In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead
Chapter 41
Now
The whole world ended with Mint’s words. Everything I thought I knew gone in the blink of an eye, our past scratched out and written over with the truth, the words dark and terrible. And I was going straight to hell, because the first thought that crossed my mind when Mint unraveled was, I won.
Ten years ago, on Valentine’s Day, Mint had stormed out of Sweetheart, snuck into my room, and stabbed Heather seventeen times because he thought she was me. Heather was always taking what was mine, and the secret of her murder—the great, intractable mystery of her death—was that she’d simply done it one too many times.
It had been about me this whole time.
Then the shock cleared, and my next thought was, My body is turning inside out. I leaned over and threw up everything inside my stomach, acid bitter in my mouth.
The room exploded into noise.
“You killed her,” Eric screamed, lunging for Mint, but Mint was too fast, twisting away from him to the corner of the room where the shattered window met the wall. He bent and scooped something from the floor, gripping it like a dagger in his right hand. It was a massive, jagged piece of glass. A line of blood snaked down his wrist from where he held it, the same crimson as the Duquette polo he wore.
“Nobody come close,” Mint warned.
“Mint, it can’t be true,” Caro said. “Take it back. You wouldn’t do that.” She clutched her chest. “You’re our friend.”
Mint pointed the glass dagger at me. “Where were you that night?” He spun to Coop. “With the professor, or him?”
My heart was pounding so fast it was going to break through my chest.
Courtney grunted, an unladylike sound, and her eyes rolled back in her head. Caro shrieked, but before she could do anything to stop it, Courtney wobbled, knees bending in unnatural directions, then collapsed on the floor. Caro dropped to her knees and pressed her fingers to Courtney’s throat. “Her heart’s beating. Oh my god.”
“She just fainted, Caro. I’ve seen it on the field. It’s going to be okay.” Slowly, Frankie turned from Caro to Mint, his hands spread wide in supplication. “Mint, why don’t you put the glass down. This isn’t you. Put it down and we’ll talk it out.” He took a hopeful step forward.
“Stay back!” Mint hissed. His golden hair was disheveled, flipped over his forehead so you could only see one of his eyes, making him look a little mad. Perfect Mint, campus big shot, heir to a real estate empire, king of the East House Seven. A killer.
Eric ignored Mint’s warning, stalking toward him. “You planted the scissors in Jack’s room.” It wasn’t a question but a puzzle piece fitting into place. “You framed one of your best friends, threw him to the wolves. Sat back and watched his life go down in flames because of what you did. All our lives. And then what, you kept dating the girl you tried to kill, just to keep up appearances?”
That’s right. Oh god. Mint had come to me after Heather died, drowning in an ocean of emotion he could barely keep contained—guilt and fear and anger. I’d assumed it was survivor’s guilt, nothing more than an intense reaction to what had happened to our friend. I could remember now. He hadn’t let me touch him for hours, nearly a whole night, even as he’d insisted we recommit to our relationship. And I—awash in my own misery and guilt—had been grateful for the lifeline, the chance to make my life normal again. I was desperate to feel the way Mint used to make me feel—like I was valuable, a somebody.
I grimaced as I remembered the night he’d broken up with me in New York, the way he’d looked at me with revulsion when I’d begged him not to. That had been a glimpse of the true Mint, what he really felt. Everything else had been a lie, carefully calculated by a man who’d actually tried to kill me. My first real boyfriend, who for a few triumphant seconds in the dark thought he really had done it.
My legs went weak. I dropped, unable to hold myself up.
Mint’s steel eyes turned to me as I knelt, taking measure of me in that way he had. But this time, instead of wanting to straighten my spine and stand taller, I wanted to cower. To be anywhere other than where he could find me.
