Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 94220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 471(@200wpm)___ 377(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 471(@200wpm)___ 377(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
I’m a fucking liar.
I expect I’m about to explode into a fit of rage, grief, agony, but I don’t even feel connected to my body. There’s a numbness, like after Mom and Dad died.
Like I can’t accept this is true.
“Zane? Zane?” Leif’s voice sounds distant, like I’m not sitting beside him in the car but like I’m standing outside it.
After Jill alerted me to the news, I got off the phone with her to look up the headlines on my phone. Said I’d call her back, then frantically googled and found that article.
“What is it? Talk to me,” Leif says, but I can’t tell him this. How could I even get the words out?
I pass him my phone, and as he reads the article, I’m transported back to the day when Shelly and those fuckers from the CPS tore us apart.
My mind leaps forward again, to an image my mind’s crafted of a body shoved back into a sewer line. Discarded like my brother wasn’t even human.
He didn’t do this to himself. I fucking knew it.
But there’s no relief in the thought, and it’s as though all the pain finally catches up with me.
My chest constricts, my body trembles.
“Detective Roth hasn’t reached out to you?” Leif asks.
“No.” With all that’s on my mind, it wasn’t something I’d even considered, but now that he’s mentioned it, I can name the emotion that overtakes me: rage.
Considering how much we talked early in the investigation, she should have given me a heads-up. And if she fucking knows it’s my brother and hasn’t told me, fuck her!
“It doesn’t say it’s him for sure,” Leif says. “It sounds like a guess.”
“It’s not a guess,” I snap. “A source from inside the department leaked that, so they know more than is even on the damn page.”
I didn’t mean to practically shout the words at him.
“Fuck, I’m so sorry, Leif.”
“Zane, you don’t owe me an apology for that,” he says, looking far more disturbed by my apology than when I shouted. “I can’t imagine what reading this is like.”
I press my hand against the window and grip the seat with my other.
Why’s the car fucking spinning?
Tears push to my eyes.
All those images seizing my mind have stopped, but it’s like I’m holding them behind a wall that’s about to burst. I open the car door and lean out, my body going through the motions like I’m about to hurl, but I only manage to dry heave.
I don’t know what happens next—it’s like a fucking blackout, and soon I’m on the ground, shaking, light-headed.
“Zane! Zane, don’t leave me!” I hear Mike call out, but I know it’s too late.
When I finally shake free of the memory, I find Leif at my side; he must’ve gotten out of the car at some point.
“Zane, are you okay? Please talk to me.”
His words reorient me, and I glance around, trying to make sense of everything that happened, when there’s a familiar buzzing sound. Leif pulls out my phone.
Jill must be calling back, but I can’t talk to her now.
Not about this.
Leif says, “It’s Detective Roth. Do you want to take it?”
As it buzzes in his hand again, I can’t…I don’t want to hear. Don’t want to know.
But I reach forward and take the phone, answering it.
Just get it over with.
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” I ask.
Getting my anger out is cathartic, feels like the only thing that’s keeping me from losing my goddamn mind.
“Zane, I’m so sorry. It’s not Mike, though. We know that.”
My hand trembles so much, I nearly drop the phone, but instead, I fall back against the asphalt.
Thank. Fucking. God.
As tears well in my eyes, I finally manage, “Roth, what the fuck is going on?”
*
Leif and I sit in the reception area at the station.
I’m still reeling in emotion.
My grief has flared up along with my anger, but it’s all muddled in a confusing mix after my chat over the phone with Detective Roth.
“Come to the station. I’ll explain everything. It’s not Mike.”
Even after hearing those words, it’s not enough to console me, and I can tell Leif’s on edge as he sits, scrolling through his phone.
Along with the other emotions that have taken over my body, there’s the guilt that I just ruined what was a lovely date with my boyfriend.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him.
He looks up from his phone. “You don’t have to keep apologizing.”
Do I keep apologizing? I barely remember how we even got to the station, so maybe I have.
“This is a big deal,” he adds. “It’s okay to be worked up.”
There’s a click of heels, and Roth rounds the corner, running her hand through her bangs before catching my eye. Her gaze shifts, and she notices Leif.
A part of me is like, Fuck, but with what I went through at the Nights of Lights, I don’t really give a damn.