by CoraLee June
Once at the threshold, I lowered my voice. “Can you discreetly look into Lex Lewis? Kai’s brother. Violet and him might have been seeing each other. I’m not for sure, but…”
Detective Rodriguez pulled out a notepad and wrote down my request. I felt a multitude of emotions for revealing my suspicions. I knew it was the right thing to do, but it felt wrong, too. “I’m familiar with Lex. He’s been on my radar for quite some time now. I’ll look into it. People can do insane things when they’re jealous, Breeze. Be careful. We will keep you updated.”
I closed the door behind the detectives and took a moment to center myself before going back to Chase. Violet was pregnant and scheduled an abortion, and she never even mentioned it to me. I pushed down the feeling that I didn’t really know her after all and walked back to the living room to console her mourning twin.
Chase was standing by the window, watching the water roll up onto the sand and then retreat back into the ocean. I stood next to him, the beautiful view in front of us perverted by the detectives’ words. The images of Vi’s mangled body that I had tried so hard to repress came flooding back. The thought of a tiny fetus being among the carnage broke me.
Tears fell freely from my eyes. I could see the tears also streaming down Chase’s anguished face reflected in the window. I turned into him and buried my face in his shoulder. Chase reciprocated, wrapping his arms around me. His body heaved against mine. I don’t know how long we stood there holding each other and crying, but when my eyes burned and had no more tears to give, I broke our embrace. Neither of us spoke. We didn’t have to.
Day had given way to night long ago. I had no idea what time it was, but my body was aching for sleep. I took Chase by the hand and led him up the stairs to his bedroom.
Chase’s room looked different. Beer cans littered the floor. His clothes and photos of Violet were scattered aimlessly around the room. His navy bedding was twisted and tangled on his mattress, and there was a hole punched through the drywall. The rest of the house looked serene and peaceful. But here? Here was where Chase fell apart.
I helped him out of his T-shirt and shorts, settling him into the queen-size bed. I slid into the other side, taking his head on my lap. I ran my fingers through his hair in slow, gentle strokes and watched as he breathed in and out. Each breath was clogged with emotion.
“I would have been an uncle,” Chase finally spoke. “I would have been a good uncle.” My heart broke at his words. His heartbreak. More tears streamed from his bloodshot eyes, and I wiped them away with my palm.
“Tell me what I can do,” I pleaded. I just wanted to help him.
Chase never answered me. We both knew the truth. There was nothing we could do. There were no words or acts that could bring Violet back. Nothing could make the gruesome reality of her death disappear. So I just held him. I stroked his hair. I watched him cry until he fell asleep.
And then I allowed myself to completely fall apart.
Hours passed. I tucked Chase into bed and watched the steady rise and fall of his chest, only pausing to call my mom and let her know I was staying here for the night. It wasn’t until three a.m. that I decided to get up. My heart knew where I needed to go far before my brain did. I slid on my shoes, grabbed my keys, and after kissing Chase on the cheek, slipped outside.
My headlights illuminated the sunbaked road as I drove. My eyes felt heavy and swollen. The wind whipped at my cheeks as my tangled hair teased my neck. I was dizzy with exhaustion but fueled by a purpose bigger than myself.
When I parked the Jeep outside Kai’s converted bus, I sat there for a minute in the eerie dark, listening to the crashing waves in the distance and the whirring of crickets. Clenching the steering wheel, I worked up the courage to wake Kai up in the middle of the night to ask him my questions. I had to know. I couldn’t rest until I did.
My feet carried me to his front door, and before I knew it, I was knocking with a curled fist. Fumbling and groans from inside made my nerves go haywire. And the exact moment Kai opened his door, I realized that this was a bad, bad idea. “Breeze?” he said while rubbing his eyes. Kai was shirtless and wearing a pair of gray sweatpants that hung low on his hips. His dark hair was a mess, and he rippled with tension when our eyes met. “What are you doing here?”
