Chapter 26

They spent the next half an hour or so criss-crossing their way through Ashebrook’s alleys and side roads until they reached the parking garage with their car. Before they even got to it, they had changed back into their street clothes and gorged themselves on the food and drinks Darius had packed. They made sure to dump whatever trash they had into a large dumpster, adding their all-black clothes to it as well, making sure to bury it under the heaps of other garbage so they wouldn’t be seen by a random person. They got in the car and soon, Darius was calmly driving, his eyes glued to the road. The money was still in the trash bag but Alex had stuffed it into the trunk in case they got pulled over.

“What the hell was that?” Alex half-screamed, clearly angry. He couldn’t take the silence anymore.

Darius didn’t say anything.

“Talk to me, damn it!” Alex yelled. He was angry and felt betrayed by what Darius had done. He was pissed. He let himself truly believe they were only going to scare them into leaving Anna alone.

But he killed them!

Darius was a murderer.

He felt like his world didn’t make any sense at all anymore.

“It’s over, so there’s no use getting pissed about it,” Darius replied, his voice cool and flat. For the first time in a long while, that incessant buzzing of overwhelming emotions was gone and he felt like himself again.

Alex was astounded with Darius’ utter lack of emotion considering he just murdered two people.

“Don’t judge me. They had it coming.” Darius glared at him darkly.

“Maybe they did, D. Hell, I’m sure they did,” Alex replied. “But it’s not for you to decide that. It’s wrong.”

“No! Screw that self-righteous crap,” Darius lashed out, his voice filling with bitter hatred as he remembered the faces of his victims. “The minute those two assholes messed with Anna it became my decision. I’d kill them again if I could. So don’t preach to me about right and wrong, because I really don’t give a rat’s ass.”

“You think I didn’t want to see them dead? They should be after what they did,” Alex told him, some of his anger deflating. “But we still don’t have the right to make choices like that. Just because we have these powers, that doesn’t make us judge, jury, and executioner.”

“You can think and do whatever you want. I think that they should’ve died and I didn’t see a problem with being the one to do it,” Darius told him, his eyes focusing away from Alex and back on the road again. They were on the street that curved around Sarver-Ingram, leading to one of the back entrances to Ashebrook. “Men like that are rabid animals, and rabid animals need to be put down. It’s as simple as that.”

“Nothing is ever that simple,” Alex replied.

Darius didn’t have a response to that so a heavy silence filled the car again.

Eventually, they drove into Creek’s parking lot. Darius found a spot in the back, parked, and turned the car off. As they got out, he went to the trunk and took out the trash bag with the money in it.

Alex continued to say nothing as they strolled up to their dorm. When they got to their room, the sun’s light was a deeper shade of yellow. Alex glanced at his clock and saw that it was almost four o’clock. Their whole smash and grab had taken almost three hours start to finish.

Darius climbed onto his bed and lay there, staring up at the ceiling and ignoring Alex completely, which was fine with him. He didn’t want to talk to Darius anymore. He grabbed his phone and dialed Cassie’s number, hoping he would be able to see her. He felt like he needed her more than anything at that moment.

The phone picked up after the second ring.

“Hello?” Her voice was like a healing salve on all the emotions he was feeling.

“Hey,” he replied. “It’s Alex.”

“Is something wrong?” she asked, hearing something in his voice that concerned her.

“Is it alright if I come see you?” he asked with a tinge of hopefulness to his voice. He needed her to say yes. He needed to be away from Darius like his body needed air to live. Dozens of conflicting emotions battered around his brain, each one fighting to take control. It made it hard for him to think.

“Yeah. Of course,” she said instantly. She sounded eager to see him too and that made him feel better already.

“I’ll be right over,” he replied.

He hung up after telling Cassie goodbye and looked over at Darius, but his eyes were still resolutely locked onto the ceiling.

“I’ll be back later,” Alex said, his voice stony.

Darius finally looked at him, his head rolling lazily in his direction.

“I won’t wait up,” he said.

Alex ignored the comment and just walked out. He was angry at Darius for using him the way he did. He had manipulated him just so he could get revenge on Williams and the cop. And he was dumb enough to fall for it. That pissed him off. He couldn’t even pretend what happened was never going to be a possibility. He absolutely knew it would have been but like a moron, he ignored every instinct inside screaming at him to not rob the drug lord and went through with it anyway. Despite the fact that he knew exactly why Darius wanted to rob Marks. Despite knowing Williams had a hold on Anna and was hurting her. Even despite knowing Darius’ increasing rage episodes and violent outbursts.

