Define Ezria

Chapter 34

"Jason?!" Ezra shoved me back when I tried to look over his shoulder at Jason who was still pointing at us with the gun.

"Finally you got my name right. I was tired of the whole Noel thing, even though it did work in my favor. Poor kid has no idea what is going on but you, oh you believed it was him so easily it was quite amusing to watch you lose your mind, but game over I'm tired of playing."

My mind was racing trying to come up with a logical explanation as to what was happening right in front of me. All this time we thought it was Noel but if Jason is being honest it was him all along.

"Why?" was all that I managed to say, and because the nigh was so still apart from my frantic heartbeat ringing in my ears, my voice carried away and Jason heard me. He looked at me then and regret passed through his eyes before it was gone and replaced by anger.

"I wasn't initially planning on hurting you Aria, I really wasn't. I was quite . . . fond of you from early on. I tried to give you a second change, don't say I didn't. Even last month, I made it clear that I wanted you. And what did you do?" He moved his gaze to Ezra, and his gun followed.

"You chose him. Honestly what do you see in this pedophile asshole?"

"Hey man" Ezra said, raising his hands palms up toward Jason, "let's all calm down. You don't have to do this. Put the gun down and let's talk about this."

Jason laughed, throwing his head back, clearly bemused at Ezra's peace offering, which only made me more horrified.

"YOU! You don't get to talk." He sobered up all of a sudden holding the gun out with what seemed a renewed purpose. "It's your fault Aria won't live a day more. If only you had stayed away maybe non of these would have happened." He then smiled like a lunatic, turning back at me, "Maybe".

"Jason stop! What did I ever do to you? I never meant to hurt you."

"Oh you did more than that little pink. You took my family away" He motioned behind him and I turned my head to read Alison's tombstone yet one more time. "Alison?" I screeched, "Jason how can you say that, we all lost her, I've made many mistakes in my life but Alison was never one of them. Her death is no one's fault but her murder's, who is in jail and will remain there til the end of his life"

"DON'T SAY IT WASN'T YOUR FAULT!" He screamed and I took a step back dragging Ezra with me. "It is your fault. You and the rest of your pretty little friends are to blame. You all knew about Ian and how he was abusing her and you told no one."

Ian had been Alison's older secret boyfriend for almost a year before he had started hitting her when she wanted to stop hiding their relationship. After another year of that Alison couldn't bare it anymore and threatened to turn him in, so he killed her.

"You are wrong" I cried back, tears dripping furiously down my cheeks, "We didn't know about any of that and we especially didn't know about Ian! We knew something was wrong but Ali wouldn't tell us. Are you forgetting Ian was Melissa's boyfriend at the same time he was seeing Ali? Do you really thing she would have told us? Mellissa's own sister? Besides, you knew Ali better than anyone. The girl could keep a secret"

I was trembling from both the cold and the memory. We hadn't known about Ian and we knew it wasn't our fault, but it was the stress and guilt of what ifs and maybes that kept us into therapy ever since that happened. Having Jason, Alison's own brother, accusing me and the girls of that hurt more than the bullet he was about to plant in my head ever would.

"Jason stop it. It wasn't their fault man and you know it. I bet you didn't miss an interrogation after your sister's case was opened. You know that the girls did not know what was going on better than anyone so why are you doing this?" Ezra tried again in a sober and not accusing tone. I knew then that he was trying to keep him talking long enough to come up with a plan to escape this. All plans that I could thing off however ended with one of us leaving the cemetery in a body bag.

"Shut the fuck up! You know nothing, NOTHING, about what happened to my sister! But I do.Your pretty little girlfriend is a killer and so are the others." He pointed the gun at my head "You can act all high and mighty but I know what happened. You drove her to him. You gave her no choice with all our lying and drama. She couldn't trust you. Non of you. And it killed her. You killed her."

I shook my head and blinked trying to clear my eyes long enough to deny it. But it was getting harder and harder. What if he was right? What if it was our fault. We were just kids after all and Ali had always been years ahead of us, even back then. What if she really couldn't trust us with something as important as her own threatened life? I remember myself asking her what had happened to her neck that was covered in bruises but all she did was roll her eyes at me and say that her sex life was pretty adventurous and not to worry my pretty little head about it because I wouldn't understand anyway.

I remember feeling so small, so unworthy and immature that it didn't even occure to me she was lying.

"No!"I said again. "It was not my fault and it certainly wasn't my friends' fault. You're not the only one hurting Jason. We will all suffer about it for the rest of our lives but it wasn't our doing. You will not harm my friends and you will not harm Ezra who had nothing to do with all this."

I grabbed Ezra's jacket hard enough to make his lose his balance and fall to the ground out of the gun's reach. "Aria no!". I wobbled closer to Jason and pointed at my myself, bluffing, praying, bluffing.

"Finish what you started then, kill me!"

I heard the loud bang of the gun going off and then nothing but darkness.

He wasn't bluffing.

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HIII I'm so sorry it took me forever to upload I truly am. Also PLEASE DON'T HATE ME ABOUT THIS. Ily