamiliar. “I saw you two together.”
And that’s enough.
“It wasn’t really anything. I was just trying to make sure no one knew anything, you know? About us? Please, Alex. This is a little rash, don’t you think?”
I pause and grab on to the sleeve of his jacket. “You don’t need to kill them, Alex.”
Alex blinks at me, his eyes closing. “I know I don’t.” He reaches into his pocket and tosses me a book of matches. “We do. Together.”
I take the matches and pull one off. “So you want me to help you kill them? Is that it?”
He nods, his green eyes looking almost black in the deep of the night. “That’s it. This is what binds us together. Not our blood.” He touches his heart. “Theirs.”
I turn the matches in my fingers, trying not to look at the way Rob is still thrashing in the car, at the way Jacqueline has her head strained toward me, her bulging eyes screaming all the things she can’t. I think of all the times I wished Jacqueline dead. I think of all the times I actually started planning it.
And here it is, laid out before me, in one very messy car.
My hands start to shake from fear and pain and cold.
He’s insane. Alex Belrose, my first and only love, is absolutely insane. There’s no way around it.
“I’ll get rid of Jacqueline forever if we can get rid of Rob, too,” Alex pleads. He still has that smile on his mouth, and it’s twitching and odd. Something about him has gone off.
And I’m in way too deep.
“About that . . . ,” I say.
And I throw the matches off the edge of the cliff, into the water below.
“You’re insane!” I say. “And I have the pictures on my phone to prove it. And I’ll tell everyone you tried to fail me just so you could bring my parents in to threaten me. If you kill them, I’ll show everyone just how goddamned nuts you are, Alex Belrose. You let them go and you don’t come near me or them again.”
He crosses his arms, and the flashlight lights up his face from below his chin. “P-pictures? What are you talking about? I didn’t ask your parents to come in, either. And I don’t know why you’re attacking me like this.” Very slowly, he starts unbuttoning his shirt, revealing a thin red line about his heart. “I can’t lie to you, Riley. We’re blood-bonded, remember? And they can test for that sort of thing now. They’ll bring us in to the police station together, and they’ll be able to tell we’re part of each other, won’t they?”
I’m breathing hard, and my heart is in my throat and my stomach and my head and everywhere all at once. I pull my phone out of my jacket and open the folder. “You snuck into my bedroom,” I say, and my hand trembles.
He is quiet for a moment as he takes the phone, and he looks through the photos one by one.
I sneer at him. “You’ve gotten so good at lying you don’t even realize when you do it to yourself. Do you remember now?”
He screams, then, and it’s primal and animalistic, and he throws the phone down and start
s toward the car.
“You did it!” he screams at Rob. “You were stalking her! She’s mine! And you were after her, all this time! Fuck you!”
And before I can move or scream or stop him, he pulls another book of matches out of his pocket.
He lights them all at once, across the rusty side of the car.
And then he throws them in the door and slams it shut.
I grab my phone off the ground and run away as fast as I can.
I turn back, grabbing my ears, and the car is in flames, and Alex is just standing there, watching it, watching them burn, watching them die, and then it happens.
The explosion.
A giant orange fireball, bright as the sun, like a thousand guns going off at once, and I cover my ears and hit the ground.
But it doesn’t stop me from seeing.
Alex, getting blown back by the force of the blast.
Toward the cliff.
Over the edge.
And gone.
Alex Belrose, presumed dead.
Things to Know About Riley Stone:
• When Riley Stone recounted her account of the events leading up to the murders to the police officers, her lawyer, and the DA, they were shocked that anyone could survive such a horrific incident with such grace.
• It was concluded, after an investigation, that Riley had been manipulated into a highly inappropriate relationship with her French teacher based on the threat of bad grades (and the promise of better ones).
• The photos on Riley’s phone were found to have backups stored on Alex Belrose’s e-mail account.
• Riley’s grades had indeed been changed after the meeting with her parents, Ms. Felcher, and Mr. Belrose.
• DNA evidence from the Belrose residence corroborated Riley’s story that she had, indeed, spent a significant amount of time at the Belrose residence.
• Throughout the process, Riley’s bravery and fortitude were commended.
• When Riley Stone cried, the entire station cried, including the DA—who swore she hadn’t shed a tear in ten years.
• The police station never knew that Rob Samuels, not Kamea Myers, had been Riley’s real competition for valedictorian. He had been signed up for a special course that would have allowed him to significantly raise his GPA.
