It was true that I had texted the unknown number, which belonged to Jace, and told him I was done playing his twisted game. I had told him I had enough of feeling guilty and letting myself feel like I didn't belong because of an accident that happened years ago. My dad's death will always be with me, but I didn't want to keep blaming myself for it. So when I got the chance, I texted him to tell him I wanted this to end. He never responded until this moment, only to knock me out unconscious.

I can feel the heaviness of my eyelids but struggle to open it. The pain that had been there moments ago, seemed to have disappeared now. I felt my skin was on fire but weightless. I wanted to move my hands but was unable to. My mind gives in and I doze off again.

When I woke up again, the fogginess had worn down. I moved my hands again, but this time a tingling sensation took over. I could feel the rope that kept my hands in place and feet. I could feel my head move to the side and my eyelids flutter to open. I can make out the small cabin we were in, practically empty. There seemed to be some chairs and a large bag to the side. That's when I heard his cold voice.

"You up?"

My voice is groggy as if I've been asleep for years when I say, "Why?"

I can feel his hand on my chin as he lifts it up and pours a liquid down my throat, making me cough. I lick my lips at the taste of the water and find myself being able to glare at him.

He gives me an unbothered look. "You are so ungrateful. I gave you water."

"Should I be thankful? You have me tied up," I spit out.

"Only because I have to."

"What does that mean?" I say and begin to look around, "And where is Grayson?"

Jace points to a place beside me, near the corner, where Grayson is tied to a chair but still out as a lightbulb. He then shrugs, "I probably underestimated how much drug I should have given him."

"You drugged him?" I ask incredulously.

"I drugged you too, only a little bit," he confesses. My eyes scrunch up in anger as I start trying to rock my chair back and forth, but my body is too weak. "It's pointless to try," he tells me.

I can feel the tears wanting to come down as I look up at him and ask, "what did I ever do to you?"

He points at himself, "me?" He shakes his head, "Nothing. It's not me you hurt, but I work for someone else. I told you it was nothing personal." He shrugs, "I don't even want to be here. I also told you-" he walks up to me and I can feel him tug at the rope, securing it. When he backs away, he gives me a smirk and looking into my eyes says, "Girl fights can be so messy."

I scrunch up my own face in confusion. It felt like he was giving me a clue. I look up into his lifeless emerald eyes and think back to the moment he mentioned these words and to the moment he looked familiar. I had always felt that I knew him, but I was never able to pinpoint from where until this moment. He was closer and now I could smell the lavender scent masking the smell of whiskey and gasoline. The lavender overpowered the scent and she always made sure lavender was her key signature. Every morning that I would pass by her locker as she sprayed the perfume of the sickly sweet smell, I knew she would be waiting for me.

"Where is your sister hiding, Jace?"

He gives me a wicked smile, "she said you were smart but it also took you a while to figure out, so I'm wondering if that's even true."

I scoff and explain, "It took me a while because I never thought my best friend would be the one to do this to me."

The claps come slowly as my face contorts to one of pure anger and disgust as her face appears, her blonde hair down in a nice blowout. I wondered when she had the time, especially between pretending to be my best friend and the devil incarnate. "I wondered if you were ever going to notice?" she said.

"Lynett." Her name leaves a sour taste in my mouth. How could it not? I had known her since middle school where we had bonded over our fathers. I had lost mine forever and hers was in jail. They said misery loves company, so we found solace in talking about everything but that. Now, to see she was the one sending me constant reminders to feel guilty and painting me to be a killer for the whole world to see, only left bitterness towards her.

This only makes her laugh as she comes near me and slaps me, hard. I can hear it ricochet through the sounds so loud it seems to have woken Grayson up. I can see him looking around, but unlike me, he had a cloth around his mouth. As much as her slap hurt, it finally made me realize the pain in my thighs. I look to see the needle stuck inside me, taped over as a small drop of a liquid falls on the dropper. Jace hadn't lied about drugging us.

