time it took her to get to my side is gone, my mind a blank ball of fury. “Why don’t you let me have this, huh?” she says and I force a breath. She takes the blade from me as the room slows its wobble.
He swallows hard as Talia steps back.
“His mother killed my parents. Sarah killed her for what she did to them. Is that why Jamison killed Sarah? Is that why he’s after me?” I ask. Even without the knife, I’m too close to him. I stumble a step away and run my hands through my hair, trying to collect myself. When he doesn’t answer, I ask again, louder.
“I didn’t know,” Ploy says. “I didn’t have anything to do with it, I swear.”
“And Brandon? I suppose you had nothing to do with him either, right? Poor innocent Ploy dragged along for the ride,” I spit out, but the way he’s looking at me, I almost believe him despite everything.
“Allie, I didn’t know,” Ploy says. “I owed him. He told me we’d have power, money, be famous. I thought I’d be set.” He gives me a miserable look. “Can you honestly blame me?”
“And me?” It’s the question I’ve been waiting to ask. The one I need the answer to most. “What about me?”
He bites his lip. “I got you to trust me, tell me things. I wasn’t supposed to...you and me...we weren’t...”
When he looks up at me, the shame in his eyes burns through me. “You had me laid out on your couch like some sort of sacrifice! Things changed for me the same way they did for you. Can’t you understand that?” he growls out. Talia tightens the grip she has on him from behind and he settles into compliant misery again.
Back at my apartment I’d had my blood in the syringe and the needle in my hand. I’d wavered. Did you think it was a trap? Jamison’s words reverberate through my mind but it’s in Ploy’s voice that I hear them.
“I should have left you dead on my doorstep.” The sentence leaves my lips, emotionless, an afterthought barely worth my time, like he should be now.
“But you didn’t,” Ploy says. His words are hollow echoes of the hope already fading from his eyes. If I were Talia, I’d use it to my advantage. But I’m stalled out, all of my questions answered save one.
“At my apartment,” I say. “How did you know I’d bring you back?”
“We took one of those calculated risks you’re so fond of,” he snaps. The ‘we’ strikes me like a slap. We means him and Jamison – a team. “He wanted you scared so he killed Brandon.” Ploy slumps and Talia shifts the knife. “He wanted things moved forward so he killed me. I didn’t exactly have a say in it.” He fidgets like a little kid caught doing wrong. “He didn’t mean to do more than cut me. He didn’t. Things went too far. He gets caught up and he...” Ploy glances up at us as he trails off. “He gets caught up.”
Talia lets out a whistle of a short breath. “And this kid is your friend? This is who you betrayed Allie for?”
He spins. She doesn’t have time to use the knife. If he’d wanted to, he could have overpowered her, but that doesn’t seem to be his goal. “I didn’t betray Allie.”
“Look at her and tell me you didn’t.”
They both turn. I hate her for drawing attention to the way my chin quivers, the tremor in my hands. I know what she’s doing, using his emotions against him, drawing this out, making him suffer for what he did.
And she’s testing me. My resolve.
“Allie,” Talia says softly. “Tell him how upset you were. You were falling for him. It crushed you to know what he’d done. ”
“I wasn’t.” I shake my head. “That’s not true.”
Ploy takes me in, a flicker of triumph in his eyes and I want to kill it, kill him. His hand twitches and I step out of his reach in case he thinks he’s going to get a sudden rush of courage and dare to touch me. “I hate you more than I’ve ever hated anyone in my life,” I say, because I want it so badly to be true. Hurt burns through me.
Ploy takes a slow step, then another when Talia doesn’t stop him. His eyes are on me. He doesn’t see her behind him, matching his pace, the blade near his spine. Talia’s too close.