“Just answer the fucking question.” His voice was angry, but there was something pleading about it, too. He wanted the truth but only on his terms. He wanted me to tell him that I hadn’t done anything and that he had nothing to worry about. He wanted me to tell him it would all be okay.
But, beneath that, he doubted me. He doubted us. He questioned it even though I had freely given him all of me.
Every broken part of me was his.
Somehow he thought that after what we’d had together the night he left, I could run to the nearest bed —Owen Fletcher’s bed — and dive right in.
It dawned on me then why this was so significant. Why I couldn’t just tell him it hadn’t happened and move on.
I had been questioned by people my entire life.
Nobody had ever believed my word as the truth. No matter what happened to me—even the most unthinkable things. When I’d told anyone about them, nobody had ever trusted that what I was saying wasn’t a lie.
I’d thought Jake was different than everyone else. I thought what we had was actual trust.
I was wrong.
The clouds released the first of the afternoon rain, soft at first then harder, until sheets poured between us. Tourists screeched and scattered for shelter. Jake and I just stood there and stared at one another, the water dripping off of us as if it wasn’t happening, either.
“Abby, just tell me!” He was frustrated now. His forehead was furrowed, and his eyes looked hurt and concerned, but his voice sounded like pure vinegar.
“I would never do that to you.”
“Wouldn’t you?” I couldn’t believe he would ask me that, after everything I’d shared with him.
The rain concealed my tears. I looked down at my boots to compose myself.
“You can believe whatever you want,” I told him.
“I want to believe the truth,” Jake said.
But, it was the truth. Whether he believed it or not.
“No, you don’t. You heard a rumor, and you immediately believed that I fucked Owen.” I shook my head. “You doubt me. I let my walls down with you. I showed you how much you meant to me. I told you things I’ve never told anyone else.” My voice cracked. “I showed you my scars.”
He would be the last person to see them.
“Doesn’t matter, though. A few minutes after you ride back into town, you accuse me of screwing someone else. You don’t know me like I thought you did. You’re not who I thought you were.” I didn’t wait for him to answer. I just started walking past him, toward the apartment.
“Bee.” He grabbed my elbow. I looked up at him so I could see his beautiful sapphire blue eyes for what I imagined was going to be one last time. His lips were tight and his grip on my arm was even tighter.
I shook him off and kept on walking.
I was glad for the rain now, to cover my tears so Jake couldn’t see them. He didn’t deserve my tears. He didn’t deserve my pain, or the faith that I’d placed in him.
I heard his boots on the gravel trailing behind me.
“Bee!” he yelled.
Each time he said it, it felt like he was stabbing me one more time, letting me bleed out and suffer a slow, agonizing death. When I couldn't take anymore, when I needed the torture to be over, I stopped walking and turned to face him. I steadied my gaze and looked him right in the eye.
In that moment, it wasn’t red that I saw. It was blue. Radiant blue, like the color of his eyes. I don’t remember the look on his face. I just remember the beautiful color blue clouding my vision.
Before I could say anything, he jumped in. “You were my only reason to come back here.”
“Well, ain’t nothing holding you here now.”
I turned and started to run. I had no destination in mind. I just needed to get away from the hurt. But, it traveled with me.
I ran faster.
There were no sound of boots on the gravel behind me, no smell of leather or of sweaty man. No beautiful blue eyes to make it all stop. It was just me, left alone again with all the pain I just couldn’t seem to get rid of.
It would have hurt less if he’d just shot me instead.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
OUR TOWN MAY HAVE LOOKED like the Mayberry of tourist destinations, but if you were to come inside and stay a while, it wouldn't take you long to learn that filth, decay and darkness were the glue holding it all together.
It was time for me to get the fuck out. Every reason I’d ever had to stay put in that town had left.
I shoved the few things I owned into my backpack. I needed to get out of there, and I needed to do it as soon as possible. Even though I had nowhere to go, I was still in a rush to leave. It’s not like Jake would be barging through the door at any moment—I knew that much. I’d heard his thunderous bike fading into the distance over the bridge minutes before.
