The Outsider: Hard Knox Part 27

"Why did you turn yourself in if they weren't going to arrest you?"

"Because I deserved to be punished," he said, his voice as dead-sounding as his face looked. "I wanted them to charge me with her murder. I wanted to spend the rest of my miserable life decaying behind bars, but since I had no shortage of alibis, they only booked me with what they could make stick. I did six months, was released, went back to my mom's s.h.i.+thole of an apartment, loaded a bullet in a gun, and pressed it to my temple. My finger was just brus.h.i.+ng the trigger when someone knocked on the door."

I didn't want Knox to see me crying-I didn't want him to censor his story because he thought I couldn't handle it-so I wiped my eyes with the back of my arm.

"For whatever reason, I answered the door and found the only guy on the police force worth a d.a.m.n standing there. He was holding an evidence bag with Maggie's necklace inside. He didn't say a word, just put it into my hand, and curled my fist around it before leaving."

"It was like she knew. Wasn't it?" I had to swipe at my eyes every few seconds now. The girl who'd been rumored as being incapable of crying had turned into a sobbing open wound.

He nodded. "That's what it felt like. So after putting the gun away, I packed a few things and left that apartment and everything inside it for good. I slipped Maggie's necklace on later that night before falling asleep outside some rest stop, and I never took it off. Until that night I put it on you." His arms fell back at his sides as he turned to face me.

So much was written in the lines creasing his face-so much in the fine print. There was apology, shame, guilt . . . love.

"s.h.i.+t," he said, studying my face. "You're crying."

I'd forgotten to wipe my eyes. I mustered up a smile. "So are you."

"I don't cry," he replied softly.

Another tear splashed into my lap. "Neither do I."

When he made it halfway across the room toward me, he stopped.

"That's why you're studying forensic science, isn't it? Because you want to catch the people who commit crimes like the one that happened to your sister?" It was amazing how a few new pieces of the puzzle could bring meaning to the whole picture. I'd picked up hundreds of pieces this year, but the ones I'd needed most were the ones I was only just being handed.

"That's why, yes," he said, stepping closer. "After I moved out, I was a tumbleweed, drifting wherever the wind took me, wherever circ.u.mstance guided me. For a year, I just floated from place to place, job to job, face to face. One year to the day after her death, I fell asleep s.h.i.+t-faced after downing a couple bottles of whatever alcohol had the highest proof for the least amount of money at the liquor store close to the park I was camping in. I dreamed about Maggie a lot, but in this dream, she was yelling at me, screaming her lungs out. She was getting on my case that since she was dead, I had a responsibility-a duty-to live for the both of us. I was the one with a pulse, but I was living like I was dead." He rolled his neck a few times like he had to push himself to keep talking. "Maggie was always real quiet and soft-spoken, so to have a dream about her wringing my neck and damaging my eardrums left an impact. Especially having it on the anniversary of the day she'd been murdered."

"Valentine's." The word slipped from my mouth, another piece fitting into place. "She died on Valentine's Day, didn't she?"

He exhaled like it hurt him to do it. "Yeah. At a Valentine's party her brother had decided to throw, she snuck in to get her first experience with a guy-no doubt she'd hoped to hold some nice boy's hand-and she got drugged, raped, and left for dead."

"G.o.d dammit," I cursed under my breath, hitting the mattress with my fist. His story was too much to take without hitting something. "That was why you were so insanely p.i.s.sed when I went to that party without you."

"Exactly. Maggie died on Valentine's. You went to a party on your own on Valentine's when we knew someone was targeting you . . ." The vein running down his forehead popped through his skin. "Insanely p.i.s.sed is an understatement."

"Knox . . ." I swallowed. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry doesn't even begin to describe it. I'm sorry for your sister and your s.h.i.+tty childhood, and I'm sorry for not making this year easier on you. I'm sorry I doubted you, and I'm sorry that you found me the way you did with Beck . . ." I couldn't remember much from that night, but I could imagine how Knox had felt stumbling into another bas.e.m.e.nt to find another girl he cared for in the same bad situation he'd found his sister in. "I'm sorry for so G.o.dd.a.m.ned much, I can't even get it all out right now."

His head didn't stop shaking. "You don't get the 'sorry's. Not a single one of them. I get them all, Charlie. I deserve them all."

