Page 95 of The Hate We Breathe
“Oh, my god…” I stare at her.
Roquel, the first person I met at Silverwood Public that didn’t outright hate me. The one who tried to involve me in school, who gave me warnings, who came when I was trapped in Morpheus’ house…
The girl I thought was my friend.
“It was you…” I shake my head. “Why?” The question is a whisper as it slips from my lips, but she hears it.
With a bubble of hysteric laughter, Roquel sucks in a lungful of air before she answers. “He fucking loved me until he thought he could have you.” Her eyes fill with a hazy sheen of tears. “Youruinedeverything—youalwaysruin everything!”
“Roquel… he was a monster.”
“No!” The word comes out on a shriek. “No, he was my lover! He was going to marry me!”
Behind me, I feel Lex’s hand on my leg. Unwilling to leave him on his knees a moment longer, I bend—not turning away from the woman in front of me—and lift his arm over my shoulders to help him to his feet. He keeps most of his weight on one leg as he comes up.
“Morpheus Calloway was a fucking asshole,” Lex states, and a part of me wants to shove him back to the ground for that. Roquel is obviously insane, and antagonizing a crazy person is never recommended.
Roquel’s expression slowly shifts, the laughter and anger fading until it’s as if she’s donned a mask. I wonder if this is how she fooled everyone for so long.
“You didn’t know him,” she replies to Lex. “I knew him. I was the only one that did.” Her gaze flicks to me. “The only thing that I ever disliked about him was his obsession withyou.” Thoughher expression doesn’t change, she spits the last word as if it’s a curse.
“But you knew about it.” Lex tries to take a step forward and I push a hand against his chest, gritting my teeth in annoyance. “You knew what he fucking did to her and you still befriended her.”
“Whathedid toher?” Dark, choppy locks of ink-black hair shift along her shoulder as she tilts her head. “You mean the night she took him from me?”
I blink. “Excuse me?”
“I knew I wasn’t his only lover,” she snaps. “I didn’t give a fuck about the others. He told me about them. He didn’t have to hide it from me. Because, unlike all of the otherwhores,” she sneers and jerks the gun in my direction as if trying to punctuate the fact thatIshould be considered one of those whores, “Iactually loved him.”
“You’re fucking delusional.” The words slip from my mouth in a moment of shock. They’re a new brand of poison—acidic and burning—when I realize that she didn’t just accept what Morpheus had done. She’d… helped him in a way.
My body trembles, not with fear but with something far colder.
Rage.
Bile climbs up my throat. She knew. Sheknewwhat he did to me. Worse than that, she’d been there. She could have stopped it. She could have helped me. Even if I didn’t give a shit about the girls at school, I’d been willing to follow that one into the woods to keep her from experiencing what I had. Not Roquel, though.
She’d chosen a monster and a rapist.
That night, in my memory, has given me nightmares, so much confusion as I’d tried to forget. The sleeping pills. The alcohol. Anything to take away the reminder and the sensation of filth under my skin that he’d left in me.
Yet, here she still stands, clutching that gun like she’s the victim, and not for the first time, I want to kill. I want to wrap my hands around her throat and watch as the light dims from her eyes. She deserves far worse.
The hand I have pressed against Lex’s chest curls into a fist. He reaches up and cups his free hand over it, and I glance down to find that it’s the one he’d tried to staunch the blood from his leg. The red smudges coat my skin, slick and warm, a violent reminder of how close we are to losing everything, and it’s all because ofher.
I face her again as she tilts her head, eyes flashing with a mixture of satisfaction and anger. “What I am,” she hisses, “is tired of trying and failing to kill you.”
Her laugh breaks, sharp and bitter. “God, I don’t know what it is about you—it’s like the fucking universe is on your side.”
Lex releases a curse beside me, low and rough, before biting out an accusation. “You killed that girl because you thought she was Juliet, didn’t you?”
The warmth of his hand over mine grounds me, pulling me back from the edge I’m ready to leap off. Still, I stare back at the woman mere feet away, holding us captive with that damn gun.
Roquel’s mouth twists. “That was an accident,” she admits. “But yes, she was wearing that stupid wig and I thought…” Her eyes narrow, and for a split second, her voice softens into something unholy. “How much easier everything would’ve been if you’d just died when you were supposed to.”
I blink. “When I was supposed to?”
She rolls her eyes, exasperated. “Oh, don’t act like you’re fucking stupid, Juliet. You didn’t really think Otis broke into your apartment on his own, did you?”
