When I got back to the apartment, Nicole greeted me from the kitchen. One glance at the expression on my face, and she knew.

“Brighton…” she hurried towards me, but I held up a hand to stop her.

“You’ve been lying to me this entire time,” I croaked. “You’ve been helping him this entire time.”

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry. You don’t understand…”

“I understand perfectly,” I confessed. “Jackson was your boyfriend. And you were helping Ryland to get revenge. Because my father took him from you.”

“That may have been true at the start,” she sniffled, “but it isn’t what I really wanted. I told him I didn’t want to go through with it anymore. Once I met you, and I realized…”

“You mean when you purposely met me in the park,” I interrupted.

“Yes.” She cast her eyes to the floor. “I’m so sorry, Brighton.”

“You helped him blackmail me,” I whispered. “You let him have sex with me when I didn’t even know who he was.”

She looked sick at my implication. “I didn’t know,” she swore. “I didn’t know he would go that far. He didn’t tell me that, and I only found out about it afterwards. I’m so sorry, Brighton. You must think I’m a horrible person, but I’ve been trapped in his game too. He won’t let me move on…”

“The flowers?”

“Yes!” she choked back a sob. “Every year he sends me those fucking flowers, along with a note to remind me why he is doing this. To remind me how much Jackson loved me and to justify his need for revenge.”

The genuine pain in her eyes told me what she said was true. She’d confessed the same thing the night she explained her boyfriend had died. That he wouldn’t let her move on. Meaning Ryland. But it didn’t matter now because she was right. She was just another player in his game, and I couldn’t trust her. Not really. Everyone who had come into my life in San Francisco had been planted there, and I wasn’t sure who I could trust anymore. 

“I have to leave,” I stated.

“Please don’t go,” she begged.

“I have to, Nicole.” I walked towards my room. She followed along, continuing the conversation while I packed.

“You can stay here,” she insisted. “The apartment’s in my name. We can change the locks. We can do whatever you want.”

“It’s not about changing the locks,” I said softly, trying to ignore the hurt expression in her eyes. “It’s about the fact that Ryland wants my family dead, and I can’t continue to do this. To get sucked back into this vortex with someone who doesn’t even care about me.”

“He does,” she argued. “He loves you, Brighton.”

I smiled sadly at her delusion and shook my head.

“What Brayden did was wrong,” I said. “I’m not going to argue that. But I can’t let Ryland hurt him…”

“I know,” Nicole agreed. “I understand, Brighton.”

“You do?”

She sighed and fell onto the bed, staring at a spot on the carpet. “I’ve told Ryland this isn’t what Jackson would have wanted. It isn’t what his parents would have wanted. But he’s so wrapped up in his grief he can’t even see his way out of it.”

I collapsed onto the bed beside her and released another painful wave of tears. Tears for Ryland and his broken heart.

“I wish I could help him,” I said. “I would do anything to help him.”

“I know.” Nicole clasped my hand in hers. “That makes two of us.”

The room fell silent as we both concluded there was nothing further to say on the subject. Nothing else that we could do. Nicole resigned herself to that fact when she spoke again.

“I’ll call Matt for you.” She stood up and walked towards the door. “You can crash with him, or he can give you a ride to the airport. Whatever you need.”

“Thank you.” I nodded. “And Nicole?”

“Yeah?”

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for what my father did. For how he hurt you.”

“I know you are, Brighton.” She gave me a weak smile. “But it really is time for me to move on.”

 

***

 

Matt’s truck idled at the curb of the drop off zone as silence engulfed the cab.

“I’m sorry about everything,” he said in a gruff voice. “If I’d known what Ryland was doing, I would have put a stop to it. But Nicole always worried she would bear the brunt of it, so I didn’t push the issue. I didn’t want to hurt her.”

“She cares about you.”

He nodded, finally admitting it.

“But you were Jackson’s friend,” I continued. “So she thinks it’s wrong.”

“Or at least that’s what Ryland tells her,” he grumbled. “I felt that way too, for a long time. But I know that Jackson wouldn’t have wanted her to be miserable like this. He wasn’t that kind of person.”

“Not like Ryland,” I whispered.

“He never used to be that way either,” Matt said. “But he lost his entire family. And he hasn’t dealt with it at all.”

“I love him,” I admitted through tears. “Despite it all. All I can feel is this giant hole in my chest. I keep wishing we could get past this somehow.”

Matt reached over and hugged me, which was better than any words of false comfort. He knew as well as I did that wasn’t likely to happen.

“I better go,” I croaked. “Or I’m going to miss my flight.”

“Come back, Brighton,” he said with a sad smile. “Figure out a way to come back home.”

 

***

 

As the gravel crunched beneath the retreating taxi’s tires, I released a weary sigh.

My mother had uprooted us as children from the city of Chicago and probably made it about seventy miles south before the car broke down. Because this is where we ended up, the land where hopes and dreams came to die. It was desolate and barren, and just about everyone who lived here had a tragic story in their background. It was a silly dream to think I could ever really escape this place.

