Red-Blooded Heart

by V. J. Chambers

  “What the hell are you doing in there?” Graham calls, as if reading my mind. His voice is a little slurred, and I know that this isn’t his first beer. He sounds a little soused. Maybe he’s been drinking all afternoon.

  “Washing up, sweetie,” she sings back, too cheery, like she belongs in some Disney movie with some fucking singing mice.

  “Leave it,” he says. “Come sit with me.”

  She hesitates, but then she pulls one last dish out of the sink, rinses it quickly, and says, “Sure thing.” She sets the dish in the drainer and heads into the living room.

  He growls and grabs her around the waist. He pulls her down onto the couch.

  They’re kissing.

  I want to look away, but I can’t. They’re eating each other’s faces, and I want to throw up.

  He pushes her back onto the couch and then he’s on top of her, and she’s wrapping her legs around his hips, and I think I’m going to lose it, but I don’t move. I’m frozen here in the crawlspace, watching.

  He pulls away. “What?” he says, annoyed.

  She sits up, looking confused. “Baby?”

  “Why are you being like that?”

  “Like what?” There’s a frightened look in her eyes, like the way she looked when she came out of the woods and the coywolves were howling and it hurts my heart.

  Bile is rising in my throat, and my stomach is churning.

  “You’re not kissing me back,” he says.

  Wasn’t she? Sure as fuck looked like she was to me, asshole. What do you want from her, anyway? I hate Graham Sullivan with the fire of a thousand suns.

  She swallows and she leans in to kiss him again.

  He lets her for a few moments and then he puts his hand on her chest and shoves her away. “Oh, come on, you think you’re fooling me? You don’t want to make out. That’s why you were in the kitchen, pretending to wash the dishes for two fucking hours.”

  He’s exaggerating. It was maybe twenty minutes tops.

  She scratches the back of her neck, nervous, not meeting his eyes. “Look, sweetheart, you’ve had a lot to drink—”

  “No, I fucking haven’t,” he says, and then he slaps her.

  The sound of his open hand against her cheek echoes through the small house, and I’m dumbfounded.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  -juniper-

  Graham requires a soft touch. He needs to be mollified constantly, and he only responds to constant praise. He’s like a three-year-old that way. Not that I have a lot of experience with three-year-olds, but from what I gather, he’s very much like a toddler. When he doesn’t get his way, he throws tantrums and hits people. He’s worse when he’s drunk.

  I’m not always able to keep him from getting violent, but a lot of times I am. I agree with everything he says, and I tell him that’s he’s really smart or really hot or really sexy.

  Most people would not respond to the way that I speak to him. They’d think they were being patronized, which would be the truth, but Graham eats it up. He loves the way that I soothe him.

  He probably has mommy issues or something. I’ve never asked. Maybe his mother never loved him, and maybe he wants to be babied. Whatever. I do my best.

  But when he’s drunk, it’s harder, because he loses all grip on reality.

  And there’s something inside Graham that’s just plain mean. I think he likes hurting other people. I think he likes hurting me. When he’s drunk, sometimes there’s nothing I can do to keep him from going off on me.

  He started drinking earlier that afternoon. He made some comment about how there was nothing to do out here in the middle of nowhere and that we might as well get shit-faced.

  I don’t usually let him get too drunk.

  But I couldn’t stop him this time. He was dead set on it, and he didn’t have any interest in listening to anything that I say. When we’re out in public, around other people, I can be more subtle about it, and I can keep him from drinking too much, but none of my typical tricks work now.

  I’ll say things like, “Oh, no, he’s not having another beer, because he’s driving, and he’s so, so responsible that way. It’s one of the things I respect so much about him.” And then give him an adoring look full of steam. He responds to that kind of not-so-subtle manipulation, but it works better when there are other people around for him to feel superior to. Out here, there’s no one, and so he has just been drinking and drinking and drinking.

  I’ve known for a few hours now that he might start wailing on me soon.

  If he starts hitting me, I only have one strategy to deal with it—run.

  So, the minute he slaps my face, I leap up, hand to my cheek. I don’t talk to him when he’s starting to hit me. Anything that I say makes it worse. If I plead with him, he seems to enjoy my pain. If I taunt him, he gets angrier. If I apologize, he feels vindicated.

  He gets up off the couch and grabs at me.

  I’m trying to get my coat, which was hung up on the pegs on the wall across from the couch, but has fallen down to pool on the floor. I bend down to snatch it up.

  But his hand closes over my arm and he tugs me over to him.

  I wriggle out of his grasp.

  He punches me. His fist slams into my stomach.

  I double over, gasping. The pain is bright and hot. But I need to get moving, so I force myself to move through the pain. Gritting my teeth, I pick up my coat and I back away from him.

  He lumbers after me, but he’s drunk and clumsy.

  I open the door and tumble outside. I shrug into my coat, and I take off across the yard towards the woods.

  “Juniper!” Graham yells after me. “Juniper, get back here!”

  I look over my shoulder. He’s leaning on the door, apparently too drunk to let go and keep his balance. Good.