“Did you know?” My voice was hoarse. In the distance, thunder boomed. Seemed fitting a storm would hit. It was nothing compared to the hurricane in my chest. Violet and I used to love watching the dark clouds roll in.
“Did I know what?”
“Did you know she was pregnant?” I asked as fat drops of water hit the top of my head and slid down my cheek. I clutched my middle as more wind whipped around me, and Kai took a step closer.
“Let’s go inside, Breeze.”
I kept my feet solid, refusing to budge as lightning struck. More thunder boomed and echoed around us. The heavens opened up, and a torrential downpour enveloped me. I didn’t care. Kai grabbed my arm, but I shrugged him off.
“Did you know?” I asked again, shouting over the loud rain and angry sky. “Did you know she was pregnant?”
Kai reached for me again, and I took another step back. And another. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t be here. Stalking closer, he then grabbed me by the waist and dragged me inside. I didn’t fight him anymore.
My clothes were sopping wet and dripping on his floors. I stared helplessly at the puddle growing at my feet while he locked the door and searched for a towel.
“Fuck, Breeze. You’re going to get sick.” He handed me a towel, then disappeared inside his bedroom, reappearing a few minutes later holding a shirt. “Put this on,” he then demanded while holding it out to me. I stared at it while clutching the beach towel around me.
“Did you know?” I asked again. Thunder cracked like an echo to my words outside. “Did you?” Tears spilled from my eyes.
Kai’s lips thinned into a fine line, and he ripped the towel from my shivering body. His hands angrily yanked at the waistband of my shorts, tearing them down my slick thighs and completely off. Cool air hit my skin as he reached for the hem of my shirt and pulled it over my head.
A numb sort of awareness settled over me. My freezing skin pebbled. My nipples were cutting through my wet bra. “Get changed, and we can talk,” he whispered while staring at me with a mixture of shame and heat.
“Turn around,” I told him. The world stopped for the briefest of moments as indecision stunted his movements. I expected him to give me his back so I could change, but instead, Kai wrapped his arms around me like a hug. I shivered at the contact. The hard planes of his body met my soft skin, and he quickly unclasped my bra. The wet fabric fell at our feet, and my bare breasts brushed against his warm chest. I briefly nuzzled into his neck as water from my soaking wet hair dripped down my back. How could he feel so safe? So comforting? He trailed his fingers down my spine, and my breath hitched.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
When he pulled away, Kai immediately turned around, not sparing me a single glance. I put his shirt on in silence, afraid to break the spell. “I knew,” Kai answered with his back to me. I bit my fist at his words, swallowing back a sob.
“Did you ask her to terminate the pregnancy, then?” I asked, my voice shrill.
“No,” Kai began before turning to face me. “I wanted to keep the baby. But it wasn’t my decision to make.”
I scoffed. “That baby was just as much yours as it was Violet’s.”
Kai’s face fell. “That’s the thing, Breeze. It wasn’t.”
“What?” I asked incredulously.
Kai scrubbed his hands down his face. “It wasn’t mine.”
Dear Diary,
Two thin lines have the power to change everything. Life is such a fragile thing, don’t you think? He’s going to be so angry with me. We were careful, except when we weren’t. Except when we frantically fucked like our lives depended on it. How can something so precious ruin everything?
XOXO,
<
br /> Violet
“How? Who? Was it Lex?” I asked while stumbling over to the leather couch. I needed to sit down. It was one thing to grieve your best friend. It was another thing entirely to learn that you never really knew the girl you were grieving.
“I was going to break up with her,” Kai explained before sitting beside me. He rested his forearms on his thighs and was hunched over, deep in thought. “A week before her birthday. I was tired of the fucking and fighting. She had been off, and I figured that she was feeling it too. We’d run our course. I didn’t love Violet Jones. In fact, I had started to develop feelings for someone else. It didn’t feel right anymore.”
The thought of Kai having feelings for someone else made an unsettled feeling curdle within me. Violet had mentioned that she and Kai had tried breaking up a couple of times. It just never stuck. “So, what happened?”