I compose myself and spit out, "bitch." Lynett smiles her sadistic smile and it somehow looks creepier when she does it than when Jace did.

"You deserve this and more," she tells me.

I turn my attention to Jace who looks like a model in a photo shoot, leaning his leg on the wall and flipping through a magazine, clearly bored by the scene. "Do you agree with her?" I ask him. All he does is shrug.

"I'm an innocent bystander. I was paid for my work and will now be here as muscle," he says with a chuckle.

I turn my attention back to Lynett and laugh. How could I be so gullible? "At the football game, you had him stage this little fight to make sure I wasn't suspecting you," I say and wish I could smack my head at how obvious it was. "And at the carnival, Jace was the clown but you were waiting to lock me in that fun house." I give her a smug face, "you knew a lot about me. My habits."

"And who you are, Amelia?" she says with wide wicked eyes.

"Oh yeah," I can't help but be sarcastic, "and who am I?"

Lynett smears, "You're nothing but a fraud who got everything and anything she wanted. How was that fair? My father gets thrown in jail because of his dad-" she points at a very disoriented Grayson, who scrunches up his nose in her reveal, "and goes into hiding because of your dad and you." She takes a breath and says her words as if rehearsed, "My dad did nothing wrong. My mother had died and left us, he needed the money. What was he supposed to do? A rich guy in a suit approaches him and offers all this money, only if he can deliver the death of a certain Archer. My dad was a drunk and a deadbeat but he tried, he went over there and tried, but couldn't do it. He had realized I was asleep in the car when I woke up and asked him what he was doing." She gulps as the memory infiltrates her mind. "He loved me so he didn't pull the trigger that time. We were heading home when he kept swerving and then, there was a car, he didn't even notice. The car came towards us as I tried to yank the steering wheel away too, but we both seemed to have failed our fathers that night." She gives me a sympathetic smile, "we could have been true friends, Amelia if you didn't constantly have a better life. You moved the steering wheel but they blamed my father because he was drunk, so he had to go into hiding after escaping and from the guy who hired him. That left my brother," she points at an avoidant Jace, "to have to find a way to fend for us. He hit the jackpot when he met Grayson. He made us good money, all because he was broken inside. Until," she pauses and moves the dropper to a higher speed. "My dad finally came home after years because he was able to get the money he was promised." She gives me a disgusted look, "I hated you after that night. I even befriended you just to make sure you were never happy. Sending you those newspapers would always bring your happiness down, but yet you always succeeded. It's annoying."

"Wait," I tell her after she finishes. "Let me get this straight, your dad was the other driver involved in the crash and assassinated Grayson's dad for his uncle?" I take a breath and ask incredulously, "and you blame me?"

"Amelia, the evidence that it's your fault is written everywhere," she takes out my diary from all those years ago.

My eyes widened in shock as I asked, "How do you have that?"

She shrugs and flips through the pages. "I stole it from the therapist," she admits, like it's common knowledge. She goes on further to explain, "Because I remember you from that night. You didn't see me, but I saw you." She has gone cynical and yells, "you moved the steering wheel and crashed into us-"

"Your dad was drunk and swerving everywhere," I yell back but she ignores me. It must be a family trait.

"You just ran and left your own dad to die."

The tears are rolling down my face at that memory and I try to defend myself, "I had no choice. He told me-" I mumble, "he told me to run and look for help." My face falls down, defeated, "I didn't want to. I wish it had been me."

"And I'm trying to make that dream come true," she tells me. I looked up at her words, was she insinuating what I thought she was?

"I had tried once in freshman year when I couldn't stand the fact that you had seemed to move past your father's death while I had to keep seeing my dad behind bars. Yet, when I got you drunk and guided you to the terrasse, you befriended that asshole." She looks at Grayson who mumbles something into the cloth, "so I settled for making sure to make your life miserable. Yet, here you were again, befriended people who didn't let my plan take into effect. So, you finally texted Jace after the dumbass took the blame. How could I not come and put you out of your misery?"

