Broken: The MISTAKEN Series Complete Second Season (32 page)

M
y heart was beating
way too hard. Too fast. I could feel it trying to almost thud right out of my chest.

I looked over at Brandon before turning back to Krystal. I knew. I knew there was no fairy tale to be had. There wasn’t going to be a knight in shining armor carrying me into the great unknown. No, I knew all too well what was coming, and there was no fairy tale about it. No happily ever after ending. No happy anything.

I think it was pity that I read in Krystal’s eyes as she approached us. I’m pretty sure that she knew, too.

Her eyes narrowed, glaring over at Brandon. “I suppose your excuse for this is that they accidentally did a lobotomy instead of taking out your kidney?”

He returned her glare. “Walk away, Krystal. Pretend you never saw us.”

“And then what?” She turned to me. “You’re aware of the implications here, right?”

The only thing I was really aware of in that moment was that I was being forced back together with Daniel—someone I had sworn to never see again—and that I had seen a dead body less than two hours ago. Just thinking about seeing Amanda like that brought a fresh wave of nausea over me. All I could do was shake my head at Brandon’s sister—it wasn’t as though I could actually speak—my brain seemed almost disconnected from my mouth. And I didn’t know what she meant by “implications,” anyway.

She let out a long sigh. “Think. Just for a second, you two. This isn’t something you can just go
do
. You can’t just leave the country.” She turned back to Brandon. “Did they scan her passport?”

He stood there, motionless, his fingers still laced through mine. His eyes were shooting poison darts in her direction, but he said nothing.

“Are you an idiot? Christ, Brandon.” She pulled her phone from her bag and typed something into it before looking back up at us. “You know what happens now. You both know what happens now, right?”

I shook my head again. My mind was still reeling. Even if I hadn’t just seen a dead body—
oh, my God, I saw a dead body
—I still don’t think I would have been able to piece together whatever it was she was trying to tell us. Warn us about.

Brandon continued to stare across at her, his eyes narrowed. I don’t know if he knew the answers to her questions or not—he just refused to speak at all.

Krystal rolled her eyes. “Let me spell it out for the two of you. Even if you do make it on the plane … even if the plane somehow gets off the ground with the two of you in it…” She turned back to Brandon. “They’ll be the last hours you’ll have together. You know that.”

I saw his jaw tighten, the muscles in his face almost twitching, but still he said nothing. He didn’t even move, except to tighten the grip he had on my hand.

She turned to face me. “Someone will be there to meet your plane. You’ll be turned around and shipped back home, Jenna. Him…” She flicked her head toward her brother. “He won’t be so lucky. I don’t know where you’re planning to go, but the plane ride will be the last time you’ll see each other. The very last time. Is that what you want?”

I turned my head and tried to catch his gaze. His eyes refused to meet mine, still staring across at Krystal, as though she was the cause of the situation we found ourselves in. I finally found the ability to speak. “Brandon.”

He didn’t even flinch at the sound of his name. It was as though he was frozen there, unable to hear anything but the voice that must have been playing in his head.

My voice softened with concern for him. “Brandon?”

Nothing. Not even the slightest movement.

I thought maybe I had broken him. Maybe this night—or the events that led up to this night—maybe it all had finally just snapped his mind in half. Either he was broken or he was preparing to attack. I knew I should fear the outcome of either scenario.

Krystal shook her head slowly, turning her gaze back to him. “You know that’s what will happen. You lose her if you even try to get on an airplane with her. You know that, Brandon. You know it better than anyone. And you won’t just lose
her
…” Her voice was calm, almost soothing. I could tell that she was just trying to get through to him. As if anyone could have gotten through to him in that moment…

He began to shake his head, slowly at first, his eyes narrowing again. “You can pretend you haven’t seen anything.”

“The damage is done. You used a real passport…”

“No damage is done. Not yet. Not if they aren’t looking for it.” He motioned with his head toward her bag. “Not if you don’t tell anyone.”

She rolled her eyes again. “You think
that’s
what I was doing? Warning the Davis camp that Jenna was on the move? Because that’s what I do, right?” She looked up at the ceiling, shaking her head once more. She squared her shoulders, letting out a sigh. “You don’t give me much credit, little brother.”

