Split(78)

I turn to her, hoping she’ll finish that sentence and reveal she’s just as freaked out about us as I am.

“You’re right. I’m safer without you.” She chews her bottom lip and then huffs out a breath. “But the thought of living without you is worse than my fears.”

Could that be true? Could she possibly feel as lost as I do when we’re not together? My hands shake and to be safe I pull over on an old road that leads to an abandoned mill. I shut the truck off. The air in the cab thickens between us and my mind clambers to sort the million questions that jumble my head.

“Then what happened? What did I do to chase you away?”

She groans. “You didn’t do anything. I . . .” Her fingers fist into her hair. “Dammit, this is so hard.”

Her silence weighs down the air in the truck and I’m tempted to open a door, stick my head out, and suck in much needed oxygen.

“I saw your employee paperwork, Lucas,” she whispers.

My spine stiffens and I stare at nothing in front of me.

“Your name. I’ve heard your name before.” As if every molecule of air between us swells, the space between us strings tight with tension. “Menzano. I know all about you, Lucas,” she whispers.

No. She can’t know; she’ll hate me if she knows.

“I know about the Menzano Massacre.”

I hold my breath, praying I imagined those words and she didn’t just confess to knowing what I did.

“Lucas?”

My throat closes in and my head spins. She knows . . . but only knows what the news reported, the details released from my case, but still to this day, no one knows the truth. Not even me.

“Lucas, please talk to me.”

The warmth of her hand hits my forearm and I recoil, trying to melt into the door. My hands shake as visions play out before my eyes like a bad dream.

The confusion, the blood, the voices of panic all around.

“You’re shaking—”

Finding out my mother was dead.

“. . . scaring me, Lucas . . .”

My brothers.

“. . . breathe!”

My baby sister.

“Lucas! Breathe!”

Shyann, my only friend, the only woman I ever cared for, knows how sick I am. She trusted me once; even knowing about Gage, she accepted me. No way she’d believe in me now, knowing what I am, what I’m capable of.

“Lucas, please!”

“I think . . . I killed them.”





TWENTY-SEVEN



SHYANN


I suck in a quick breath at Lucas’s confession.

He did it. He killed his family.

Everything I read online said after a hung jury and a retrial the case was dismissed due to insufficient evidence. The entire family’s fingerprints were found on the murder weapon. The angle of the gunshot entry wounds were sketchy, and eventually, after Lucas was held in juvenile detention for almost three years, it was determined to be a mass suicide and he was released. Controversy stirred around the case because of Alexis, the youngest victim. It seemed unlikely that a seven-year-old would willingly commit suicide, but nothing could be proven without witness testimony.

Whatever Lucas said, there’s no way he’s capable of murder.

But Gage, for Lucas’s protection, I believe, would kill.

I study the man now, so different than the boy from the pictures online, and yet somewhat the same. He’s pressed against the door, eyes cast out the window. I don’t see a cold-blooded killer; I see a shattered soul who’s pieced himself back together and despite his abuse has shown nothing but compassion and selflessness, putting his own desires aside by staying away to ensure my protection.

So I’ll risk safety to give him what he needs.

I reach for him with shaky fingers and slide them behind his neck. “Lucas?”

“I can’t . . . breathe.”

My eyes burn as he becomes more and more like a boy and less like the man I’ve come to know. The man I’ve come to care deeply for.

“The air . . . I can’t.”

“Okay.” I hop out of the truck and jog around the hood to the driver’s side. Cautiously I open the door.

“Come on out.” I try to sound strong, try to force a steady voice despite my anxiety. “You need fresh air, Lucas. It’ll be okay.”

I peel his fingers back from their clenched position at his thigh.

He’s shaking and his palm is sweaty, but he grips my hand. “Why . . .? Why are you doing this to me?”

My heart fractures and shreds through me. I don’t want to hurt him, I never wanted to hurt him, but I can’t stand secrets between us. My job has always been to seek out information and search for the truth. That’s all I want. I never expected what I’d learned about Lucas to tear him down so low.

I hold tight to his hand and tug. “Come on. You need to stand, get some air. It’ll be okay.” My voice cracks and I realize the lie in my words. It won’t be okay; nothing about any of this is okay.

My conscience whispers that I am holding on to the hand that was responsible for ending the lives of four people, three of them children.

I’m in the forest alone with a self-proclaimed murderer and although I trust Lucas completely, I sense Gage just below the surface.