I whipped my head around with him. Yes, he had things to be sorry for, but so did I-there was no shortage of them either. "Knox-"

"Which brings us back to the metal box you found in my desk drawer," he interrupted.

I kept my mouth closed, but he didn't get to end the conversation about 'sorry's by claiming them all.

"What you saw in that box was what I've managed to collect over the course of three years at Sinclair. None of it was mine originally. I found and swiped it all from frat parties. I knew the guys in the frats had to have a part in it, but questioning, watching, and threatening wasn't getting me far. They might have wanted me at their parties, but I wasn't one of them, so unless it was about girls, sports, or beer, they didn't talk to me."

All of those campus reports that Neve had shown me months ago took on a different meaning. Instead of appearing as a hot-headed alpha who couldn't control himself, Knox was a man in search of the truth. The guys he'd threatened and pinned against walls weren't victims but suspects.

"When I had that dream about Maggie pretty much ordering me to make my life count for the both of us, I partially interpreted that as an order to commit part of my life to making sure fewer girls ended up like she did. Once I'd turned over the so-called leaf, took my GED, and got into Sinclair, I noticed right off the bat that these 'harmless' frat parties were anything but. At first I wanted to ignore it, pretend it didn't exist, act like I'd left that part of my life in the past, but I couldn't shake the voice inside me reminding me that every time I turned away, it could mean another situation like Maggie's. Pretending I didn't know a thing about the drug or how people acted when they'd taken some or how they acted when they were trying to drop it in someone's drink wasn't worth it. At every party, I'd see her face and remember why I didn't get to pretend I was some clueless college kid."

I s.h.i.+fted in bed, waiting for him to look at me. I now knew why sometimes when he'd looked at me it had been like he was seeing someone else. "Until the night we met and you really did see Maggie. Or at least a girl who could have pa.s.sed as her twin."

When Knox looked away, I wasn't sure if it was because he felt guilty or because he just couldn't stand to look in my face while we discussed his sister. "When I saw you that night, I was convinced someone had slipped something into my drink. I knew of Charlie Chase, but I didn't know what she looked like, so I asked one of the guys at the party who you were. After I went through the checklist and realized I wasn't drugged, I wondered if you were Maggie incarnate, coming to kick my a.s.s over what was going on at Sinclair." A small smile went into place as he stared at the floor. "But it turned out it was just some girl who looked like Maggie coming to kick my a.s.s. Repeatedly. Even right this very moment."

I wanted to smile with him, but I couldn't. "That's what the attraction was, wasn't it? I looked like her. You saw me as your second chance to save the girl you lost."

His brows pinched together when he looked up. "That might have been what got me to come up and talk with you that night, but that's not what's kept me attracted to you. I noticed you because you looked like Maggie, but I fell for you because you were Charlie Chase."

Now that smile came easier. "Are you saying I'm nothing like your sister?"

Knox laughed. "No, nothing at all." He laughed again when I narrowed my eyes at him. Throwing his arms at me, he said, "You're proving my point right now. She was sweet, patient, quiet. She followed the rules, didn't cuss, and kept the peace instead of causing a scene."

"I'm those things too," I fired back before rethinking it. "Occasionally."

"Rarely," Knox said under his breath. "My point is that I liked her for the person she was, and I like you for the person you are. You may look like her, but you're not her, and I'm fully aware of that. I'm not trying to subst.i.tute you for her."

"Good." I s.h.i.+fted again, trying to get comfortable, but as I felt like one giant, gaping wound, no position was more comfortable than another. "It's strange, don't you think, that I look so much like her?"

Knox's gaze drifted out the window again to study the starlit sky. "When I think about it, no, it doesn't seem so strange at all."

I looked out at the night sky with him, and I smiled. Maybe he was right. Maybe it wasn't so strange we'd been brought together, as if fate or providence . . . or someone up there looking down on us . . . had a hand in it.

We'd covered so much. My head had been pounding when I'd woken and was only pounding harder from everything I'd learned since. But there were still a couple questions that hadn't been answered. I still had to know a few more things before I either fell back asleep or friends and family-or the police needing a report-busted in. "If I didn't tell you where I was going that day, how did you find me? How did you know I'd be in the Sigma Nu's bas.e.m.e.nt?"

