Changing You ✦ The Sequel

Chapter 43 {Z}

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"I'm just gonna put these away."

Riley released the towel she had twirled around her head and let her hair fall, the damp strands darker than normally as they framed her face, her features still slightly flushed from the hot water.

She rounded the bed I was sitting on, picked up the other two towels and had already turned halfway towards the door when I caught her wrist and stopped her.

"I killed his brother," I whispered, my voice refusing to admit it out loud.

I felt her freeze. Faltering in the middle of her step as she turned back around.

"Warner's younger brother," I clarified, slightly louder. "I poisoned him."

She sat down next to me, the towels still gathered in her arms and she looked at me but I couldn't look back at her.

I was too scared to watch her reaction. Terrified for her opinion of me to change; that she would never look at me the same, but I had to say it. I had to face this now or I would never have the guts to do so.

"I can't- I can't blame Warner for what he's doing because I'm no better than him. I'm worse. I'm the reason his family's dead."

I let go of her wrist only to pull my hands into fists so tightly my knuckles crackled. "And he's not the only one. There are so many others. People I've hurt, that I took down and they didn't even do anything wrong."

I shook my head sharply. "Who am I even kidding, Ri?"

"Warner's brother? He was Reese's age. Even younger, maybe. He was tied up to a tree and defenceless and innocent and I poisoned him. I killed him before my father could consider to torture him, but it's still murder, Ri, I could've chosen to untie him and let him go just as easily but I didn't. He was just a kid."

"I know," she said softly. "I know what you did."

The statement caught me so off guard that I felt brave enough to meet her eyes.

"When I took your pain," she said. "I don't know how, but I guess- because you were thinking about it, I saw it, too. Exactly the way you remember it. Through your point of view, I guess. It was like replaying a memory in my head except it wasn't mine."

"I didn't know you could do that."

"Neither did I," she muttered.

I pinched myself, pushed myself to tell her everything else, forced myself to continue.

"You don't know the rest," I stated through clenched jaw, looking down at my hands so I couldn't see her reaction out of the corner of my eyes because this... this is what I guessed Jack had found out about. What had caused him to turn against me.

And shit, I couldn't blame him.

"That's not all," I breathed. "God, I wish that was it. You wanna know how we were able to find them?"

I hesitated. Postponed. Felt her eyes on me until my throat squeezed shut with fear. "Because he was on the list."

"What list?"

I reached for my phone on the nightstand and opened up a document before handing it to her. "This one."

I swallowed, hard, felt the atmosphere around me change; suddenly heavy with silence, as she scrolled through the list of names. Names of people like her.

She stared at the names that were crossed out. "Who are these people?"

"Zach-"

"Born werewolves," I confessed, nearly choking on the words.