“I found the pregnancy test. She tried to deny it, but I finally got it out of her.” I swallowed and nodded, wordlessly encouraging him to continue. “At first, I was freaking the fuck out, yeah. But then I got excited. I even…” Kai paused, then stood up. I watched his back as he walked into his bedroom, and when he came back out, he was clutching a onesie with surfboards all over it—my heart swelled. He didn’t keep the box of Violet’s belongings, but he kept that.
“Oh, Kai,” I whispered before placing my hand over my mouth. He set the baby clothes down with care on the counter before coming back to sit by me.
“I’m a man. A man that takes care of his obligations. I wanted to marry her, make things work good and proper for my kid. But she started to freak out. She said she couldn’t handle it. I thought maybe she needed some time to process it all,” he explained. “It’s not like we planned this. I always—always—wore a condom. We were very careful. And in the end, it wasn’t like we were...together...that much.”
“It’s so crazy because I didn’t know any of this was even happening,” I whispered. I tried to think back on the week leading up to the party. She didn’t seem off at all. She smiled and joked. It was like nothing was wrong. But Violet knew she was pregnant?
“Right before her party, we got into a huge fight. I caught her drinking, and I told her it was bad for the baby. She got pissed. She started screaming at me that I knew nothing. Said she was going to ‘take care of it.’”
I shook my head. Kai and Violet were bickering at the party, but it didn’t seem that bad. I thought that Kai just wanted to leave.
“When I asked her what that meant, she told me she made an appointment at the clinic for an abortion. She said it didn’t matter what I wanted because the baby wasn’t mine. We’d fought a few times about her disappearing. She had been acting weird with Lex around town. It was like the second she said I wasn’t the father, everything clicked into place. I was shocked but also…”
Kai wrapped his hands around his neck and curled his body in shame. I waited patiently for him to continue. “I was also relieved,” he admitted.
That was brutal. I couldn’t imagine the emotional whiplash he endured. “So why were you there then? Why stay? Why didn’t you tell us?”
“It wasn’t my story to tell. And I already had the cops breathing down my neck. Think, Breeze. This looks really bad. If I were to tell them that my girlfriend admitted to me she was pregnant with another dude’s baby the night she was murdered, the cops would have locked me up.”
I pinched my lips together, and Chase’s earlier words echoed in my mind.
Motive.
Kai continued. “I don’t know. We said stupid shit to hurt one another all the time. I guess I was thinking if I could get her away from the party, we could talk it out and I could help her somehow. Even if the baby wasn’t mine, I knew she was struggling. I might have not loved her, but I was worried. And then…”
“Then what?”
“Then the fight broke out. Then the cops showed up, and I realized I wanted—no, needed—a break from this train wreck. And then the girl I’d been really falling for this entire time needed a ride home…”
I stiffened at his words, then quickly stood up. “What?” I asked. Certainly, he didn’t just say what I thought he did. Kai chewed on his lip before standing up. We were toe to toe, our breath mixing. My chest heaved as I waited for him to explain himself.
“I told you I was a monster,” Kai said before reaching out to tenderly stroke my cheek. I quivered, too overwhelmed with it all. “It’s not because I did anything wrong. But because I’m not as sad as I’m supposed to be. I’m not the grieving boyfriend. While my cheating girlfriend was dying, I was lying in bed and feeling hopeful about my future. I was feeling free.”
“You’re not a monster, Kai. I couldn’t imagine…” It was all so much.
“Violet Jones was like a scream. Loud. Piercing. You couldn't help but hear her. But you know what, Breeze? I started to like this whisper of a girl. Calm. She flows like the air. Understated but powerful. Potent. Precious. She’s beautiful. And it’s so wrong. The night Violet died, I was driving her home. The night I found out the baby wasn’t mine, I was thankful. I was thanking whatever God up there was listening, because it meant I had another chance at this.”