"Lynett," I say, my voice laced with sorrow, "you don't have to do this."

"I do," she tells me, "I promised my dad I would get our revenge."

I look over at Jace, silently pleading for his help even if I knew it would never come. His eyes glimmer at me as he races his eyebrows and then gives me a wink as if all this was a game. I look at Grayson who stares at me with the same dejected face I held.

Wait, I think and turn to look at Jace again who seems to be moving his eyes from me to my hands and back until his sister turns around. Then he pretends to be flipping through the magazine again. "Jace, what are you doing?" Lynett reprimands.

"Nothing," he sneers at her with a roll of his eyes.

That's when I remember how he had leaned close to secure the rope, or had he? I try my luck and find the rope is looser than it had been. I take the obvious stalling on Jace's part to move my hands, and the rope falls. I quietly remove the needle and the rope tying my leg. I creep behind her and smile at Jace. He smirks at me, only alerting his sister who looks confused, but turns around only to be met with a smiling me. Remember the training, I think as I make a fist and punch her in the face.

She looks up in shock from the ground and yells, "Jace. Stop her."

Jace looks at her and shakes his head, "I don't get in the middle of girl fights. You know this."

I smile at him and go to kick her one last time. I can see her close her eyes, knocked out. I quickly rush over to Grayson and unhook his own needle. "Did you really have to drug us?" I ask Jace.

Jace looks at me, "just because I helped doesn't mean I'm on your side."

"Why did you help?" I ask, emphasizing the "did" because this was out of character for him. He spent all this time helping her, his sister, only to help us.

Jace gives me a sheepish grin and says, "have to protect my investment."

I can't help but smile as he helps me put Grayson on my shoulder. The drugs they had injected in me had eased the pain but still made my body feel like they were moving in slow motion. I look at him and since I wasn't so sure myself, I question, "What happens next?"

He gives me a half smile, "I called the cops already. I'll stay with her. We'll turn ourselves in and hopefully start over."

"How can we trust you?" Grayson voices out what's in my head, finally able to speak.

"After everything we went through Grayson, you should trust a little more," Jace says with a wink.

"That's exactly why I don't." He looks down at himself, "I mean you drugged us right now and helped your sister with her scheme."

Jace thinks about this and finally says, "my sister was brainwashed by my dad believing he was doing what's best. I think you can relate to wanting to make your dad proud." Grayson rolls his eyes at Jace's comparison. Jace chuckles, "all I'm saying is. I didn't think she would take it this far." He scrunches his face in confusion, "I mean, did she expect me to bury you guys?"

Grayson ends up taking a punch at Jace who recoils in pain. Then he shrugs and says, "Well, I'm sorry your sister turned out to be a psychopathic bitch but you deserved that," in sarcasm.

With a hand on his cheek, Jace smirks and responds, "runs in the family." Grayson and I roll our eyes as we begin making it down the steps, the drugs wearing off slowly, but wearing off. "Wait," we hear him yell as the distant sounds of sirens begin to appear. How long were we there for?

We look up expectantly at Jace who takes out a manila envelope. This guy really liked envelopes. "This is a written confession from my dad. I hope it helps," he says, catching us by surprise. Grayson looks at him as if he wants to hug Jace, but knowing their history, he doesn't. Jace then looks at me and hands me the diary I had thought was long gone. and then walking away to meet the cops.

I knew our names would eventually come up in the investigation, but for now, I just wanted to enjoy our senior camp trip. After everything, I think we deserved one without any more secrets surrounding us. 

>>>>> 

So, I have a friend out there, hopefully she's still reading this. But love, I know you have a thing for guys named Jace and well, hopefully he didn't disappoint ;) 

Anyway, everyone, I hope you guys finally got the answers you weren't asking. 

What did yall think of the big reveal?

If you can, please let me know what your honest thoughts were on how this whole thing went down because I have my doubts ngl. 

Two more chapters and I'm so sad it's ending. I finished it a long time ago but to share it's another type of feeling. 

Don't forget to vote, comment, and share :)