She told me

Chapter 24

"You're joking"

She twirls the kitchen knife in her hand, "I'm really not".

"I'm not going to kill her Peyton, that's crazy".

"Once you kill her, I'll be able to trust you because we'll be keeping each other's secrets, we can be soulmates forever".

Mia tries to yell something through her gag, and I know her enough to know that she's using curse words that most people don't even know about. She's still glaring at Peyton like she wants to push her off a building and honestly, I can't blame her.

Peyton keeps the knife down and walks up to me, gripping my shoulders, "look I know it's not going to be easy but honestly it only hurts the first time. You'll feel guilty and horrible, like you're the worst person in the world but you'll understand later that you did what you had to do, and it won't hurt at all. In fact, you'll kind of enjoy it."

Yup, the first girlfriend I'd ever had, and she was a psychopath.

"Why don't we just run?"

She cocks her head, "what?"

"We could just go, run away, just the two of us, we can leave all of this behind".

"I can't leave Maya alone".

"She'll be safe now" I take a deep breath, "you've eliminated all the threats remember"

She frowns "I don't know, I don't think..."

"Come on," I take a step closer to her, "isn't it time we did something for ourselves? Something that makes us happy? I love you and I want to be with you, no matter what, but this town, it's never going to keep you happy, it's never going to keep us happy, we'll have to be on guard all the time, we can never just...relax."

Peyton's face clears, "well that's where you're wrong, once you kill Mia, we can just pin everything on her".

Mia makes another strangled sound through her gag as I try to make sense of what Peyton is saying, "how is that possible? no one's going to believe she stabbed herself."

Peyton smiles, "well they're not going to know, they won't know she's dead, they'll just think she ran away once we get rid of the body."

"That's not going to work".

"Of course, it will, we just have to make a fake trail of clues. Besides, she was voted 'most likely to kill someone' last year."

"That's not a real thing".

She shrugs, "well it wasn't an official category, but everyone voted anyway."

"Okay" I can sense Mia looking at me and I know if I look at her, I'm going to see betrayal in her eyes, so I don't.

Peyton grins and retrieves the knife from the stone platform. I hold out my hands, "be gentle".

She cuts through the ropes and once my hands are free, I instinctively massage my wrists which are now dark red in colour. She places the knife on the floor in front of Mia, "go ahead".

I take a deep breath, "I'm actually doing this".

"Yeah" Peyton smiles at me, "you are".

"This is it" I hold her face in my hands, "we're going to be soulmates, together forever".

"Together forever" she repeats, as she kisses me. I kiss her back, grabbing her waist and lifting her.

Then I set her down and aim the gun I'd snagged from her waistband at her, "against the wall now".

"Lucas, what are you doing?" she shakes her head, "why did you have to ruin it?"

Before I can react, she runs towards Mia, grabbing the knife from the floor on her way. Then the knife is at Mia's throat, "drop the gun".