He motioned again with his head toward the phone in her bag. “Then what was that?”

“Nothing.” She turned to me. “Nothing we need to talk about right now.”

His jaw clenched again. “It’s done. It was already done when I got there.”

She lifted a brow. “Really?” Her voice was flat, as though she didn’t believe him.

He matched her tone. “Really.”

She nodded, flicking her eyes to mine again before turning her gaze back to his. “Like I said, we don’t need to discuss it now.”

I knew what they were talking about. I could tell she was trying to protect me from the discussion, but I already knew. Another wave of nausea found me, and I thought for sure I was going to puke. I don’t even really know where my words came from, only that I was finally finding the ability to make sense of the thoughts swirling through my head. I stared down at the floor, almost trying to will my stomach not to feel sick, from making me need to hurl. “Amanda. You’re talking about Amanda.”

I heard her suck in a breath. “We need to get out of the middle of this concourse.”

I hadn’t even really realized we were standing in the middle of the walkway where other people were making their way around us. I felt like I was in a bubble—the only thing I could hear was the two of them. Brandon and Krystal. No one else had even entered my consciousness.

She turned and walked with us to a nearby waiting area, a deserted gate that was already closed for the night. Brandon pulled me close to him, sliding his arm around my waist as we rested against the wall of the empty waiting area.

Krystal stood in front of us, almost too close. Her voice lowered to something barely above a whisper. “You told her?”

I looked up at him and saw his eyes narrow again. “I didn’t have to.”

“So she knows…?”

He cut her off. “She knows what happened tonight. She didn’t need to see it. And she doesn’t need to know anything else.”

My body stiffened in his arms. I was tired of being “protected.” Tired of being told what I did and didn’t need to know. It wasn’t as though I
wanted
to know what they were talking about. All I really wanted to know was that this could end. That this weird, twisted story where I was somehow caught in the middle could actually turn out in my favor. I almost longed for the time before I’d met Brandon—before any of this weird shit started happening. Living with grief, living with numbness … going back to that almost seemed like it would be better than the place where I found myself now. I wasn’t sure how much more I could handle—how many more secrets I could tolerate knowing. All I really knew was that the little bit I found myself knowing was only the tip of the iceberg. I somehow knew that there was a vast depth of secrets that my father held that I didn’t know about—that I didn’t really
want
to know about. And I knew that I had somehow been caught up in them, no matter how unintentionally it had happened.

“She’s ready, Brandon. She deserves to know.”

I looked across at Krystal. I’d always held such a deep respect for this woman. I hadn’t even met her until everything had broken loose six months ago—until that day I found out Daniel was still alive. I knew of her, of course—she had run my father’s campaigns from the sidelines, never coming anywhere close to his “real” life. Well, the life I thought of as reality. I had no idea what my father considered his real life—for all I knew, the secrets Krystal knew about and the lies she helped him cover up
were
his real life. The life I knew about—his life with me and the woman I grew up thinking was my mother—for all I knew, he didn’t even think about us. Maybe he never saw his family as his “real” life.

Brandon shook his head. “Our plane is going to start boarding any minute. I’ll talk to her on the plane.”

“You can’t. You know you can’t, Brandon. Wherever it is you’re going—the length of that flight will be the length of the rest of your life. I know you know that. I
know
you know…”

“Stop. We’ll figure it out.” He rubbed at his jaw. “I’ll figure something out on the plane.” He glanced over at me, his blue eyes searching mine. “We’ll figure it out, Jen. Do you trust me?”

Do I?
I knew I wanted to tell him that I did. I knew I wanted to get on that plane with him—to race for the gate and outrun his sister. I didn’t think she would stop us physically, but I did somehow know that she was right—that if we so much as stepped foot on that airplane, it would be our last time together. Everything that Krystal said made sense to me. Nothing that Brandon was saying was making sense at all. My eyes darted between the two of them—I was just so unsure. Completely lacking confidence about which choice was the right one to make.

