by Ace Gray
“I know you didn’t.” I coolly crossed my arms and lifted my chin. Tears still puddled in the corner of my eyes. “You’ve been lying to me my entire life. You made me think I was safe and the world was good. I would have been different. I wouldn’t have come here…” I choked on the thought as much as I did the sob swelling up in my throat.
“If you’d just done as you were told—”
“No,” I spat, cutting off my dad. “Don’t even.”
“Filly Bean…” Uncle Horse tried to soothe me too.
“I thought it was a silly rule, some place you’d rather I didn’t see.” I stepped back from all of them. “Why? Why did you lie to me? Did you think I’d love you less?” I took a breath and stared them down in the barely-there light. “Did you think I wouldn’t see the good in you? I could have forgiven it all—the drugs, the murder, even the sex with each other,” I gagged, “if only it had come from you.”
“Who did it come from?” My dad’s voice was as dark as the shadow he’d retreated into. It was the voice of a cold-blooded killer.
“That’s all you care about right now?” I swallowed back bile.
“Filly Bean, it’s such a complicated story to tell…” My mom started.
“It started when we were eleven,” Uncle Horse added.
“Who told you these things?” My dad’s voice still had a roil and seethe that scared me.
“Filly,” Uncle Conrad started with a sigh. “I remember the moment I found out. Far more often then I should. Finding out what came before made me sick.” He was the one that stepped away from the small horseshoe of my family and set his big hands on my shoulders. “But then I looked deeper and saw what made up their hearts. Of anyone I know, you see beneath, Filly. You see everything.”
As he plied me with honesty, I thought again of Brye. Of how I’d seen him tonight. A sexy man who was more tempting than blank canvas and ice cream, who was sacrificing for me, who had protected me, who had felt like so much more. I had seen so much more than met the eye.
“I know. Even furious I knew. But I deserved to know what came before me. I deserved the chance to see what was deeper.” Why hadn’t they trusted me? “The way he told me almost broke me.” My words similarly crumbled.
“Who was it?” My dad tried to soften his voice, but I knew the sound and shape of true ruthlessness now.
I swallowed the jagged pill that was every emotion churning in my stomach. “It was Connor MacCowan.” I looked my dad dead in the eye when I said it.
“I’ll kill him. I should have killed him.” The way his words squeezed through gritted teeth, menacing and dark, I believed him.
And I couldn’t bring myself to protest. I wanted Connor dead. Not because of the things he’d said to me, or even because his foul hands had run across my body—though those things helped—but because of all he’d done to Brye.
Brye, my lost forever, Brye… The tears pricked at the corners of my eyes again.
“Cole,” my mom darted past me and pulled on my dad. “Not now, not like this.” She handled him, unafraid.
In a world full of killers and questions with no answers, my mom was still my mom. Her shoulders back, her warmth spilling out just because it had to. My dad was being overly protective. Horse and Conrad were playing peacemaker, taking their cues from my parents. They were the same. But that didn’t change that they had lied. And that it was me that had changed.
I cleared my throat and felt the family ice filter into my veins just before I spoke.
“I don’t care what you do to Connor, Dad, but his son is mine.”
“Call 911, I think he’s dead.” A nondescript voice was pulling me from myself and back into the faint pinks and gold of sunrise.
“It’s always the joggers that find the body,” another said. “What do you say to 911?”
I groaned and pressed up to sitting. The first thing I noticed was the flat pale of the day, the soundless way a day without Filly greeted me. But then the shrieks of the two women crouched nearby pierced through that deafening silence.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” I snapped. “Don’t call the cops.” God knew there were enough dirty ones on that payroll that I’d be dead in a matter of minutes. “I’ll take care of myself. I always have,” I added as an afterthought.
I patted around for my cell phone and flipped to the only number I could trust. At first, it rang and rang but at the last moment…
“Hello?” It wasn’t the voice I was expecting.
“Where’s Emmett?”
“I don’t want to know.”
“I need him.”
“I’ll help you.”
“I can’t trust you,” I snapped.
“But you know you can kill me.”
My stomach knotted. In my current state, I didn’t know if I could. But if Emmet even questioned me like he’d been doing...
“Fine, meet me at Hawthorne. One hour.”
The line went dead and I knew that was the only guarantee I’d get.
There were small bare footprints in the dirt of the far side of the track, headed toward the stable. Four sets followed and it made my heart ricochet off my chest.
I followed them into the stables until they disappeared then I leaned against the stall and slid down the wood. My head rolled back and I blew out a deep and heavy breath. She was gone, just like she was meant to be. I sat next to the last ghostly shadow of hers, grateful that her parents had been close after I’d pushed Filly’s impounded Charger into the lake.
“Good Christ you look terrible,” Deirdre said from the open doorway.
“It’s been a rough week or two.” I didn’t bother opening my eyes.
“I hear love is a battlefield.”
I smirked in spite of this shit storm. She reached her hand out and I took it, letting her pull me up to my feet.
“You really do look like hell.”
“I feel like it too.”
