When Rivals Love (Bayshore Rivals 3)

Slowly, I bring my hand to my mouth to stop the scream from coming out. Banks. Oh, god, she didn’t. She wouldn’t.

“Ha, then why is he with me? Why did he call the cops on you, and have you sent to a loony bin?” It’s like I’m watching a nightmare play right before my eyes. I want to look away, but I can’t. Shelby raises the gun to my stepmom’s head, but it doesn’t seem to faze her.

“Huh? It wasn’t because he loves you?”

“Shut up!” Shelby yells her voice cracking, agony pouring out of her.

But my stepmom doesn’t listen, she just continues nudging her closer and closer to the proverbial edge, “You were nothing more than convenient pussy for him. He needed you to keep an eye on Harlow and spreading your legs for him; that was just an added bonus for him.”

“Stop, just stop!” Shelby screams even louder this time, the sound ringing in my ears like a siren. Lifting her hands, she presses them against her ears, and like a hawk, my eyes remain on the gun that’s still in her hands. With it pointed away from us, now is our chance. Then it happens.

The moment the gun isn’t pointed in my stepmom’s direction anymore, she lunges for Shelby. Everything happens so fast; I can hardly make sense of it all.

A sob escapes my lips as I helplessly watch as the woman I’ve always known as my mother drives the already bloodied knife into Shelby’s chest.

For a moment, I can’t breathe, I can’t move, I can’t think. Time slows, and all I can do is watch Shelby die. The girl who has been my companion for most of my life stares back at me. A knife stuck in her chest, blood seeping from the wound, soaking through her gray jumpsuit. Her wide eyes bleed into mine, her face pales, and her eyes go blank.

I can see the exact moment all life leaves her. One second she is standing, the next she crumbles to the floor, landing in a heap. I don’t know why, but I can’t stop staring at the lifeless form on the floor. I’m unable to understand or comprehend anything that is happening. This can’t be real. This has to be a dream.

A nightmare.

I know I shouldn’t, but my eyes move on their own from her crumpled body, and to her eyes. I gape at the vacant look there, somehow waiting for some kind of spark to return. For her to wake up… but it’s too late. She’s gone, her entire life, all hopes, and dreams, every memory she ever had… gone. Just like that…

“Oh, come on. Don’t act like you actually cared about her,” my stepmother says nonchalantly, utterly unfazed by what she’s just done.

“You-you k-killed her,” I stutter. My voice coming out just as shaky as I am.

“So what? She deserved it. Truthfully, I should have killed her a long time ago,” she admits. Bending down to where Shelby’s body is lying on the floor, she pries the gun out of her lifeless hand. “And I should have killed you when your mother was pregnant with you. I apologize for making you go through all of this just to have it end with the same result.”

Shock is all I feel. Fear. Anger. Sadness. I don’t feel any of those emotions in that moment. Not like I should. It’s like I’m having an out of body experience.

She killed my mother.

“Why do you look so surprised?”

Swallowing thickly, I push everything down. If I’m going to survive, I’m going to have to come up with a way to escape her.

“Why… Why did you kill her? What did she do that would make you want to kill her?”

“She took your father from me, that’s what. He was always supposed to be with me. We belonged together, and she ruined it all. Just like now, how you ruined everything. I should have killed you with her, but your father and I found out early on that I couldn’t have children of my own, so I thought I could raise you. I thought he would love me even more for it.” A darkness overtakes her features, “I actually thought I could love you, but just like your mother, you turned out to be nothing more than an inconvenience.”

An inconvenience?

The word cuts through me like a sharp knife. So many emotions flood me all at once that I can’t decide which one is greater… hurt, anger, or disappointment. I’m so disappointed in myself. Disappointed that I let this woman be part of my life for so long, that I didn’t see the kind of person she really was. All this time, I thought my father was the biggest monster, but as it turns out, there was a worse evil lurking.

I want to cry, to scream, to destroy the woman in front of me. I called her my mom… the woman who took my real mother from me. The walls around my fragile heart crumble as the reality of everything crashes into me.