Page 80 of Five Survive
Oliver blinked, slowly, the only muscle that moved anywhere on his body.
“Why did you never tell me?” he said with a low growl, voice catching in his throat. But that wasn’t the right question. “And how did you know Jack Harvey?”
There it was, the right question. Red’s head flicked toward Reyna, waiting for the answer. So was everyone else: Arthur, Simon, Maddy, all looking Reyna’s way, backing her into the corner by the front door with their eyes.
Reyna hugged her arms around herself, picking at the wrinkles in her sleeves.
“I knew Jack,” she said, slowly, carefully, like her words might cause an explosion if she said them too hard. And, looking at Oliver’s face, they just might. “Because we were together.”
Simon blew out an awkward puff of air, hanging back, running his hands through his disheveled hair.
Reyna chewed her bottom lip, waiting for the explosion. But it didn’t come.
“Together how?” Oliver said, overenunciating the words, sharpening the consonants.
“Together like…” Reyna’s voice cowered, shrinking beneath an outward breath. “Please don’t make me say it.”
“How long?” Oliver was too calm, too still, and Red shivered, the hairs standing up across the back of her neck.
“I’d known him a couple of years.” Reyna sniffed. “Met him at the bar when I went with friends.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Reyna shook her head. “Since September. When we went back for fall semester.”
Oliver’s eyes spooled in his head, working something out.
“Four months,” he said, not a question. “You were with him for four months behind my back.”
“I’m sorry,” Reyna cried. “I shouldn’t have done that to you. I know it’s awful, and I’m so so sorry.”
“And you’re telling me now,” Oliver continued, still too calm, a clouded look in his eyes, the pupils too large and beetle-dark. “In front of everyone here, in front of my little sister.”
Maddy shrank in the booth.
“I’m sorry.” Reyna hugged herself tighter. “I wish I could have told you at a better time, just you and me.” She shook her head, strands of black clinging to her cheeks, wet with tears and sweat. “No, I wish it never happened in the first place. If I hadn’t been such a coward, if I had just…” Her words failed, lips pressing together while she tried to get them back.
“If you had just what?” Oliver pressed, and Reyna winced, like he was pressing down on her neck.
“Broken up with you.” She said it quietly, almost a whisper, staring at Oliver like there was no one else in the RV. And there wasn’t, not really. Red’s mind was quiet for once, watching the scene, a strange feeling in her gut. Not guilt, or shame, or hunger, it was something older. Ancient. A primal instinct telling her to keep out of Oliver’s way. There was danger outside the RV, and now there was danger inside it.
A low bark of laughter from Oliver as he slapped his hand on the table, making the kitchen knife jump and the flashlight roll toward Maddy. “What?” he said, a deep smile splitting his face, crinkling the skin by his eyes. “You would have chosenhimover me?” Another quick burst of sound from his throat, halfway between a laugh and a shout, the smile across his face twisting in at the ends, turning cruel.
“I’m sorry. I loved him,” Reyna whispered, a pair of silent tears. Red backed up another step. Maybe Reyna shouldn’t have said that, not right here right now, but clearly she’d been holding this in for a very long time. It only took a man with a rifle to bring it to the surface.
Oliver was still smiling. Why was he still smiling? “We’ve been together two and a half years,” he said.
“I know,” Reyna cried. “And I do care about you, Oliver. A lot. But it was different with him. It was easy.”
“Easy, huh?” Still smiling. Hand resting on the table where he’d smacked it, fingers splayed, just a little too close to that sharp knife there. Red tensed.
“Different,” Reyna said, with a wet sniff. “Jack didn’t feel right about it, what we were doing. I told him I was going to break up with you, I said I’d do it any day now.” Her breath hitched in her chest. “I didn’t know we were going to his bar that day. If I had I would havetried to get us to watch the game somewhere else. I know that’s not the problem here, it’s me, what I did…” She trailed off, taking a new breath to come back stronger. “That’s what he was saying to me in the parking lot. He said he’d waited long enough and I had to choose. I had to break up with you because it wasn’t fair to keep doing this.”
Oliver didn’t speak yet, just that same smile, blinking for her to keep talking.
“And then you came out and saw us, and I panicked. It wasn’t how I wanted everything to come out, with both of you there. But I knew it was the moment, whether I wanted it or not, and I had to make a decision, there and then. I had to decide. And, I don’t know…” She wiped her nose on the other sleeve this time. “I loved Jack, I knew that, but in that moment my head was telling me he wasn’t the smart choice, the practical choice, because he worked in a bar and that’s all he ever wanted to do. Whereas you…” She paused, daring a glance at Oliver.
“I’m going to be somebody,” Oliver said, showing too many teeth on that last syllable. “So what, Reyna, it was a battle between your head and your heart, was it?” he mocked her, but Reyna nodded, slowly, up and down.