I glanced down and the amount of blood that spotted the white shirt I was wearing. It was nothing compared to the shredded destruction I was becoming inside. Where was she? Was she safe? Did she miss me? Could I see her again? Had I really done the right thing? The questions were spinning a lot like my head. The first aide that I needed was becoming something far more complex.
Deirdre and I walked side by side toward the bathrooms at the back of the track and my eyes scanned the stables where I’d sinned far too frequently. Did setting Filly free here erase any of the wrongdoing? Did it mop up any of the blood I’d spilled? I couldn’t stop myself from recalling each spatter, each murder as Deirdre held my blazer and I stripped off my shirt then tried to wash the rust color stains out.
I looked over to my odd companion and noticed how different she looked this morning. Something heavy sat on the line of her face. Her face that was pointed away from me, giving me privacy despite the times we’d been together.
“Why are you here?” I asked as I shook the water from my hands and leaned on the porcelain basin.
“I have a soft spot for lost little girls in love,” she answered with a sorrowful smirk.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I stood to my full height and puffed up my chest where my arms crossed it.
“She loves you.” Deirdre looked like she was going to reach out and slap me. “Filly loves you and maybe I finally decided that was worth fighting for.”
“But why?”
“Why did you?” she countered then turned away from me, effectively ending the conversation.
I watched her as I wrung out my shirt. I didn’t want to trust her motives, but here in this small tack room, she didn’t seem to be a predator. She didn’t seem to be hiding. She perched against a nearby saddle and tucked my jacket into her chest. She seemed smaller than I remembered.
She turned under my scrutiny and leveled her gaze at me. There was no wall behind her eyes, just an earnestness that I felt compelled to trust.
“What now?” she asked.
“I have
to find a way out of town. Get as far away from here as possible.” I dropped my gaze to my hands and snapped my shirt open. It wasn’t much better. “Maybe Canada.” I started to look around for an alternate.
I skipped down the stairs and out into the straw walkway. I felt Deirdre’s rage follow me down the stairs before I heard her stomp after me.
“You’re not going to go to her?” she shrieked.
I shot her a deathly glare over top of the chest I started digging in. “No,” I said sharply.
“Why in the fuck not?” she shrieked as she lunged at me. She shoved at my chest and I wheeled back. “Why in the hell wouldn’t you?”
I didn’t even acknowledge her, I just kept digging for a shirt that didn’t draw the attention of bloodstained tie-dye. She didn’t understand. She was selfish just like me, well like I’d been.
“Come the fuck on, Brye. She loves you, you love her.”
“That’s not all that matters,” I snapped as I found a dusty black t-shirt and shook it before pulling it over my head. It was a little too tight, but I swung my arms and flexed to stretch it out.
“It’s the only thing that matters,” she spat as she shoved my jacket against my chest and started to walk out.
“Deirdre, stop,” I called out. “Deirdre.” I ran after her and slid in the loose dirt as I got in front of her. “Stop. I have my reasons, you know I do.”
“What are they?” She crossed her arms and looked down her nose at me.
“Death is my shadow, my constant companion and I won’t make her live in the dark. She deserves better than that.” I took my jacket and shoved it in a trash can a little harder than necessary. “She deserves better than me.”
“And?” She didn’t flinch.
“You know what kind of hell I’m about to face. What will rain down on me.”
Everything about Deirdre’s demeanor made the questions run rampant through my head again. Was she my light in the dark? Could she face the storm? I’d decided no for her. I’d decided no because she was worth so much more.
“And?”
“Look, Deirdre, I don’t even know where she is.” I sighed and started to walk backward out of the barn. “Are you going to help me or not?”
She stayed put, arms crossed, chin high. I rolled my eyes and turned around, wondering why I’d ever let myself think she could be helpful.
“I do,” she called after me and I froze. “I know where she is.”
My heart went as still as the rest of me.
“I went to the club last night to help her. She asked me once before and I laughed in her face. I wasn’t going to do it again.”
“You were going to help her leave?” Even with Filly gone, anger swelled up inside me.
“I saw your father’s eyes...” She trailed off, knowing that was enough of an explanation. “I wasn’t going to let her die.”
“Why?” I asked, disbelieving.
“I have my reasons.”
“And what happened? What stopped you?” I searched her face, her eyes, her body for any hint that she was screwing with me.
“You,” she said simply. “You love her. And I just got this feeling you were going to beat me to the punch.”
“So...?”
“So, I waited out front in a cab. I watched her leave.”
She should have sucker punched me. It would have felt better. And I probably would have been able to keep breathing.
“You...” I couldn’t get the words out.
“Followed her,” she finished.
My mouth went dry and my hands hurt from how tight they were balled at my side. Filly was within reach. I could have her back. God did I want her. My body already seemed to be moving toward her. It was my brain that kept reminding me of all the reasons this was bad. And wrong. And cruel.
And the only thing I really wanted.
I peered into the darkness just beyond the hotel and I swore I saw someone there, tall and lanky like a cat. My family scuttled me in so fast that I didn’t get to look a second time. I let out a deep breath, but it wasn’t relief, it was exhaustion. Exasperation even.