“Jack was going to report me to the cops for hurting Trevor,” Mint said, his voice cold and detached, almost thoughtful. “I never felt bad about what I did to him. But you—I did feel bad about you. Really. I tried to forgive you for Garvey, to move on in New York. I figured if I could just get rid of my anger, that goddamn fire in my chest, I could wipe the slate clean. But I couldn’t. And it turns out I shouldn’t have even tried to forgive you, because it wasn’t just Garvey. It was him, too.” He pointed the tip of the glass at Coop, whose gaze was already locked on Mint, eyes narrowed, shoulders tensed.
“For that, I’m going to finish what I started,” Mint said. For a second, I thought he was talking to Coop—he was still looking at him. But then he turned to me, his eyes strangely vacant, and I knew the truth. Of course. It was me he hated. Me who’d turned him into his father.
His voice was so measured. “I’m going to do it right this time. You did everything you could to humiliate me, and now you have to pay, for balance. I—”
Eric rushed him in a burst of speed, but Mint reacted quickly, meeting Eric with his foot, kicking him square in the chest. Eric hit the floor hard, hands catching the glass shards. They turned bright with blood.
Coop lunged, trying to take advantage of Mint’s distraction, but Mint twisted away and slashed Coop with his jagged glass, making a vicious line across Coop’s chest. Caro screamed as Coop staggered, clutching the long gash, his T-shirt gaping open.
I fell backwards to the floor. It was one thing to hear Mint’s confession, another to see him strike his friend and draw blood. The surprise must have caught Frankie, too, because he paused his forward momentum, giving Mint the precious seconds he needed to thrust his hand inside Coop’s pocket and wrestle out the lighter he’d known Coop would be carrying. He flicked up a flame, as fluid as Coop had taught him to be.
“Don’t—” Caro started to get up from where she crouched near Courtney, but Mint leapt past her to the stack of old newspapers and touched the flame to the paper. For one glorious instant it seemed nothing happened, but then the fire spilled from the lighter, racing over the newspaper, and suddenly it was ablaze. The fire caught the arm of a nearby couch, licking across the cushions, until it covered the couch like a blanket.
Mint was setting the room on fire. We’d discovered his secret, and now he was going to kill us.
Eric had rolled to his knees, still struggling to breathe from Mint’s kick, and now he and Frankie grabbed Coop’s shoulders—ignoring his moan, the hand pressed to his chest—and pulled him back, away from the flames. Caro was trying with every ounce of her strength to pull the deadweight of Courtney’s body toward the doorway.
As Mint rose, the fire rose also, as if a cobra, entranced. It was so hot I could feel it on my skin, even across the distance. And it was growing bigger, engulfing the old couches to form a wall between me and my friends. Between me and the door.
Leaving me and Mint on the other side. Alone, together.
He turned to me, dropped the lighter, and smiled.
I scrambled backwards, toward the cool air of the broken window, but Mint closed the distance between us too fast, seizing my leg with his free hand. I was too terrified to scream as he yanked me across the floor, my hands scraping the ground but finding no purchase.
Then I was underneath him, looking up at his face. Even crazed, even in disarray, he was still so beautiful. The best mask in the world. The boy who had everything, who no one would suspect. I breathed faster, coughing as I sucked in smoke. When had Mint become this other person—senior year? Junior? Had this been inside him all along, this dark potential? Should I have known freshman year, the day we sat on his bed, knees touching, and he’d told me what he’d done to his father, how good it had made him feel? Or even further back than that, the day he’d snapped over the drawing on the float?
He had shown me slivers of who he was. And instead of recoiling, I’d leaned toward him. Because he was Mint. The prince of Duquette.
I choked again, and all the while Mint was leaning over me, sinking closer. Why wasn’t I fighting? What power did he have over me, what spell had he cast that kept me, even now, in his thrall?
“Why?” I managed to ask, pushing the word out past the ache in my throat.
Mint ignored me, eyes flicking over my neck, my lips, my cheekbones. “You know, my father tried to kill himself. The week of Sweetheart. I never told anyone until now.”
Danger, get away. I tried to roll, but he caught me by the throat, his large hand squeezing painfully. I thrashed, gasping, my arms and legs slick with sweat from the fire, but Mint held me fast.
