Consequences of Deception (19 page)

I’m finding it a bit difficult to breathe, but I don’t let it bother me. No use in fighting anymore, not really. I suspect that my face is smashed into the pillow, and I don’t care enough to turn my head. Instead, I keep right on floating in my happy land, remembering driving around my circular driveway with my dad a hundred times the first time he let me into the car. We’d laughed and laughed about being on a road to nowhere, and…

It’s the yelling that brings me back to reality, and I blink my eyes open to find Killian on top of me with a hand pressed against my throat.

“Goddammit, Sloane!
Where are you?
You earned this, you selfish bitch! Don’t fucking ignore me!”

I have nothing left to give him, so I just stare at him with no emotion as he thrusts away inside of me, and I don’t even care a little bit when he finds his release and begins coming inside of me as he lets out a series of tortured sounds, his eyes never leaving mine.

Seeing him so out of control makes me think back to the way that I felt that day in Starbucks, all those years ago, when he turned his back on me and walked away with no emotion, and something about the reversal of our roles strikes me as hilarious.

I can’t help the crack of laughter that comes from me, and when he glares at me, I laugh harder. He’s so intent on punishing me that he can’t see that he’s already dealt the deathblow, and as I laugh and laugh at how ridiculous that is, tears pour out of my eyes. The whole thing is so pathetically funny that I can barely breathe.

“What in the fuck are you laughing about, goddammit?”

Shaking my head, I laugh harder. “I’m laughing because you’re still trying to get your pound of flesh when you’ve already won. I’m already broken and now you’re just pissing in the wind. Take whatever you want, do whatever you want. Hurt me, fuck me, punish me… it doesn’t matter. When you’ve gotten your fill, do what you’ve wanted to do all along and kill me. I’m not going to put up a fight and if you won’t do it, I’ll do it myself. You win, Killian. It’s over. I hope that breaking me gives you whatever it is you’ve been looking for.”

He lets out a harsh sound as he stands up and walks away, probably to go do a victory lap. I don’t move at all. Instead, I close my eyes and go right back into my dream world.

I come back from my trip down memory lane to Killian holding me up as water cascades over me in the shower. It’s annoying as hell that he’s cleaning me, annoying that he can’t just celebrate his victory and let me go.

I stay silent the entire time he is washing me from head to toe, and I keep that up as he dries me off, brushes my hair and dresses me in one of his t-shirts. Apparently, me being silent pisses him off, because he’s stomping around like a madman. Sitting me on the edge of the bed, he grabs my face.

“You’re acting like a fucking lunatic right now and the things that you said earlier were seriously fucked. What the hell is going on in that head of yours?”

I say nothing, continuing to stare at him blankly. Nothing I say matters so I really don’t get why he’s asking.

Grabbing my shoulders, he shakes me. “What the hell? Answer me, goddammit!”

Something about him shaking me brings me out of my fugue-like state, and for the first time in days, I actually have something to say.

“Why do you fucking care? You got what you wanted, Killian. You’re a bully and an asshole and you’ve single-handedly ruined my life and shit all over everything that I loved. I get it, I do. You hate me for surviving the fire when Shannon didn’t. Don’t you think I hate myself enough for that? How much sorrier do I need to be for you?”

He pushes me away as he steps back, a black look of rage taking over his face. “That is fucking rich coming from you! How much sorrier do you have to be? Let me count the motherfucking ways! You could start by being sorry for fucking fooling me and making me love you when you were nothing but a lying coward! Next up, you could be sorry and take responsibility for being fine with the fact that my eighteen-year old sister was fucking your father! And finally, you can tell me how sorry you are and how much you really regret jumping out the fucking window, like a coward, and leaving my sister to die! She was all I fucking had, Sloane, and you left her in there without even trying to get her out! How could you jump out without trying to wake her, hell, wake your father up?
How could you
?”

My jaw drops in shock, and I pinch myself to see if I’m really awake. He’s talking crazy right now, and I can’t believe that he thinks that any of that is true.

“Oh my God… Killian, you’ve lost your mind. Not one thing you just said is true. You need help!”

He explodes in a rage, grabbing the lamp that is on the nightstand next to me, throwing it across the room where it smashes into the wall before falling into broken pieces on the floor.

“Stop fucking lying! I know, Sloane. I fucking know—for a fact—that everything I just said is true, right on down to your loser piece of shit father fucking my teenage sister!”

He can say whatever he wants about me, but for him to be calling my father a loser piece of shit is the absolute end.

Snapping out of my fog, I stand up and slap him across the face as hard as humanly possible.

“You don’t know
shit
, Killian! Everything you just said is fucking bullshit, and if you
ever
call my father such disgusting things again, I won’t be held accountable for my actions! I hate to burst whatever bullshit bubble you’ve been living in for the last four and a half years, but
I
was there that night and
everything
you just said isn’t just ridiculous, it’s flat out fucking wrong! If you’ll pull your head out of your goddamn ass, I’ll tell you what really happened. I don’t know where you got your information from, but it’s crap.”

He glares at me, but instead of backing down I glare right back, taking secret delight in the angry red mark on his face. He deserves that and more, as far as I’m concerned.

Turning away from me, he opens the bedroom door and gestures to the hallway.

“You want to weave a tale, princess? Have at it. Get your ass into the living room so that we can talk. This ought to be rich.”

My stomach churns as I walk past him to go into the living room where I take a seat on the sofa. He crosses the room to me, his eyes locking on mine, in a way that suggests to me that he thinks I’m full of shit.

He is out of his ever-loving mind and is about to find out how very wrong he is. Once I’ve disabused him of the ridiculous thoughts in his head, I’ll be demanding an explanation as to who gave him such bullshit information.

