The Things We Couldn't Forget

Chapter 28.

I know I won't be able to sleep.

But I do my best to pretend for Kelsea.

She needs to rest just as much as Dallas and I do, and I know she won't as long as she's staying away trying to watch out for me.

So I lay in Dallas's bed, mind racing, staring at the wall until I'm sure she's asleep.

She'd stayed up longer than I thought she would be able to. I could see the light coming from her phone beneath the blankets she kept up over her head and just make out the muffled voices playing from its speakers.

Every time I'd hear my own name mentioned, I would strain my ears to hear more. To be let in on what they're saying about me now. They aren't releasing much. Just that Aries and I are persons of interest and they're asking for anyone with information on the two of us that might lead to an arrest to come forward.

The idea terrifies me.

How many people in this town are still here that remember my father? That remember me? That would love nothing more than to see me fall the same way he had?

Between the two of us, Aries and me, I know this town is going to have a lot more to say about me.

I don't want to hear it, but I strain to listen anyway. I hate hearing his name over and over. I hate the way it twists the knife in my back deeper and deeper. It slices through muscle and sinew and aches with a pain I don't have the words to describe.

How could he do this to them?

How could he do this to me?

How can I be laying in the same room thinking of the exact same questions I'd laid here thinking about after my father made his confession?

Was it all a lie?

Everything that ever happened between us? Everything I believed him to be? Did he ever even actually care, or was he always this dark and evil person existing right under my own nose just as my father had done under this roof?

The question plagues me in the dark.

It slams against the confines of my mind on repeat, no matter how hard I try to drown it all out.

Where is Amie?

They haven't found her body yet, and I'm not sure that they will. I know they've already searched Aries's house. I hear the muffled sounds and the reports talking about their search warrant into his home and vehicles and how they aren't disclosing at this time any findings.

What did he do with her?

It's the question we all want answers to.

People all over the country are tuning into this tormented story I'm stuck living inside of.

None of us were worried about Aries. He had full access to this house without even needing the stolen keys because he had had me. Stupid, naive, idiot me. The girl he knew would never suspect him.

For all I know, he's already brought her here. She could already be over the bluff and gone. He had been here, right down stairs while the rest of us slept.

I hate myself for trusting him.

I hate myself for trusting Luke.

I hate myself for trusting my father.

They'd all played on my stupidity.

I'd breathed a small sigh of relief when I heard Kelsea finally lock her phone and roll over in the bed across the room.