Branded Page 20

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Dixie

  Present

  His dad … was murdered?

  By my brothers?

  No, that can’t be true. It can’t be.

  I shake my head. “No, that’s not possible.”

  “Yes, it is, and you know it,” he growls, practically shaking. “Admit it, Dixie. Just fucking admit it.”

  “No,” I say, shaking my head again. “It’s not possible.”

  “Stop fucking lying!” he yells. “Always with the fucking lies. Enough is enough. Admit it’s your fucking fault that he died. You gave them the Zippo.”

  But that’s just it.

  I didn’t.

  “I never gave that Zippo to anyone,” I say.

  “Then how did it end up on the counter? Huh?” he yells.

  “I didn’t give it to them! You have the wrong girl,” I say.

  “Bullshit!” he spits.

  “It’s the truth. Yes, I found that fucking Zippo of yours, but I kept it in a box in the shed. I never handed it over to anyone.”

  “Your brothers must’ve gotten their hands on it then,” he barks.

  “No, that’s impossible,” I say.

  “They were at the shop, Dixie!” he shouts. “They fucking killed my papa with their own fucking hands.”

  He’s so angry, I feel as though he’s going to punch a hole in the ground beside my head. I close my eyes as he lets his rage loose on the soil, roaring out loud.

  “My papa is dead because of you!”

  And even though I didn’t do anything wrong, I still feel guilty. Guilt he bestowed upon me the moment he decided I was to blame for his pain. That same pain I know all too well.

  But my brothers are innocent.

  “They didn’t do it,” I say.

  “They did, and you know it. They knew my papa had those Zippos on his shelves, so they must’ve thought he set the farmhouse on fire. Except no one did. I didn’t even do it on purpose,” he says, taking a deep breath. “After you broke up with me, I needed a cig, so I lit one. And then I saw your brothers busy in that farmhouse. They caught me looking, so I ran. And then the fire broke out.”

  “And you left your fucking Zippo,” I mutter.

  “Which you found,” he fills in for me, flashing the Zippo again, holding it in front of both of us as if it’s some sort of final piece to the puzzle.

  But it isn’t. Far from it.

  Because I know for a fact my brothers didn’t do this … and that they were murdered for nothing.

  “So you killed my brothers … for killing your dad?” I mutter, choking on my own words.

  “An eye for an eye,” he says through gritted teeth.

  “And you think I gave them the Zippo that led them to your dad?”

  “Finally, you admit it.”

  I shake my head, closing my eyes so he doesn’t see me cry.

  No wonder we got so fucked up in the head.

  No wonder he’s so pissed off.

  But it’s directed at the wrong person.

  “You’re wrong,” I say, lying still on the harsh ground, wondering what it all means. Why things happened the way they did. It must be one sick, cruel joke. And for some reason, it makes me laugh. Out loud. Hard. Pathetic.

  “What’s so fucking funny about my papa’s murder?” he snarls.

  “Nothing, but you have the wrong person,” I say.

  He grabs my shirt again, pulling me closer to his face so he can yell a little louder. “You brought them to his doorstep, Dixie!”

  “I didn’t,” I say. “You don’t get it, do you?”

  “What?” he snarls.

  “My brothers were at the farm with me and my parents the entire time,” I explain, looking him directly in the eyes. “We were cleaning up the mess from the fire you started. They didn’t leave the property until the day they died.”

  The look in his eyes changes drastically, and his lips part, his face darkening.

  “What?” he mumbles.

  “Yeah, they have an alibi,” I say. “Me and my parents.”

  He shakes his head vigorously. “No.”

  “It. Wasn’t. Them.”

  “There was a fucking note!” he stammers, clearly not wanting the whole image he painted of us to break apart into tiny little pieces. But I have bad news for him … everything he thought about me and my family was wrong.

  “My brothers didn’t kill your dad, Brandon,” I say with the most serious tone I can muster right now.