Instead of sitting next to me on the couch, he sits in one of the side chairs. It’s strange that our positions have changed. Ten days ago it was me that didn’t want to hear what he had to say—now it seems as if it’s Killian that’s not looking forward to what’s coming.

Taking in a deep breath, I begin speaking. “What you believe happened and what
really
did are two totally different things. Are you ready to hear the
truth
about what happened that night, Killian?”

He gives me a hard look before responding. “I’m ready to hear your version of it, yes.”

That’s really the best that I can hope for at this point, but since the facts are on my side, I’m jumping in with both feet.

“You already know how it all started. You were in New York City at a tech conference and Shannon, my dad and I had gone up to the lake house for a few days during winter break. We’d been planning to go for weeks. I remember that Demi was so annoyed that she couldn’t come since she was in Minnesota at her grandparents’. Stephen was supposed to come up to meets us that day too, but he pulled out the last second since he got food poisoning.

“Shannon was upset about something, so I took her into town and tried to cheer her up with pedicures and shopping. We met up with my dad at that awesome fusion restaurant near the house for dinner and we had a great time. When we got home, the three of us watched
Batman Begins.
Dad went off to play on his computer before he went to bed, so Shannon and I moved into my bedroom and watched
Weird Science.
She fell asleep not long after it began, so I turned it off and went online.

“I sent you a message on Facebook and you answered not too long after, and we spent about an hour chatting. It was really late, especially in New York, but you were doing—that thing that you do—when you go somewhere for less than three days and you try not to get knocked off California time. Do you remember that?”

He stares at me in silence for a moment before finally acknowledging my question with a nod. “Of course I remember. I remember everything about that night and the days that followed. I already see a hole in your story, but by all means, go on.”

He’s so damn frustrating. There aren’t
any
holes in my story because it isn’t a story; it’s fact. Choosing to ignore him entirely, I go on.

“After you and I finished chatting, I went to sleep. I remember that it was almost midnight. It was Shannon who woke me up to the living hell that was happening in the house. The smell was horrible and my room was filling up with smoke, so we crawled to my bedroom door together. When Shannon opened it, we both saw that the entire place was going up in flames. I screamed for my dad, but there was no response. Shannon dragged me to the window and said that we had to jump out…”

Not expecting an interruption, I startle when he cuts me off.

“Shannon was with you in your bedroom when the fire started? What was she wearing?”

“Jesus, Killian. What a stupid question! She was wearing that silly ass pink sleep shirt she loved so much that said ‘PINK LIFE’ all over it.”

Slamming his hand down onto the arm of his chair, he glares at me. “Bullshit! My sister was found in a pair of fucking underwear. She wasn’t wearing anything else!”

Leave it to him to pick out the stupidest detail ever. “Ugh! You are so frustrating! She
was
wearing the pink shirt, Killian. When we went to my bedroom door, Shannon was smart enough to know not to touch the handle without a buffer. She pulled off her sleep shirt before she turned the handle. Things were crazy and happening so fast that she never even tried to put the shirt back on.”

“When we got to the window, Shannon opened it and pushed the screen out. The last thing she said to me was ‘
I have to do this, I’m sorry! Call Stephen and get help! I’ll be out in a minute. I love you
.’ The next thing I knew, she was shoving me out the window. I’m sure that you already know that when fell, I got stabbed by a fishing pole. I couldn’t move or even breathe, but I saw the firemen when they arrived. I told the one that found me that there were people in the house and I begged him to save my family. That’s the last thing that I did before my heart stopped, Killian. No matter what bullshit you’ve believed, I didn’t jump out that window like a goddamn coward.”

He’s lost the coloring in his face entirely and since I finished he’s just been staring at me. He seems to be lost in thought, so I’m going to wait it out until he says something else.

“This is all a very good story, but there’s one thing that you haven’t mentioned.”

I stare at him without saying a word, because lord only knows what he’s thinking.

“Shannon was
pregnant,
Sloane. She died on the floor next to your father’s bed. You and I both know that she didn’t have a boyfriend. What she did have, however, was a secret. I knew that something was going on with her but no matter what I said, she wouldn’t cop to the fact that she was seeing someone. It all became very fucking clear why she kept her relationship status to herself when she died the way that she did.”

I’m flabbergasted by his revelation but not entirely shocked because he’s right—Shannon definitely had a secret.

“I knew that she was hiding something but I had no idea that she was pregnant. But you and I both know that she and my father never saw each other that way. I don’t know what she was hiding, but I can tell you, with one hundred percent certainty, that it wasn’t a relationship with my father. Shannon’s baby wasn’t his and there’s absolutely no way that it could have been.”

“You can’t say that, Sloane. You don’t know for sure, and—”

I cut him right off because he’s wrong about that. “Actually, I
can
know for sure. My father was sterile, Killian. He couldn’t have children.”

He stares at me for a few seconds in confusion before he says anything else. “So you’re saying that, after your parents had you, he had a vasectomy?”

Talking about this is literally making me nauseous, but there’s no way around it.

“No, he was
always
sterile. When my parents decided that they wanted to have a baby, my father asked Stephen to be their sperm donor.”

He’s staring at me like I’ve grown another head. “How is that even possible? You’ve never once mentioned the fact that Stephen is your father!”

I glare at him before I snap back. “That’s because he
isn’t
my father.
My father
was Trevor Evans, and
nothing
will ever change that. I didn’t even know that Stephen was the donor until I overheard Celine yammering on about it right before they got married. When I asked my dad, he explained why they asked Stephen to be the donor and that was that. I never discuss it with anyone because it’s no one’s business. To my knowledge, Stephen doesn’t even realize that I know. It’s a non-issue to me.”