I walk into the kitchen and realize I’ve been talking to myself. “Emilie?”
Just like Emilie promised, she has helped us finish our book up, and we’re done in record time. Our first book took three months to write, and that was with all of us writing our own chapters. I guess it was more like transcribing our chapters. We never typed the first word in it.
But because of her, this one is going to be much more cohesive and more than just our favorite subjects in school and what we wanted to be when we grew up. Mrs. Tish is letting Emilie count the work as credit hours toward school. I want to give her some credit on the book jacket, but Emilie doesn’t want it. She says that isn’t why she’s helping. But she has spent a lot of hours on this…I’d want credit. Just when I think I get her, she does something odd like refusing credit or money.
I retrace my steps back through the dining room to the kitchen to wash my eyes. The cool water gives me some relief, but my shoulders tense at the sound of Emilie’s raised voice.
And since Kasen is the only one here…. I take off back through the dining room and pause at the bottom of the stairs. Where are they? I scan the rooms up there, some closed up and some not. Light filters through my cracked door. So do their voices.
“Why are you accusing me?” she asks. “You’re the one making everything weird.”
“I wouldn’t be if you kept your fucking mouth shut.”
“I didn’t tell him, Kasen!” she shouts. “But I’m starting to wonder.”
“What?”
“Why would you tell me, his girlfriend, if you were afraid of him finding out?” Her voice is lower now. “I think you want him to know, so why don’t you just tell him?”
I stop on the landing and wait for his answer. This is the moment that I’ll finally find out what’s up with Kase. It’s been like living with a stranger lately. A moody stranger.
“What’s wrong with telling you?” he asks.
“I’m not the one, Kasen.” I can hear the tears in her voice. “I don’t—I can’t believe in that.”
My feet automatically pick up speed. Time to stop the torture.
It’s what Kasen has been doing to all of us lately. The tension he has put on us is two ticks from frying my brain. But what does Emilie have to do with all of it? What is he trying to make her do?
Once at the door, I see them through the crack. Emilie is sat on my bed, and Kasen towers over her, his fists clenched at his sides.
“Lay off.” I bust into the room and shoot daggers at the boy who used to be my best mate. “What don’t I know?”
I ask this, but do I really want to know the answer? I’ve been on the phone a lot with the private investigator. One of the common denominators with the spate of killings is Kasen. Except the one in Nevada—his alibi is Niki. But for most of the others, he was around or nearby. The investigator keeps telling me how very little it means because there’s no real motivation in it for Kasen. That makes sense, but I haven’t been able to shake the feeling Kasen’s hiding something.
Emilie drops her face into her hands. “Kasen, please just ‘fess up.”
“How come you don’t tell me what’s going on, Emilie? An even better question—how long have you been keeping secrets from me?”
She raises her head and scowls at him. “And you say I’m the one driving the wedge between you guys? Kasen, your guilt is messing up everything!”
He turns toward me, crashing into my shoulder as he walks out. I grab his shirt and twist him around, locking my arms around his neck. “What did you do?” The image of his hands on Luke’s throat pop into my head. “If you did something to her, I’ll break your neck.”
“Julian!” Emilie shouts, and I hardly notice her tugging on my arms.
He surprises me, though, and twists out of my headlock. A scream echoes in my ears when I stumble and lean backward over the banister. Kasen reaches for me, but I’m not in any danger of going over. I shove him against the wall and hold him there with my arm across his chest. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but if you look at her—no, don’t even speak to her.”
Emilie backs into my room. “Stop it! You’re both acting like idiots.”
Kasen swivels his gaze to her, raising his eyebrows. Accusing her.
“You did it, you idiot!” she shouts. “Fine. Here goes. Julian, it wasn’t a miscarriage. Remember that night? The guards came back and you were talking to them? Well, Kason was in the room talking to me. Niki actually had an abortion. That’s why I didn’t want to talk to him after that.”
I turn in time to see her grab her head and rock it back and forth.