I knew it would be the last time that comforting sound ever touched my ears.
I left my keys on the rack and swung the door open to leave. I wanted to turn around, to take one last look at the rooms where we’d shared so much happiness in so short a time, but I couldn’t let myself bring that to the surface. The air in the apartment was sticking to me, suffocating me.
I had to get out.
I grabbed my hoodie and stuffed it into my bag before gunning for the door.
I was in such a hurry to leave I ran right into the doughy chest of Sheriff Fletcher. He was standing on the porch, his fist raised in the air, about to knock. He didn’t react to me slamming into him or ask me what was wrong when he saw my tear-stained face. In his suspicious, coal-colored eyes, I saw a flash of knowledge, of recognition, and I knew that he knew everything.
Owen. Jake. Everything. He knew what his monster of a nephew had done.
The sheriff handed me a thick yellow envelope and walked away without uttering a word.
I closed the door and sat back down on the couch, losing my will to flee. I dropped my backpack onto the floor beside my feet and examined the envelope in my hands. It was too thick and heavy to be a letter. My name was written in feminine handwriting, in large black marker across the top flap. I opened the seal and poured the contents out onto the coffee table.
What little there was left of my heart nearly stopped.
It was money—stacks that had bands around them, labeling how much was in each. I had never seen so much money in my entire life. I prodded around inside the envelope. There was no note—just a business card. It read Bethany Annabelle Fletcher, ESQ, Attorney at Law. Owen’s mother. And on the other side, in the same handwriting as my name on the envelope it read:
To ease your troubles…
The Fletchers were trying to clean up Owen’s little mess. This made them as sick and twisted as Owen. At least I knew then where he got it from. The money— ten-thousand dollars from what I estimated—was hush money, meant to keep me quiet. The Fletchers obviously didn’t want people to know that their golden boy was really a sadistic rapist. The thought made me gag.
I wondered how many times he’d done this before, how many times this worked for them in the past.
It sure as shit wasn’t going to work with me.
Bethany Fletcher was trying to give me money to ease my troubles. Like money would undo the damage Owen had done to me, over and over again. There truly was only one thing that could ease my troubles completely. Since Jake was gone now, it was no longer an option.
But if Jake were here…
He wasn’t, though, and he would never be again. I would never experience his reassuring touch. I would never again see his stone face turn soft when he looked at me. This kind of pain, coming from a heart that I thought I had successfully closed off to the outside world years ago, was worse than any physical pain anyone could cause me. It was worse than what I’d experienced the morning after Owen attacked me.
I would go through what Owen put me through a thousand times over to have Jake be the person I thought he was.
Jake would put Owen to ground if he knew, and I would want him to. Frankly, I didn’t care if that thought made me a bad person. Bad, good. Right, wrong. The lines were so blurry lately. I was in love with a killer, and I wanted Owen dead.
When I thought of it as simply as that, maybe it wasn’t so blurry after all.
The money on the coffee table mocked me, and I could feel all the pent up anger that had been distorted by the sadness from losing Jake rise to the surface. No matter what they tried to pay me, I wasn’t going to say anything to anyone except Jake, anyway. Did they think I’d be seeking justice from a failed system? That I’d tell people what their precious son did to me? Little did they know Jake leaving had just bought Owen a reprieve from his almost guaranteed death sentence. Something clicked inside me. I wasn’t sad over losing Jake, or upset that Bethany Fletcher thought I was poor, stupid white trash who could be bought.
I was fucking enraged.
I couldn’t remember a time in my life when I’d been so angry. The heat from below the surface of my skin felt as if it had been dropped in oil. I wanted to jump out of my skin and harm someone, throw something. To destroy for the sake of destroying.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. My heart rate went from normal to borderline cardiac arrest in a matter of seconds.
Fuck. This. Shit.
This bitch thought she could buy my silence? Well, she was dead fucking wrong. All the Fletchers were. And, I was about to show them how dead fucking wrong they really were.