Reaching into his pocket, Knox pulled out something. He held a familiar piece of jewelry. "The necklace."

My eyebrows lifted. "The necklace led you to me?" I might have been okay with believing in higher-powers with match-making proclivities, but this was something else.

"Well," he swallowed, "the tracker inside it did."

He was already grimacing before my mouth dropped open. "You were tracking me? You installed a tracker in the necklace you put around my neck?" That might not have broken any real laws, but it broke a h.e.l.l of a lot of trust laws.

"When I put the necklace on you, there wasn't a tracker in it." He looked at me like I was crazy. I was looking at him the same way. "I just drilled it in there while you were asleep a month or so ago. I didn't tell you because I knew you wouldn't wear it if I could track your every move, but it wasn't like that. I did it in case there was an emergency . . . which was exactly what I had to use it for."

I was still too flabbergasted to feel any grat.i.tude. "Not cool, Knox. You can't justify breaking someone's trust just because you were doing so to save their life."

"I can justify it." He crossed his arms and came closer. "I would justify anything if it meant saving the life of a person I cared about. I could justify going to prison, killing someone, stealing, anything, if it meant saving you or-G.o.d help me-saving Maggie. You feel free to justify whatever you want, but you can't tell me what I can or cannot justify when it comes to you."

His words dimmed my anger but didn't deplete it. "I'm too independent for that, Knox. I'm too independent to be tracked and followed and wrapped in protective-boyfriend bubble wrap."

"I don't expect you to be anything less than who you are. Independence and all." He took another step closer until I could almost touch him. "But just because you're independent doesn't mean you have to go it alone."

"You've been talking to my mom, haven't you?" How many times had I heard that phrase from her? Plenty, although I supposed I'd never really taken them to heart.

"Yeah, a bit, but she's not the one I heard that one from."

I tilted my head.

"Maggie used to say that all the time. To me. Although I never really got the sentiment behind it until I met my match in you and realized we could both be our lovable, independent selves"-we both raised our eyebrows at that-"yet look after each other at the same time."

I blew out an exasperated sigh. "Do you have to have a really great explanation for everything? Can't you just, one time, shrug and admit you weren't thinking and totally f.u.c.ked up? Just so I can be mad at you for a while?"

He wrinkled his nose as he shook his head. "Nah."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't want to give you any reason to be mad at me. I don't want to give you a reason to hate me because, as much as I might have begged you to do that, you're the single most important thing in the world to me, Charlie Chase. You've become my world. And how do I live in a world where you don't exist?" Stuffing his hands into his pockets, he shrugged.

Knox rarely looked vulnerable. He rarely looked like anything but an impenetrable two hundred pound fortress of muscle and steel, but right then, I wasn't sure I'd ever seen a person look so fragile. I reached out for him as he closed those last few steps between us and took my hand.

"Where do we go from here, Knox? What comes next?" Now that the pieces behind us were accounted for, those were the important questions.

"We nail the b.a.s.t.a.r.d who did this to you. We nail the rest of his fellow b.a.s.t.a.r.ds with him. We make sure they suffer for every pill they dropped, every girl they took advantage of, and every ounce of ent.i.tlement that made them think they weren't taking anything they didn't deserve." His hand around mine was gentle, but his expression wasn't. "We crush them-one by one."

My heartbeat picked up just thinking about the challenges ahead of me-ahead of us. Like anything though, we'd tackle them one by one, day by day. "How are we going to put together an ironclad case against Beck? My memories of that experience are lacking, to put it generously, and it's no secret there's no love lost between you two. An attorney will spin that, along with your prior record, to try to get him off. We can't let him get away with it. We can't let him think he can just keep doing this and nothing will happen to him." My stomach tied into ropes thinking about pa.s.sing Beck on campus after what he'd done. He wouldn't hesitate to do it again to the next girl he set his sights on.

"We've got ironclad, Charlie. We've got it." His expression darkened. "That b.a.s.t.a.r.d is going down, and the rest of them are too." He must have noticed my confusion, because he squeezed my hand before continuing. "There was a-"

"Video," I whispered after another flash. "He was taking a video because . . ." I concentrated on the image of Beck behind a camera, his lazy smile as he explained why . . . "He needed proof in order to be elected president of the Sigma Nus."