“I have a brother,” she says. “Mom was in high school. She gave him up for adoption. That’s why I’m not the one to talk to, Kasen. I can’t support….”
Kasen nearly falls when I let him go. He bends at his waist and straight-up roars like a man on fire.
“You think I wanted this! I don’t know what I wanted.” He pounds the banister then gestures to Emilie. “Nik did it then told me. On the phone! She was never even there that night. I was just walking and walking… Yup, I’m not like the famous Julian—I can still get around. And then…then I come back to talk to a friend. I just thought a girl might explain why Niki….”
And there goes his alibi. No. I won’t believe that he’s the—No.
I look from Kasen leaning heavily on the rail to Emilie standing in front of my bed, tears building in her eyes. My chest tightens and stings. “Why? Emilie, you could’ve just said something.”
“I didn’t want to hide it.” The tears roll down and drip from her chin. “But it wasn’t my secret. Kasen just—”
Kasen comes back into the room. “That’s right. Go ahead and paint me the bad guy.”
Is he? His alibi for the Nevada murder is gone.
“Would you just stop it?” She grips both his shoulders and levels her eyes on his. “I don’t think you’re—”
He jerks away. “I am the bad guy!”
“I swear, I don’t think that.” She clutches her hands like he just burned her.
Kasen laughs. “But don’t bother talking to you. You’re here for Julian and nobody else.”
How come someone couldn’t talk to me? Why all the secrets?
He darts out of the room. It’s so quiet, but my head is screaming at me. I stare at the beige rug while my mind pummels me. Can’t anybody be straight-up? Not even Emilie? Someone once told me you can only depend on yourself. At the time I rejected that idea. But now….
First, Doug hides his past from me as if he doesn’t know every single thing about me. And Luke is going to therapy now, but I’m not supposed to know that either. How come he wouldn’t want me to know? Of all people, I thought Emilie wouldn’t keep things from me. Wouldn’t keep this from me. All this time I’ve been fussed about Kase’s crabbit attitude.
And suspecting him of— “For fuck’s sake!”
Emilie’s arms snake around my waist, her face pressing against my back. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s my best mate.” With a sigh, I pull away. “I could have been helping him.”
Och, I’m to blame too. A couple of weeks with a debauched attitude and I write him off? Shite, I was even suspecting him the killer. But I’m not now?
“I know, I know. I’ve been so stupid. Julian, I kept thinking it wasn’t my secret to tell. Like you not telling me about Luke. But I know…that wasn’t something I needed to know. I should’ve…someone needed to know what Kasen was going through. I let my own screwed-up life mess with my head.”
“Why!” Heat rushes through me. My heart beats so hard, I can feel throbbing in my toes. “What is going on with you that makes everything so complicated?”
Wiping away her tears, she says, “I don’t know. Most of the time I’m so happy. But sometimes fear creeps up.”
My anger leaves in a breath. “What are you afraid of, Emilie?”
“I’m afraid of getting into something life-long because it’s
what is convenient at the moment, or that it’s the best thing for everyone else. Or because I’ve just lost myself and don’t know how to be by myself.”
“Are you afraid to love?” When she nods, I reach for her hand and stoop to get eye level with her. “Tell me why.”
“It’s stupid.” She begins to shake her head, and I take her other hand.
“Please?”
“Julian, I don’t—I’m the only reason my parents together.” She lifts her shoulder like she doesn’t care but obviously she does. “I was the mistake. And then they separated a while back and only got back together because their freaking hormones got the best of them. Oops, again…Hannah. They’re not even a couple.”
“We’re not them, love. We won’t be like that.”
“I’m not done,” she whispers, turning one way then the other before dropping to the floor.
I get on the floor with her and grab her hand. “Go ahead.”
“I’m afraid I don’t even know what love looks like.”
I could spout off that I saw plenty of it at Thanksgiving, but I know better. It’s not the same. But if she’d just let herself feel, with no pulling back, no mental barriers…. “Then look at me. Really. Look at me, Emilie.” When she does, I say, “This is what love looks like.”