  “Then who fucking did?” he growls, clasping the Zippo as if it’s his last lifeline to the truth.

  “I don’t fucking know,” I say, “but it wasn’t them.”

  Suddenly, he pulls out his gun again and points it right at my head. “You’re lying, right? Tell me you’re fucking lying,” he says, hiding fury behind those vicious eyes. But his hands tremor with fear. Fear of the unknown truth about to be exposed.

  And with his gun pointed right at me and death looming right around the corner, I still find the courage to shake my head, and say, “No. It’s the God’s honest truth.”

  With eyes that predict thunder, he gets up off me and shakes his head profusely, refusing to face the truth. Both our bodies shake from the revelation. From the realization that this is why we’ve been hunting each other … why we’ve been haunting each other’s minds for decades.

  This.

  His father’s murder.

  My brothers’ murder.

  This is why he did the unforgivable.

  And it was all for nothing.

  “You murdered my brothers when they didn’t do anything,” I hiss.

  “No,” he says, pacing around with the gun still in his hands. “They killed my papa.”

  “Stop lying to yourself, Brandon. You have no fucking clue who did it, admit it!” I get up from the ground too, pushing myself up to my knees.

  “They left a fucking note, Dixie!”

  “That could’ve been anyone,” I reply. “Anyone can fake a note.”

  “Who?” Again, he points that gun at me as if it’ll make me change my mind about what’s the truth and what isn’t. “Who the fuck would do that?”

  “Why are you asking me?” I spit back. “Last I checked, I was trying to salvage whatever the fuck was left of our farmhouse, along with my brothers and dad, who still happened to be fucking alive when you decided to burn down the place with them still inside.”

  “It was an accident!” he yells back.

  “Bull-fucking-shit!”

  “You don’t fucking know,” he yells. “You don’t fucking know because you weren’t fucking there!”

  “I saw you leave. That’s all I need. Just like I saw you leave the house after you murdered my brothers in cold blood.”

  “That wasn’t me who did that,” he says. “And you know it.”

  It’s hard to discuss on an equal level when there’s a gun pointed at your head, but I’ll bite.

  “I saw you in that room with three other men, brutally murdering my brothers. It doesn’t matter who sliced them up. You were there, and you knew what you were doing.”

  “We were supposed to punish them for killing my papa. Hurt them for hurting us,” he says, his gun practically shaking in his unstable hands. “They weren’t supposed to die.”

  “Yet they did,” I say, pursing my lips. “And who’s gonna take the blame for that, huh? Who’s gonna repent? You?”

  He paces around again, tapping the gun against his forehead as if it’ll help solve this shit. It won’t. Everything he did, he did for nothing. And he ruined us both because of it.

  “Finally realizing you did it all for nothing, huh?” I mutter.

  “Shut up!” he yells, still waving the gun like it’s gonna scare me.

  It won’t. I wasn’t scared of his gun when he still wanted to kill me, and I’m definitely not scared of it now that he knows the truth.

  “You hated me because of this? Your dad’s death and that fucking
Zippo?” I say, cocking my head. “Because I gotta say … that’s pretty messed up, considering you’re the killer here, and the fact that I didn’t do shit, which I’ve been trying to tell you over and over.”

  “I said shut up!” he yells, still using the gun to threaten me to be quiet.

  It won’t work. I know he won’t use it against me. He already tried that when he still believed I was the sole cause of his papa’s death, and now that he knows I’m not, I don’t think he has it in him to ever kill me.

  Not when we both know I’m innocent … and he’s not.

  “You’re cruel, Brandon. All this because I broke your heart …”

  “I don’t give a damn that you did,” he hisses, walking toward me with the gun pointed straight at my heart. “At least I had a fucking heart.”

  “Says the murderer,” I say, glaring back at him. “Go ahead. Shoot me. Do it. Maybe it’ll end your suffering. Or maybe not since you know I’m innocent now and you murdered two innocent boys.”

