She sighed, then finally turned to look at me. “Did you know?”
I wanted to lie. I wanted to lie so damn bad.
“Yes.” I admitted the truth because I refused to lie to her.
“Then you need to go. I want you to go.”
“Sienna, I had my reasons. I was protecting you—”
“I don’t care. I want you to go. Leave me. Both of you.”
Then she turned and walked away, locking herself in her bedroom.
I stood there staring at her door, wanting nothing more than to pull it off his damn hinges and make her let me hold her. Explain to her what I was doing. Why I did it.
“She needs time. Don’t do anything stupid. You never were as stupid as your brother. You were the smart one. Don’t let her down, like we did.” Then Nina Roy turned and walked away.
I stood in that living room waiting for sobs, or something to give me an excuse to burst into her room and hold her. There was nothing but silence. She wanted time alone. I would give her that. But this wasn’t over. It was the beginning. She just had to see that.
Six years ago . . .
DEWAYNE
“Slow down, man. You gotta calm the hell down. You can’t kill her. You’ll do life, dude. She’s a kid. A dumbass one, but still, she’s a kid.” Preston’s words were falling on deaf ears. I didn’t give a fuck. If Kimmy Bart had aborted my brother’s baby, I was going to fucking murder her with my own hands.
“Get your ass to the Alpha frat house,” Preston said into the phone. “Dewayne’s going after Kimmy, and word is she’s here. I can’t hold him back.” I knew I had about five minutes before Rock got here. Because if someone was going to stop me, Rock was the only person I knew who had the strength. I had a slut to find.
I’d lost my brother, and Sienna was just fucking gone. Vanished. And now this shit. I had reached my breaking point, and I didn’t give a fuck anymore. Bring on prison. This was all my fault anyway. Fighting with a drunk sixteen-year-old boy had been stupid. He was a kid, and I had threatened him while he was drunk—with the one thing I knew he didn’t want to lose. Sienna.
All of this could have been avoided if I’d just walked out of that house and dealt with him when he was sober. Maybe he had been ready to let Sienna go. If he’d been sober and made that decision, then I’d have let him. If he didn’t know how lucky he was, then he didn’t deserve her. But he didn’t have to die over it. That was all me. Fucking me.
“Kimmy’s slept with most of the basketball team. Hell, I’ve slept with her, I think. That could have been anyone’s kid. We don’t know it was Dustin’s. Just because she was claiming it was his don’t make it his,” Preston said.
I knew this. But I also knew I’d seen my brother fucking her bare. Chances were good that baby had been his. All that was left of my brother, and she’d murdered it. She deserved to die too.
“What if she wasn’t even pregnant? Ever thought of that? She was jealous of Sienna. Dustin wouldn’t break up with her. He loved Sienna. He just wanted to fuck Kimmy. Girls do that shit when they’re desperate. She could have been lying. Don’t do life because of a lying teenage girl.”
I wanted to blame someone, someone other than me, because the pain and regret were too much. If Kimmy had aborted Dustin’s baby, then I could lay all this hate and blame on her. She would deserve it. And I needed to be free of it. I just wanted to take a deep breath again. I wanted to be able to look my parents in the face and not feel like a bastard for being the reason sorrow filled their eyes.
So much pain.
“Where’s Kimmy?” I heard Preston ask some guy who stumbled outside.
“Don’t know,” he slurred.
“Go find her and tell her to hide her sorry ass before Dewayne finds her.”
Preston was determined to stop me any way he could. I’d find her, though. I was running out of time before Rock showed up, but I would find her. If not tonight, another night.
“Shouldn’t have let you drink so much damn whiskey. Always makes you mean,” Preston said, still right beside me. He wasn’t helping. All his yakking.
“Hey, Dewayne, sorry about Dustin, dude,” a guy called out. I didn’t even look at him. His drunken words meant nothing. He didn’t know Dustin. None of them knew the real Dustin. They knew the kid with too much pressure to be the best. The kid trying to find himself. They didn’t know his heart. None of them did.
“Find Kimmy Bart and tell her to fucking run and hide,” Preston called out to him.
Dumbass wasn’t helping.
“I’ll find her. Keep it up. I’ll find her and she’ll pay,” I swore.