  Because it’s different out here in the country than in the city. In the city, all I had to do was get out of the apartment, get onto the sidewalk, and we were in public, and he had to behave. But out here, there is no one to pass judgment on him.

  “Juniper!” roars Graham.

  I keep running, into the woods.

  Once in the darkness, I stop and look back at the house.

  Graham yells my name one more time and then shuts the door and goes back inside.

  I sit down on the ground and do my best to catch my breath.

  Graham and I never talk about the fact that he hits me sometimes. Once, he tried to bring it up, to apologize, and I changed the subject. He never tried to apologize again.

  I don’t want his apologies. I know they don’t mean anything.

  After a while, it’s cold on the ground, so I stand up. My breath is coming out in puffy clouds. I put on my gloves and pull up my hood. I know that if I walk through the woods in this direction, I’ll eventually come to Deke’s house. I imagine going there and knocking on his door and telling him that my boyfriend is a monster and that I need somewhere to stay for the night.

  I wonder how Deke would react.

  Deke seems like the kind of guy who wouldn’t take well to a guy beating up a woman. For some reason, it’s sexy to think of him protecting me.

  Not that I need protection.

  No, what I need is Graham. He’s here for a reason.

  I stay in the woods for a while, until I’m pretty sure that Graham has passed out, and then I start back for the house.

  But as I’m walking, I see a figure in the woods.

  I freeze.

  It’s a man, but he’s not coming from the direction of my house, he’s coming from the direction of Deke’s place.

  Wait. Is it Deke?

  “Juniper?” calls his deep voice in the darkness. “Is that you?”

  “Deke,” I say. “Uh, hi.”

  “What are you doing out here in the cold?” he says.

  “I could ask you the same question.”

  “Just walking,” he says.

  “When you walk, do you always walk to my place?”

  He
shrugs. “You sure you weren’t walking to my place?”

  “No,” I say, annoyed. But not at him, at myself. I must have been subconsciously heading for his place or something, although I know better.

  “You lost?” he smirks.

  “No!” I say.

  Something in his voice changes. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I protest. I don’t like how concerned he suddenly sounds. “Look, I should tell you that I’m back with my ex from the city.”

  He stops short.

  “I brought him with me,” I say. “We’re living in the house together. So, you know, whatever happened with us before, it can’t happen again, all right?”

  “I see,” he says slowly.

  “I have to go,” I say, and I go around him and take off into the woods. I need to get home.

  * * *

  -deke-

  I watch Juniper go, but I don’t go after her, because I know Graham is asleep and that she’s safe for now. I wonder if she’s telling me the truth. Did she break up with Graham before she came up here? When she kissed me, was she really free?

  But I don’t suppose a person can really be free from a guy like Graham, no matter what.

  I’ve been too hard on her. I blamed her, but she was in a relationship with an abusive asshole, and she can’t be held responsible for the way she’s acting.

  She’s a victim.

  He’s a jerk who has been manipulating her and forcing her to do things that she doesn’t even want to do. She got away from him out here in the wilderness, but then she went back to the city for Thanksgiving and he got his hooks back into her.

  I know about guys like this, actually. I’ve seen it first hand. They do their work first by tearing down a woman’s opinion of herself. They tell she’s stupid and question all her decisions. They talk down all her accomplishments. They do that for a long, long time before they ever hit her, so that when they do she’ll be a shell of herself, and she won’t have the will to fight back.

  Juniper is in a bad situation.

  I could tell her that I know, but that would mean that she’d know that I was spying on her, and I don’t think she’d take that too well.

  Even if I did try to confront her about this, chances are she wouldn’t kick Graham to the curb. She’s in deep with this guy. He has power over her. She’ll probably do whatever it is that he tells her to do and never ask questions.

  So, I know that I need to back off. I need to regroup and come up with some other kind of strategy. I’ll keep my eye on her, of course. If she’s in danger, I’ll need to intervene.

  The best I can hope for is that this guy will hate it out here and decide to go home early. This doesn’t seem like the place for him. He wants his cell phone service, after all.

  I’m not saying I’m the greatest guy on earth. I have my faults, and maybe it’s despicable that I’m spying on her and all. But I’m nowhere near as bad as this Graham guy.

  And hell, it’s a good thing that I was keeping my eye on Juniper, because otherwise, I never would have seen what happened, and then no one would be there to protect Juniper. She’s lucky to have me looking after her.

  She needs all the help she can get.

  * * *

  -juniper-

  Graham is sprawled out on the couch. He didn’t bother to get the bed out, or maybe he was too drunk to even be capable of getting it out. I slide it out from its hiding place and pull back the covers. I climb in and lie on my back.

  I’m afraid.

  For the first time since I started this whole thing, I’m doubting my ability to pull it all off. Graham is such a wild card. I thought I had him under control, but I really don’t. What if Graham loses it? What if he gets really angry and hurts me really bad? He could slam my head against the wall and I could get brain damage or a concussion. He could punch my face and split my skin and I could get an infection. He could kill me.

  Maybe not right out, but he could do it by neglecting my wounds or by forcing me not to go anywhere to get them tended because he doesn’t want anyone to know what he did.

  I’m playing a very dangerous game here.