Aye, I already know what she’s thinking—how can you love someone in so little time?
She drops her head back down and shakes it. The lamplight shines on her dark hair and makes it look like she has a crown on her head. Or a halo. “I’m still not finished.”
Emilie tells me everything. Her dad getting her mum getting pregnant in high school. And then the adoption. Her dad leaving school and joining the army and hating it so much that after retiring, he actually enjoys a janitor’s job.
“I didn’t want you to think my family was trash,” she says. “I’ll never be in the situation my Daddy’s in. Kasen and Niki too.” She drops to the bed and looks up at me.
So that’s how come she puts the brakes on, is it? Not that I haven’t been relieved a few times. A bloke can only take so much, and if I was the one to stop it every time, she might get hurt feelings.
Chapter 17
Emilie turns to me with her iPod in hand. “It’s my turn.”
“Pardon?”
She looks over her shoulder at the line-up of booths—the Christmas Eve Festival. They opened it an hour early so we could peruse through it unfettered by a bunch of shoppers recognizing us. She turns back to me with a smile. “Christmas present talk.”
“Right.” I lean down for her to put the buds in my ears. She presses her lips to mine; they curve when she cranks the music up. Classical music—all right then.
Luke, Parker, and Emilie walk to the next booth containing knitted scarfs and hats, Tom and Gregory following close behind.
I hang back with Doug to give them more space. Luke will not stand for being close to Doug anymore. Says there’s something very wrong with my minder, who’s unofficially mine and Kasen’s.
Doug shows me a massive foam dart gun and wiggles his eyebrows. Aye, we need something to break up this pent-up aggression. Truthfully, it’s just Kasen now. Luke’s outlook has gotten much better since the therapy.
Doug and I creep forward, and before long Emilie’s iPod dies. I keep the buds in though. A conversation with Doug isn’t what it used to be. Everything is strange now. Doug and I have always been close, yet now there’s something weird. A past he didn’t want to share with me. Aye, I guess there’s tension with a lot of people lately, isn’t there? It’s like a huge portion of my life is a lie. That sounds like I just found out I was adopted, but no, I’m flipped. It feels like the person I assumed was a family member actually isn’t. Chooses not to be. I get a grotty feeling every time I look at Doug. Grotty and sad.
And with Kasen it feels the same way. It’s like the disappointment of getting told we can’t go to an awesome theme park…multiplied by a thousand. I try not to think about either of them since all it does is give me a massive lump in my throat, like the one I have now, but my mind won’t let me forget.
I can’t forget. It’s like trying to avoid looking at a wreck scene. My eyes, my mind, keep going back to these deep disappointments over and over.
We get up close to Emilie and the boys before long.
“Emilie isn’t responsible for all that,” Parker says.
“No, Kase just told her and no one else,” Luke says. “I’m not gonna lie, Emilie. If you weren’t here, he would’ve never been unloading on you and there never would’ve been anything for those two to fight about.”
She gasps, and I’m ready to butt in until Parker speaks up, “Why the fuck have you always had such black and white logic? Emilie, you were the only one he told—that can’t be argued, but so much other good stuff has happened because of you.”
She rifles through a bin of stuffed animals and mumbles, “But does it outweigh the bad?”
Yes! I start to tell her, give away that I’ve been listening, but Luke opens his mouth.
“Of course,” Luke says. “Julian’s getting more sleep. Don’t know if he’s told you, but the lad was quite restless before you finally came along. You do something to him, calm him.”
“Yeah, I knew about the sleeping.” She looks up at him. “But that’s Julian. Kasen said I was just here for…Are you glad I’m here?”
Luke jerks his gaze from a stuffed flamingo. “Massively. Our book alone is enough. And your songs are perfect.”
“There’s better songwriters than me.” She shrugs. “I need to hurry and learn guitar so I can put music with it.”
Her hands are just so small. I’ve been trying to teach her.
