by Penny Dee
Instinct tells me to move, so I take two steps back. “What are you talking about?”
As she comes closer, the smudge of mascara under her eyes and the disheveled tousle of her hair tell me she hasn’t slept in days.
“It’s been a long time coming, for sure. Not to mention exhausting with all the pretending and fake smiling, and all those evenings I had to listen to you drone on and on like some poor little princess.” She pulls a face as she lets out a deep breath. “But I knew it would be all worth it in the end.”
Still not sure what’s happening, my eyes go back to the gun in her hand. “Riley, you’re scaring the shit out of me. What’s going on? Why do you still have that gun pointed at me?”
She ignores the question. “You know, you really are the most self-absorbed person. Poor little Bronte, broken-hearted about her friend dying. I can’t cope with my loss, so I’m going to fuck and discard one poor boy after another. I’m sad, so I’m going to use men and just toss them aside.” Her face twists into a mean snarl as she mimics me.
I take another step back, my brain scrambling to work out why she is so angry at me. “I don’t know what’s going on—”
“Now, why doesn’t that surprise me?” She scoffs as if she should’ve known I would be too stupid to have worked it out by now. “I’m talking about Rhys, you dumb fucking bitch.”
The mention of my ex-boyfriend momentarily throws me.
What does he have to do with this?
“You knew Rhys?”
She stops walking.
“Know him? He was my boyfriend! But then, you wouldn’t know that, would you, because when you discarded him like he was nothing, you didn’t care what happened to him. You didn’t call to check up on him or to make sure he was okay. You were too cut up about your friend dying, so you just tossed him out like garbage and went on your merry way. You didn’t care that he was so twisted up with pain that the only way to escape how he felt about you was to fall into a deep well of darkness.” She slaps herself on the chest with her free hand, trying to make a point. “But I did care. I was the one who held him. I was the one who tried to kiss away his pain. I was the one who tried to make him forget you.”
Her words spin around me, weaving a web of confusion that leave me momentarily speechless.
“You dated him?”
“I loved him!” she yells suddenly, making me jump. “But he couldn’t see past you to realize that.”
I back away, my knees wobbly, my heart beating wildly in my chest.
“Instead, he kept me at a distance while he obsessed over his failed relationship with you.” Her face twists into a snarl, and her eyes glint with hate. “Oh, I was good enough to fuck, but I wasn’t good enough to love. It was always Bronte this and Bronte that. He said he cared about me, but he didn’t, not really. Because when he was fucking me, it was you he was in bed with.”
A past conversation with Rhys comes back to mind. “You were the girl he grew up with,” I say, remembering what he’d told me. They’d grown up on the same street and were high school sweethearts. But he’d broken up with her when he started at TSU because he didn’t think a long-distance relationship would work. Then he met me.
“When his parents brought him home, he was broken. He wasn’t the boy who left for college.” Her eyes narrow. “You did that to him. You changed him. You turned his head inside out until he couldn’t think straight anymore. But I still loved him, and I tried… I tried to put him back together again.” A darker storm falls across her face as she sucks in a deep breath in an attempt to steady her emotions. “But it didn’t work, and he died.”
“I had no idea… I mean… I…”
“I-I-I…” she mocks my stammering as she comes closer, her eyes alive with madness. “He died… because. Of. You.”
The accusation makes me take another step back. “The article I read said it was an accident.”
She scoffs. “It wasn’t no accident.”
“There were skid marks. He overcorrected—”
“It was no accident.”
“The medical examiner said—”
“I made it happen!” she yells, and I rear back as if her words actually reach out of her mouth and slap me.
Stumbling backward until my shoulders hit the wall behind me, the color drains instantly from my face. “Wh-what do you mean?”
Riley’s eyes harden, and they are now vacant of any warmth like a shark’s eyes stalking its prey. “I tried to save him, but he didn’t want saving. All he wanted to do was wallow over you.” She spits the word ‘you’ like it’s some foul taste in her mouth. “It was exhausting. I mean… I was right there, right in front of his nose and did he care? No. All he wanted to do was to moan over little ol’ you. He didn’t care that he was breaking my heart when all I wanted to do was to love him.”
Foreboding crawls up my spine. “What did you do, Riley?”
She closes the space between us, her maniacal eyes glued to mine. “I was the driver in the car with him. We were arguing. He was trying to break up with me… again.” She rolls her eyes. “Said he was feeling better. Said he felt excited about his future again. Said he wanted to finish school and move on with his life. After everything I’d done for him since he’d come back, he was going to leave me again. But I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t let him humiliate me again. I knew the embankment was up ahead…” she sneers bitterly. “Of course, when he realized what I was going to do, he tried grabbing the wheel. In the confusion, I hit the brakes a couple of times, but in the end, I simply put my foot down on the accelerator and took us over the edge.”
I see the pulse thundering through the vein in her neck and the insanity glowing in her eyes. But then they glaze over, and she seems dazed, almost detached from the memory as if it happened to someone else.
