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Maybe at this point, I’m insane. Maybe that will be my plea. It doesn’t make me any less guilty.
I’m just as much of a murderer as Mason is.
And even more so than Jace, in a way.
I answer the phone on the last ring.
“Hello.” I expect it to be the police, but it’s Kat.
“Are you all right?” I close my eyes. It’s good to hear her voice.
“How could I be?” I ask her with a pain she can’t even imagine. She has no idea.
“It’s going to be okay. I just got a call.”
“From who?” I ask as I sit up straighter and pull my knees into my chest. “About Mason?” I need to know. “Is he going to be okay? Mason’s going to be okay, is that what?—”
“Calm down,” she says, cutting me off. I sit uneasily, waiting for her to speak.
“What did you hear?”
She’s quiet a second longer than I can stand. “He’s in interrogation,” she says. “They can charge him with obstruction now though, but that’s it.” My throat tightens and makes my words come out in a higher pitch than I intended.
“Obstruction?” I blink over and over, feeling light-headed.
Kat continues, “That’s what I’ve heard. Nothing is set in stone yet.”
My heart races erratically.
“It’s not … I can’t.” I struggle to speak, to breathe even. “Kat, you have to help him. You have to help me.” It’s my chance to confess. To tell her everything. I throw my head back and I rock with the need to let it all out.
“It’s okay, he didn’t do it.”
“I know he didn’t. They can’t keep him. They can’t charge him with anything,” I say, pleading with her as if I know how this all works. But I have no idea.
“Kat,” I say as my voice cracks again and the words are right there, threatening to come out.
He’s taking the fall for me, because he loves me.
And I’m letting him. God, it hurts. It’s so wrong. I bury my face between my knees, hating my reality.
He said he loves me; he’s taking the fall for me. I didn’t even have the balls to tell him how I feel in return. He said I love you, and I said nothing. He must know. He has to. What we have is real and tangible. But I need to tell him.
“Is he going to get off?” I ask her and wait with bated breath. The other line is filled with the sound of her breathing deeply and I find myself hunching forward, my lungs squeezing with the need to breathe.
“Jules, they have some evidence.”
Her words make my blood run cold. Evidence?
“He didn’t do it,” I say and the words leave me without my consent. I know they’re from me, I know I said it, but I’m somewhere else. Not here, safe in a luxurious hotel penthouse while Mason sits in jail for a crime I committed.
“I know he didn’t,” she says and I’m not sure if she speaks with certainty for my benefit or if she really believes he didn’t. She continues, “But for them to be holding him this long, it means they have something on him, Jules. Evan says they have something. There’s something going on.”
I swallow thickly, not responding as Kat repeats my name over and over again. The flashes of what happened haunt me. The blood, the heat, the kick of the gun in my hands.
“What can I do?” My voice is eerily calm as I stare straight ahead, although I see nothing but his father’s lifeless eyes.
“There’s nothing we can do, Jules,” Kat says and I shake my head even though she can’t see.