CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I'm walking down a sidewalk at night. Not in Autumn Downs, but in Encino. I'm in the old neighborhood where I used to live. I'm holding hands with Lila, and we're talking and laughing. I don't know what we're talking about, but it doesn't matter. I'm with her, and it feels good to be with her.

She's wearing tight jeans and sneakers and a long-sleeved striped hoodie. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail. She shivers, and I put my arm around her shoulders. She leans against me, and I feel warm and happy.

She looks up at me and smiles. It's a good smile. It's not a sexual smile, and it's not a sad smile. It's just a smile. She's just happy to be with me.

I smile back and kiss her. Her lips are soft and cool. When I pull away, she wraps her arms around me and hugs me tightly.

We walk to a park, and I see a woman waiting for me on a bench. I don't want to see her, but I start walking toward her. I don't know why I do, but I can't stop myself.

Lila tries to stop me. She grabs my arm and pulls me back, looking pleadingly at me. I know I should listen to her. I want to listen to her.

But I can't. Something about that woman on the bench draws me, and I can't pull away. I pull free of Lila's grasp and ignore her cries of warning.

The woman on the bench lifts her head, and I see that it's Vivian. She smiles at me and stands, opening her trench coat to reveal her naked body.

The scene shifts, and I'm in bed with Vivian. She's moaning beneath me and moving her body deliciously under mine. I feel desperation and ecstasy course through my body meanwhile panic and revulsion course through my mind.

I don't want this. Why don't I want this? When I'm awake, I want her so badly I can barely breathe. Why don't I want this now?

Vivian's movements quicken. Her hand lifts to grip my shoulder. She bucks her hips, opens her mouth and cries out, "Annie!"

And instantly, I"m in the street in front of my old house again. Mom is on the ground, cradling Annie"s body in her arms. She"s weeping.

Annie turns to look at me, but it"s not Annie. It"s Lila. She looks at me, and her eyes are filmy and gray with death.

"They killed me," she says. "You need to stop them, Nate. You need to stop them before they get away with it."

***

I wake up with a cry and start shivering almost instantly. My breath comes in rapid gulps, and my hands start to tremble. The shakes get bad enough that I curl up into a ball and hug myself, teeth clicking from a cold that no heatwave can cut through.

Damn it, I need to use.

I get to a sitting position but stop there.

I can't do this. I can't use the drugs. I can't let myself turn to heroin every time I have a nightmare.

But God, this nightmare.

I curl back into a fetal position and rock from side to side, weeping softly.

I hate that they took Lila from me. I hate that I'll never know what could have been between us. Vivian is fun, but that's all she is. That's all she can be. With Lila, I could have had a future.

I hate that I'm overthinking that. I hate myself for being selfish and thinking of what I could have had with her instead of what she could have had if she were allowed to live.

But that diary proved that there was something there. That little moment we shared meant something to her. I actually made her feel good. Not just in bed, but really good. She met me and thought that maybe if things worked out with us, she could stop using. She could get better. She could have gotten better. Maybe I"m just being an idiot thinking that she could have been right, but she could have had a chance. We could have had a chance.

"Fuck," I whisper softly, my voice hoarse from weeping. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck."

I roll out of bed and head to the closet, moving feverishly. I can't feel like this. I can't fucking feel like this, or I'll go insane and wind up on the news for butchering my mother with a kitchen knife and then stabbing myself through the temple.

Lila's face flashes across my mind, then Annie's, then Lila's again. I stop inside the closet, leaning against the wall. "Damn it," I whisper, tears falling from my face onto the plastic bins that count as a dresser when you have an alcoholic mother. "Fuck."

I sink to my knees, my hands folded like I'm praying, and release a choking sob. It's loud. Loud enough that if my mother were a mother and not a fucking waste, she'd know her son was weeping with anger and despair and trying his hardest not to jam a needle into his arm just so he can have five minutes of peace.

I think of calling Vivian. She cares about me. She would want to help me. Even if she can't be here to hold me, she could talk to me, help me get centered. She wouldn't want me to be on the needle.

But I don't call her. In the middle of my crisis, I realize somehow that she doesn't really care about me. At the end of the day, she's just another rich schemer in a neighborhood full of rich schemers. She doesn't have a husband to worry about, so she can have fun with the sexy pool boy. She might even like me a little bit, but she's not going to help me when I'm sobbing on the ground trying to convince myself not to shoot heroin.

I need to do this myself. I'm alone. I'm fucking alone.

Just like Lila was alone.

Anger seeps in through my despair. My mom's wasted on the couch in the living room sleeping in a pool of vodka, sweat and piss, but somehow, Lila's parents are even worse. Somehow, the daughter of the tech mogul and the former actress has worse parents than my absentee father and drunk mother.

"I'm going to avenge you, Lila," I promise. "I'm going to bring those fuckers down. I don't know how, but I swear to God, I'll bring them down."

The anger pushes the despair away, and slowly, the shaking stops. I get to my feet and walk away from the closet, stoically refusing to look back at the rig I know waits for me.

I pick up the diary on my desk. I don't bother hiding it. It's not like Mom would care if she found it. Hell, the only reason I hide my heroin is that I'm afraid she'd steal it and find something more powerful than vodka to take the pain away.

I'll take this to the police tomorrow. I'll give it to Detective Ramirez. She'll read that, and she'll know that the Kensingtons had to have killed Lila. She'll know.

But will she care? She didn't have trouble calling Lila's death an accident. The case was open for what, two days? Then LAPD just washes their hands of her. Oh, mom and dad are rich? Well, we're not touching that one. Too bad for little Lila.

In the back of my head, I hear a voice telling me to calm down and think this through before I do anything rash. What am I going to do anyway? What can I do?

I don't know. That's the answer. I have no idea what I can do.

But I'm going to do something. I'm not just going to let people forget that Lila Kensington was murdered in her own home by the two people who were supposed to love her most in this world.

I go back to bed, but I don't close my eyes. I won't get any more sleep tonight.

I know what I'm going to do. Tomorrow, I'm going to talk to Julian Kensington. We'll see if Mr. Cool is as cool as he thinks he is when he's presented with the evidence of his own evil.

Maybe it's stupid. It probably is. But it'll be worth it to me just to see the fear in that asshole's eyes when he realizes someone knows what he and Clara did.

That thought brings a smile to my face, and a few minutes later, I'm able to sleep.