Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 80689 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80689 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
I should take Jonas’s hand and leave, but I’m too curious not to turn around.
Simon’s smug grin has not diminished even a little, as if he has something he knows will keep me here. I stay facing him, not saying a word, knowing him well enough to know he’ll get to the fucking point if I stick around.
“Glorious. Just glorious. This worked out better than I imagined. Jonas, if I’d wanted you to fuck me, it would have happened the day you arrived. This is what I wanted.”
“This?” I’m skeptical, but I know Simon, and it’s clear Jonas and I were misled about the endgame.
“This declaration about leaving. Ryan, I know you better than anyone. I knew when I brought him here you wouldn’t be able to resist him. Just like you couldn’t resist Kieran. And I knew you would want this. Now, I didn’t expect Jonas would want it back. But this is perfect because now you’re in love, which is what I was really waiting for this whole time. And you’re ready to leave with someone who really cares, and I get to expose you for the liar and the monster you really are.” This last part he says with a tense jaw, glaring at me, as if I were the villain and he the victim of an evil plot of my making.
“I think you’ve already demonstrated who the monster here is,” Jonas says.
“He told you about Kieran, right? Told you you look like him, but did he tell you what he did to Kieran? What he really did to him?”
“Simon, stop this.”
“He caught Kieran and me. And he made a plan to get back at us. A twisted plan. Fucking Kieran, then telling him he felt violated. Like it was against his will. Kieran was such a good man, he couldn’t handle the thought. Couldn’t bear that you would even think that about him. That’s why he killed himself, and you know it. You and I both know the truth about what you did that day, and the lies you told Kieran and Father, and why you told them those lies. I, your fucking twin, who knows you better than anyone, know what you did.”
Heat surges through me to the point where it feels like my cheeks are about to catch fire. “Simon, that’s not true!”
“Yes, it is! You love him. Jonas, he sees you, and he’s still hung up on this man he adored, yet he couldn’t get over his perverse need for revenge, and he killed him because of it. Ryan, you can’t change the past by being with this man. You can’t undo what you did to Kieran and Father.”
I stare into his eyes. Is this all part of the game, or does he really believe what he’s saying right now? No, he can’t.
“Don’t do this, Simon. Don’t lie about what happened.”
“You’re the liar! I’m supposed to believe Kieran raped you? But this man who came here, who’s a dead ringer for him, you didn’t have any problem getting fucked by him? No trauma? No torment?”
“It wasn’t easy—”
“It was too easy.”
“Jonas isn’t Kieran! Jonas never did anything to hurt me.”
“Kieran never did anything to hurt you either!” He raises his voice until it’s booming through the library, echoing off the walls.
I’m lying beneath Kieran, wondering why he hasn’t heard my cries to stop.
Am I not being loud enough?
Am I not using the right words?
“You know that’s not true,” I say.
“I don’t know that!”
While he’s expressing himself in shouts, my rage comes out as a whisper. Maybe because the truth doesn’t need to cry out so desperately. “Yes. You. Do.”
I don’t want to say it, I shouldn’t say it, but it seems the only way to get Simon to face a truth he can’t seem to. “You were there, Simon.”
As I turn toward the arm Kieran’s restrained, I see Simon standing on the other side of the shed, watching.
“Simon! Simon!” I call out.
“No, it’s just you, Ryan,” Kieran says, which only confuses me.
And now there’s a flash of terror in Simon’s expression.
A knowing.
Because despite this elaborate performance, he knows.
He’s always known the truth.
30
JONAS
“You were there.”
Goose bumps prick across my flesh.
Ryan didn’t share that with me when he told me about what happened the day Kieran raped him. Not that he needed to. Fuck, with all the trauma he endured, it was painful enough just hearing the highlights, but this reveal makes Simon’s fucked-up game all the more disturbing.
The way Simon freezes, his nostrils flaring, his eyes widening, his hands balling into fists, either he doesn’t believe his brother, or he knows he’s telling the truth. Knowing Ryan, I suspect it’s the latter.
“Shut your dirty, lying mouth,” Simon practically growls.
“You watched what he was doing to me. I screamed out your name.”
Simon can’t make eye contact with Ryan. A damning reaction.