My life flashed before my eyes. A life in the Buena Vista trailer park. Born here and doomed to die here too. That is after I spent the majority of my life chasing pennies in my chosen profession of waiting tables or stripping. The highlight of my life would be the pack a day smoking habit I’d need to develop just to get by.

I swallowed past the pain in my throat and tugged my suitcase into action. I might have a broken heart and an empty future, but at least I had my family. A brother who I never really knew at all and a mother that would likely be dead soon. Yeah, I still had that.

The lilac bush where Ryland and I had first kissed taunted me with her blooms as I walked up the rickety steps. I didn’t bother knocking, and the door wasn’t locked as I swung it open with the familiar tweaking of the handle.

Brayden sat on the sofa, a beer in his hand and an incredulous expression on his face. His suspicion turned to relief when he saw my bags, and a moment later he enveloped me in the warmth of one of his hugs. But it didn’t feel warm anymore. It felt hollow and empty and filled with lies.

“I knew you’d come back,” he whispered. “I knew you wouldn’t turn your back on us.”

I pulled away from him and crossed my arms, staring up into his dark brown eyes.

“It’s time to tell me everything,” I insisted. “And I mean it, Brayden. Not a single part left out.”

 

***

 

Brayden kicked his heels up on the end table, his eyes trained on a passing cockroach as he took another puff of his cigarette. It was a disgusting habit, one he must have picked up in prison. We'd always complained as kids about how Norma-Jean refused to smoke outside, and we had to go everywhere smelling like a dirty ash-tray. But now, as the lines on his face had changed from a boy to a man, so had his demeanor.

He was rough around the edges, and a lot harder too. He was blunt with me in a way he’d never been before, and a hint of resentment lingered in his eyes every time he looked at me. I would have to ask him about it later.

“It was Frankie,” he said, crushing the roach beneath his boot. “You didn’t know him because he didn’t want you to. He said it was safer that way. That if his family ever found out he’d bred an Irish bitch, they’d cut off his dick and kill Norma just for the hell of it.”

“But you knew him?” My voice sounded thin, and I hated it. I hated all these fucking secrets and lies.

Brayden didn’t care. He just shrugged, like it was no big deal.

“I was ten when he started coming around,” he said. “But we made sure to keep you out of it. He said I needed to be the man of the house and do him proud. He had a wife and kids already, and they weren’t from a filthy blood line.”

I shook my head in disgust, and Brayden sliced his hand through the air, flicking ash everywhere.

“Those were his words,” he grunted. “Not mine. But Frankie didn’t have any sons, he told me. And that’s the only reason I meant anything to him I guess. He wanted someone he could be proud of, and since I didn’t look like you or Norma, you could hardly tell there was any Irish in me.”

He glanced towards the small laminate dining table in the kitchen as though he were recalling a particular memory I wasn’t familiar with.

“As I got older, he came around more often. He didn’t want you to meet him, though. He said he couldn’t look at you without seeing Norma.”

I sucked in a harsh breath and cast my eyes to the floor. The rejection stung, even though it shouldn’t have. My father was a murderer. I knew this now. But it didn’t change the fact that I’d always wondered why he abandoned us. Or that I had longed for his love as a little girl.

“You wanted the truth,” Brayden said. “I’m not going to sugar coat it for you, Brighton. Not this time.”

I blinked away my tears and gestured for him to continue though it was the last thing I wanted him to do.

“Frankie picked me up that day,” he went on. “He said he wanted to take me on my first job. He wanted me to do my old man proud. I knew what he did for a living. Norma-Jean told me when he started lurking around here more often, making her real nervous. And I’m not going to lie and say I didn’t want it because I did. I wanted to live by his code, and his honor and have all the things he promised me. He said I’d live like a king after I earned my dues. That I’d be untouchable and gain the respect of an honorable bloodline.”

I wrung my hands together and bit my lip to stay quiet. I wanted to ask Brayden what the hell he was thinking. How he could ever even remotely consider what he was talking about. But I needed to hear what he had to say first. I needed to hear it all.

“He didn’t say much else as we were driving.” Brayden flicked his cigarette butt into the tray and scrubbed a hand across his face. “I wondered why we were in such a beat up old truck. I’d only ever seen Frankie in nice cars before. After we got onto the freeway, he told me there was a family in town he needed to deal with, that the guy owed his boss some money. I should have understood then what he meant by that, but I guess I was too fucking stupid at the time.”

He stopped to light up another cigarette, cracking open a can of beer while he was at it. I frowned, and he narrowed his eyes.

“It was like clockwork,” he said. “We pulled off to the side of the road and waited. He got a call on his cell phone, and this weird expression on his face as he started the truck back up. Calm. That’s what it was. And it never changed, even when he ran them off the road.”

