Olivia's POV
"What?" I stare at Brooke as tears continue to pour down her cheeks. Because she isn't answering, I grab her shoulders and shake her. "What did you just say?"
Brooke, however, breaks into a loud wail and slumps against me. I stagger a step back, barely able to keep both of our balances as she rests her forehead against my shoulder and continues to produce a high-pitched cry of an elk.
"For the love of..." Eliza clasps her hands over her ears. "Make her stop."
"There, there." I awkwardly pat Brooke's back. "It's going to be alright."
"No, it's not. It hurts!" Brooke wails and wraps her arms around me. "I want Weston. I want him to hold me and assure me that he doesn't hate me."
"Hate you? Why would he hate you?"
"Because I'm a terrible person."
"No, you're not." I continue to pat her back despite a part of me screaming at me to ask her what she meant by her being to blame for my accident.
"Yes, I am." She lifts her head off my shoulder and her tear-stained eyes meet my confused ones. "I know you have a crush on Weston."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"It's the reason why everything happened. I chose him because I knew you had a crush on him."
"Chose him? You're not making any sense."
Brooke, however, ignores my confusion, slumps down onto the sidewalk, and continues as if I've never spoken. "Because I chose him you were in that accident."
From the corner of my eye, I see Eliza remove her hands off her ears and take a step closer to us, but I force myself to stay focused on Brooke. With a sigh, I crouch down, so Brooke and I are once again on eye-level. Brooke, however, covers her eyes with her hands and breaks into another wail.
"He's going to hate me the moment he realizes why I started to date him."
"I have no idea what you're talking about," I groan, but force myself to count to three. "Why don't you start at the beginning?"
I have to count to three four times before Brooke finally lowers her hands and lifts her panda eyes to meet mine.
"It all started with the crush I had at the beginning of this school year." She sniffs. "Do you remember him? Tall, big arms?"
"Sure. Didn't I set you up with him?"
"That's the one." She purses her lips into a tight line and for a moment I think she's going to break into another sob. "I told you I had a crush on him, and you told him. But I wasn't the one he liked. It was you."
"That can't be true. I remember him agreeing to go out with you."
"He thought you'd come onto the date as well. When only I showed up he told me that you're the one he likes. This is why I approached Weston."
"What?" I blink, not understanding how we got from her crush telling her he doesn't like her to Weston. Because my legs are starting to cramp from the crouching position, I lower myself onto the cold asphalt. "What does Weston have to do with this?"
"When the guy left, I swore to myself that I would do to you what you did to me." Brooke wipes her nose into her sleeve. "So, when I found out that you have a crush on Weston, I asked him out. Because it turned out he liked me, I wanted you to catch us that night, so you would also have your heart broken by your crush. But you never showed up."
"What night? What are you talking about?"
"The night of your accident." Brooke sniffs. "I called you."
"No, you didn't. Iâ"
The sidewalk beside the bus station we're sitting on suddenly disappears and I find myself exiting Davis' house. I just dropped off the medicine, so I take the first step in the direction of a nearby bus stop. But then my phone goes off. I pull it out of my pocket and find Brooke's name written on the screen.
"Hi, Brooke," I say.
"Liv," she greets me. "I need you to come to Ramona's café right now. It's really important."
"Ramona's café? What's going on?"
"You'll see. Just come here as fast as you can."
The call goes dead before I can respond. Because it's Brooke, though, I type in the name of the café she mentioned into my phone. To my surprise, it's within walking distance of my current location, which is why I turn in the opposite direction from where I was headed to and make my way up an unfamiliar streetâa street that led me up to the place where I saw the three men attacking Charlie.
"You're the reason." I'm back to sitting in front of Brooke, with my brain spinning at the newly triggered memories. "I've been wondering why I chose that direction when there was a bus stop much nearer to the Davis' house. It was you all along. You're the one who called me."
"Yes." Brooke nods and wipes the last few tears into her sleeve. "I'm the reason you were in that accident. And all because I wanted you to catch me with Weston, so it would break your heart... Now you know why I had to break up with him. You're the one who deserves to be with him, not me."
For a moment, I stare into her smudged eyes and then shake my head. "What you did was wrong, but you're not to blame for the accident. I'm the one who crossed the road without looking and Anya's the one who drove off after hitting me. And Weston has nothing to do with any of this. I'm already in love with someone else."
"What?" Brooke gapes at me.
"I already have someone else." I rise to my feet and then offer her my hand. "So, you're going to go to Weston, tell him the whole truth, and then beg him to take you back. And if he doesn't, then he's an idiot who doesn't deserve you."
"You don't like him anymore?" Brooke reaches up to my hand and with my help, moves into a standing position.
"Yes, he's all yours."
Before either of us can say anything else, a loud clap fills my ears. I glance at Eliza, but she is already looking at someone behind my back. I turn around and find Lucien leaning against a traffic sign a few steps away from us. He is still slowly clapping, while a mocking smirk caresses his lips.
"How very noble of you," he says and lowers his upper body in a mocking bow.
Because of Brooke's presence, I can't do anything other than narrow my eyes at him and then turn back to the other girl. "Go home and call Weston."
"Thank you." Brooke pulls me into a tight hug and then runs off in the direction of her house.
The moment she rounds the corner I turn back to Lucien. He doesn't make a move to follow his new charge and instead remains leaning against the traffic sign.
"What do you want?" I ask him and take a safe step back, closer to Eliza.
"I have no idea what you're talking about." He lifts his hands into the air and feigns an innocent expression.
"Don't play dumb. I know you were there on the night of the accident. And I bet you're also the one who told the Head Guardian about Samuel and me. So, what else do you want? Are you that determined to see me dead?"
"I don't care about you." Lucien detaches himself from the sign and takes a step closer to me. "It's Samuel I was after. You were just collateral damage."
Samuel's words about Lucien being the one who killed him echo inside my mind, but before Lucien can take another step closer to me, Eliza pushes me behind her back and steps up in front of me.
"Try taking another step closer, and we'll see what happens," she says.
Instead of being intimidated by her threat, Lucien snorts. "I'm not the bad guy here."
"Try telling that to Samuel, whom you killed." I glare at him.
I expect Lucien to immediately deny my words like Samuel told me he did every time he accused Lucien of being the one who killed him, but he doesn't. Lucien's only response is visible tension in his jaw; otherwise, he continues to wordlessly stare at me.
Just when I'm about to tell him to stop staring, Lucien averts his eyes. "Find the car."
"What?" I blink at him.
"She still didn't get the promotion she's so desperately after," he says and without him mentioning her name I know who he's talking about. "She's not going to risk anything messing with her chances, so she's set to buy back the car she sold after the accident. It contains the only real evidence that she was the driver. Find the guy who bought the car before she does, and I'll tell you where the proof is."
Before I can question his words or wonder why he of all Guardians would tell me this, he closes his eyes. Just before he vanishes, however, he slips out one last piece of information.
"The guy's last name is Weston."
***
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- E