“It was all over very quickly. Yet at the same time, it was like it went by in slow motion. I turned to him and saw he had this stupid resigned look on his face. And boy, I hated you in that moment more than I ever thought I could hate anyone. Because his expression wasn’t why is this happening or why are you doing this to me? No. In those final moments, he was thinking about you. About the love of his life. And you know how I know this with absolute fucking certainty…” her voice burns with hatred as she takes another step forward, “… because just as we crashed into that tree, he said your fucking name.”
The last of the oxygen in my lungs leaves me in a stifled gasp. I feel sick as Riley momentarily drifts away on the memory.
“I blacked out and when I woke, his eyes were staring lifelessly at me.” She shakes her head as she looks away. “I hadn’t planned to survive. Truth was, I hadn’t planned to kill us either. It just happened. But I survived so I had to make it look like an accident. I was hurt but even with a broken wrist, and some deep bruising to my ribs, I was able to get him into enough of a position to make it look like he’d been driving. I’m not saying it was easy, but somehow it worked.”
I struggle to swallow, needing her to keep her talking. To give me time to work out what to do next. “Then you came looking for me.”
“You weren’t hard to find. I watched you via Facebook and Instagram as you roamed aimlessly around the country after you dropped out. Then I had a Google alert set up to tell me if your name ever appeared online. Imagine my surprise when I read an article about a minor vehicle accident involving a young woman who’d arrived back in town to start back at school.”
I remember the article. It had been such a minor accident I was surprised it even made it into the paper. It was hardly newsworthy. Someone had rear-ended me after drinking a bottle of wine and falling asleep at the wheel. It was nothing more than a nudge. I mean, it could’ve been worse, but the truth was, it wasn’t. Yet somehow, it ended up in the paper and then online.
“That’s the moment I knew I was returning to college,” she says.
Riley smiles.
It’s evil and betrays all innocence.
My
mind races to think back on our first meeting. How she accidentally bumped into me and knocked all the books out of my arms when I was on my way to the campus parking lot after class. How she’d insisted on buying me a drink because she was a klutz, and I looked like I was having a bad day.
I was having a bad day, and I was wondering why the hell I’d come back to college.
And had just met a psychopath, by the sounds of it.
“I thought you were my friend.” The words slip from my mouth and show my utter ignorance to the fact it was all fake on her side.
“Oh no, Bronte, I’m not your friend. I’m just a really good fucking actor.”
Despite her holding a gun and looking murderous, my heart feels the sudden loss of her friendship. It had been nothing, all built on a lie.
“What about Sebastian?”
Please don’t let Sebastian know about this.
I couldn’t bear the thought of him being in on this crazy plan.
“He’s just a stupid kid who made this whole thing a little more bearable. Honestly, if it weren’t for him, I would probably have killed you earlier.”
At the mention of killing me, my heart double kicks in my chest.
This is really happening.
She really plans on killing me.
She’s fucking crazy.
My mind frantically searches for what to say.
Keep her talking, keep her talking!
“What about Officer Johnson?”
She rolls her eyes because clearly, I’m too dumb to realize it already.
She sighs. “Every good assassin needs a patsy. Stupid jerk was too easy to set up. He was a fucking sleaze. Really, he made it way too simple. His DNA and fingerprints were all over my apartment. And once he was arrested, I placed a couple of calls to the local newspaper.” She uses her fingers as a pretend phone, then starts to recite what she said. “I’m so pleased they arrested that officer. He was so creepy and out of line when he stopped to help me change my tire.”
I’m astounded by the length she’s prepared to go to get her revenge.
“You’re insane,” I whisper.
A sinister smile creeps across her face. “You don’t know the half of it.”
Time is running out.
I can feel it.
Any second now she’s going to shoot me.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because he’s dead and you’re not…” her lips widen into a more grotesque grin, “… yet.”
“You think killing me is going to make you feel better? You’re sick, Riley. You need help.”
Her smile vanishes. “See, that’s where you’re wrong, Bronte. Because killing you will bring an end to all of my suffering. You’ll both be gone, and I’ll finally be free to move forward with my life. Fall in love again. How was I supposed to move on when the very person who destroyed my chance at happiness with Rhys is still alive? What if she did it again? To me. To someone else. No. You have to go.”
“They’ll know it was you. Jack and the club, they won’t let this rest.”
“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that. I’ve covered my tracks too well for anyone to work out it was me. Although, I wasn’t planning on Officer Johnson turning up when he did, but that will make this all the more convincing. You see, once you’re dead, I’ll say I found you in a pool of blood. And that I saw Officer Johnson put the gun to his heart and shoot himself. It was a murder-suicide, Jack. I saw it with my own eyes.” She smiles but her eyes are dead, there is no emotion in them. Just a cold blackness where her evil resides. “Don’t worry about Jack. Oh, he’ll be devastated. Gutted, even. But I’ll make sure he’s looked after. He’ll want someone to hold him throughout his grief, and who better than his poor little wildflower’s best friend. I might even warm his bed. Get me a taste of that big cock you say he’s got.”
“You sick fuck,” I snarl at her.
