Page 96 of Trapper Road

She shakes her head. “Nope. Lord knows what kind of bullshit story he’s spinning for your mother right now. Probably blaming Juliette for it all.”

The entire situation is unbelievable. “What a monster.”

“The world is full of them, unfortunately.” She sounds so resigned that it hurts.

I want to slip my hand into hers and tell her that I’m not a monster, but how can I know that for sure? What if being a monster is in my blood? What if it’s inescapable?

I am my father’s son, after all.

There’s an agitation under my skin, a buzzing with the sudden need to share everything. To tell Willa the truth about myself and see how she reacts. See if she’s horrified by who I am or still thinks of me as someone safe. So I say, “My father was a serial killer.”

We’re sitting in front of the dresser and I can see her reflection in the mirror above it. Her jaw drops. Her eyes meet mine in the mirror. “Seriously?”

I nod. “Melvin Royal.” I understand now what Willa meant about the relief of sharing secrets. Except this secret belongs to me, not someone else. I hold my breath, waiting for her reaction.

Her eyes go even wider. “Holy shit! I actually know that guy. You’re not kidding — he’s like a for real deal serial killer. Used to torture girls in the garage.”

I try not to wince at that last bit. “Yep. That’s the one.”

She thinks for a moment and I wonder if I’ve made a mistake telling her after all. “You can leave if you want,” I tell her. “If it’s too much. Especially in light of learning about Juliette’s death. But I just thought you should know. It felt weird to keep that from you.”

She puts her hand on my knee. “Of course I’m not leaving.”

I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. That’s always the part I hate about telling people who my dad was — waiting to see how they’ll react. It usually doesn’t go well, which is why I tend to keep it to myself. Not that that matters with the way information spreads online.

“What’s it like?” She asks. “Growing up the son of a serial killer.”

I force a smile that seems more like a grimace. “It’s great. Really,” I say dryly.

She turns to face me, and reaches out and hooks her fingers through mine, twisting me until I’m facing her as well. “I’m serious. I want to know.”

Other than my family and therapist, the only person I’ve ever really spoken to about my father was Kevin. My stomach twists at the thought of my friend. My former friend. He was fascinated by my father, used to spend hours pouring over obscure internet sites looking for information about him.

I wonder if I should have seen that as a sign of what was to come. I shake my head, my thoughts coming dangerously close to the afternoon at school when Kevin pulled his gun. I don’t want to face that memory.

“I hate it,” I finally say. I’ve never said those words before, and the moment I do I realize how true they are. “He ruined our lives.”

“How so?” Willa asks.

“Where do I even begin? We lost our house, our friends, our school. We even lost our names — Connor Proctor isn’t my real name. It’s Brady Royal. That’s the name I was born with, the one I was raised with. I was forced to change it after Mom was acquitted and people started to come after us.”

It feels strange to say my old name out loud. To think that’s who I used to be.

“We’ve been on the run for as long as I can remember. We do drills — actual drills — on things like how to evade an intruder, how to defend against an attacker, how to disarm someone. We’re not normal.I’mnot normal.”

She tugs my hand into her lap. “Being normal is overrated, don’t you think?”

I smile. “I appreciate the sentiment, but there’s a difference between being strange and being the son of a serial killer. It changes the way people look at me.”

“Ok, give me an example.”

Really, given everything that’s been going on, only one thought comes to mind. I blow out a breath. “You sure you want to know all of this? It’s heavy stuff.”

She leans forward and kisses me. “I want to know everything about you. And I may be petite, but I’m strong enough to handle the heavy shit.”

“There was a school shooting before we came here.”

She lets out a little gasp, but says nothing, waiting for me to continue. I’ve been running from these memories for so long that it’s strange to actually confront them.