by Bella King
Grace smirked. “Just like Kain when you confided in him about Kimberly? Yeah, he knew too much. He had to die too. That was your fault.”
Travis was trembling now. He seemed ready to explode, maybe in tears or maybe in pure unfiltered rage. I didn’t know, but what Grace was saying was pushing him to the brink. I was shaking from fear, but only because she had a gun pointed at Travis and I. What she said didn’t affect me the way it did Travis.
Grace continued to gloat over what she had done. “The fire at the school. That was meant to separate you from Alice, but you two were too busy getting it on to care that the auditorium was burning down. Alice had been hard to kill, it seems.”
Now things were getting heated. Grace obviously wanted every person around Travis dead so that she could have him all to herself. She had failed at winning his heart, so now she was taking even more drastic steps to make sure he didn’t give it to anyone else.
“Did you love Kimberly, Travis? Did you?” Grace asked, cocking her head to the side.
Travis shook his head. “You don’t understand. Kimberly and I weren’t involved like that. For fuck’s sake, that was three years ago. I didn’t care about women back then.”
“You chose her over me, and after that you just used me to try to find her. You don’t care about anyone but yourself,” Grace replied.
“I do care about people,” Travis said, sounding a little hurt.
“No, you don’t. You manipulated Alice to find Kimberly. You don’t care who gets hurt, as long as it isn’t you. Look where it’s gotten you, staring down the barrel of a gun,” Grace taunted. “I didn’t want to have to do this, but you left me with no other option. I’m not going to go to prison for murder, even if it means killing again.”
Grace was too far away for Travis to charge at her. He stood, shaking in rage and fear, listening to her talk down to him, belittling him and crushing any hope he had of bringing Kimberly to justice. I knew that Travis wasn’t perfect, but Grace had gone way too far with this.
“Give it a break, Grace,” I interrupted, growing irritated at her verbal abuse toward Travis. He didn’t deserve this. “So, the man of your dreams doesn’t like you. Grow the fuck up.”
Grace pointed the gun at me as I stepped out from behind Travis’s back. “Travis was using you just like every other woman in his life. You think you’re special?”
I shrugged. “Maybe he was, but I didn’t kill anyone over it.”
Travis interjected. “Alice, stop.”
I didn’t listen. Travis had been in charge of me since I first met him, but now it was my turn to call the shots. Grace wasn’t going to talk to either of us like that, and even if I had to die to prove it, I was going to make sure she knew it.
I took a small step toward Grace. “You’re nothing,” I said.
Grace shook her gun at me, her finger on the trigger. “And you’re about to be dead,” she said.
I didn’t think, I just went into full rage mode. I flew toward Grace as she squeezed the trigger, a shot ringing out deafeningly loud down the hallway. I knew I was hit immediately, feeling the bullet piercing the flesh in my shoulder like a hard punch. I thought being shot would feel differently, but with my adrenaline pumping, I barely felt any pain.
I heard Travis yell something as I slammed into Grace, knocking her down hard onto the ground. Her head smacked against the cold tiles as the gun flew from her hand. Travis ran toward us as I collapsed on top of Grace’s limp body, blood running out of my shoulder wound.
Grace didn’t move at all as Travis grabbed me, pulling me off and onto the floor beside her on my back. “Alice, talk to me. Are you hurt?” He asked desperately.
I nodded weakly, aware of how much blood I was losing. Travis’s face turned from worried to panicked when he realized that I had been shot. His hand brushed against my damp sweater, coming away bright red with blood.
“Shit, we need to call an ambulance,” Travis said. He reached for his phone and quickly called 911.
I smiled at him. “We did it, Travis.” I said softly.
Travis nodded as the phone connected. “We did,” he said, before addressing the emergency response person over the phone. “Hello? Yes, I’m at Crimson High School, and my friend has been shot.”
“Girlfriend,” I corrected him, holding a finger up.
Travis didn’t seem very amused. “She’s bleeding a lot.” He paused. “Yes, the shooter is down. I think she smacked her head against the ground. She isn’t moving.”
As Travis explained the situation to the person on the phone, I looked up at him lovingly. If I died, I wouldn’t want to die not knowing for certain if Travis loved me or not. I reached out and grabbed his shirt. “Travis.”
“What?” He said, looking at me with scared eyes.
“Do you love me?” I asked.
“We can talk about that later,” Travis said.
“No,” I replied firmly. “Do you love me?”
Travis’s eyes were welling up with tears as he touched my face. I barely felt his skin against mine, and I was fading fast. He looked deep into my eyes. “Yes, Alice. I love you. I don’t want you to ever forget that.”
“I won’t,” I said. And that was the last thing I remember before everything faded to black.
Chapter 28
Grace had been behind everything. She didn’t die from her head injury, but it certainly knocked her brains around enough to scramble them a bit. After that, she had no issues making a full confession to the police. She was never quite recovered after that night at Crimson High, and she was sent to a special facility to live out the rest of her days under the careful supervision of trained professionals.
Grace told the police how she had run away from home when she got expelled, knowing that her parents would make her life hell when they found out what had happened. It was then that she completely snapped, making it her goal to keep Travis from discovering Kimberly’s body and falling in love with me. That had failed miserably.
Grace had set the fire at the school party, killing Kain before burning the evidence. The other two students that died in the fire were just collateral damage. She had also hunted down Eve and murdered her after spying on her and Travis. She didn’t want any other woman near him.
Travis had never been in love with Kimberly. They were good friends, but Kimberly had tried to get in the way of that. She saw an opportunity to get rid of Kimberly once and for all after Travis and her had gotten into an argument, so she took it, stashing her body in the walls of the school during construction.
She would have gotten away with all of this had it not been for Travis’s vigilant search for Kimberly. It had taken him three years to bring her to justice, but he had. That was truly something to be proud of.
Grace was the reason why Travis and I had gotten together in the first place. If it weren’t for her psychopathic killing spree, we would never have fallen in love. It was fucked up, but romance can be a messy business.
✽✽✽
I lived through my gunshot wound, thankfully. I was told that Travis refused to sleep until I was out of surgery and stable. He was a true gentleman the entire time and considered a hero by many students and teachers at Crimson High. He was my hero, and nobody could tell me he wasn’t a good man. I felt this in my soul. He may have had a rough home life, but the compassion that he showed me after I broke through his tough shell had been life-changing.
I asked Travis again once I woke up from surgery if he really loved me.
“Yes,” he said, “I love you, Alice. I love you more than anything.”
That was all I ever needed to hear from him.
All of this crazy adventure had happened within the first two months of school, which meant there was still a good while before Travis and I graduated. We would be dealing with a whole new set of problems and confrontations from people that didn’t believe that Grace could possibly be the killer once we arrived back at school, despite her admitting to it.
&nbs
p; As Travis and I walked hand in hand on our first day back at school since the incident that had changed our lives and finally put Kimberly to rest, we were confronted in the hallway by Grace’s brother, Anthony.
“You two better watch yourselves. You may have managed to frame all this on Grace for now, but there will be consciences for what you’ve done,” Anthony said as he glared at us.
Travis clenched my hand but stood confident in the face of Grace’s brother. “We’re not afraid of you.”
“Maybe you should be,” Anthony replied. “Not everyone here believes that you two are heroes. I, for one, think that you should be dead.”
I wasn’t that worried about Anthony because I had Travis on my side, but his words sounded serious. If his sister was capable of all this mayhem, I was sure that he also had an evil streak in him. We would soon find out…
The End.
Keep an eye out for the next installment of the Crimson High Series to find out what happens when Anthony turns the school against Travis and Alice. You can join the mailing list for updates on the next book before it’s released.
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