Secrets Are For Keeping

Chapter Forty-Nine

The entire world seemed to stop.

Time froze and I felt numb everywhere. My throat felt raw and my entire body was tired, like saying it had drained everything from me.

The broken record, suddenly came clean, and the memory exploded into my mind.

My fingers reaching out and grabbing the gun. Pointing it at Beckam and pulling the trigger. Because I couldn't let the man take him. I couldn't let the man recruit him into his group and I couldn't let them change Beckam into something he wasn't and torture and hurt Beckam until he was barely even human. I couldn't let them destroy him.

And so I'd killed him.

To save him.

And then I did the one thing that I knew would rip me apart inside. I looked at Kain.

He was staring at me like I was a stranger. His entire face which had only just last night been looking at me with warmth and love, had become guarded and cold. When our eyes met, I could see the betrayal, the pain, the torture that I'd caused him. He just shook his head, looking like he'd lost a part of him and there was no way he could ever get it back.

At that point, I wasn't able to hold it back. Tears began streaming down my cheeks in full force from my eyes. Kain's rejection had made everything more real. The dream-like state that I'd fallen into immediately after the confession ruptured, and I felt reality pouring in, drowning me.

Hands grabbed my upper arms again, and I felt the chain release itself from me. I couldn't look at Kain. I could never look at him again.

Because I'd killed his best friend.

I was pulled out of the room, and then through a metal door. My body was dropped down in the middle of the room that I had been in before going out, and it almost made it feel like I'd never left at all. I wished it were true, that I'd always been in the room. But the damage was done: the tears drying on my face and the memory of Kain's face after I'd spoken haunted me, a look filled with pain and betrayal.

"Thank you, Nova. I'm glad you now have completed what I have asked of you," came the voice of Mr. Neilson from right in front of me. I'd forgotten all about him. And even worse.

I'd forgotten about Olivia.

Olivia hadn't known.

I turned my head to the right and slowly stood up, looking at her face. How she wasn't even able to look at me. But it was there, the hurt, the pain. It was all there. Because of me.

Mr. Neilson was still holding the gun to her neck, and he wore a grin on his face, just like he had before I'd walked out. "I'm so happy you were finally able to let it out. That secret of yours that you just couldn't escape." He was still smiling, but I was too tired to fight back. Too tired to say anything in return so I just stood in the middle of the room, staring at him as he held Olivia and spoke.

"I wish everything could be much easier than this...," he said and unexpectedly released Olivia. She stumbled to the ground, coughing. Then she looked up at me, and somehow, it wasn't the expression I'd been expecting.

Because rather than hatred and disgust, I saw love. I saw her love for me shining through above it all, even after what I'd admitted, even knowing everything that I'd done.

A loud bang exploded into the air.

I stared at Olivia, in shock, not understanding the noise, not being able to piece together everything.

The blood coming from Olivia's black shirt.

The look of surprise on her face.

Her body falling forward, on to the ground, almost as if the world had gone into slow motion.