“He failed everyone, so he took the coward’s way out. But I’m not like him. I fix my mistakes.” Instead of shocking me, Mint’s words rang with a painful familiarity. And I realized: our fathers were alike. They’d walked similar paths, and all this time, Mint and I had hidden it from each other. My whispered words from over a decade ago floated back: I think I hate my father, too. Maybe we were the same. Mint and Jessica: two sides of the same coin.
Mint squeezed my neck, and I felt my windpipe constrict. Red flooded my vision, the whole world narrowing to a single, desperate need: air.
He leaned in, pressing his lips to my ear like a lover, like he’d done a thousand times before. “You’re a terrible person,” he whispered. “I want you to die knowing that.”
Then he plunged the jagged glass into my side.
Pain. It was an electric shock, a strike of lightning, the burning heat of thousands of nerves dying. I wrenched against his hand, the world closing in—the thickening smoke, his unrelenting grip, the pain—the pain—worse than I’d ever known.
He pulled back to stab me again and I saw it, like déjà vu: I was going to die like Heather. She’d taken my place ten years ago, giving me a decade-long reprieve, but now fate was back to claim me.
Suddenly Mint toppled sideways, his hand freeing my throat, the jagged glass flying out of his grip. Coop and Frankie were on him, their shirts and pants smoking, their skin a bright, scary red. They’d pushed through the wall of flames. Coop wrapped his arms around Mint’s shoulders, twisting him away, and I lurched backwards, screaming when the movement ripped open my side.
I pressed my hand over the wound and made myself keep moving, even though I couldn’t tear my eyes from where Mint wrestled Frankie and Coop, the three of them tumbling over the broken glass.
I gulped air that was mostly smoke, ignoring the pain in my throat. The room was in flames. I could only see the top of Caro’s head over the fiery wall of couches, and I couldn’t see Courtney at all. Where was Eric? We needed to leave, now.
Sharp movement snapped my attention back to the fight. Mint tried to shove Coop, but Frankie wrestled him to the ground, pinning his arms, both their chests heaving, sweat rolling from their temples. The look on Mint’s red face was monstrous. “Get off me!” he screamed, kicking his legs, but Frankie held on.
Mint changed tacks. “Frankie,” he begged, “you’re my best friend. Let me go—we can talk.”
Frankie’s face was an open book, his struggle—pain and confusion, love and regret—written across it plainly. Nearly two decades he’d worshipped Mint, been steadfastly devoted. But now he closed his eyes and shook his head, gripping Mint tighter.
Flames crept to my shoe; I yanked my foot back, clutching again at the pain in my side. Coop’s head jerked in my direction.
“We have to get out of here,” I yelled. “This place is going to burn down.”
Coop looked down at Mint, then back at me, nodding. He turned to Frankie. “Pull him up, then let’s run. But don’t let go, okay?”
Frankie nodded, and together, they yanked Mint to his feet and pushed him forward.
I stood, eyes stinging, blood warm and sticky against my fingers, and followed, trying to track them through the smoke. Over their shoulders, I could finally see Caro, still grunting and tugging Courtney’s body toward the door. She was so close.
In front of me, Mint jerked. And I knew instantly what he was thinking: no matter what happened to us, Caro and Courtney, at least, would escape. Caro would tell everyone what happened here, what Mint had confessed. He was a goner.
I opened my mouth to shout a warning, but Mint was too fast. He snapped and twisted out of Frankie’s and Coop’s grasp, shooting backwards, past me to the corner of the room, where the open window met the wall.
“Wait,” he screamed as Coop and Frankie doubled back for him. “I’m sorry, okay?” Mint bent over, panting, his eyes two blue dots in a sea of red. He raised his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry for everything I’ve done. All of it, truly.”
Frankie and Coop froze in surprise. In that moment, I could hear shouting from far below. The Homecoming parade—of course. They’d come to the end of the route, and now they were gathered underneath Blackwell Tower. And it was lit with flames, billowing smoke.