Luke smiles at the booth attendant and pays for the flamingo. “But those other writers can’t make it sound like something we’d think. You know us.”
Parker gives Emilie a cuddle and smiles down at her. “Like ‘Blue You’ when I told you about the girlfriend I had while I was on tour one. A fifty-year-old would talk about the bloom of her cheeks or some rubbish. You come along with blue reflected on her face from the computer screen—Facetiming or Skyping. There’s no way I could write that and it sound like a proper song.” Parker and Emilie ease into the next booth.
I wrap my arms around her from behind. “You’re doing great on the guitar. And I’m not letting you go anywhere. You’re my new sleeping drug.”
Her cheek heats up under mine. She sucks in a quick breath and turns in my arms. “You heard?”
“Just the last.” I tuck her face into my neck and nuzzle her hair. “Your battery died. And you know I can read lips quite well too, don’t you?”
“I forgot.” She pulls back. “Wait, I didn’t realize you actually took something to sleep.”
“You’re the perfect medicine.”
She sighs. Something tells me that doesn’t make her too happy. It’s anytime I mention depending on her, isn’t it?
“What if something happens to us?” she asks. “Will you go back to staying up all night?”
Oh, hell! I grab her elbow and pull her to the close-way behind the booths. Glancing back, I spot Doug a few meters behind.
“I thought your worry was about the lads,” I say, putting my back to him. “Not me.”
“Everyone keeps reminding me…” She holds her hands up and lifts her shoulders. “We’re young. The chances of it lasting forever are way low. What’s gonna happen to you if we—”
“Is it too hard for you to just live in the moment?”
“Julian, look at me.” She holds my face. “Don’t you think this is a little bit different? The band—the people depending on you to keep it together.”
“We’re perfect.”
“I know.” Her eyes stay locked on mine. “But it doesn’t have to last forever for it to be perfect.”
Relief lightens my shoulders. She’s just doing her usual thinking-too-deeply deal. “What if we did last forever? Would you have a problem with that?”
&n
bsp; “As long as it doesn’t require a ring on my finger.” She smiles. “There’s something I need to tell you.” She looks at the brick dykes on each side of us. Is she really claustrophobic here? “I’m emancipated now. I’ll turn eighteen next month, so it seems like a waste now, but I didn’t know how long it would take when I filed. Anyway, I’m an adult a month before I was supposed to be.”
Och! So this is what she means about being prepared, is it? I thought it was about her being ready. Mentally…logistically. Ah, hell—a trip to the clinic ready. “Sex?”
She laughs. “Just getting on an airplane as a minor was a headache. My agent suggested it might be easier for paperwork. Mamma and Daddy’s signature for every little thing was a pain in the ass. And, Julian…” All I can see is the curve of her dark pony tail while she stares at the ground. “I don’t want that—whether we go there or not go there—to be about the law or my parents.”
Oh my God. I love this girl so much my insides are like magnets to her, twisting and tugging until I’m at her side. My mouth is going to come unglued and I’m gonna say it. “I love you.”
Her head jerks up. “I wanted to say it first.” She throws her arms around my shoulders and grins up into my face. “I love you too.”
Doug shuffles his feet through the leaves behind me. Aye, I get it, Doug. You can hear us. I don’t care, do I?
How the hell we went from talking about our future breakup to I love you is mixter-maxter.
Girls.
“Time to run, Julian,” Doug calls out.
Aye, I’ve got my drawings for the book to take by the office.
“Where is he?” Parker shouts. I turn to see him pushing past Doug at the mouth of the close-way. Luke hangs back. “Jules! She turned down Red Nose for us. She can’t do that, can she? I told them myself we’d still do it.”
Lauren isn’t the one to be mad at this time. She rang me yesterday and asked my advice about the annual fundraiser. An unusual conversation, but it sounds like she took my suggestion.
“You seriously think we’re good for it this year?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says, but doesn’t sound convincing. He turns back toward Luke who only shrugs.