Knox's jaw ground together. "I should have killed him. I really should have finished that sorry son of a b.i.t.c.h."

I shook my head. "You would have gone to prison."

Knox huffed. "It would have been worth it."

I motioned my hand around the room then down my bruised body. "And miss out on all of this?"

His expression lightened some as his thumb circled my wrist. "That's what jail breaks and living life on the lam are for. I could have had my Beck-killing cake and eat living my life as a free man with you too."

My body was tired, and my mind was exhausted. We had so much more work to do, but it could wait a few hours. s.h.i.+fting to the edge of the bed, I patted the empty s.p.a.ce beside me.

Knox didn't hesitate to curl up next to me. He draped his arm, leg, and head over me, coc.o.o.ning me from the big bad world-or at least trying to.

I slid my leg through his, found his hand again, and closed my eyes. "So you're saying we give Beck, the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, and the rest of the world h.e.l.l?"

"I'm saying you do whatever you think you should do. I'll be there with you every step of the way, whatever you decide."

I hadn't fought the good fight for so long to give up when it mattered most. The thought of videos and reports and hearings and prosecutions was enough to make me want to retreat, but I couldn't. Others might try to sweep this kind of a thing under the rug, but others had died from it. That was why I had to speak out. I had to be the voice for the thousands of others who'd quieted or lost theirs.

"Give 'em h.e.l.l it is," I said, twisting around to face Knox. "But first, why don't you kiss me? I do my best h.e.l.l-raising fresh on the heels of a good kiss."

As Knox's lips lowered to mine, I focused on holding on to that kiss, that moment, for as long as I could. But like all near-perfect moments and mind-numbing kisses, it had to come to an end.

FAST FORWARD FROM one amazing kiss to the last day of my soph.o.m.ore year at Sinclair. Fast forward through multiple police questionings, just as many briefings, twice as many interviews, and one trial consisting of ironclad evidence, a sullen, excuse-ridden defendant, and a h.e.l.l-raising prosecutor. Fast forward through Knox Jagger getting thrown out of the courtroom after charging through a court gate and guard to wrap his hands around Beck's neck when Beck told the court I'd been "leading him on" and that the video camera had been all my idea. Fast forward through lost sleep, new nightmares, and becoming even more of an outcast at Sinclair.

That summed up almost three months of my life. I'd always considered myself a strong person, built of a little more grit and gruel than the girl next to me, but those few months had almost stripped me of every last bit of it. Just when I was certain I didn't have the strength to sit through another uncomfortable questioning, or watch that heinous video one more time while my attorney scrolled down more notes, or have one more journalist approach me when I was on my way to cla.s.s, Knox was there to lend me some of his. Or, as he liked to put it, remind me there was always more strength inside me if I took a moment to look.

He'd gotten me through difficult days and nightmare-ridden nights. He'd gotten me through all of the finger-pointing after everyone found out what had happened, and he stood by me when Sinclair seemed to want to blame me for all of the bad press it started getting instead of pointing the finger at the guy and guys who were actually responsible. Knox never wavered. He was my rock and my shelter from the storm. He was the reason I made it through the stormy oceans and finally arrived in not-quite-flat but calmer waters.

Knox Jagger had saved me in more than one way this year. And while I wasn't sure I believed him, he said I'd returned the favor.

It had taken time and dozens more talks like we'd had at the hospital for me to make peace with why he'd withheld vital information from me, but in the end, we'd both kept secrets from one another. We'd kept them for various reasons, but what it all boiled down to was he cared for me and I cared for him. Neither of us was eager to lose the other when those secrets surfaced. We'd messed up-it had and would continue to be a recurring theme in our relations.h.i.+p. I'd accepted that. Accepting the cons to Knox and me being together was easier when I knew that there was a ma.s.s of pros towering above them.

Knox hadn't been my only rock through all of this. My parents had been unwavering as well. As difficult as it had to have been for them to hear and see the things they did in court, they didn't let it show. They stayed strong for me and supported my every decision along the way. When I'd told them I was staying at Sinclair to finish my degree, I'd witnessed the worry flood their eyes, but they didn't try to talk me out of it. They knew, like I did, if I could make it through what I had this past year, I could make it through anything.

