Heroes Are My Weakness(97)
He stepped up on the cracked pool deck to see what she held. And when he did . . . Pain contorted his face. He turned on his heel, abandoning her.
“Don’t you dare walk away from me,” she cried as he stalked across the yard. “Don’t you dare!”
He slowed, but didn’t stop. “Leave it alone, Annie.”
“Do not walk away.” She spat out each word. Not moving a step. Staying right where she was.
He finally turned to face her, his words as flat as hers had been vehement. “It was a long time ago. I’m asking you to leave it alone.”
His expression was stony, foreboding, but she had to know the truth. “It wasn’t you. It was never you.”
He clenched his hands into fists at his sides. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re a liar,” she retorted, not with anger, but as a statement. “That summer. All this time I thought it was you. But it wasn’t.”
He launched himself toward her, using attack as his defense. “You don’t know anything. That day you got dive-bombed by the birds . . . I was the one who sent you to that wreck.” He was on the pool deck, looming over her. “I put the dead fish in your bed. I insulted you, bullied you, excluded you. And I did it all on purpose.”
She nodded slowly. “I’m starting to understand why. But you’re not the one who shoved me into the dumbwaiter or pushed me into the marsh. You didn’t take those pups down to the cave or write the note that sent me to the beach.” She ran her thumb over the photos she held. “And you weren’t the one who wanted me to drown.”
“You’re wrong.” He met her eyes dead-on. “I told you. I had no conscience.”
“That isn’t true. You had too much.” Her throat tightened, making it hard to speak. “It was Regan all along. And you’re still trying to protect her.”
The proof lay in the photos she held. In each one, Annie had been cut out. Her face, her body—every jagged slash of the scissors a little murder.
Theo didn’t move—he stood as straight as ever—but even so, he seemed to fold in on himself, withdrawing to that place where no one could reach him. She expected him to walk away again, was astonished that he didn’t. She clung to that. “Jaycie’s in some of the photos,” she said. “All of her.”
She waited for him to stalk away, to explain, and when he did neither, she offered her own conclusion, the one he couldn’t seem to utter himself. “Because Jaycie wasn’t a threat to Regan. Jaycie didn’t try to steal your attention the way I did. You never singled her out.”
She could feel him waging an internal war. His twin had died more than a decade earlier, yet he still wanted to protect her from the evidence of the photos. But Annie wouldn’t let him. “Tell me.”
“You don’t want to hear this,” he said.
She gave a mirthless laugh. “Oh, but I do. You did those things to me to keep me safe from her.”
“You were an innocent party.”
She thought of the punishments he’d taken for his sister. “So were you.”
“I’m going inside,” he said flatly. He was shutting her out, sealing himself up as usual.
“Stay right here. I became a big part of this story, and I deserve to know all of it right now.”
“It’s an ugly story.”
“You think I don’t already understand that?”
He separated himself from her, walking to the end of the deck where the old diving board had once been mounted. “Our mother left us when we were five—you know that. Dad escaped by working, so it was Regan and me against the world.” Every word he uttered seemed to cause him pain. “All we had was each other. I loved her, and she would have done anything for me.”
Annie didn’t move. Theo nudged a rusted metal bolt with the toe of his riding boot. She didn’t think he’d say more, but he went on, his voice barely audible. “She’d always been possessive, but then so was I, and it wasn’t a problem until we were around fourteen, and I started paying attention to girls. She hated that. She’d horn in on my phone calls, tell me lies about any girl I showed an interest in. I thought she was just being a pest. And then things got more serious.” He crouched down on his heels to check out the mess at the bottom of the pool, but Annie doubted he was seeing anything except the past. He went on—coldly, without emotion. “She began starting rumors. She made an anonymous call to the parents of one girl telling them their daughter was on drugs. Another girl ended up with a broken shoulder after Regan tripped her at school. Everybody believed it was an accident because they all loved Regan.”