• Jacqueline Belrose had been a successful model since she was a teen. She had once been signed with a modeling agency in Paris, which was how she met Alex Belrose while he was studying abroad.
• Jacqueline’s maiden name was Brown.
• Riley has a tripod in her closet specifically made to hold a smartphone. She bought it at the mall, on clearance. She uses it to make YouTube videos, or to take timed photographs of herself throughout the night.
• Riley knows the password to Alex’s e-mail account, which connects neatly to his Outlook calendar and his cell phone. It’s an all-access pass to everything Belrose.
THIRTY-SIX
After
I sit at my vanity, putting the final touches on my makeup while I wait for Sandeep to pick me up.
He’s been so sweet through all of this, really. So supportive. So perfect. I couldn’t ask for a better boyfriend. Tonight will be our fourth date, and I think I’ll ask if he wants to make it official. Make Riley and Sandeep an us.
At first I wasn’t sure if Sandeep would be into dating me again, especially after what happened last time we went out, but when he found out that Alex Belrose had manipulated me against my will and tried to ruin my life . . . he understood. And how could he not? Any good guy would understand.
I finish my mascara and blink at myself in the mirror. There’s nothing there to show that a few weeks prior, I was a girl being mentally held hostage by an insane, delusional man who believed I really loved him. Nothing to show that I was helpless. Nothing to show that I was about to watch three people die.
Or that I was about to take a tour of several nationally syndicated talk shows to speak about my experience. Or that soon, I was going to be on the cover of Clare for their “Teens Who Rock” issue. They’re calling me brave. They’re calling me a heroine. And I understand why.
Anyone else would have broken under that kind of pressure. That kind of stress.
But not me.
I made it out alive. I made it out valedictorian. And it’ll probably take me some time to heal, which is perfectly understandable, but I’ll be okay.
Fighters always are.
Naturally, I had to figure some details out creatively to connect the dots, but it wasn’t like it mattered. Alex didn’t make it off the cliff and I did, and I needed, after all this, to be perfect, just like I always had been, in order to be okay. And if Alex loved me like he said he really did, he would have understood that.
I lean forward and touch the tiny red line below my eye, where a bit of metal hit me when the car exploded. I wince. It still hurts. It will leave a small scar. But it’s nothing compared to what Alex did to me. Nothing.
It’s too bad about the scar. And too bad so many people had to die. But so much good has come of all of it for me. I’m rising.
There is a knock at my door, and my father opens it, very slowly, as if he doesn’t want to startle me. “Sweetie?” he asks.
“Yes?” I smile at him in the mirror.
“Your date is here.” His voice is soft. That’s how they talk to me now. They pay attention when I enter the room. They make sure I get enough to eat. They smile at me, albeit a bit sadly, when they think I’m not looking.
“Thanks, Dad. I’ll be right down.”
“I’ll let him know.”
Dad closes the door.
I tie a dark pink ribbon in my hair and then uncap a tube of lipstick.
I won’t put on too much, of course.
After all, I am a good girl.
Something to Know About Riley Stone:
• Riley Elizabeth Stone is just about perfect. Ask anyone.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Any author knows that the hardest part of the book is often the acknowledgments—there are so many important people to thank when it comes to creating a story!
First, to Michael Strother and Jennifer Ung: Michael, you are a fantastic editor who shared the vision for this book from day one, and that means the world to me! I had a blast creating it with you! Jennifer, I am so grateful to you for adopting this book and for helping to make it the best it could be. I cannot tell you how much I value your passion and commitment to this story.
To Melissa Edwards: thank you for being so amazing and supportive. I am lucky to have you as my agent!
To my parents, for always being there, for encouraging me, and for helping me every step of the way—thank you. I love you!
To Bethany and Suz, for being amazing, always. I couldn’t do it without you.
To the musers—thank you for being there for me, especially this year.
To Tammy Gibson, my early reader—I appreciate it so much!
To Teresa Kirchner, for all of the incredible advice on cheerleading—you went above and beyond for me!
To Amy Ross, Carrie Straub, and Aldo Wilson: thank you for helping out with my French!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
AMANDA K. MORGAN is the author of Secrets, Lies, and Scandals. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where she is hard at work on her next novel.
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ALSO BY AMANDA K. MORGAN
Secrets, Lies, and Scandals
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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First Simon Pulse hardcover edition June 2017
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The text of this book was set in ITC New Baskerville.
This book has been cataloged with the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4814-4957-1 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-4814-4959-5 (eBook)
Such a Good Girl Page 19
