What I Would Do For You, page 38
I don’t give myself time to think; I text Walsh my address without allowing another moment to pass for me to reconsider, to hold onto hope that I’m wrong.
I watch the clock, knowing he’s nearly an hour away.
Curiosity gets the better of me when her cries turn silent. I have to know she’s all right more than anything else. She couldn’t possibly hurt herself, but still, I have to be sure.
Although her shoulders rise and fall with deep, unsteady breaths, her eyes stay closed as the door creeps open.
The comforter’s slipped down her body and I use that as an excuse to bring it up around her shoulders. She’s still as I do, but I know she’s awake when she slightly leans into my touch. She keeps her lips pressed tight as her bottom lip trembles. The plea is so close to being spoken.
Slowly, I lie down behind her. And when I do, an inhale of relief greets me, her lips parting and her body slightly gravitating toward mine, her back to my front.
It reminds me of the night I first lay with her, when I told her to close her eyes.
If only we had the luxury of living our entire lives like that, in blissful ignorance.
It’s selfish to lie down with her. Everything about her calms me. With my eyes closed, I breathe her in, knowing it’ll be the last time. I wish that the memory of this moment would comfort me, but given how I have to be careful of her bruises and that I’m the one who made her cry last, this moment will only serve as a reminder to why I should stay far away.
We breathe in unison and it’s her steady breaths that calm mine. When I kiss the curve of her neck, she whispers that she loves me, and I believe her, I really do.
So much so, that it lulls me to sleep beside her.
It’s not until the door creaks open and my brother stares back at me, that I wake up, my eyes tired and full of shame.
“I didn’t mean to be here,” I confess to him as his eyes widen with unspoken questions. I do my best not to wake her as I creep out of bed and turn away from him. His weight shifts at the door, causing the floorboards to creak.
“Just get her to her sister.”
Cody nods in agreement and I walk past him, neither of us saying another word as I leave him to save her from this nightmare in a way I never can escape.
Delilah
“I’m begging you.” My sister’s voice is strained as I sit in her office. The faint bruise on my left arm is barely there anymore. I’ve traced it idly this past week. It’s the last remaining reminder of what happened. Physically speaking, that is.
“Cody begged you, and now I’m begging.” The mention of Cody’s name does something to me. There’s a place inside my chest that’s felt empty for days. I can barely look at him. I know he wants me still, and he blames himself when he shouldn’t. I told him he shouldn’t. My sister told him to give me time. But time isn’t going to change any of this.
Her voice is thick with embitterment when she says, “For Christ’s sake, do you want me to get down on my knees?”
“Is this because I asked to meet you here instead of your apartment?” I know damn well she’s not pushing the issue just because I don’t want to go back to her apartment. Still, it’s a defense. The reason she wants me to go into therapy is multifaceted but she understands I didn’t want to go back to her place, and have this conversation in the place I was abducted.
I’ll be fine if I never go back there again.
My sister starts in again. “You didn’t go to mom’s funeral. You aren’t sleeping.”
“And how would you know that?” I question snidely, even though she’s right.
“You look like hell, Delilah.” I scoff at her comment. “And you should,” she stresses, almost as if an apology.
“You went through hell, so it makes sense that you’d look like it.”
“Well, thanks for that,” I say and pull my purse into my lap, sitting stiffly on a very comfortable sofa draped in deep blue velvet. The clock above my sister’s desk ticks away as she sighs, both frustrated and saddened. “You need to talk to someone. It doesn’t have to be me.”
Playing with the thin necklace that drapes across my décolleté, I do my best to consider what she’s asking me to do. She wants me to tell all my secrets to someone like her. A man or a woman who supposedly won’t judge me, yet they’ll have the option to give me pills if they deem them fit.
Isn’t that a part of judgment? Sighing to myself, I ask her, “Do you really think it’s going to help me?”
I know what would help me, but he’s not answering me. I have no way to see him, no way to make any of this better.
“I’m seeing someone,” my sister says and leans forward, “after mom …” She leaves the word dying unspoken, leaning back in her seat. The leather groans as she continues, “And what happened with our father.”
I can’t bear the mention of our father. Staring past my sister’s cream blouse, I focus on the textured wallpaper that lines her office. It’s a simple damask pattern in a pale blue and cream colorway.
“Don’t bring up Dad, please.” Cadence’s shoulders sag slightly, her brow raising in condolence. I didn’t realize how much she loathed him until I saw her reaction to the news that our father was a serial killer.
Beyond a moment of surprise, she believed every word to be true without hesitation.
I still don’t know what I believe.
He took the fall for all those murders. Some of those murders, though, really were his handiwork. Without a doubt, I know he must’ve killed them. I remember the names of some of those women. They news was peppered with them when I was younger. A series of young girls going missing, each time happening closer to home, and a public outcry for their bodies to be found.
I remember the way my mother stared at the television, demanding my sister and I never stay out late and always check in even though we were so much younger than the victims. There’s no way she knew my father committed those murders. At least not then, but somehow, I think she found out. Or maybe she only suspected.
