Page 117 of Unspoken Lies

“You’re being very nice to me and it’s weird,” Rachelle murmurs, looking around the campus.

The sun is shining and there are people underneath trees chatting to each other or reading. It’s a very active campus, and the weather is in that in-between state where it can be eighty degrees one moment and chilly the next.

“This is exactly the way I always should have been with you,” I sigh. “The bet is a way to control kids to do shitty things in the hope they’ll be able to break away from their obligations. Instead, they find themselves indebted to a secret society that’ll find ways to bleed you dry, as soon as they find the right time to do it.”

“What were you running from?” Rachelle asks. “I still don’t know.”

“Sex trafficking humans under the guise of being a shipping container company,” I grunt, my tone so low no one else can hear me. This isn’t a conversation for anyone else but her.

“Excuse me?” she asks, surprised.

“My parents, especially my grandfather, have never presented themselves as good people,” I sigh. “My grandfather and the men in my family have tastes that tend to trend toward the very young, and I’ve always struggled with it. I’ve had to pretend it’s what I like or have conversations with them about how they enjoy fucking underage girls and boys. My parents kidnapped me at the end of sophomore year of high school andforced me to fully immerse myself in the business. I couldn’t look away, and I snapped.”

“Snapped like when you threw me into a river on my birthday?” Rachelle asks mildly.

“Yeah, kind of like that,” I breathe. “The guys have always known about my fucked up home life, which is why I used to spend the night with one of them whenever possible. Hearing that the men in my family liked to fuck minors is very different from seeing them do it. I was wrecked when I came back, and it helped to be able to focus on anything else. You were our plaything.”

“I still hate water,” she mutters, pulling her hand away from me to cross her arms over her chest. I feel the absence of her immediately and my chest is getting really tight at the loss. “I don’t like being unable to see my feet at the bottom of a body of it.”

“You still get into our pool,” I remind her.

“Theo is a pushy asshole. He also tends to get in the pool with me so that if I panic, he can help me,” Rachelle explains. “Outside of that, I’ll avoid all bodies of water, thank you very much.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, staring at my feet as I walk. “Just saying I was in a fucked up place isn’t enough. I was drowning in the weight of my responsibilities, and I was a coward. There was no other way out for me where I could escape being a sex trafficker. I held onto you with both hands as my life preserver, but managed to drag you under.”

“That’s not fucking fair,” she says, anger flooding into her voice. “That’s an impossible choice, and I’m not going to let you pull me into it.”

We’re basically hissing at each other at this point, and I need to be able to talk to her where she can scream if she wants to. Myhand spans the small of her back, pushing her to enter the tower. She can get out her angry energy while climbing stairs.

“But you are in it,” I say calmly, ignoring the sign that says students can’t go up the steps and ducking under it with Rachelle. “Your presence at Carlysle Prep was a catalyst to the bet being enacted. We can’t take it back.”

“Are you saying I’m at fault for existing?” Rachelle asks with a snort. “That’s rich.”

We trudge up the stairs, the place completely deserted. If we’re going to have it out, it may as well be in a tower, it feels fitting somehow.

“Are you saying if your mother hadn’t married Mr. Reyes that you’d still be Ignacio’s stepsister?” I ask, playing Devil’s advocate.

“You’re deflecting,” she mutters. “Stop trying to make me mad at you.”

“This is what happens when you’re in therapy,” I grumble. “You can’t be fucked with.”

“Youput me in therapy!” she yells, exasperated. “All of your fuckery has done this to me.”

There we are.

“Yeah, it has. A series of fucked up things brought us together,” I remind her. “If Nacio hadn’t been so pissed off that his dad was getting remarried to create a perfect little life, he wouldn’t have insisted you be our bet.”

“So I should be mad at Ignacio?” she asks, rolling her eyes. Her energy is flagging as she climbs, but we’re almost to the top. “Your arguments are flimsy at best, Elijah.”

She’s been hanging out with Theo too much.

“I’m simply saying that the universe threw us together,” I explain. “You were my life preserver, and I grabbed on with both hands.”

“Fuck you,” she huffs, getting to the top and walking to one of the openings to gaze out. I think she’s trying to find space from me, but there’s none to be had.

“I’m explaining this to you badly,” I mutter. “I don’t know how to talk to you, how to fix this, or if I even can. Why are you okay with everyone else but not me?”

“You didn’t want to open the casket!” she yells, throwing her arms up as she turns. “Emil told me what happened that night, because he heard the entire sordid tale from Nacio. You wanted to leave me there, because of a fucking bet. I’m not a person to you. I’m just a thing to kill.”