  He makes a face, his nostrils flaring as his eyes flicker with an ache I’m all too familiar with.

  “You can threaten me all you want, but that won’t change the truth. Killing me won’t solve anything. I’m not your problem. You are,” I say to him as he grinds his teeth.

  Suddenly, he starts shooting at the ground. My eyes close as bullets ricochet all around us. I’m lucky I didn’t get hit with any of them. Sadly, he didn’t either.

  “Fuck!” he yells, pacing around again.

  It’s quiet for a few seconds. I’m not sure whether I should say something or keep quiet. Part of me wants to confront him with his bad deeds. Make him see how evil he is, no matter the consequences. He can’t shoot me anyway.

  However, another part of me is completely choked up right now. I don’t want to get it, but I do. He’s trapped in his own lies, and now that he’s finally seeing a way out, it’s blocked by his own pride.

  In order to move on, he has to admit he was wrong. Not a lot of people can do that. And on top of that, he knows he hurt me in the gravest of ways.

  What he did was unforgivable, and now he has to live with it for the rest of his life. He probably hates himself right now. That, or he hates me for telling him the truth.

  Either way, things can’t get any worse as we’re already at rock bottom.

  The question is … how do we get out?

  When I look at him, all I see is pain. As if he’s begging for release from the prison that keeps him in chains. But I can’t give that to him. I can’t because that would be an insult to my brothers’ legacies.

  Even if I hated their guts, they were still my brothers. And family always sticks together, right?

  I take a deep breath and wait until he’s done pacing. Maybe he’ll figure shit out on his own. After all, he can’t keep me tied up here in the middle of fucking nowhere forever.

  His foot taps on the ground, and he scratches his head, sighing out loud.

  “What are you gonna do now? Kill me and get rid of the evidence?”

  “Just … shut it,” he says, but the look in his eyes softens immediately as if he already regrets being a dick. “Please. I need to think.”

  I snort. “Shoulda done that before you actually killed someone …” I roll my eyes. “Untie me, Brandon. You know I’m innocent.”

  He mulls it over a few seconds, still nervously tapping his foot.

  “Brandon, look at me!” I yell when he’s staring at the ground for so long it feels like he’s forgotten about me. “Let. Me. Go.”

  “And then what? You’ll kill me?” he says, shaking his head, still pacing around with the gun in his hand as though it’s a second dick he needs to hold while thinking about me.

  “You owe this to me,” I say with the most honest, good-intentions voice I can muster.

  But no matter what I say, I don’t seem to get through to him. It’s as if he’s completely zoned out. Away from this world.

  * * *

  Brandon

  My mind is screaming at me.

  I’m trying to make sense of things, but the more I think about it, the more my thoughts are becoming one jumbled mess.

  I don’t know what or who to believe. Is she really as innocent as she claims to be? Or is she lying to save her own ass? But that wouldn’t make any sense. She already said she doesn’t care if she dies. She’s tried multiple times to make me shoot her.

  Biting my lip, I pace around while she watches me. The look in her eyes is killing me, and I try to ignore it, but she makes it so damn hard. It’s as if she knows she’s right, and that infuriates me even more.

  I can’t think like this, so I stomp toward her and grab her tight, dragging her to the car.

  “What are you doing?” she shouts as I hold her wrists while untying her. Then I tie her again, this time to the car bumper.

  “What? No, untie me!” she says.

  “Not a chance,” I reply when I’m done tying the knot.

  “Brandon …” she says with a threatening tone.

  I get up and put my gun away. “I need some time alone.”

  “Out here?” She snorts. “You’re nuts.”

  I turn around, and say, “I’ll be back soon.”

  As I start walking, she begins to scream. “Brandon! No!”

  I stop momentarily to pull my Zippo from my pocket and light a cig. The first drag is the best, but the rest feel bitter and shallow. Like the drags don’t do anything for me anymore.

  Then I continue walking.