I wish she were alive so I could ask her. I wish I knew what she was thinking and why she stayed with him if she thought he’d killed them.
“You know he did it, don’t you?” My sister’s question brings me back to the here and now, and the faint memories of childhood vanish. “Did you read the articles?”
“I read them,” I lie.
“The parts about you aren’t true.”
“I know,” I say to go along with her although I imagine some parts are true; not in black and white, but they’re true in the gray areas. Maybe because I know the truth and I’m holding it in. Therefore, whatever comes out is most certainly a lie.
“There’s no evidence that you were involved. They can’t pin a thing on you. It’s all—”
“Circumstantial,” I say, finishing the sentence for her. “I know,” I repeat, my voice quieter and the fight in her eyes draining.
“It’s not okay that anyone thinks you were a part of any of this.”
The steady ticking of the clock passes between us before my sister starts up again, saying, “You’re not okay.”
“I know.”
“What if …” she starts with a hint of optimism and leaves her place in the wingback chair across from me to round her desk. The drawer opens and closes quickly enough, and she presents me with a pale blue journal.
“What if you put whatever you’re feeling in this?”
“You therapists and your journals.” It has the softest leather cover, but it feels like betrayal in my palms.
“I’ll feel better if you’ll tell me you’ll at least try,” she says, attempting a compromise. Her tone is telling, as if she’s certain this is the solution. “If things get bad or start to slip even the slightest … will you come talk to me?”
“So you can be my shrink?” My response is both dismissive and playful. “I thought you got a promotion and you won’t have time for patients?”
Her smile makes me smile. It’s humble and small, but I know this is a big deal for Cadence. “The Rockford Center won’t be open for another month. So I can’t start my position there just yet, but it’ll be nice to be in a brand-new facility and with patients who …”
She trails off and the smile fades. My sister is a hero in so many ways. In ways I could never be. Christopher’s face flashes before my eyes and I nearly lose it on the spot. It takes everything in me to hide the swell of emotions.
“Well, you know.” She sucks in a breath and relaxes her posture then asks, “What’s going on with you and Cody? Have you talked to him at least?”
I struggle to answer her honestly, so I deflect, although I’m sure she’s well aware that’s what I’m doing. “I don’t have time to think about my sex life right now, not with the board meeting coming up.” Another lie. So many damn lies.
The truth about Cody is that it all makes me feel like I’ve lost my mind.
Love and hate are both insane.
If they were products of a sane mind, the two emotions would be logical and controllable. God knows they aren’t.
Marcus
I’ve written so many notes with deep strokes that left the paper embossed with names. Too many to know for certain, but at least thousands of letters and hundreds of names. This one is so very different from all the others.
At the top of the page, the blue ink barely touched the notepad. Featherlight script trails down the page, each letter carefully placed. It’s not a warning or a message, but a question that I’m not sure she’ll answer.
Maybe I’m selfish, but I had to ask her, even if I don’t know how she’ll respond to it.
Even worse, I’m not sure how to sign it. I don’t know which name should appear at the bottom. Which man she’d be willing to meet one last time at the barn where all this began.
Christopher or Marcus. The pen hangs in the air just like the question, and it feels as if my life hovers with them.
It started at the old barn that served as my refuge and then became the hell that raised me … and it should end there. I’m willing to close this chapter, I’m willing to never write another name down for as long as I live, so long as she’ll listen to me. So long as she believes me. I’ve never wanted anyone to see me and to know my story, the way I crave for her to know every detail. Swallowing thickly, I sign the note and drag air into my lungs. Listening to the crackle of wood splintering and smoldering in the fireplace, I turn to watch the embers burn bright.
This place holds secrets in every corner, moments where I devised plans and sought evidence of justice in the keepsakes I’ve taken. Although I’ve parted with a number of them now, all in efforts to put blame elsewhere.
Whether or not Delilah meets me, I’ll leave this place and never return. Walsh will wander here, I know he will. He’s come many a time in search of me. He’s the only one I’ve met here. He must know it means something to me. After all, I brought the love of our lives here, I mended her here and lay beside her without worry. He will come back. He’ll find the note I left for him. Riggins is expecting his call if ever my brother needs anything. I’ll leave it all to him.
The knowledge that this address was once the home of a family I sought justice for has escaped him for years. I had to buy it and live here just so I could sleep after I slaughtered the men who took their daughter and ripped their family apart. After ending their lives, I stole every penny they had and took on their wealth and names for years. Even the deed to this place bears the name of a man who’s long dead but according to records, resides elsewhere and the place is thought to be empty, waiting for him when he returns.
I imagine one day I’ll forget this address, but I’ll always remember her name. For so long, it’s the names of the victims that I used to justify what I’d done. I murdered, I stole, I manipulated situations to wreak havoc and send bad men to war against one another. And all of it was justified if I could name their victims.
It’s her name, Delilah Jones, that prompts me leaving this place forever.
I simply can’t go back. Not after what’s happened.
The only other thing I regret is bringing my brother into this. He could have had a different life; instead I led him into the nightmare with me. Delilah and Cody will forever be the names that counter the one I took, Marcus.