I clutched my stomach and rocked back and forth, images of little Sophia Lockhart burning through my brain. Of Ryland trying to comfort her during her last painful breaths. The enormity of his pain weighed heavy on my chest. I wanted to rip out my own heart and watch it bleed to pay for my father’s sins. For the heinous and unfathomable things he’d done that night.

I was crying now, but Brayden didn’t try to comfort me. I was glad. And when he continued, I just listened in between mouthfuls of air. 

“He pulled a gun out of his jacket and handed it to me,” Brayden said. “He told me to finish it with one in the head for each of them.”

His voice was quiet now. Too quiet. And I didn’t know how to feel about him anymore. I waited anxiously for his next words. The words I needed to hear from him to confirm what Ryland said. That my brother was a monster, like our father.

“I went down there.” He looked me straight in the eye while he said it. “And I was going to do it. I really thought I was. I kept telling myself over and over it was about honor. Family.  Blood. But when I saw the fucking mangled bodies inside, I vomited all over the place.”

“Jesus, Brayden!” My entire body shook. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

He didn’t answer me. He just kept talking, in the same flat tone, staring off into the kitchen.

“I put the gun right between Jacob Lockhart’s eyes. He looked at me like he didn’t understand. He had no fucking clue why this was happening. He was bleeding all over the place, and the little girl next to him made some kind of weird gurgling noise. And I couldn’t handle it. So I shot five rounds into the forest and walked away. I figured they were going to die anyway. And if they didn’t, then I knew Frankie would kill me. But I didn’t care.”

“Oh God, oh God, oh God….”

I ran to the kitchen and vomited up the meager contents of my stomach. Everything in my body burned. Everything in my world was falling apart, and it felt like it was my fault somehow. The only thing I could think of was Ryland. Of what he had gone through because of Frankie. And whether I wanted to admit it or not, but because of Brayden too.

I rinsed my mouth out and slid down onto the floor, clutching my arms around my knees as I stared at the dingy tile. Brayden kept talking, as though he needed to purge himself of the details, regardless of whether I listened or not.

“When the news reported that Michael Lockhart had lived, I never heard from Frankie again. The cops found his body a couple days later, in a dumpster in Chicago. And the evidence trail led back to me. They knew I fired the bullets they found there, but they didn’t know why. I wouldn’t tell them. So they pinned me with a drunk driving charge instead, and I never said otherwise. Neither did Michael Lockhart.  I was sure Frankie’s boss would come after me. It didn’t matter what happened in court because I would die one way or another.”

“Then one day, Jacob showed up. He told me that Michael had handed himself over to Frankie’s boss, along with the money he owed to spare Jacob’s life. He wanted me dead, and he made it a point to let me know. But he told me he was going to take pleasure in destroying my life first. He said that I’d had the chance to kill him, and he would make certain I regretted that decision every day for the rest of my life. When the coroner’s report came back, and they upgraded the charges, I was fucked. I couldn’t do anything but take the fall if I wanted you and Norma to live, and Jacob knew it too.”

“That isn’t fair, Brayden,” I croaked. “Don’t make it sound like you did this for me and Norma. You did this for you. You chose to go out with Frankie that day. You chose not to call an ambulance… to let that little girl suffer. What you did was wrong, and you knew it too. You went to prison because you wanted to punish yourself.”

Brayden shot me a glare that would have withered me any other day. But I had nothing left to give anymore. Every tear had already been purged from my body, and every ounce of emotion completely dried up. All that remained was the harshness of reality.

“And what would have happened if I wasn’t there that day?” he laughed hollowly. “Your precious fucking Ryland would be dead, Brighton. But you know what, now that you mention it, I wish I wasn’t there. Because then he’d be rotting in hell where he belongs.”

“You don’t even know him,” I snarled. “And you’re full of shit. You can’t possibly think what happened was justified. Frankie murdered that entire family, Brayden! And for what, some money?”

“I didn’t know,” he snapped. “And I didn’t fucking care. I was only thinking of Frankie. Of how I wanted my old man to be proud of me.”

The callousness in his words gutted me. Because when I looked into his eyes, I didn’t see my brother anymore. I saw a stranger. He believed what he said, even though I didn’t.

“You mean you wanted to be like him,” I accused. “A low life fucking criminal?”

“Why not, Brighton?” He threw out his hands and shot me a scathing look. “What the fuck else am I gonna’ do? Live in this shit hole for the rest of my life? Frankie said he lived like a king, and yeah, I’ll admit it, I wanted a piece of that too. I wanted something better than this life.”

“And what about now?” I asked. “What are you going to do now?”

“The only thing I can do,” he replied. “Sit here and twiddle my fucking thumbs until I can get a job flipping hamburgers for the rest of my life.”

His words made me realize something. Something that hadn’t occurred to me before.

“Why didn’t they come for you?” I demanded. “If they killed Frankie, why didn’t they come for you too?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I guess Frankie never told them what happened. Maybe it was the only honorable thing he ever did.”

It sounded too easy, but it was a lie Brayden and I both readily accepted. I needed to believe for my own sanity it was true.