  I can hear her bang her head against the bumper, but she’s not going anywhere as her wrists are tightly bound to the car. It’d be a miracle if she escaped, so I’m sure I can safely go away for a while. At least until I’ve cleared my head.

  “Brandon! Get back here right now!” she yells, stomping her heels on the soil. “Untie me!”

  It’s hard to leave her like that, but what else can I do? If I untie her, she’ll run off.

  “Don’t you fucking leave me here alone!” she adds.

  But there’s nothing else I can do. Right now, I can’t stay with her. I can’t look her in the eyes. Not without feeling like a complete failure.

  I’ve failed everyone who entered my life. My papa. My uncle. Even her.

  All this time, I thought she caused my papa’s death, that she picked up my Zippo and gave it to her brothers, but she says she didn’t, and for some reason, I don’t think she’s lying. She has no reason to.

  But then how would the Zippo end up at my papa’s shop?

  And why that fucking note?

  It must’ve been someone close to my papa, or at least someone who knew the Burrells. But my papa never hurt a fly, and he didn’t deserve to die. Not like that.

  And if I hadn’t left my Zippo where I did, he would’ve been alive today.

  At least, that’s what I assume because if not … I probably wouldn’t be able to live with myself either way, knowing his death was in vain.

  All my life, I’ve searched for a meaning. A purpose. And when she stumbled back into my world, I thought I found one: vengeance.

  Except things aren’t turning out to be so easy after all.

  Do I even have a right to vengeance when I did something horrible too?

  Because if she’s right about her brothers … if they didn’t kill my papa, then I’m responsible for the death of two innocent boys. I wasn’t the one to slice their throat, but I made the call. I put my uncle on their tracks. I could’ve reported it to the police. I could’ve done a lot of things, but I didn’t.

  And for that, I’ll be forever to blame.

  And I won’t hold it against her if she hates me forever.

  But now I finally understand. Why she had this unquenchable thirst to murder me in my sleep. Why she wished I wasn’t ever in her life to begin with.

  As she said, I’ve ruined everything.

  I destroy everything I touch, including her.

  And fuck me, right now, that hurts more than anythin
g.

  Sighing, I make my way up a small mountain path and sit down against the hard stone, watching the horizon from afar. It’ll be a long time before dawn, but I won’t get any rest.

  My mind has to be clear for that, and right now, it’s cloudier than ever.

  But my heart … fuck, my heart is bleeding.

  I thought mine had shriveled up and died, but Dixie coming back into my life brought back feelings I thought were buried long ago. Something untouchable. Something I can’t explain. A longing that goes unanswered.

  I can feel it deep down inside me, the need to claim her and never let go. To kiss her and ruin her and do everything I ever wanted to do to her body. And then when I’m done with her, I’ll do it all over again and again.

  Because that’s just it. Even though I fucking hate her sometimes, I still can’t get enough of her. Physically, I’m away, but mentally … I’m still right there with her.

  That has to mean something. I just don’t know what.

  It’s not right.

  I have no right to her.

  Especially not if everything she says is true.

  Should I let her go?

  Should I go search for my papa’s real killers?

  Or should I let her kill me after all?

  Fuck me, I don’t know anything anymore.

  Shaking my head, I blow out another breath and fumble in my pockets to take out another cig. Man, I’ll probably go through my entire stash before the night is over.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Dixie

  I keep screaming, but my voice disappears into the wind.

  Brandon is long gone and so is my hope for being untied.

  Now I’m stuck here in front of a car, praying to God that fucking coyotes don’t eat me alive.

  Fuck.

  I hate that he put me here just so he can walk off while ignoring me. What the hell is he thinking, keeping me contained? He knows I’m innocent. I saw the realization and the regret in his eyes. All of it probably became a little too much for him to handle, so he just walked off and left me here all by myself. Alone. In the wide-open desert.

  Great.

  As if things weren’t going badly enough already.