Page 158 of Wicked Little Secret

“Stop. Stop. Stop!” I chant over and over again. My hands clap over my ears in hopes of tuning him out.

Yet when he speaks, I can still hear him. His calm, measured voice is inescapable. He himself is inescapable.

“It hurts now, Nyssa,” he says. “But I can make sense of it all for you. If you’ll listen. I can tell you everything. Every sordid, twisted, morbid detail.”

The tears won’t go away. My eyes sting blinking them back. My lungs struggle keeping up with my intakes of air. Rarely an emotional person, it’s like years’ worth of curiosity, confusion, and trauma have rushed me all at once.

I’ve grown up believing the lies Aunt Brooklyn told me.

She was my mother. Edward Oliver was my father.

We were ostracized by the Castlebury community in the wake of the Valentine Killer slayings.

I was ruthlessly bullied.

That wasn’t fake. That was real. I lived it myself.

I have the childhood memories seared inside my head. The scars on my knees. The emotional hang ups from being taunted about my broke mommy and dead daddy.

But how could my memories be real when everything else wasn’t?

My entire reality—my whole backstory—has been nothing but fiction told to me forulterior motives.

What if what Theron says are more lies? How can I trust it’s the truth?

Fat tears roll free, slipping down my cheeks. I dare myself to glance in Theron’s direction. He hasn’t budged an inch. He hasn’t taken his eyes off me, like he’s so enamored by me even now.

Even like this.

When I’m a sweaty, teary-eyed mess full of cum, clutching a fucking bedsheet.

I swallow against another rising tide of emotion and whisper hoarsely, “Tell me.”

He slides fingers through his unruly dark hair, tousling it further. “I’m guessing you know about your mother—Josalyn Webber—becoming pregnant her freshman year at Castlebury.”

“My aunt told me. She took a year to study abroad, but really it was to have the baby. No one had to know, and it was passed off as her older sister’s.”

“Brooklyn. Her older sister. I’d never met her… or even known her name. She’d only mentioned her sister in passing,” he confirms with a nod. “I didn’t meet Josalyn until several years later. She was a 1L and I was a 2L. She caught my eye as soon as I saw her crossing a courtyard. I’m sure it’s no surprise to learn that I was a loner… even back then. I was quite fine being on my own. But that was only until she walked into the picture.

“She was… striking. In the same way you are. The kind of beauty and grace that stands out in a room. The kind of wit and cleverness that’s addictive. I knew as soon as I saw her—certainly once I spoke to her—that I wanted her. More than wanted her. She became a compulsion I couldn’t let go of. I was obsessed.”

I’m not sure how to respond other than to blink at him.So many questions are trapped in my throat. Questions about my mother, Josalyn Webber. Questions about me and the extent of this obsession he’s admitting to.

“But Josalyn had her own issues. You see, despite the fact that she had covered her pregnancy and hid it from the upper crust of Castlebury, there were other problems. Your mother was at the university on a scholarship. Something that already put her at a disadvantage in the eyes of many. And then there were… racial biases at play.”

A scoff tears from my throat. I shake my head. “Why am I not surprised? So Aunt Brooklynwascorrect.”

“To an extent. But she didn’t tell you the whole story. She told you the version that I’m sure she believed protected you… and her and her sister’s lies. See, despite her disadvantages, Josalyn still flourished at Castlebury. At least initially. She made friends in Holly Bunton—now Holly Driscoll—and several other followers of hers. She believed she was finally gaining access to spaces that were long denied to her.

“Until rumors began. Rumors about where Josalyn Webber was sneaking off to at night. Unsavory rumors that sullied her reputation in the eyes of many,” he says. “It was around this time that I became friends with her. She was being ostracized, and I sought to ease the pain. I wanted to make her feel special. Make her see everyone else was an imbecile for how they were treating her.”

“Rumors?” I mutter, my brows drawing close. “What rumors?”

“Josalyn was in love,” he says, almost begrudgingly. His eyes darken, face twisting in contempt. “But not with me. She was in love with her professor. A man by the name of Anton Vise. My mentor and someone Josalyn greatly admired herself.”

“Professor Anton Vise,” I repeat in a whisper. “He was a criminal law professor here, wasn’t he? I remember seeing his name in several of the newspapers I pulled from the school archives.”

“Yes, he was brilliant. So brilliant, he charmed her. And many of the female students. But she was the only student he had eyes for.”