Dad looked sideways at me, noticing the other guys trying to get a look. He folded it and pushed it back into his pocket, shooting them all a warning glare. “Someone who is going to arrive in your life at the exact moment you need her to.”
“Like fate?” I asked. I didn’t really know what that word meant, but I had heard it be thrown around a lot with the adults.
He laughed. “Not fate—karma. Your wake-up call.”
“WHAT THE FUCK!” I GASPED, stepping backward until I’m colliding against a hard body. Spinning around, my eyes shot straight to Bishop. I searched him for more answers, but as per usual, he guarded his emotions with a wall that was probably built from all the people who died at his hands. His eyes were always evasively beckoning, and could summon me within seconds, but he had kept too much from me for too long. Now I was internally battling with myself on whether I trusted him or not. I tilted my head, scanning his features for something. A simple flick of light to pass over his face—but I got nothing. My shoulders slacked in defeat. I didn’t trust him anymore. I could no longer trust any of them. My mother, who was actually my adoptive mother, was alive. She didn’t shoot herself, and all my brain could manage to think was: well, shit, I got bullied all those years for fucking nothing! That could have something to do with the fact that she had fucked Bishop, though. And then I remembered who else just arrived back from the dead along with her. Khales. Nothing was making sense to me—as per usual. My body hummed with a numbness so bleak that the only thing I could feel was the trembling of my fingers and the sweating of my palms. You will not look weak right now. Through all the revelations that had been laid out tonight, and between the bloodshed, I could feel myself slowly slipping again. Losing touch with what was happening in front of me. Was it possible to have a mental break from the people around you driving you so fucking crazy? If not, I was probably going to be the first one to have it happen to.
Hector raised a cigar to his lip, lit it up and then blew out a cloud of fog. “Madison, my son never killed Khales, or, so I’ve just found out tonight.”
I turned back to face Bishop. “I thought you told me you did?” I fought to add to that sentence just like you told me a lot of fucking things. I hissed the ‘me’ to accentuate how livid I was by yet another one of his lies.
“Well, this is all grand, but that’s not why I’m here.” Khales stepped forward and my eyes cut to her.
“Don’t you fucking come closer.” Then I glanced at my mom. The person I mourned for years after her apparent death. I realized, there was a lot that went on between her and my father that I probably didn’t know. But even though my gut churned with distrust when I looked at her, I trusted my dad. Amongst all the chaos that he had put me through, I believed he had a good heart, well, at least when it came to me, anyway. I’d been wrong about this type of shit in the past, so at the same time, I wasn’t entirely sure. I was overwhelmed, so overwhelmed that my hand started to convulse, and my legs quivered. A sharp zap started shooting through my bones, leading to my knees, and then suddenly, I was on the gravel road with stones imprinting into the flesh of my knees and palms. Silent tears began to trickle down my face, and in my peripheral, I caught Bishop sinking down beside me, his arm curling around my back. I froze as every sound, every ounce of talking that was going on, started to slip into white noise. The revelations, this world, it had been slowly breaking me since I first stepped foot into the Riverside Prep marble hall. The finery that screamed elusive, now roared at me in caution. I could feel my thoughts tremble as they slowly started to lose the fight. I thought I had my mom, I thought I’d always have her, even when she was dead, I still thought I had her. But it turned out, I had nothing but plastic promises that were delivered by a cheap imitation of what a mother should be.
The hands that were clamped around my upper arms tightened and began to shake me. I stared at Bishop instantly, but I had nothing else to give. Nothing. My mouth opened, and in my mind, I was ready to tell him to take me away from all this. To whisk me away from the imposters, and the fakes, but…I didn’t trust him. One thing was clear through all of this mess. “You loved her.”
His eyes searched mine cautiously. “What?”
“You loved her.” This time it came out as though I was more confirming it within myself and less like I was asking him a question, because deep down, I knew. He must have felt something for her to not have ended her life all those years ago.
“Madison.” A voice so familiar, it lit up my memory bank like a matchbox full of explosives and drifted through the frosted midnight air, lashing over old wounds that have now opened again.
My eyes closed in reply. “Don’t.”
“Madison, there’s—”
My eyes slammed open and I narrowed them at her, finally, having enough courage to face the monster head-on. I slowly, and on shaky legs, stood from the asphalt, dusting off my pants and squaring my shoulders. I faintly heard a car pull up behind me, but ignored it. All of my
