The Rebel of Raleigh High (Raleigh Rebels #1)(52)

This is soul destroying. This is the most terrible thing I have ever heard, and I wasn’t even there. Six-year-old Alex was, though. I rub the heel of my hand into the center of my chest, as if the physical action will ease the emotional pain I’m feeling. “Alex, you really don’t need to—”

“She grabbed hold of my ankle. Wouldn’t let me go. She was so fucked up, but it was surprising how tight she held onto me then. I turned her onto her back, and that’s when I saw that most of the left side of her jaw was missing. She couldn’t speak. She tried,” he says, nodding, “but she couldn’t. So, she told me what she wanted by pointing at the gun. I didn’t want to give it to her, but I could see that she was in so much pain and I didn’t know what else to do, so I got it for her. I gave it to her. I did.”

I cover my mouth with my hands, my eyes burning like crazy. I’m too scared to breathe for fear that I’ll end up bursting into tears. Alex looks at me. Looks hard. Doesn’t waiver. “She couldn’t close her hand around the handle. She kept on trying, and she kept on dropping it. In the end, she started this…awful wailing. I’d never heard anything like it before. She was suffering. She wanted to go, and she couldn’t fucking do it, and I knew what was going to happen next, but—”

“Oh, Alex.”

“The gun was fucking huge. I think it was a desert eagle or something, must have been to blow half her face off like that, but I wasn’t really looking at it properly. At the time, all I knew was that it was heavy and I couldn’t hold it straight, not even with both hands. She helped me. She guided it to her other temple. The one she hadn’t already ruined. She closed her eyes, sighed, and it was like this…this wash of relief came over her. She nodded, squeezing her hand around the top of my thigh, digging her fingernails into my leg, and then I remember her jerking, the sound of the gun firing, the small room filling up with this horrible smelling smoke, and there being blood running down the wall. And…that was it. I called nine one one. Told them what had happened. There was a second there where they thought I’d just straight up fucking killed her. Took two days for the coroner to confirm that my story was probably the truth. They kept me in a psyche ward, locked inside this room with three fully grown crazy motherfuckers who kept trying to touch me. And then it was the system. Foster care. Bumped from home to home.”

His skin has taken on this deathly hue, like a part of him has just died in the retelling of this dark, fucked up story. “If I’d come home earlier, I probably could have stopped her.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Alex. None of it.”

He looks down at the food in front of him, then back up at me again. He shifts a little, laying his hands flat against the top of the table. I don’t think he knows what to do with them. “You’re right. I know,” he says. “She did it to herself. Even in the end, she managed to pull the trigger. But I held it for her, Silver. I fucking held it.”





20





ALEX





I run the St. Christopher medallion along the chain around my neck on the drive back to the cabin, tearing myself a new one. Way to ruin lunch, ya fuckin’ asshole. Nothing like a good old gory suicide to really whet a girl’s appetite.

Beside me, Silver sits in silence, two to-go boxes full of cold food resting on her lap. I think she’s fucking traumatized. I was traumatized as fuck for a seriously long time after that happened to me, but I’ve had the benefit of eleven years and a whole heap of a state-ordered therapy since then. I don’t like to think about it. I sure as fuck don’t like to talk about it, but I can if I really feel the need to.

Once we’re back, Silver puts our abandoned food into the fridge for later and goes upstairs. When she comes back down, she has her guitar in her hand; she opens up the doors that lead onto the lower deck, letting the cold air inside, and goes to sit in a weathered old chair by the railing. She doesn’t say anything as she begins to play. The melody is haunting and soft, filled with a sadness that makes my throat ache. She’s seriously fucking talented. Her fingerpicking skills are on fucking point.

I sit myself down on the deck, back resting against a wooden post, watching her hands slide deftly up and down the instrument. I’m still only wearing a t-shirt, and the cold knifes through the material, but I barely feel it. I’m too sucked into the music that spills from her like a tortured confession of her own. To the right of the deck, the lake lies as still and flat as a mirror, reflecting the gunmetal grey of the sky, as well as the brace of trees that venture all the way down to the shoreline, their exposed roots, knotty and tangled, dipping into the water.

Time slows as Silver plays. She doesn’t even seem to be paying attention to what she’s doing, her fingers flying nimbly up and down the neck of the guitar. It’s quite something to watch. When she finally stops, her hands falling still, I get to my feet and take the guitar from her. I’ll admit, smug bastard that I am, that I’m pleased by the look of shock on her face when I begin to play, mimicking the melody, pitch and pace of the song she was just playing herself.

“You motherfucker,” she says, a small smile spreading across her face. “I s’pose this is what you meant. When I asked what you were planning to do when the end of year music exam rolled around, you said you had it covered.”