Page 58 of Boys Who Taint (Spine Ridge University #5)

Levi

The night of Mavis’s death

After Mavis scared everyone in the woods with the props she set up while everyone was busy at the campsite, everyone went to bed, except us two.

I don’t know why, but her little spooky adventure didn’t do much for me. I guess when you’re too busy trying to make contact with the girl who’s been avoiding you for months, nothing grabs your attention anymore.

I sigh and sit down against a tree near the ledge where we made our jumps into the water, listening to the water break against the rocks.

“Are you moping around again?” Mavis says as she sits down beside me.

I roll my eyes. “I’m not moping.”

“Yeah, you are.” She nudges me with her elbow. “C’mon, you can tell me.”

“It’s nothing.”

“It wouldn’t be nothing if it’s been bothering you all this time. Tell me. I promise I won’t tell a soul.”

I lower my gaze and draw in the earth with a twig I found. “You know, I always imagined things would go differently between Aspen and me.”

“Oh … you’re talking about how she’s been ignoring you?”

I shrug. “I don’t understand it, and it’s pissing me off.”

“Sometimes girls do that.”

“You think?”

“I know so.” She snorts. “Girls can be fickle. One day they’re interested, then the next they’re aloof.”

“Right.” I draw some stick figures in the ground. “But we’ve known each other for so long. We used to be friends, but then she started pulling away.”

“You’re worried she doesn’t like you anymore?”

I suck in a breath. “She won’t even look at me.”

She nods a few times. “I get it.” She scoots closer.

“You know, I feel the same way about a guy I know. Someone I’m close with.

” She tucks her hair behind her ear. “I was head over heels, but he never saw me the same way, and then he fell for another girl, so I pretended I never felt anything for him, and I … just gave up.”

“I’m sorry. He doesn’t know what he lost.”

She smiles. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

“I mean it.” I smile back.

“I think these things just happen sometimes. People are like bugs.”

“Bugs?” I frown, snorting.

“Yeah. They start small, dependent, crawling all over you, and friends with everyone. And then they weave this cocoon around their heart and hide from the world.”

“I’m not getting the analogy here.”

“When the bug is finally done growing, it’s turned into a moth or a butterfly, a completely new being. And then it flies away and might never see its fellow bugs again.”

“That’s depressing.”

“Yup …” She stares off at the waves in the distance. “But you know, sometimes those bugs might just randomly fly into each other.”

I look at her, and she looks at me, and I don’t think we’re talking about bugs anymore.

“As for me, I’m kind of done trying to fly,” she mutters.

“Hmm …” I get what she’s saying, but I don’t know if I could ever see it in that kind of light.

“I don’t think she’ll ever fly back to me.”

“You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”

The sudden question catches me off guard. “W-what?”

“It’s hard to hide when you’re in that deep,” she says, grinning. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell Aspen. Or anyone else.” She grabs my arm. “As long as you don’t tell anyone what I told you either.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” I say.

“Good. Because I don’t think I’ll ever, ever recover.”

I snort. “You’d hex me if I tried.”

“Damn right I would.”

We both laugh, and for a moment, I don’t feel so alone in my head.

“You know what? Fuck ’em,” she says.

I’m still lost in thought. “Who?”

“ Them . Those fuckers don’t love us back.” She gets up and pats her legs. “I’m done waiting around, wasting my life for someone who’s not interested. You and I are in the same boat. We should cheer each other on in finding a new partner. A new life. A new obsession.”

I look up at her. “What do you mean?”

She holds out her hand. “Let’s make a pact.”

“But we’re not—”

“Screw it. Even if we weren’t friends, we’re friends now. We’re bonded for life, man. We exchanged secrets. I don’t do that with everyone.”

Tempted by the prospect of that twinge of jealousy and yearning cutting away at my heart, I take her hand.

“Screw them. Let’s take our life into our own hands. No more pining. No more suffering. We make a pact, here and now, just you and I. We’re going to do our best to find a new love and forget about the old.”

But what if I don’t want to forget?

“They don’t want us. They’ve flown off. It’s time we did the same.”

Maybe she’s right. Perhaps we should stop living in the past.

Her smile is enough to convince me as I let her pull me up from the ground.

“Let’s make the jump. Together,” she says. “And when we fall into that water, we give up on them.”

I swallow away the lump in my throat and nod.

I take off my shirt, and she removes her beach dress so we’re both in our swimwear. She reaches out for my hand, and I take it.

Am I really doing this? Am I ready to let go?

She squeezes my hand. “Just run and jump. Don’t look back. There’s only one way down.”

We both begin to run.

Don’t look back. Don’t stop. Just give up.

“Here we go!” she squeals.

The moment our feet reach the ledge, a blue butterfly flutters across my field of vision, the same kind that landed on Aspen’s marshmallow at the bonfire, and I stop.

Abruptly.

Instantly.

Definitively.

Even though Mavis’s foot is already off the ground.

I can’t.

I won’t.

I refuse to give up on Aspen Caruso .

And as Mavis lets go of my hand, ready to make the jump, I stay frozen in time … while she slips and screams.

THUD!

I’m frozen to the ground while the dead whisper in my ear.

Join her.

You deserve it.

You killed her.

You killed an innocent girl.

Her sister.

It’s all your fault.

You let her jump without you.

You’re a murderer.

The first tent behind me zips open, and Cecelia races toward me, beckoned by the deafening sound of death.

A death that’s on my hands.

I can’t.

I can’t let go of Aspen.

And now I’ll lose her forever.

Aspen

Present

The oxygen hitches in my throat.

He … was in love with me?

That’s why Mavis died?