Mint looked at me. And to my shock, his eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry, Jess. There’s something wrong with me. I’ve known it ever since that night. I’ll get help.”
“Mint—” My voice caught.
“Forgive me, please,” he begged. “I’ll do anything, I promise. I’ll turn myself in. We can salvage this. I’ll—”
Out of the wall of fire, a body flew toward Mint. Eric. They slammed together, shoulders cracking against shoulders, tumbling until Eric seized control, drawing Mint up onto his hands and his knees. Then—too fast for me to stop it, too fast even for the scream ripping from my throat—Eric pushed Mint out the open window.
I might have only imagined it, like a waking dream, but for a single second, Mint’s body floated among the trees, his eyes stark and wide against the sky. And I knew, with all my heart and soul, that I’d loved him, and he’d been good and wicked, and in the dark, secret part of me, we were so much the same.
And then he plunged.
My scream ended only when we heard the terrible, unmistakable crunch of his body hitting pavement. And then everything was drowned in the thunderous noise of hundreds of people shouting and stampeding below us.
Mint’s body had fallen from the top of Blackwell Tower in full view of the parade.
Mint was dead. I reeled with it for a second, somehow cold with shock in a burning room. And then something strange happened. Everything clicked into place. I knew exactly what to do.
“Get back!” I shouted to Eric. He turned to me, defiant, but I kept yelling. “Get away from the window. Everyone will see you.”
“Jess.” Coop rushed toward me, Frankie behind him.
“All of you, back,” I screamed. The heat from the fire was stinging my skin, making my fingers slippery with sweat. Behind the flames, I could see Caro—her shocked face, wide eyes staring at me from where she stood, paralyzed in the doorway.
“I killed Mint,” I said, my voice rough. “Do you hear me? I pushed him out the window. He killed Heather because he thought she was me, and today he tried to finish the job. You all heard him. He wanted me dead.”
“What?” Frankie asked.
“If the cops know Mint surrendered and Eric pushed him anyway, Eric will go to prison.”
“I don’t care,” Eric said. “I knew what I was doing.”
I looked at him. In that moment, his hard veneer—ten years of doggedness, pursuing justice when no one else would, clear-eyed and coldhearted—wavered. And I could see the skinny freshman boy he’d once been. It was that boy who’d devoted his life to arriving at this moment. That boy who was willing, in the end, to give up his freedom to see his sister’s killer dead.
“I promised her justice,” he said softly.
I shoved him behind me and stepped to the window. “It was self-defense. See?” I lifted my bloody hand from my side. “He stabbed me, so I pushed him.” I looked at Coop and Frankie. “Promise me, right now. Say I did it.”
“You did it,” Frankie said roughly.
“Coop,” I warned. “Say it.”
“You did it,” he whispered, but his eyes begged me: Let me pull you from the window, let me save you.
But it was time I made a different kind of choice.
Sweeping aside glass, I climbed to the edge of the window, making myself visible to the crowd below. It was cooler here, the smoke mixing with crisp air. Below, a ring of people circled Mint’s body, ignoring shouts from firefighters who raced up behind them. Some of the Homecoming crowd was running from the parade in fear. But the rest—the majority—gazed up, transfixed by the sight of me. The red-faced, bloody girl, blond hair whipping behind her, standing atop the tower, criminal and defiant.
Gasps spread among the crowd. Arms lifted, fingers pointing. “She pushed him,” someone yelled, clear and loud enough to carry up to me.
In front of the whole world: Jessica Miller, villain.
Sirens cut through the noise, and I saw, with my bird’s-eye view, dazzling red and blue lights. Cop cars speeding toward us, parting the crowd like the Red Sea.
One last moment of freedom. I took a deep breath of cool air, heavy with the scent of magnolias. Looked back at the crowd, and this time I spotted him. Right there at the edge, his face tilted up, mouth set in a hard line. I nearly lost my footing.
Jack.