Kai leaned forward, his lips dancing along the shell of my ear for a low promise. “I didn’t plan on liking you, and when you’re ready, I’ll tell you how it happened—how I started to fall for the girl that hid in the shadows instead of the girl that enjoyed being the life of the party. I didn’t plan for our world to implode before I got the chance to shoot my shot. But it did. And you’re here. And if I were a good man, I’d push you away.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m the sort of man that doesn’t cry at his girlfriend’s funeral, Breeze.”
I drove back to Chase’s before he woke up. I didn’t give Kai a response. We just sat there, waiting out the storm while our minds processed it all.
And when I left, he wordlessly kissed me on the cheek as the sun rose over the ocean, his sad eyes looking me over with regret and hope. I didn’t know how to feel about this. About any of this. I needed time to process it all. I was looking forward to the day, though. I was scheduled for my first shift back at the surf shop after school. I hoped some normalcy would help me find my footing and would give me time to settle for a bit.
Chase was still asleep when I walked through the front door of his large, empty house. I was still wearing Kai’s T-shirt, and only his shirt. It was long enough that my soaked shorts forgotten in a pile on Kai’s floor didn’t even matter for just the drive back. Instead of going back to Chase’s room, I went to Violet’s. I didn’t want him asking questions about where I was and why I wasn’t wearing any shorts. I would tell him what I found out, but I needed to process it first before I would be ready to handle Chase’s reaction.
I opened the door to Violet’s room, turned on the light, and took a step in. Chills broke out across my skin the moment my feet landed on the plush carpet. When her body was first discovered, the police did a search for her cell phone, since it wasn’t on her in the woods. They took a few things for the investigation, but for the most part, the room was completely preserved, like a shrine to Violet’s memory. Had Chase come in here? I couldn’t help but feel like there were secrets hidden in every corner, every crevice.
I walked over to the bed and ran my fingers over her pretty purple comforter. I had sat there on her birthday, hours before the party while she put on makeup and curled her hair. I had spent so much time in this room over the years. Having tea parties, putting on fashion shows, talking about cute boys, and planning for our futures. I thought that I had known everything about her.
I went to Violet’s closet to find something to throw on. All of her clothes were hanging neatly in her oversized closet. Violet was slightly smaller than I was, but I knew she had a few things that fit me perfectly because I used to steal them all the time.
I started opening the drawers in the built-in dresser and rummaging through them. I was looking f
or a specific pair of shorts that I could wear to school and not be uncomfortable by the too-tight waistband. I was standing on my tip toes, combing through the very top drawer. I couldn’t see over the edge, so I was trying to find the shorts based on feel alone.
I was just about to give up and settle for something when my hand brushed over something hard. I closed my fingers around it and lifted it out of the drawer. It was a book wrapped in leather. I opened it to discover that it wasn’t a book, but a journal. A diary. Violet’s diary.
Before I even had a chance to read the first page, a picture dropped out. I bent down to pick it up and was met with a sonogram photo. It had Violet’s name in the corner and 7W5D printed directly under it. I ran my fingers over the photo. I couldn’t really make anything out. It was a black and white blob. But I knew there was a baby in there. I knew there was life pulsing on the faint image.
“Oh Violet, what did you do?” I whispered to myself before gently putting the photo back in the pages of her journal. I didn’t even know she kept a diary, she hated writing. Anytime we had papers due at school, she paid someone to write them for her. I wanted to scan the pages and search for information. Maybe she wrote about who she was sleeping with? Maybe it confirmed everything.
“Breeze?” I heard Chase’s sleepy voice call from the other room. I quickly found a pair of shorts and put them on before grabbing a hair tie off the top of her dresser and throwing my hair up.
“In here,” I called back before shoving the journal in my purse. After last night, I wasn’t sure if Chase was able to handle any more revelations.
The doorknob jiggled, and soon a sleepy Chase waltzed through the room. I took in the dark circles under his eyes and his wrinkled shirt. His light brown hair was a mess as he looked around. “What are you doing in here?” he asked.