She seemed to sense my uncertainty. She motioned at a row of chairs. “Let’s sit down. We can talk about this.” Her gaze rested on his for a long moment. “Brandon, let’s just talk. Just for a minute. You have a few minutes, don’t you?”

He repeated his earlier question. “Jen, do you trust me?” The longing in his eyes, the searching—it was almost turning to desperation.

I wanted to tell him that I did. I wanted to reassure him—to tell him that I believed him and that it would all work out. But I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know that anything was going to work out. I didn’t know if telling him the truth—that I wasn’t sure about anything—was the right answer or if the right answer was lying through my teeth and telling him that I trusted him completely. My mouth fell open a little, and I knew it didn’t matter what I said anymore. He knew. I could see by the hurt in his eyes—he knew what my answer was.

She motioned to the chairs again. “Let’s sit. Please. We can talk about this.” Her gaze narrowed again at Brandon. “Like adults.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, shaking his head. “Fine.” He guided me by the waist to the chairs, sitting down next to me and taking my hand in his again. “Make it quick, Krystal.”

She nodded and took a seat next to me, turning her body to face me. “Jenna, did Amanda ever say anything to you?”

My brow furrowed with confusion. I felt Brandon squeeze my hand—I wasn’t sure if that meant I wasn’t supposed to answer or if he was just trying to be supportive. “About what? She said a lot of things to me. Most of them were not very nice.”

She nodded. “I’m taking it by your use of past tense that you’re aware of the situation? Aware of what…”

Brandon interrupted. “She saw her, Krystal. She saw the whole thing. She thought I did it…”

“And you’re saying you didn’t.” Her words were flat, definitely not a question. It almost echoed exactly what I had been thinking about what he had told me. It seemed impossible that he wasn’t involved—he was there in Mason’s room. He was there, and what reason could he have had for being there if he hadn’t been involved? Something wasn’t right—I was positive about that. I just wanted so desperately to believe what he was telling me. I desperately wanted to believe that he wasn’t capable of doing something so heinous.

He spoke through his clenched teeth. “I said I didn’t. Why is that so fucking hard to believe, you two? If I had, I’d tell you I had. I. Didn’t.” He squeezed my hand again, turning to face me. His voice softened when he spoke to me. “I’m telling you, Jen. I didn’t.”

I nodded, and tried to tell him with my eyes that I was at least willing to consider believing him, no matter how unlikely the story. There was something about him—about the way he was acting, the look in his eyes—something that told me I
had
to believe him. I turned back to face Krystal, who sat on my other side. I felt hot tears stinging behind my eyes—I wasn’t really sure who or what to believe. I only knew that I really hated that I seemed to be caught in the middle of some battle of which I had no knowledge before this moment.

Krystal met my gaze again. “Jenna, did she ever talk to you about Mason? Anything about him?”

I felt my hand being squeezed again, and I was sure that time that it meant I should keep quiet. There was just something about Krystal’s tone that made me feel like I almost wanted to know what the hell was going on—what the big secret was that they were keeping from me. “Only about his piano lessons. It was really the only thing she ever talked to me about. About Mason, anyway.”

Krystal nodded. “And nothing else? No mention of his father…”

“Enough. I said she doesn’t need to know. She doesn’t.” He almost yanked on my arm to get me to turn back to face him. “It isn’t important, Jen.”

“It is.” Krystal interrupted again. “She’s ready, Brandon.”

“She’s not. This is not something she needs to have any awareness of…”

“She is. You’re not giving her enough credit. It’s disrespectful. She can handle this.”

“I didn’t say she couldn’t handle it, Krystal. I said she didn’t need to know. I’m respecting what I think she needs to know…”

I pulled my hand away. I felt like the net at a tennis match, watching the barbs the siblings were throwing at each other cross over me with every word—and I hated that they were discussing me as though I wasn’t sitting between the two of them. “Stop. Please.” I didn’t want to cry again. I didn’t want to experience that feeling of near desperation that was beginning to overwhelm me. I clasped my hands together, certain that I didn’t want to feel any more squeezing on them, even though I was sure he was trying to tell me something. “Just tell me.”