Page 234 of Because I Killed Him
“No, Char—”
“Not for you. For him. Harry won’t want me here.”
Before I can argue further, she pulls me into a hug that’s tense, almost desperate. “I love you,” she says. Then she releases me, steps out of the hovercar, and hurries off in the opposite direction from Harrison.
He walks down the sidewalk like a door hanging off one hinge in a windstorm. When his gaze lifts to mine through the windshield, his eyes carry a scraped-out emptiness, the look of a man too broken to carry his own grief.
I wait until he reaches my window before lowering it. He stops and stares at my face for a moment, as if needing to convince himself it’s real, then walks around the front of the hovercar and sits in the passenger seat.
I grab his hand and flinch at how cold he feels, even as sweat beads at his temples.
“Harry… talk to me. What did they do to you?”
He avoids my gaze, unblinking, his hand limp in mine.
“I took a deal,” he says flatly. “I can’t go home. I have to spend the summer in civil rehabilitation. Charleston City.”
“What? But Harry, the wedding. Vivian—”
His shoulders quiver, then tighten like cables straining to hold. “The wedding has to be postponed. I’ll tell Viv myself.”
A sudden choke escapes my throat. “And the charges? Are they being dropped?”
“Only if I pass.”
“Pass? Pass what?”
Harrison’s eyes drop to the Fraternity cap in his lap, and I realize it’s not his. From the small tear in the green-and-black band, I know it’s Vincent’s.
He runs a thumb over the visor, his hands trembling so badly he almost drops it. Then, with a reverence that feels like mourning, he places the cap on the console between us, as if he no longer feels worthy to touch it.
“Harry, please. Let me call my dad. We’ll fight this—”
He shakes his head once, then again, more forcefully. “No, Loredana. It’s done. I took the deal and… I chose my hard.”
He reaches for the door handle, but I grab his sleeve, too desperate to let him go. “Harry, don’t—”
He turns back, and when I see his expression, I slowly release his arm. There’s nothing left in his eyes. No hope or fight, only despair wearing the face of one of the best men I know.
Harrison steps out and shuts the door. I watch him go, shoulders drawn inward, boots scuffing the concrete, his head bowed as if raising it were something only the man he was yesterday could manage. Inside me, something breaks, then breaks again. Whatever path he’s on now, I suddenly get a terrifying sense that it’s no longer leading toward my family.
Not even toward Vivian.
I can barely see past the black spots swimming in my vision as I speed around the Copper Headquarters, scanning every sidewalk for Charlotte. My chest seems to collapse in on itself with worry for Harrison and for Vivian as well.
She’s already waited nine long months to see him. She’s counted down every day, every hour, to see his face. Now she won’t see him at all during summer break. When September arrives, he’ll come straight back here, bound to this machine that grinds up low-citizens whole. She’ll be locked out for another year, waiting by the phone for the man who didn’t come home.
I slam the heel of my palm against the control stick, cursing. In therearview, I catch sight of that hovercar again, the same one that followed Charlotte and me to the Copper Headquarters. I swerve and hit the brakes so hard my seatbelt bites into my collarbone. The hovercar fishtails, then jerks to a stop, floating alongside me. Behind the control stick is William Lee, his head ducked as if trying to disappear behind the dashboard.
The rage I feel over Harrison’s sentence and Vivian’s loss narrows, focusing squarely on him: William Lee, who tripped on his own reckless pride until it cost his brother his life; whose fatal error forced Harrison to draw his saber against the Blues, unwittingly leading the Greens into a charge we couldn’t win; who lit the spark that dragged us all to this cliff’s edge, where good men fall and nothing catches them.
For one terrible instant, I want to kill William. I want to tear him out of that hovercar with my bare hands and scream every drop of my pain into his face. My fingers twitch toward the door handle, then freeze. I know this is how the high-citizens break us, by turning low-citizens on each other, feeding us crumbs of blame so we never dare lift our eyes to the banquet of rot above our heads.
No more wasted hate. Not on low-citizens. Not on William.
I slam my foot down. The power core screams, the hoverfield shuddering as I rocket away, leaving William staring after me like a ghost.
I keep circling the Copper Headquarters, searching for Charlotte, but there’s no sign of her. She doesn’t answer my calls, and my texts go unanswered. It’s unlike her to disappear, especially after what just happened to Harrison. I roll down the window, letting the breeze cool the sweat on my neck. As my eyes fall to Vincent’s cap on the console, I notice something strange. Next to the cap is Charlotte’s emerald-studded lighter, the one her mom gave her, which she never goes anywhere without. Could she have left it by accident? I think back to the hug she gave me, too tight and desperate, and a low groan rips out of me.
