Page 69 of Blood Sport

“Have they gotten more detailed?” Aunt Jas asks, her eyes focused on me.

I nod. She has always been so perceptive when reading me. It’s like I’m an open book to her, and I am in so many ways. She has seen me at my lowest and my best, so there is nothing this woman doesn’t know about me.

“There has been one detail of the dreams that have been sticking out to me,” I say slowly, the glowing blue eyes flashing behind my eyelids. When I blink, they’re permanently printed there.

“Which is?”

“I keep seeing a man standing over my parent's bodies, and he has these… piercing blue eyes that stare right through my soul.”

Aunt Jas blows out a sharp breath as she leans back in her seat. I can see the wheels turning behind her eyes as she takes in the new information. Ever since that night, I haven’t once recalled seeing a man standing over their bodies like my mind was trying to protect me from such detail. Until now.

But why now? Why is the vault my mind locked away these memories in suddenly opening now, revealing new details I once didn’t remember?

“A man…” she says, chewing on her bottom lip. “That’s odd.”

“I agree.” I nod. “Any idea who it could’ve been?”

She shakes her head, leaning forward slightly to cup her steamy mug. “That is a mystery, sadly. Maybe you walked in on the man after he had… you know.”

After he had finished killing my parents, I want to finish for her, but I don’t. I understand what she is trying to say, but I can’t get the man’s words out of my head. Of him calling out for my mom as if he were in physical pain. Would a man who had just killed her, and my dad, be that distraught?

None of this is adding up.

“I understand what you’re saying, but yeah, maybe that’s what it was.” I keep the details of what the man said in my nightmares to myself because I don’t know enough to come to a conclusion about what it means, and I don’t think my aunt will be much help with the limited information I have.

“Investigators are still looking into their case,” she says after sipping on her tea. “I know it’s moving slowly, and I wish we knew more about what happened, but we just have to be patient. If you learn anything in your dreams that might be of help then let me know and we can go to the station together, okay?”

I nod. “Of course.”

“Are you being safe in Pullman?” Aunt Jas asks, her blues searching my face. “Especially with all those murders.”

“I am. I remember Mom telling me about satanic murders that occurred in the late ‘70s that were similar to the current ones. Did she ever talk to you about those?”

She shakes her head. “When I was your age, I was very into true crime and staying safe. I had to tell your mom multiple times to be careful when hitchhiking a ride home at night, but she didn’t fear anything, or care much about the dangers of it. But it was when she started dating a guy at the time that she got more into true crime, especially the satanic murders that were happening. I already knew my fair share of the details, but she never discussed them with me. She did say that she was really into it. Curious, if anything.”

I pause, my brows furrowing. “Wait, she dated someone before Dad?”

Aunt Jas’s eyes widened as if she realized that was something she wasn’t supposed to share with me. Well, too late. “Um… yes. Well, kind of. She was seeing this guy and your father at the same time.”

My eyes nearly bulged out of my head. “She was what?”

Aunt Jas rubs the back of her neck, unable to look me in the eye as she laughs nervously and flips her blonde hair over her shoulder. “Um, yeah. It’s not something she wanted you kids to know, but I guess the cat is out of the bag now, huh?”

“Some bloody bag,” I murmur, trying to wrap my head around the bombshell that my mom was dating my dad and another man at the same time. My mom was a beautiful woman, so I didn’t doubt that she had men falling at her feet all the time, but I didn’t expect to unearth this detail. “Wait, so who was the guy?”

Aunt Jas shrugs. “No idea.”

I frown. “You don’t know who he was? Like, not even a name?”

She shakes her head. “Nothing. Your mom was very secretive about him. No matter how hard I tried to get her to at least tell me his first name, she wouldn’t budge. I had a feeling that she really liked him, otherwise, she would’ve been more open about sharing him with me.”

So, Mom liked this man enough to keep him a secret, but was open about telling Aunt Jas about Dad? This piece of information confuses me more than ever because now I want to know who this man is, why it didn’t work out between them, and how she ended up with my dad.

I was never really close with my dad, no matter how hard I tried. Miles was close with him, mainly because they bonded over sports and other boy things. But we could never get to that point in our relationship, no matter what I did. I always felt like something was… missing. He wouldn’t look at me with love the same way he did with Miles and I never understood why. Don’t get me wrong, he loved me, I know that, but I could tell he didn’t give me enough of himself like he did with Miles as if he were holding back for some reason. And to this day, I never learned why our relationship was like that.

“So, how did she end up with Dad?”

“All I know is that the mystery man she was dating had to leave Pullman abruptly, and from then on she grew closer to your dad. They started dating, got married, and had you and Miles. The rest is history.”

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