Still Not Over You(17)

Everything stays dark.

I breathe out slowly, creeping toward the waiting journal like the world’s worst cat burglar.

Slowly, trembling, I slip it out from under the beer bottle, then sink down to sit on the weathered wooden porch boards with my back against the railing, the leather warm as if it’s alive in my hands.

I flip the cover open with my heart pounding so loud in my ears it’s like a storm inside me.

There’s so much on these pages. So much of his thoughts, so much of his heart.

All the things I’ve been missing, stretching back for years. Every little bit of inner turmoil. All those introspective thoughts swimming in dark, troubled blue eyes. The boy I’d missed is in these pages, laid bare one word at a time.

Until those words turn jagged and dark and angry.

Until I can see him changing line by line.

Until it’s like this other self comes boiling out in black ink. This demon. This poison in his thoughts and in his veins, using him to write its furious words on the page.

I’m skimming my fingers under the lines to keep my place, the sound of my fingertips whispering on the paper, I’m moving so fast – until I get to the last entry.

Harsh, jagged lines, clearly written in anger, jerking up and down in black swoops of ink.



Fuck you for leaving, Dad. Fuck your dirty laundry. Fuck your company. Fuck you for getting killed over nothing. And fuck your killer, too.



Someday I’ll find that asshole. I’ll figure out who he is, and this time there won’t be a body left to find.



I’ll be the man you couldn’t be.



I'll finish what you couldn't. I'll give ma a reason to smile again – really smile – while I lie through my teeth about what you truly were. A selfish, arrogant, two-timing prick who put our futures on the line every day, and God only knows how many lives.



God only knows why you wound up loving money so bad you'd do the shit you did. And wherever God is, knowing, you're not with him now. You're in hell and you're never coming back.



My heart is ice, right now. Frozen so solid and heavy it can’t even beat, but my head is spinning.

I don’t understand what I’m reading.

Landon thinks his father was killed? Crown Security was dirty and...and...Landon hated him?

Enough to want to hurt him?

Enough to want him in hell?

But he loved him enough to kill his murderer?

Landon, the boy I know, the boy who’s gone...

He’s planning to kill someone.

The boy who shipped overseas and came home to a dead father is gone. There’s a hardened, furious, would-be killer with a vendetta in his place.

I press my trembling fingers to my lips – and it’s the only thing that stops me from screaming, instinctively clamping my hand over my mouth on a whimper, when the journal suddenly rips out of my hand, pages fanning violently enough to almost tear.

My frozen heart shatters. My blood goes electric. Terror. Shock. Agony.

I stare up at Landon, looming over me, his eyes lit with a glacial fury I’ve never seen.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

The way he says it almost destroys me.

Instead of snarling temper and shouts, it’s frigid and quiet and deadly, as if any part of him that cared for me at all is gone behind this mask of slow, calculating, murderous rage.

He’s become a stranger, a man I've never seen before, and I think the reason my eyes well with burning, blurring tears is less out of fear of him, and more out of grief as I realize the Landon I knew really is lost.

Yet, there’s a glimmer of something human there, too. Awful and familiar.

The betrayal.

And I hate that it’s the only part of Landon left, and it’s directed at me.

“Um, I...”

“You, nothing. I don’t want to hear it.” He snaps the journal closed with a finality that feels like a gunshot. “Save your breath, McKenna. I don’t want to hear your apologies. Don’t want to fucking hear anything else, not from you and not from Steve. Your brother’s been up my ass for months. Everyone’s walking on eggshells, treating me like damaged fucking goods, and the worst part is they're right. I’ve had enough. My life, my privacy, my shit, McKenna. Not yours or Steve's or anybody else's. Do yourself a heaping favor: get the fuck out and leave me the fuck alone. Say anything about what you've read to anyone, and fuck, you –”

My ears stop working. I'm trying to back away but I don't even know if my knees work.

I can't breathe. I can't feel.

My throat is so tight. Choking. I’m crying as much for him as I am for me, and I rise shakily to my feet. Some brave part of me wants to reach for him.

He’s just a blur through my misting, fragmenting, blood orange vision, but I step closer to the dark shape he makes against the night. “Landon...”

“Are you listening? Leave!” He turns on me with a roar, all kinetic energy and vibrant rage, radiating his own heat. The force of his voice hits me like a shockwave. It echoes in my bones. “What the hell do you think you'll accomplish? Last thing I need is some little girl sniffing around after me. Go fuck with someone your own age, McKenna. I don't need you. I don't need fucking anything. We're done.”