Page 110 of Hate Me Like You Mean It

His sentence was twice the length of mine and three times as harsh. He hadn’t been allowed a phone at all. Though she hadn’t thought to take the walkie-talkie away.

“He’s a good kid, don’t get me wrong,” she went on, her confidence growing. “But he gets bored and wants her attention. So he gets himself into all sorts of situations.”

I leaned in, plopping my chin on the base of my palm with theatric curiosity. “Whose attention?”

Dominic nudged my foot again, and I bit back a grin. “Mom seems to think I have a crush on her boss’s daughter.”

“Do you?” I teased.

“No. She’s a mouthy, spoiled brat who derives sadistic pleasure from causing me pain.”

I hummed. “She sounds really pretty.”

He chuckled, shaking his head with soft exasperation as he finally started dealing out the cards. “And she very much knows it.”

“Good for her.”

I picked up my hand and settled back with a satisfied smile, counting down the seconds until the show was over and I could run away.

Lock the door.

And scream until my lungs gave out.

35

Alice

“She’d already started to lose trust in her memory by that point. I think that’s partly why she didn’t deny taking the jewelry,” Dominic explained in the same smooth, detached tone he’d been using since we got back into his car. “You add to that all the confusion and paranoia… it really fucks with you. The paranoia, especially. It doesn’t show up until later stages for most people, but then again, most people aren’t diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s at forty-three. Lightning struck twice with her.”

We’d been parked outside my building for twenty minutes. The ride itself had been just under two hours, and Istillhad questions. Every time he answered one, three more popped up.

“That’s why we left. Believe it or not, I wasn’t the one who suggested it. She called me while I was at school, hysterically crying about being framed by people who wanted to see her go to jail… I couldn’t even understand what she was saying at first. But as soon as she sent me a picture of the Polaroid, I knew… Or at least I thought I knew. I got it in my head that you wanted me out of your life so badly, you’d be willing to go after herto make it happen. Her reaction should’ve raised a flag for me. I should’ve known something was wrong when I got home and the house had been ripped apart. She’d been looking for hidden cameras, told me I had one hour to pack all of my essentials. At the time… I don’t know, I just assumed that’s how long your parents had given us to pack our things before they called the cops or something.”

I wanted to pull my hair out.

“They didn’t even know you were leaving.” If they had, Dominic and Rosie wouldn’t have made it anywhere near the gates without being intercepted and urged to talk things out.

When we realized they were gone the next morning, we’d all assumed it was temporary. Gampy had assured us that the two of them just needed some space.

The reality didn’t fully register until a few weeks later, when they still hadn’t come back, and our calls were still going straight to voicemail.

“Her pride was hurt,” Dominic said. “The symptoms and everything else aside, she was blindsided by the accusation. She considered you all her family, and it… We argued about it constantly, especially in the first couple of months. She wanted to forgive you, talk, but I was… angry, to say the least. I blocked your numbers on our phones, hammered into her head that you’d framed her on purpose because you wanted us gone. I think, had she not felt so blindsided, had her pride not taken such a massive hit, she wouldn’t have believed me. But she did. Eventually, she stopped arguing.” He palmed the wheel again. “I will say, there was a point after her diagnosis where a part of me wondered if maybe she had taken the jewelry during… she’d fall into these sudden bouts of confusion, and I wondered if that was maybe what’d happened. I kept an eye on it, but she never showed any sort of fixation with accessories or shiny objects.”

My hand moved to dab at the fresh round of tears streaming down my face, but it barely made it an inch off my lap before flopping back down. There was no point. I’d been crying on and off for over two hours, my face was raw and swollen, my whole body was aching and depleted, and I just couldn’t see the point.

“It feels like I’ve been hit by a bus,” I muttered, resting my temple against the cool passenger window.

It was late—almost eleven. We’d overstayed our welcome at the residence and then some, until Sage had been forced to gently kick us out.

“It was a lot for one day,” he said sympathetically, reaching over to wipe my cheek.

I leaned into his touch, closing my eyes with a soft, involuntary hum. “Keep going.”

“What else do you want to know?”

Everything, but I didn’t have the energy to come up with any more questions. “Whatever I missed asking.”

His hand fell away. “How about we leave the rest until tomorrow? You’re exhausted.”