The Secrets We Keep

Epilogue

Hayden

A Few Weeks Later

It's insane to me how long trials can take. Especially a murder one. How it can drag on for weeks is stupid to me. I mean, all the evidence is here. 

As I look into my bedroom mirror, struggling to raise my arms to throw on a shirt, I look at the still healing mark on my abdomen. It looks better now than it has and because it's not so pussy and gross anymore, I don't have to keep putting on the bandages or gauze.

I sigh as I manage to get the shirt on without pain flaring up and throw on a simple zip-up jacket, too tired to struggle with a sweatshirt today. 

I should be dressing in something better, something fancier. I'm going to court, to watch the final part of Victoria Craine's trial. I don't want to go, really I don't, but the therapist mom insisted Damien and I go to, thinks it will be cathartic for us to see this through. 

Nathan didn't have a trial. Only his mom. He pleaded guilty to everything he was charged with: Second-degree murder. Grievous bodily harm. And a whole lot of other things I've mentally blocked out since then. 

But his mother, ha, she wasn't going to back down and plead guilty. She's been trying to prove her innocence now for days and it's all starting to get to me. 

The bitch shot me. Shot me in the fucking stomach and almost killed me. I wish I was evidence enough to get her ass thrown in prison but she's turned the courtroom into her latest stage, twisting the truth around to make the narrative look like she was just another one of Nathan's victims. 

There's a knock at my door and it forces me out of my thoughts as I tiredly throw it open. Damien stands on the other side, looking as tired as I feel in a pair of ripped jeans and a loose-fitting T-shirt. 

It's been weeks since the fire, since he was burned, and... Damien will never be the same again. And I'm not just talking about the mental mind shift he went through when people treated him like the town's local boogie man. 

He has burn marks all over his arms, neck, and face. They stop just under his one eye. He told me it was because he tried to cover his face with his arms in the inferno but it only protected so much. He sees my gaze on the bottom part of his face and chucks me under the chin. 

"Don't stare, asshole. It's rude," he says, but his words are light. For some reason, he's taken all of this better than I have, adjusted to the sympathetic looks and apologetic eyes with understanding and grace. But when people look at me like that, I want to start carrying eggs so that I can throw them at them. 

Fuck them and their 'sorry's. None of this would've been an issue if their heads weren't so far up their asses the first time around. 

Damien and I spent quite a few days together in the hospital. After my surgery, they allowed us to share a room while we healed. We've gotten closer in that time, closer than we've ever been before, and now it's like he can read my mind. 

"Stop being so mad," he tells me, searching my eyes with his. "It's almost over."

"I'm not angry," I tell him angrily as I shoulder past him out the door. I stomp down the hall to the kitchen and shove my feet into boots. "I'm perfectly fucking neutral today."

Both our parents look up as we stand in the kitchen, me lacing up my boots and Damien watching me with an amused look on his face. 

"Are you ready for today?" Mom asks cautiously, standing up from the dining room table with her empty breakfast plate. 

Today's Victoria's sentencing. Today we'll see if the jury convicts her as guilty or not. All I know is that if they're dumb enough to believe her sob story over Grace's, mine, Christopher's, and even her own son's testimonies, I will explode.