She brings her face closer. “You know, if you don’t have something nice to say, you really shouldn’t say anything at all.” She laughs maniacally but then stops suddenly, her smile dropping and her eyes going cold again. “Better brace yourself, Bronte, this is going to hurt.”
She lifts the gun.
But in that moment, the self-defense moves Jack taught me come flooding back, and I move with instinct, dodging out of the way and catching her in the ribs with my elbow before stomping on her foot. She yelps and flails forward before righting herself and charging back at me. This time, I hit her in the forearm, and it sends the gun spinning across the floor.
“You fucking, bitch,” she spits.
Riley comes at me again, her eyes wide as she unleashes a yielding battle cry and charges forward, arms ready to grab me, her face a mask of pure madness. However, I manage to dodge her, slip under her grasp and slide across the floor to where the gun lies.
I pick it up, but she runs at me and grabs it.
And…
… it goes off.
JACK
I’ve never pushed my Harley as fast as I’m pushing her now. My every nerve is firing with adrenalin.
Bronte didn’t answer her cell, and the home phone rang out. So, when I tore out of the clubhouse with Paw, Shooter, and Ares, I barked at one of the prospects to keep trying, telling him that the moment she answers, he needs to tell her to get the hell out of the house.
Now I pray I get there before Riley does.
The thought that I might be too late hits me fair in my gut, but I push on faster, praying out to something I’d forsaken the day my brother was killed.
Don’t take her. Dear God, please don’t take her from me.
We roar up my street, four thundering Harleys barking into the afternoon as we race toward my girl. Once in my driveway, I screech to a halt and leap off, my feet barely hitting the ground as I race toward the front door and burst through it.
But the moment I’m inside, I hear the gun go off and I freeze, my heart stalling as the sudden realization I’m too late knees me in the balls.
Bronte.
The family room is empty, but as I sprint into the dining room, I’m stopped by a vision of Bronte straddled over an unconscious Riley, and she’s raining fisted blows down on her. A bullet wound to Riley’s shoulder seeps blood onto the floor.
“Bronte...” I call to her, but she doesn’t look up. Instead, she’s swept up in a wave of retribution. She wants to make Riley pay for what she’s put her through.
“For months…” she cries. “For five… goddamn… months, she has made my life hell.” She closed-fist punches Riley again. “This bitch was supposed to be my friend. But she did whatever she could to break me down and…” she weakens with heartbreak, “… she fucking tormented me.” With a rush of emotion, she stops punching and picks up the gun from the floor and presses it to Riley’s head, and I see the loss of control sweep over her tortured face.
“Baby, you don’t want to do this,” I say.
“But she won’t ever stop,” she cries.
“Yes, she will. I promise you.”
When Shooter, Paw, and Ares run into the room, she jumps, but I put my hands out to bring her attention back to me. “She’ll go to prison, and you won’t ever have to worry about her again,” I tell her.
Ares and Shooter check on Officer Johnson, but Shooter shakes his head.
Officer Johnson is dead.
“She shot him,” Bronte cries. “One minute he’s talking to me and the next…” she digs the gun into Riley’s face, “… this fucking psychopath shoots him. She didn’t even give him a chance.”
“I know, baby, but you don’t want to do this. Think of the consequences. Think of what killing her will do to you. Think of us.”
I watch her jaw tick.
Watch her slowly come back to herself.
Dropping the gun, she sobs and collapses onto all fours. That’s when I let out the breath I was holding and run over to her. Guiding her to her feet, I pull her into my arms, and she sags against me just as the poli
ce sirens break into the afternoon.
After Pinkwater takes her statement, I leave my bike at the house and drive Bronte back to the clubhouse in my truck. Covered in blood, she’s in shock and stares straight ahead. My eyes drift to her knuckles which are bloody and bruised, and one of her fingernails is torn and bleeding.
After pulling into the parking lot, I lift Bronte out of the truck and carry her through the clubhouse to my bedroom where I sit her on the bed. “You doing okay, baby?” I ask, kneeling in front of her.
Her eyes water but she nods. “I finally understand.”
“What?”
“What you did to TomTom.” Her eyes find mine. “Why you did it.”
My gut tightens. It’s the last thing I want her to know. To understand. She’s so pure. So perfect in every way. Her knowing the need for revenge doesn’t seem right. I clench my teeth as a wave of protectiveness sweeps through me.
“I would’ve killed her,” she whispers.
I shake my head. “No, you wouldn’t have.”
She swallows thickly, but I see a tiny flicker of hope come back to her eyes. “You don’t think so?”
“No. That’s not who you are, baby. You were never going to pull that trigger.”
She lets out a shaky breath. “I’m not so sure.”
I tenderly touch her face. “I am.”
She looks at her bruised knuckles but then nods.
“Come on, you’ll feel better after a shower.” I lead her into the bathroom and turn on the water. Waiting for it to warm, I help Bronte out of her clothes and then kiss her softly.
“I’ve got you,” I whisper against her lips.
She smiles, but it’s unsure.
It’s in that moment I make a silent vow to make sure my sweet wildflower never has to question herself like this again. I will do whatever it takes to protect her from anything like this happening in the future. And there is only one way to do that.