They made me feel like a child and I just wasn’t anymore. I’d never meant to grow up, never planned on it anyways. This trip was supposed to be about spreading wings, but now, with them wide open and surviving a little damage, they felt unfurled but clipped. I listened to them speak to the desk clerk, my mom and Conrad all golden charm despite the clerk’s bubble gum smacking apathy. Their words turned into a monotonous whomp in the background. People seemed to move in slow motion as my whole world started to suck back into the size of a pin drop.
My stomach roiled.
“Come on, Filly Bean.” My dad grabbed my shoulder and pulled me toward the elevator.
“Stop.” I ducked out from under his arm and rolled away. “And don’t call me Filly Bean.”
“Excuse me?” My dad stepped back and looked at me like I was a puzzle he’d put together once but couldn’t quite solve now.
“I’m not a kid.”
“You’ll always be my kid.”
I rolled my eyes and shoved my hands on my hips as I planted myself in the lobby.
“Look, Filly, I know this has been hard but…”
“You don’t know anything,” I snapped.
“I know that we love the Kardashians because family drama is juicer than a T-bone, but may I suggest we have this discussion somewhere a bit more private.” Uncle Conrad arched his eyebrow and made a sweeping gesture toward the open elevator.
I squared my shoulders and walked beside my dad, cool, calm and collected. He seemed to stomp the slightest bit.
“Sweetheart, we’ve all been here—”
“I know.” I turned toward my mom as I cut her off. “They told me in such exquisite detail.”
My mom closed her eyes and tilted her head back, swallowing a huge lump in her throat. My dad couldn’t look at me. I had to suck in a deep breath through my nose, let it fill my ribs and swell my insides before I pushed all the toxic crap back out.
When the elevator dinged, I felt it in my teeth.
I sucked in another deep breath as I followed my parents dutifully out of the elevator even though I had to bite my cheek as I did. When the door at the end of the hallway beep-beeped and flashed green, we filed in. I hung back and leaned against the door as it closed, trying to wade through the crushing wave of emotion that seemed to keep coming. Over and over and over again.
“You and me,” Uncle Horse murmured from nearby.
I opened my eyes to find him watching me as he leaned up against the wall right next to me. His big feet were perpendicular to mine, dwarfing the pointy toes of my stilettos. He had always been the one I ran to. The one that seemed to feel as much as I did and often all at once. His barely-there serene smile eased the storm inside me.
He jerked his chin and I nodded. I followed him through the perfect suite, trying not to think of how the decadently carved wood furnishings reminded me of a bedroom that now seemed a million miles away and man that had slipped through my fingers. Only the click of a bedroom door shutting behind me snapped me out of it.
“Let me have it.” He flexed his fingers then as he sagged onto the dresser against the bedroom wall.
“I don’t want to let you have it. I don’t want to let anyone have it.”
“So why are you giving them a hard time?”
“It wasn’t easy there.” I swallowed as I thought back to the basement, the blood, the dinner party.
“What did they do?”
“You don’t wanna know,” I said with a shrug.
“You’d be surprised.” Horse smiled when I looked up and there was a glint of mischief in his eyes. I recognized it from the once or twice I’d been okay with the dirtier side of that life.
“How’d you make it through?”
“I don’t even know where to start.” I walked past him and plopped onto the bed, pulling the comforter up and over my shoulders.
�
�You can start by telling me about the boy.” He only shifted on the dresser to face me rather than sit sideways.
There was a dull ache in my chest at the mere suggestion of Brye. It wasn’t the dagger I expected, more like a spoon pressing its dull edge against the exposed muscle of my heart.
“What makes you think there’s a boy?”
“Because I know that look. It’s the look you get when someone else changes what’s inside of you.”
I sighed. He was right, just like always. He saw the truth written on my heart just like I saw the gradient of every sun-kissed shadow on the concrete.
“On the outside, he looks like a monster,” I started then felt the words stall out in my throat.
My uncle came to sit next to me.
“But?”
“But on the inside, I think he’s an artist. I think he paints with the same brush strokes as me.” I smiled when I thought about the portrait he’d painted of me with his haphazard strokes and distorted proportions.
“That’s how you made it out.” He didn’t question, he was sure. “Did he treat you right?”
“What’s the definition of right? It wasn’t hearts and flowers if that’s what you’re asking.” I rolled my eyes.
“You know that’s what you deserve, right?”
“Who’s to say what I deserve? What do any of us…?”
He sighed then let the sound hang in the thick silence between us.
“It’s not what you think,” he said softly.
“Please tell me how money laundering, murder, and mayhem is anything but.”
He closed his eyes and his whole face contorted.
“Every book starts with a single sentence. It’s a simple combination of letters, nothing fancy, no indication of where it’ll end up, but it’s a start.”
“Fucking my mom is nothing fancy?”
“Watch your mouth.” His tone made goosebumps crawl up my neck. “Your mom made me a better man. Your dad too.”
“You still lied.”
“You deserved the fairy tale.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“That people can change? That they can meet someone that makes them want to be a better version of themselves? That even horror stories have happy endings if you read far enough?” He narrowed his gaze. “I should think so.”
