CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

I was still asleep. I had to be.

I had no doubt Ricky was capable of violence. He’d put a man in the hospital two weeks ago. Like Gabriel, he’d grown up in a world where that was a reasonable way to solve your problems and, indeed, sometimes it was the only way.

My mother taught me that there was never any excuse for violence. I remember her horror when my private school principal called after I slugged a fellow third-grader because he tripped me on purpose. And I remember my father taking the phone and saying he sure as hell hoped the boy’s parents had gotten the first call, and that if someone lashed out at me, I had the right to hit back. Guess whose words I took to heart?

But now Ricky stood there saying he thought he’d killed James, and I was one hundred percent certain I was still asleep in the police station. Whatever Ricky was capable of, it didn’t include murdering James. It just didn’t.

I squeezed my eyes shut and waited to drift out of this nightmare.

“Liv?” Ricky’s voice at my ear. “Can I explain? I know there’s no excuse, but just hear me out. Then you can go. I won’t stop you.”

I was still holding his hands, which were trembling now. When I looked, he was right there, his hazel eyes bright with panic, and I knew this wasn’t a dream.

I ran my fingertips over his knuckles and felt the scabs there. Scabs from the scrapes I’d seen Wednesday morning. After James died. They were still there, his knuckles rough.

James had been beaten. I hadn’t more than briefly noted that, because what mattered were those bruises around his neck and the symbols carved into . . .

My head jerked up. “He’d been strangled—like the other victims. And he had the marks. The ones my parents—”

“No,” he said emphatically. “Absolutely not. I didn’t do any of that.”

“But the beating,” I said. “That was you?”

He nodded and shifted his weight. “After the blowout with my dad, I went to Gabriel’s place to see you, and James was there. I just . . . I’d had enough. He was still stalking you, and I decided I was going to show him why that was a very bad idea.”

“So you called him out?”

A short, humorless laugh. “You don’t call out guys like James Morgan. They’ll walk away and phone the cops. He drove off. I followed. I decided I’d wait until he got someplace quiet, cut him off, and confront him. Except I didn’t need to. He drove to an empty building and went inside. The place was up for demolition and reconstruction. Something to do with tech, so I figured it was his project.”

“You followed him inside.”

“Followed him. Confronted him. Told him that if I caught him within five hundred feet of you, his hospital stay would be a lot longer than it had been when he mixed it up with Gabriel. He came at me. I knocked him around a little. That’s all I planned. But he . . .”

Ricky exhaled, hissing through his teeth, shifting his weight again. “I’m not used to guys who don’t fight back, Liv. I know that’s no excuse. And, yeah, he started it, but he had no idea what he was doing. What he did do, though, was talk. About you. Insulting you. Saying he was getting you back no matter what. Saying . . .” He shook his head. “I won’t repeat what he said, because words are no excuse for what I did. I’ll just say that he threatened you. And I saw red, like I did with that other guy. Except there wasn’t anyone to pull me off this time. I kept hitting him until he was out cold on the floor.”

He stepped back, lifting our hands so I could pull away without resistance. He looked down at his bruised and scabbed knuckles. “I hit him until he shut up.”

“And then?”

“I left him there, in that empty building, on the floor.”

“Did you strangle him?”

He shook his head. “But I don’t think he woke up after I knocked him out. He’d obviously been summoned there by his killer, who came in after me . . . and finished it. He never had the chance to fight. Which means even if I didn’t stop his heart from beating, I still killed him.”

I could argue, but Ricky didn’t want excuses. He had done something that led to James’s death, and he took responsibility.

I wanted to reach out for him. Hug him. Tell him I didn’t care. That no matter how horrible I felt over James’s death, whatever role Ricky played in it, I understood his intention had been only to stop whatever mad and hell-bent course James had been on.

But he wasn’t looking for absolution. He just wanted me to know what had happened.

“You’ve talked to Gabriel about this, haven’t you?” I said. “If you know the legal cause of death . . .”

He nodded. “I told Gabriel that night. I realized I’d fucked up, and I figured James would call the cops. So I drove back to the condo, and I was a block away when I saw Gabriel.”

“Saw him?”

Ricky nodded. “I think that’s one of the reasons he’s been charged. The condo security tapes must have caught him leaving the building.”

I remembered Pamela asking if I knew for certain Gabriel had been inside all night. Whoever had accused him knew he hadn’t been.

“He’d gone out for a walk,” Ricky continued. “I didn’t ask why. I was just relieved to see him. We walked and talked. I left over an hour later. Which puts it past the time of death, meaning I’m Gabriel’s alibi. I can testify, beyond a doubt, that he couldn’t have killed James. That’s what I’ll do, if these charges aren’t dropped. I can prove he’s innocent.”

“By admitting you’re the one who beat James.”

“What’s the alternative, Liv? Let him go to jail?”

I felt as if someone had nailed me in the gut. If it was anyone else, I would not want Ricky turning himself in. But this wasn’t anyone else. This was Gabriel.

My stomach heaved.

“It’s okay,” he said, pulling me into a hug. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

I pushed him away. “You absolutely should have mentioned it.”

“I mean planning to confess. I know I had to tell you what I did to James, as much as Gabriel didn’t want me to.”

“And I mean planning to turn yourself in. You need to talk to Gabriel first. We need to see how serious this is, how big the risk is, before you do anything.”

“I know. I wasn’t planning to walk in there and confess tonight, Liv. I’m not that selfless, or that stupid. It comes down to this: I won’t let him go to jail. If it looks like that’s going to happen, then I’ll do whatever I have to.”

I reached over and pulled him into a kiss. He went slow at first, as if braced for me to pull away. I only kissed him harder, held him tighter, and the kiss turned hungry, rough, with an edge of desperation.

“We’re okay?” he said, as if he had to check, no matter how clear that seemed.

“I’m just sorry,” I said. “I’m so damned sorry—”

He cut me off with a hard kiss, then said, “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

Nothing to be sorry for. But I did, didn’t I? As inadvertent as our roles were, we still felt the weight of them, the guilt of them, and anything we could do to divert our thoughts from that, if only for a few minutes, we seized on it, losing ourselves in the moment, banishing the rest into the night.