Xavier started to walk toward me.
I put my back against the side of the pickup truck.
The only thing that could possibly save me would be if someone came driving down the road. This road was quiet. That wasn’t going to happen. That wasn’t my fate.
Noah and Easton finally started to walk toward me too.
I had all three standing just a few feet away.
I noticed Noah’s hands were messed up. His knuckles were cut and scabbed.
That meant he had been fighting someone. Or people. Or maybe he was just beating the hell out of anyone he felt like. He was that angry.
The three of them side by side by side were tall and deadly.
Part of me felt like blurting everything out.
Everything I knew. Everything I wanted to do to them.
Screaming for them to go away and never talk to me again.
Xavier took one more step to get closer to me. He lifted his right hand and gently touched my hair. He ran his fingers through it and I shivered.
After all that was going on, they still excited me.
I hated myself for that.
Xavier took his hand from my hair and rubbed his fingers together. “Are you okay, Winter?”
“What?” I asked.
“I asked if you were okay. You’ve been hiding. And it’s no secret where you’ve been hiding. So I’ll ask again, are you okay?”
I nodded. “I’m fine. I just needed a minute. I needed to regroup and think.”
“Plot out the next lie?” Noah asked.
“Hey, give her a break,” Easton said. “It’s hard to remember, or not remember, or fake remembering, or fake forgetting… I mean, which one is it, right?”
My face turned red. I swallowed hard. “You don’t understand…”
“I think we do,” Noah said. He moved toward me and looked at the truck. “This is quite the ride you’ve got here, Winter.”
“I was just trying to get back home. To the beach house.”
“That’s good,” Easton said. “The beach hasn’t been the same without you. All those walks I’ve taken in the middle of the night. Watching the house. Waiting. Wondering what to do…”
I shivered. “You have to realize that what you three did… to me…”
“And what’s that?” Xavier asked.
I looked at him.
Do it, Winter. This is it. Fucking do it. Say everything that needs to be said.
I opened my mouth.
Noah reached out and touched my cheek. “I’m going to ask this once, Winter. And your answer will dictate what happens next.”
I nodded with my mouth still open.
“What do you remember?” Noah asked.
It was time to stop lying.
I answered with one word.
“Everything.”
My face burned hot, but the truth was sort of out there.
It wasn’t that much of a shock since they already left me a note saying they knew.
But I had confirmed it.
I had admitted it.
“Everything,” Easton said. “Everything. Everything. Everything. So you know the truth about us, right?”
“That you’re full of shit about us being together?” I asked. “Yeah.”
“It was worth a shot, wasn’t it? If you were that fucked up in the head, why not try to plant that seed and see what would happen? You should have played into it, Winter. You gave yourself away too easily.”
“How…”
“So now we have to figure out how to handle this,” Noah said. “We can’t have this meeting here. We just wanted to check up on you, Winter. We said we would. You kind of disappeared on us.”
“I disappeared?” I asked. “You three left me in that house. That mansion. After that stupid ball. The mask party… and then the ball itself. With Barry trying to grope me.”
“He was handled,” Xavier said. “Nothing happened to you. We kept to our word. We kept you safe.”
“You left me,” I said.
“We wanted to see where you would go,” Easton said. “We weren’t that far away either. We just figured we’d give you some space. To process it all. You had worked so hard to trick everyone.”
I felt like I was shrinking.
Like they had some kind of power over me.
“I’m thinking Xavier’s shop,” Noah said. “That’s a good place to meet, right?”
“You’re going to include me this time?” I asked.
“What does that mean?” Xavier asked.
I laughed. “So I have to be honest but you don’t?”
Xavier’s eyes looked enraged.
“We have to do this, Winter,” Noah said. “And we can’t do it here.”
“Fine. Whatever you want to do. I’m not the one who did anything wrong. Remember that. I was just trying to survive. You want to use your power and your money against me, have at it. But I know the truth. I remember it all. All I have to do is say one word and it’s all over…”
I felt a little bit more empowered.
At least until Easton started to laugh.
“You think you’re innocent?” he asked.
“I didn’t say that,” I said.
“Then don’t act it,” Xavier said. He touched my hair again. “Maybe take a shower too. You smell like a Troc.”
He curled his lip and walked to his vehicle.
“Just please tell me one thing, Winter,” Noah said. “Please tell me you didn’t end up in bed with a Troc.”
“That’s not your business,” I said.
“If you remember correctly, it just might be,” he said.
He walked away next.
I wasn’t sure what that comment meant.
I slowly moved my eyes to Easton.
He put his hand up and had his thumb and pointer finger close to touching.
“This close, Winter,” he said.
“What’s that? You showing me the size of your dick?”
“So close to having my plan work out,” he said. “Too bad. You would have loved it.”
“I doubt it, Easton,” I said. “Goodbye.”
“For now,” he said. He grabbed my hand. His thumb gently stroked the palm of my hand. “We’ll text you. Xavier’s shop. Don’t fuck around this time. You said you were followed again? Remember that. I would hate to see something happen to you for real.”
He backed away and reached for a cigarette.
I didn’t move.
I watched as all three got into their vehicles and drove away.
I was back to being alone.
But I didn’t feel safe at all.
When I walked into the beach house, I took a deep breath of the clean air and I smiled. The place finally had a sense of home.
I walked toward the kitchen and saw my mother at the island, hunched over her phone.
“Oh, hey,” she said.
So casual. Like she had just seen me a few hours ago.
Not like I had been gone for days.
“Hey,” I said.
“Everything okay?”
“Not really,” I said.
My mother put her phone down. “Shit hitting the fan?”
“Big time.”