I'd gritted my teeth, braced myself, and trudged through necessary evil after necessary evil this year. I'd never lived through so many of them in such a short amount of time, but through experience, I'd gained wisdom, and I realized that I didn't have to let my life be controlled by one necessary evil after another. They were facts of life, inescapable, and hallmarks of humanity.

This year, the necessary evils had been abundant and overwhelming, but something else had been twice as abundant and overwhelming-the unexpected good. The good like having Knox in my life and experiencing what it was to know and be known on an intimate level, carving my path as a journalist with one uncompromising article after another, and discovering that being strong didn't mean I could never feel weak. One of the most important lessons I'd learned all year was that being independent didn't mean giving the world h.e.l.l as a solo act. Being independent didn't mean I had to be alone. Even when he wasn't with me, I never felt alone with Knox in my life.

As it was the last day of school, the students at Sinclair actually had better, more exciting things to do than point and whisper as I walked by, so I was almost skipping as I left my last cla.s.s. My Great Women in Literature exam hadn't been easy, but it was nowhere near the hardest test I'd suffered through this year. After nearly skipping my way to the courtyard, I headed to my favorite spot at Sinclair-the small patch of gra.s.s below one of the palo verde trees-where my favorite person (not just at Sinclair, but anywhere) was lounging. From the looks of it, he was reading something.

"You're reading. In public. People might see," I greeted as I skip-walked the last few steps.

Knox smiled at the paper in his hands before looking up. His eyes widened. "You're wearing a skirt. A pink one. And a s.h.i.+rt that says . . ." His eyes narrowed like he couldn't be reading it right. "Peace?" He shook his head, seeming stunned. "Is this another attempt to go incognito so no one recognizes you? Because I think you're nailing it. No one has shouted an insult at us since you arrived a whole ten seconds ago."

I popped a hand on my hip. "This is my farewell message to my fellow students who've so unwaveringly supported me while I've been to h.e.l.l and back these past few months."

Knox stayed quiet, waiting for it . . . He knew me so well.

"The b.i.t.c.hes is invisible." I flashed a peace sign at a few students. "Although it seems like a bunch of people can read invisible ink because I've been hearing b.i.t.c.h mumbled in pa.s.sing all day."

Knox gave an obligatory chuckle then grabbed my hand and pulled me down to the gra.s.s.

"Have you seen the article?" I asked as I scooted beside him.

"Which one?"

I shook my head. "Only the front-page article on one of the most highly circuited newspapers in the country-the one that made national news, written by this up-and-coming college soph.o.m.ore, about a certain frat house at Sinclair University?"

His face went blank for a few seconds. Just as I was about to elbow him, he smiled and pulled something from behind his back. "I was the guy tapping his foot at the newspaper stand at two o'clock this morning. I was the guy who stood on the counter at the all-night diner I walked into right after and read the whole d.a.m.n thing to the entire restaurant. I'm the guy who bought fifty extra copies and already has one at the local frame shop because he can't wait to hang this baby on the living room wall. I'm the guy who's so d.a.m.n proud of you I just want to . . ." Knox sprung up, tilted his head back, and circled his hands around his mouth. "TELL THE WORLD THAT CHARLIE CHASE IS THE s.h.i.+T!!!"

Every head in the courtyard turned.

"Control yourself for once," I teased, tugging on his wrist until he plopped back down.

"This is big, Charlie. Huge." Knox thumped his fist across the paper. "How many twenty-year-olds get to put their name on a front-page article of one of the biggest papers in the country?"

I rocked my head from side to side. "Just the ones who have the inside scoop on one of the biggest college scandals to go down in years and who only agreed to tell the story if they got to write it."

"You're a brilliant opportunist who makes her own future. How could anyone blame you for that?"

I plucked at a few blades of gra.s.s, making a face. "Technically, they tried to. But when they saw I wasn't in a negotiating kind of mood, they went ahead and let an undergrad journalism student write an article they slapped on their front page."

"I loved how you compared frat houses to the n.a.z.is-how they stick together and don't question what their leaders tell them to do, no matter what moral codes it might break."

"A tad over-the-top?" I asked, pinching my fingers together.