“I couldn’t do it. When I saw that butterfly, all I could think about was you. You. You.” He clutches his hair. “Every week, every day, every minute, every fucking second of my life, all I could think about was you. It’s always you.”

The pain in his voice wounds me.

It tears down all the defenses I’d built and turns them into dust.

“But you couldn’t even look at me. And then Mavis died.

I felt so guilty. I knew you’d hate me. Everyone called me murderer, and they were right.

I’m the reason she’s dead.” His face contorts.

“I had nothing left. Nothing except your hatred, so I made it mine.” He pauses briefly to suck in a breath.

“But then Grey stole you away. Do you know how jealous it made me to see you with him? You have no idea how much I yearned to have what he had. The way you kissed him right in front of me drove me insane. And he kept interfering, kept making things worse, and then I found out he was actually there that night, taping us. Fuck!” He pinches his fingers together.

“I was so fucking close to making you hate me to death. And then it all fell apart.”

This is the reason.

This is why he wanted to stop Grey from showing me that video.

Because if I knew the truth about Mavis’s death, I’d stop hating him and let that part of my heart I thought died long ago live again.

Destroying me from the inside out.

Levi

The truth hurts far worse than a thousand knives ever could.

God. The way she’s looking at me is eating me alive.

Why won’t it ever stop?

“Why didn’t you tell me?” She shakes her head. “I tried to talk to you.”

My heart hurts. “My own parents said I could never speak to you again.”

“Why? Why would they do that?”

“Don’t you understand? Your parents would’ve killed me if I got anywhere near you. They couldn’t lose me.” Her eyes connect with mine. “ You couldn’t lose me too .”

Her brows draw together as tears begin to form in her eyes, and I wish I could go over there and brush them away, but I know she’d never let me.

Not after the things I’ve done.

I lower my gaze to the ground. “Somewhere deep down … I believed I deserved it. Her death was my fault. We were friends, Aspen. And I killed your heart.”

She shakes her head.

“I killed you along with her.”

“No. I’m still here.”

“Because I made you hate me!” I roar.

The meaning of my words takes a few seconds to settle in with her, but when it finally lands, her face grows grim. All the freckles in the world couldn’t light up her face after the damage I’ve done.

“All those awful comments, and all those times you ignored me—”

“Hurt you,” I interject. “And it hurt me just as much. But I couldn’t let you see.”

I destroyed everything.

Even the only girl who ever truly cared.

Her lips shudder. “You needed me to hate you … so I could let you die.”

The rain pitter-patters down on my face, droplets rolling down my lips, and the scorpion tattoo still hidden beneath my hoodie. I’m not the butterfly she is. I’m nothing but a venomous insect that kills everything in its path.

I belong there in the watery depths below, and she … God, she would’ve been better off not knowing the truth.

I pull my hoodie farther down so she doesn’t have to look at me. I take out my contacts, letting go of everything that made me her Ghost.

“How could I live in a world where I could no longer touch you? How could I live in a world where the only girl I ever wanted got destroyed by my hands?”

I raise my hands and look at them like they’re monstrous. Heinous, just as my crimes. “Everyone wanted me dead.”

I curl my fingers underneath my hoodie and tear it over my head, letting the rain fall down on my naked chest. The last piece of my sin cast aside.

But as her eyes glide over my tatted body, they settle on the scar she left on my arm when I first caught her.

“You see it now? This is the proof you were looking for.”

“Ghost,” she murmurs between heavy breaths.

“He was a means to an end. Levi Torres couldn’t ever have you, so I created Ghost. To ravish.

To control. To claim you for myself. I took and took and took everything from you because I fantasized for so long what it would be like for you to be mine, that it broke me.

It twisted me into someone I don’t recognize, but I don’t regret it for one fucking second, Aspen.

” My nostrils flare, my voice unhinged. “Do you hear me? I don’t fucking regret one second of my torment, because I finally got to touch you.

Because I know, somewhere deep down, that girl who once pined for me wanted it too, even if she didn’t know it was me. ”

“You knew all this time that I had a crush on you when I was younger…” she murmurs.

“Yes, I remember the way you looked at me. Back when we were still playing around in the woods behind your parents’ house.” I swallow. “I just didn’t fucking understand because I was too young, too dense.”

She swallows.

“But I understand now. Too late.” My fingers dig into my flesh. “I know what I’ve done. I couldn’t give up on you, and that’s why she died. But if I had to make the choice all over again … I’d do it again in a heartbeat,” I say.

Her hands ball up into fists.

I snort. “Hating me was the easiest thing for you … so I gave you what you wanted.”

Tears well up in her eyes.

“A ghost to haunt you, to relinquish you of the guilt of wishing me dead.”

“I don’t,” she mutters.

“You do. Because I’m a killer. I hurt you in a way that can’t be undone.”

She steps closer, so I take one back.

Droplets of rain roll down my lips. “Don’t.

I tried to give you a way out. To make it easier for you to let go.

Because I fucking can’t, Aspen. I can’t give up on you.

Not now. Not ever. Even after waiting for years, I still stayed away to protect you.

God, I tried so damn hard to get over you.

But my heart has always, always been yours.

And I would rather die now than live the rest of my life without your love.

So please … please …” I push the tears back. “Let me die like I deserve.”

I take a step back and another one, until there’s no way back. No way to undo what I’m about to do.

“I’m keeping my promise. After all, a deal is a deal.” A simple smile is my last goodbye to the girl who deserved so much better from me.

But the second I open my arms and fall backward, ready to face the same fate as the one I killed, she runs toward me.

“Fuck the deal!”

With my arms opened wide, she jumps into me, wrapping her arms around my body as we plummet toward the abyss.