You are a moron, he thought to himself.

That wasn’t the worst part though. The worst part of everything that went down was that he was pissed at Darius but he wasn’t that pissed at him. He knew what Darius had done was wrong, but he couldn’t help but feel his friend’s actions weren’t wholly evil or wrong. Williams and the dirty cop really did deserve what happened to them. Men like that, men that fostered human misery, really didn’t deserve to live. Why should they?

Alex didn’t want to feel that way. He didn’t want thoughts like that to take root in his mind and whisper to him how easy it would be to become judge, jury, and executioner.

He was so absorbed in his own thoughts as he walked that when he came back to himself, he was surprised to see he was already at the entrance to Woods. He opened the doors, went inside, then headed up to Cassie’s room.

When he got to her door, he hesitated knocking on it. He realized he was scared. A part of him was afraid that the minute she saw him, she would somehow know what they had done and she would know what he allowed to happen. It wasn’t logical, but his mind wouldn’t let that irrational fear go away.

He took a breath to steady his nerves and then forced himself to knock on the door. Cassie opened it a second later with an obvious look of concern on her face.

Seeing her drove every other thought out of his head and it took him a moment before he was able to talk. She had on a cute green and pink sweater, a pair of dark blue jeans that showed off her legs, and fuzzy pink socks. Her hair was up in a high ponytail and whenever a bar of sunlight hit it, the blonde strands would practically glow a brilliant yellow.

She reached out her hand and he grabbed it like a lifeline. Then she pulled him into her room and as she did, she kissed him. When she broke the kiss off, she stared up at him with her beautiful brown eyes.

“What happened? Are you okay?” she asked. Her concern flooded out of her.

Alex smiled slightly but didn’t answer right away. He was trying to think of how to phrase his disjointed thoughts.

“Let’s sit down and we’ll talk,” she told him. She guided him to her bed and they sat on it. She squeezed his hand gently. “What’s wrong?”

“Have you ever done something even though you knew what you were doing was wrong?” he asked, figuring that was a good place to start. It pretty much summed up everything he was feeling. He stared at the floor, not really wanting to meet her eyes.

“I’m pretty sure everyone’s done that,” she replied, gently. “Is this about that important thing you had to do today?”

“Yeah,” he answered quietly, his vision starting to blur with frustrated tears. “And no. It’s all wrapped up in each other and I can’t separate things. I’ve made some mistakes recently and now they’ve all sort of blended together into a nightmare.”

“It’s not your fault,” she said with absolute conviction.

Alex just stared at her, dumbfounded. She barely knew him. How could she even say something like that?

“You don’t know that,” he said, roughly. He didn’t feel he deserved her kindness. “How can you? You don’t even know what I did.”

“I don’t care if I know. I don’t care if you ever tell me. I just know who you are, Alex.” Her voice was calm and reassuring. “You wouldn’t set out to do something like that unless you had a good reason because you’re a good person. I know that and I feel that. And I’m always right, which you’re just going to have to deal with.”

She laughed a little when she said that and nudged him with her shoulder playfully.

“We haven’t known each other for that long, Cassie,” he said, still unconvinced. Despite her soothing words, they did nothing to ease his mind. Their reasons for hitting the drug lord had seemed justified, even noble, at the time, but now they were hollow. At the end of the day, he’d robbed Marks for the money because he hated being poor. He wanted the chance to live his life free of the financial worries that constantly haunted him. Now he had plenty of money but felt worse than when he had none.

“I’m pretty good at reading people,” she explained with a small smile. “But I don’t even have to be pretty good to figure you out. I know you’re a good person because it’s written all over your face. Whatever bad thing you did, it’s eating you up and truly bad people could care less about the consequences of their actions.”

“But…” he tried to say.

“But nothing.” Cassie cut him off, her voice gaining a hint of irritation. She wasn’t backing down and he saw a fierce little glint in her eyes that told him as much. “Whatever you did today, for whatever reasons, the result wasn’t your fault. Don’t put that blame on your shoulders. You hear me?”

“Okay,” Alex told her, actually meaning it.

She hugged him and he basked in the steady strength he felt from her. He leaned into her, his head lying on top of hers.

“Thank you,” he whispered.