  I decide, covers tight under my chin, that I am going to move up this timeline. Tomorrow, we’ll go to say hello to our neighbors, and I’ll find Henry Watson, and then this can all get going. With any luck, it’ll be done in a matter of days.

  After all, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be a problem to get Graham drunk.

  * * *

  -deke-

  Henry Watson is at my place. He’s driven his truck into my driveway and parked it right behind my truck, blocking it in, as if he thinks that I would run from him.

  The guy rubs me the wrong way, but that doesn’t mean that I’m afraid of him. Being afraid of Henry is laughable.

  “So nice to see you,” I say to him. “Been a while.” Even though it hasn’t been that long at all. I delivered his monthly fuel supply to him only three or four days ago. I’m getting extorted to all hell in this little deal. I wish he hadn’t seen me with Darius’s car. I wish like hell he hadn’t seen that, but he did, and there is nothing that I can do about it.

  “Yes, it has,” says Henry, rubbing his hands together. “I’ve been thinking a lot recently about that car I saw you hauling out of here.”

  “Oh, have you.” I say it flatly, so it’s not a question. I can tell where this is going. This is about to get worse.

  “I keep remembering more and more details,” says Henry. “And then, the other day, the police did come by, like you said, and they were asking me the most interesting questions.”

  I should never have even gone to Henry in the first place. I was overly paranoid. What did he really see? Me towing out a car? Hell, I could have made up some excuse for that. He’d never have connected it to the police questions about Darius if I hadn’t spelled it the fuck out for him. This is really my own fault. I caused this problem.

  “It took them that long to come and see you?” I say.

  He spread his hands. “I guess it’s not pressing business for them. But I bet it would be if I went and discussed everything I know with them. I bet they’d be pounding down your door.”

  I fold my arms over my chest. “Okay, Henry, what do you want? Let’s just cut to the chase here.”

  “Well, I guess I was thinking that if you’re out there hunting and you happen to nab yourself a little something, it might be awful nice of you to share.”

  “So, I’m bringing your fuel and I’m feeding you. Soon, you gonna be up here asking me to wipe your ass?”

  He gives me a disgusted look. “You don’t have to be crude.”

  I’d like to kill him.

  Really, I would. Why did I decide not to kill him again? Was it a moral high ground thing, because I’m thinking I can talk myself out of that if I try pretty hard.

  “Do we have an agreement?” he says.

  “You betcha,” I say, giving him a perfunctory smile.

  “What’d you do with that detective, anyway?” says Henry.

  “I don’t know anything about any detective,” I say.

  “Sure, you don’t,” he says, nodding knowingly. “We all have secrets out here. I’m counting on you to want to protect yours as much as I want to protect mine.”

  Do I care about his secrets? No, I don’t. I want his secrets to die with him.

  As he drives off, I think of ways that I could kill him. I could make it look like a hunting accident. I could make it look like suicide. I could burn down his trailer and make it look like an accident.

  Well, maybe. It’s really hard to make arson look like an accident. I might be able to do it, but it would be easier if he had a gas stove or something. I’d have to go scope out his place, and then—

  But I cut myself off, because I know that Henry’s not the person I really want to kill.

  Graham is.

  There might be other ways to get Juniper free of that bastard, but killing him is the cleanest and easie
st. She might be sad for a while, but she’ll be better off.

  And there is no moral high ground to worry about with a man like that. He doesn’t deserve to live.

  Yeah, okay, it’s decided.

  Henry lives.

  Graham dies.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  -deke-

  I pull into the driveway at Juniper’s place, and I’m gratified to see that Graham is actually out of the house. I figured I’d have to awkwardly shove my way in there to get my intro, and Juniper’s place is a tight fit for three people. But he’s standing in the middle of a pile of tree branches, hunched into his coat, glaring at them.

  I don’t know what the hell he’s up to out here, and I don’t care.

  I jump out of my truck and plaster a big fucking smile on my face and then I cross the lawn to him, waving. “Hey! You must be Juniper’s boyfriend!”

  Graham has seen me pull up, and he’s wary. He wasn’t expecting company. He pulls his hand out of his pocket, and it’s swathed in some kind of knit glove with bright orange stripes around the fingers. He gives me a half-wave, actually waggling his fingers. Seriously? Could he be more of a pussy?

  I stop in front of him, offering him my hand. “I’m Deke.”

  He shakes hands with me. He’s got a weak grip in his glove.

  I crush his fingers and practically shake his arm off, grinning like a wild man the entire time. “I built the house.” I poke my other thumb at it over my shoulder.

  “Oh, yeah?” says Graham, pulling his hand back and looking me over. “Uh, you know June? She’s never mentioned you.”

  I’m not surprised, given the fact that Juniper and I have a connection that’s so deep it probably scares her. She wouldn’t mention me to him. On the other hand, she totally might have and a guy like Graham wouldn’t have been listening. I imagine he listens to approximately twenty percent of everything she says.

  “Yeah, we’re neighbors. She’s great,” I say. “Honestly, it gets lonely out here, gotta say. It’s awesome to have neighbors. How are you settling in?”