A Whole New Crowd (A Whole New Crowd #1)(60)

“They didn’t come to me. He didn’t come to me. I was too late.”
“No, no, no.” I kept shaking my head.
“He’s dead, Taryn.”
No, no, no, no, no, no. I heard what he said, but I couldn’t accept it. It couldn’t be. I had talked to him twenty-four hours ago. He had been fine. “He’s fine.”
“He’s not.” Jace’s eyes looked dead. “Trust me, he’s very far from being alive.”
“No…” I couldn’t talk. Burning pain filled me. It washed all over me, branding me as each wave crashed over me. I couldn’t think anymore. I could barely stand. “No…”
I heard Jace’s voice from a distance now. “Kevin Parson owed me a favor. I cashed it in. I needed you out of here. Do you get that? I wanted you gone. I gave you something you wanted, a family. I handed you a better future on a silver platter and you refused to take it. What THE FUCK were you thinking? Just take it. That’s all you had to do. Sit down and accept your new family.” His voice rose as he kept going, “I don’t give a shit if they don’t like you. You shouldn’t either. You have a home. You have a sister that I can tell you already love. You could’ve just accepted your new life, but you kept coming back. You kept asking f*cking questions, questions that I knew you would ask even if you were here. My god, Taryn.” His head fell back down. An anguished sob came from him. “Why couldn’t you have just let it go?”
Brian wasn’t dead. I wouldn’t accept that. There was no way. “How do you know?”
“Because I know you.”
“No.” I shook my head. I was dizzy. The room was starting to spin. “I meant Brian. How do you know he’s—” I couldn’t say the word.
“I identified his body.” He closed his eyes. His body wavered, and he had a cemented grip on the table in front of him. His shoulders were bunched together tightly. His voice came out raw. “It was an execution. They shot him in the middle of his forehead.”
I couldn’t talk anymore. I felt myself falling, and I reached out for the desk. I was going to crumble to the floor. As I found the chair and held onto it, trying to steady my knees, Jace said further, “Someone—a very bad guy—came to town. My boss. He’s here, and I wanted you gone before he got here. I wanted you away and distracted by your happy life. I thought you would be. I really thought you would stay away, especially since that’s what you always wanted. You wanted out of this life. Why didn’t you just let it go? I didn’t want you involved. I didn’t want Galverson to know about you. Brian hated me, but you—I care about you. He would realize that. He could’ve used you to hurt me, but now…” He stopped. Then his voice grew rough. He was hardening himself back up, closing the wall. “It’s too late. He knows all about you now, and he’s curious why I tried to hide you.”
His boss did this? His boss killed Brian? A hoarse cry ripped from my throat. I couldn’t comprehend any of this.
Jace came towards me. There was nothing in his eyes anymore. He was looking at me like I was a stranger once again. He grabbed my arm. I flinched from his hold, but he held firm and dragged me to the door. As he opened it, I saw three security guards. They were waiting for me. He handed me to them and said in my ear, “Stay out of my life.” The guard pulled me into the hallway, but Jace called my name again. I looked up and he added, “If you come back again, I will kill your sister.”
I opened my mouth, but he interrupted me. “I will go to the rehab facility myself to do it.” Then he shut the door in my face.
I had never told him about Mandy, but before I could let that sink in, Brian’s face flashed in my mind and blinding pain overwhelmed me. I fell to the ground. I didn’t know how I got home after that. I didn’t care how I got home.



CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The next day, Tray told me one of Jace’s men had driven me home, and he came out to carry me inside. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t do anything. I just sat and stared straight ahead, like an empty vessel. He told me that Austin had been scared. When I heard that, a pang of regret went through me. Austin didn’t deserve that. His sister was away. His parents were gone, and now I was acting like a walking corpse. No, that wasn’t true. A walking corpse didn’t feel. I was feeling too much; I couldn’t handle it. I felt like someone thrust a large butcher knife into the middle of my chest, leaving a gaping hole. It was becoming infected, and I was rotting from the inside.
Tray asked if he should call Shelly and Kevin. I asked him why. He jerked his head in a nod, then climbed into bed behind me and wrapped his arms around me.
The week passed like that. I didn’t go to school for the first half of the week. Tray took the counselor’s note to excuse Mandy’s absence, and he explained what happened with me. I was allowed three days to miss and when I went back Thursday, I shouldn’t have been there. I went from class to class. No one talked to me. Everyone watched me. They had all heard about Brian’s death; they just didn’t know I had caused it. Tray helped me. He remained by my side. He had people take notes for me. When he couldn’t be there, he had people carry my books for me.
He told me a few days later that Mandy had called. She wanted to know how I was doing. For some reason, I began laughing at that. She was in rehab, trying to comfort me. Brian had never cared when he was getting help. It had been all about him. She was in his old place, and she was reaching out because of him. Somehow, that was ironic to me, and I couldn’t stop laughing. Austin was in the living room at the time. When he saw the tears rolling down my face and heard the hysterical note in my voice, he threw his video game controller and ran upstairs.