I can’t do this any longer, but I don’t know how my brother will recover. I don’t know where any of us will go from here. Which is why I have to meet her one more time.
Crossing out the name at the bottom of the note, I write another there instead.
Maybe she’ll realize I’m trying. If that doesn’t prove to her that I am willing to do anything to keep her close, I don’t know what will.
Delilah
All I can think as his silhouette comes into view, is whether I’ll have the strength to call him Christopher and what he’ll do if that name slips from my lips.
He isn’t the man in a dark alley they call the grim reaper. He isn’t a supervillain with inhuman strength. He’s not a demon or the devil. He’s a man who was hurt, cut deep and never able to heal. So he bled all over the world, letting all those who he felt wronged him drown in it.
Christopher is a broken man and that scares me, because I don’t know how he’ll ever heal, but my inner voice screams to help him. Because I irrevocably love him.
“I haven’t been able to sleep,” I say, ignoring the heavy thoughts when I’ve made my way to the large oak tree just beyond the barn. The field is barren and recently harvested. In the distance, a sliver of silver stains the background, snow that’s yet to melt from the storm this past week. It’s cold and lonely and in the dead of winter, there’s not a soul out here on the edge of this Podunk town.
The bitter bite in the air has turned the tip of Christopher’s charming nose and his high cheekbones a shade of pale pink. Even his chiseled jaw holds a hue of rose. With a black wool coat and dark blue jeans, a hint of stubble on his face and freshly cut hair, he could pretend to be a CEO or businessman and I’d fall for it. Those baby blue eyes of his could fool the best of the world into believing whatever he said.
“You look beautiful, though,” he murmurs and eats up the small distance between us with quick strides. I swear I feel warmer just looking at him, even if he is feet away. “Even if you are tired,” he adds and then swallows thickly. The nervous energy pricking between us is almost palpable.
I nearly call him by name, telling him I can’t do this. Instead I rip my gaze from his, ignoring the stampeding in my chest to search along the tree line for anyone who could be watching. In this position out in the open, we’re exposed. Anyone and everyone could see us, if only they knew where to look or bothered to be here. But we’re all alone and why would anyone bother to look for us?
I’m of no consequence and my father will forever carry the moniker of serial killer for crimes I know Christopher has committed.
With that thought in my mind, I focus on the building behind Christopher. The run-down barn my father bought years ago is decrepit and in disarray. He didn’t keep up with it in the decades since I’ve left home, that much is obvious.
I tell myself the only reason I came is to forgive Christopher for pinning all those murders on my father. To acknowledge that he saved me and to thank him … To kiss him one more time. To end a business deal of sorts that we made in a cheap hotel room weeks ago when he told me I would beg for him. He wasn’t wrong, but there’s no need for such a deal to exist anymore.
The very thought makes my heart ache with longing. Maybe I should confess to him that I don’t know what I’ll become, but a part of me longs to be with him. That a small voice whispers wherever he would take me, I’d feel at home. Whatever I’d be beside him, I’d feel is right.
He clears his throat and my attention is brought back to him. To his handsome face and the obvious tension between us. It blisters as if we’re surrounded by fire, when in reality it’s the chill of winter that batters us.
“I don’t know how to start,” he admits and takes a heavy inhale.
Shoving my hands into my pockets, I clear my throat too and stare down at my feet. I’ve worn my best pair of heels even though I knew we were meeting at the old farm by my family house. I’d be lying to myself if I said the dress beneath my double-breasted trench coat wasn’t picked out just for him, along with the lacy lingerie.
I even chose the dark red shade because I know the color complements and suits my caramel skin. I wear it on every first date, and yet I chose to wear it this evening. As the sun sets, leaving us little light, and the cold surrounds us, daring me to expose the deep-V of my bra. As if I would.
Embarrassment rises inside of me. “Whatever you have to say,” I tell him, “just say it.”
There’s a pain that flashes across his face, and I have to admit, I feel it deep in the marrow of my bones as well.
It must mean something, I tell myself, when you can’t stand to say that final goodbye. He takes another step forward, and before I can deny him or even think twice, he leans forward, closing his eyes and I close mine too, my entire being relaxing from the gentle kiss. My coat rustles as I reach out to him, letting the cold hit my hands as I splay them against his chest, wishing we were anywhere else.
The kiss surprises me, as does my reaction to it. These last few nights I’ve dreamed of him, but it’s only this side I can accept. The other things … what he’s done and why he’s done them, they still scare me. They terrify me. The version of him now, lures me to sleep. The other half of him is what wakes me in the middle of the night with violent screams chasing my breath.
“This is for you.” Christopher’s words are whispered, his lips pressing against mine just slightly until he pulls back, making me lean forward and subconsciously I rise onto my tiptoes, needing more and unable to break the kiss.
He does end it, though, leaving me longing and my heart pounding in my chest. A fear slips into my blood, raging as my pulse quickens. There’s something here between us, some sense of pain that threatens to drown me if ever I didn’t have this man.
