Page 78 of The Engagement Party

Sierra wrapped her arm around Mitch and dragged him in close, but his wide-eyed, sullen look said more than words could. She looked torn between wanting to soothe Mitch and wanting to berate Will with her disgust.

Alex waited for Ruthie to say something, for the gun to go off. None of that happened. The pitter-patter of renewed rain as it hit the leaves came into focus. Alex tried to match his breathing to the gentle ticking sound but then the gun pressed against his skull again.

“Your turn.”

A move Alex expected. Dylan believed some of the story, not all. The jolting, ripped-out-of-him way Will told it spoke to its veracity. But Dylan knew there was more... and he was right.

“No.” Cassie dropped to the ground, digging her fingers into the mud. She rose in a rush, carrying a knife, and lunged right for Dylan.

The pressure against Alex’s back disappeared and his body fell. He went boneless and his knees hit the ground with a crack of pain. He cried out as the world above him broke into chaos. He could see them all move and watched Cassie duck then fall.

A gunshot cut through the frenzy, dropping them all to theground. He heard screams and grunts. Watched Mitch reach for Sierra as they both slipped into a crouch. When Alex looked up again Dylan was watching him, and the gun was right there.

“Stop!” Ruthie cried out.

Alex waited for the bullet to tear into him. For bone and blood to explode as he took his final breath. When he opened his eyes again, he was struck by the still air and stunned expressions of his friends. His gaze traveled and he saw it. Ruthie standing there with a gun of her own. Did she fire a warning shot or was it Dylan? Alex thought Dylan, but who could tell?

“This is over, Dylan,” she said.

A feral smile broke out on his face. “But is it?”

Chapter Fifty-Six

Ruthie

Ruthie thought she was prepared to hear the truth, but the last ten minutes had turned her world upside down. The final minutes of Brendan’s life had been filled with terror and shock.

Will. Outwardly upright, privileged, quietly wounded, hiding his feelings, desperate for love and acceptance. Will killed Brendan. He tried to hedge by calling it an accident, but he couldn’t weasel out of his guilt.

She’d targeted Will and ruthlessly ripped through his past looking for answers. She arranged that meeting at the gallery and planned for at least one more “imagine bumping into you” type meeting, hoping to initiate an ongoing flirtation that would allow her to get close enough to assess him and ask the right questions. Even with his merry-go-round of past marriage requests, she’d never expected he’d flip from nodding as she described her fake job to talk of deep feelings within the span of two dates.

The immediate intimacy was dizzying because it furthered her agenda, but it raised a red flag. In any other circumstance a guy rushing her into a relationship after a few okaydates would have been arun from himwarning that she’d joke about withher friends over brunch after she broke up with him by text. But she’d needed to stay close to Will, so she allowed herself to get sucked in. She borrowed a page from Emily’s diary and disconnected the romance from the sex.

Ruthie played a role, believing it would be short-term pain for long-term gain. Looking back, she realized Will’s tamped-down hold on his emotions was the key to unrolling all of this. Until this weekend, she’d never seen a burst of anger... but she missed the subtle signs. His reactions stayed steady, almost unnaturally so. Never too much and always too little. Now, it seemed obvious. He’d lost it that night with Brendan then spent twelve years trying to bury the act deep in his psyche so that he never felt anything real again.

And Dylan. In measured beats, through a series of non-idle threats, he’d demanded answers. She could feel his reality shift and tear. His actions had forced her to finally take out the gun. She’d smuggled it out of the house in her skirt, avoiding the problem of wrestling it out of the holster and waiting for the right time. Probably waited too long and now he was laughing at her, amused to find her fighting back.

She had no idea how to read any of the twisted emotions pulsing off him and polluting the air around him. He had a foot on Alex’s thigh, trapping him. Dylan switched the targets of his aim often, not allowing any of them time to relax or to dive at him. He moved with an awareness that trapped them in the role of prey. The gun and the swagger with which he wielded it had them frantic yet riveted, unable to look away.

He’d ventured well past the point of being open to reason, but she tried anyway. She didn’t have another choice, except to shoot. She could aim to injure him only, but that sounded toorisky. He’d become an unstoppable force, equal parts driven and demented, but the need to complete her mission, to find the answers to the questions that had taken over and shrunk her life, burned through her.

As sick as it sounded, his presence kicked a door open to the past. A door she might not have been able to breach without his unexpected interference this weekend.

“You have your answer. We know what happened to Brendan.” She glanced at Will, saw a pitiful man dissolved in a pool of his own guilt, and felt the slight buzz of loss for the person he might have been had his life traveled a different path.

She cared about keeping Sierra safe. The rest of them barely registered with Ruthie, which made her question just how much of her decency she’d forfeited in this search. Fake engagements. Weighing people’s worth. Lies. Isolation. Violence. Dylan. The pieces ran around in her head until a scream formed in her throat.

“You know that’s not all of it. Your honey implicates a dead man, makes up a story about an accident, and we’re supposed to sayfineand walk away?” Dylan shook his head. “We deserve more than that.”

He wasn’t wrong. Will’s story smacked of convenience and antiseptic scrubbing. Nothing he said explained what happened to Emily, but she couldn’t ignore Dylan’s self-assigned role of judge and executioner.We deservenotBrendan and Emily deserve. “You’ve gathered resources. We all heard what Will said. The police will handle the rest.”

“Like they did last time?” Dylan wasn’t smiling now. He’d reverted to a reflection of the man she’d met months ago. Earnest and broken but not void of humanity. “You heard him. Theydragged Brendan out of his apartment. Scared the hell out of him.”

“It’s sick and they deserve to be punished, but not by your brand of vigilante justice. You’re not this guy.” She didn’t know what he was these days. He’d spiraled in the months since she walked away, but she was willing to say anything to win him over now.

“They made me into this guy.”

Sierra and Mitch jerked back as Dylan waved his gun around. Cassie watched each flick of his wrist, her body clearly ready to push up and pounce if the right moment arose.

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