Red-Blooded Heart

by V. J. Chambers

  Graham would go to jail for it, even though I would support him and say that he’d done a good thing. I’d stick around and visit him in jail for a while, and then I’d fade away, and it would all be over.

  Elsie would still be broken, but Henry Watson would have paid for what he did.

  That’s all that matters to me. Henry Watson needs to die.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  -deke-

  “Anyway,” she says, “it all could have gone down that way if you hadn’t ruined everything by killing Graham.”

  I’m very uncomfortable tied to this chair, and I’m having trouble processing all these revelations. “You were using Graham.”

  “Hell, yes, I was using him. You think I’m stupid enough to have a boyfriend like that?”

  “Well, I have to admit, it didn’t make sense.”

  “Admit that you killed him,” she says.

  I don’t say anything. I gaze at her, and I try to make this all work in my head. It seems so crazy. All this time, Juniper has been crafting an elaborate murder plan. She’s not sweet and innocent at all. She’s a little bit diabolical, actually. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

  I killed for her.

  Did she deserve that?

  Thing is, it’s actually kind of hot. She’s hot, with her muscles and her murder plans, and her diabolical scheming. I’ve never really been attracted to bad girls before, but Juniper’s, well… yeah.

  “Untie me,” I say, and my voice is thick. I want out of these ropes and then I’m going to put my hands on her. I’m going to press her into the wall, face first, and I’m going to plaster my body around her while I kiss her neck and ease my fingers under her shirt and—

  “Stop asking me to untie you,” she says.

  I sigh. “You want to untie me. You want my help.” I consider. “You need my help, really. You’ve made this really complicated. It doesn’t need to be that complicated. That first idea you had? Going into his place and shooting him? That would have been much easier.”

  “It’s not about easy,” she says. “Difficult is fine if it means everything works out.”

  “It seems to me, with all those moving pieces, with the house and Graham and saving up all this money… well, there’s more chance of it all falling apart.”

  “You know what? Fuck you. I didn’t tell you this so that you could tear apart my plan.”

  I shrug. “Untie me.”

  “No.”

  “I’m going to help you,” I say. “You know that I am. You didn’t need to tie me up and try to blackmail me to get me to help you.”

  “Oh?” she says. “What should I have done? Seduced you like Graham? I didn’t think you would fall for that.”

  I bite down on my bottom lip. Well, shit, I wish she hadn’t said that. She is going to fuck me. I know that’s going to happen. But now I’ll never believe that she actually wants to fuck me. I’ll always wonder if she’s buying my silence by spreading her thighs.

  But I kind of don’t care. I want her anyway. “Untie me,” and now my voice is a growl.

  “You’re such a big man, get yourself free,” she says. She goes into the kitchen and picks up the beer that she got out of the refrigerator a very long time ago. She takes a drink.

  “That still cold?” I say.

  “Cold enough,” she says.

  “So, how are you going to get my help if you never untie me?”

  “I don’t know,” she says, and she’s angry. “I don’t know, okay. Just shut up. I need to think.”

  “Maybe you think too much,” I say. “Maybe that’s why you made that crazy elaborate murder plan when you didn’t need to.”

  “If I’d just gone in and shot him, they would have caught me,” she says.

  “Hey,” I say. “Do you even want to live off the grid? Or is that all a smokescreen to get to Henry?”

  She sets down the beer. “I don’t know. They’re so interconnected in my head, I can’t tell. I figure, though, I own this place outright. It would be dumb to leave.”

  I shake my head. “I knew you were too good to be true. No chick wants to live this way.”

  “Don’t call me a chick,” she says.

  “I want him dead too,” I say. “I’ve been toying with killing him anyway.”

  “Who?”

  “Henry. He saw me with Darius’s car.”

  “So, you did kill the private detective?”

  “If I admit it, will you untie me?”

  She doesn’t say anything.

  “If I tell you all my secrets, will you untie me?” I say. “That’s only fair. I know all of yours.”

  “You have more secrets?” she says. “You’ve killed other people besides Darius and Graham?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I have. One other person, anyway.”

  * * *

  After the fire, after Alice ran off, I was pretty freaked out, and I went home, because that was the only place I knew to go. Usually, when I was a kid, after a fire, there would be a point in which the flames weren’t pretty anymore, when I began to feel the enormity of what I’d done, and when guilt overtook me. Then I would run home and hide under the covers in my bed and promise that I would never do it again.

  But I didn’t live there anymore, and my stepdad had convinced my mother to turn my bedroom into his man cave.

  So there was nowhere to hide.

  And to make matters worse, it was the middle of the night, and he was on one of his drunk tears. He was screaming at my mother in the kitchen.

  I came in and I smelled of smoke and my clothes were a little sooty because I’d been in the burning building and I went to the kitchen and stood there in the doorway.

  He looked up. “You’re back,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Leave my mother alone, okay?”

  “Shut up, kid,” he said.

  I was shaking and I was angry and I was running on adrenaline. I said, “If you hit her tonight, I will kill you.” He hit her a lot. He always had. I hated that he did that, but I couldn’t do anything about it.

  The thing that made it the worst was how my mother just went along with it and made excuses for him.

  I would ask her to leave. I would find out about shelters where we could go. I would tell my teachers. And nothing ever worked, because she didn’t want to leave him.

  “He only gets that way when I make mistakes,” she would say. “If I do better, it won’t happen again.”

  And she believed it, too. She thought that it was her fault that he hit her. I hated him for convincing her of that. That was the very worst thing he ever did, worse than hitting her.

  Anyway, he hit her. He punched her in the stomach.

  And I let out this strangled bellow and lurched across the room and grabbed him and yanked him off her. I tossed him into the refrigerator and I wrapped my hands around his neck and I squeezed and I shook him and I slammed his body into the fridge over and over.

  And then he got free and he was yelling at me and my mother was screaming and grabbing me and I got one of the knives somehow and it was in him and there was blood everywhere and he was gasping and it was all a blur but at the end of it, he was dead.

  I didn’t feel bad about it.

  I felt like it was something I should have done before.

  That man hurt my mom. He hurt her inside and out, and I never stopped him for all those years. My mom—she was so screwed up in the head over him by that point, she couldn’t stop him. Somebody else had to do it, and I didn’t do it at first.

  No, instead, I set fires. Stupid fires. They didn’t fix anything. But when I killed him, that was doing something that mattered.

  Who knows? Maybe that’s why I stopped setting the fires. Maybe I was only setting them to avoid killing that bastard.

  Anyway, I didn’t feel bad.

  But my mother…

  My mother screamed and called me names and hit me. She was so angry with me for what I did. She told me that she loved him, and
that I had no right to do what I did.

  I did it for her, but did she care? No.

  She loved that asshole and she wanted me gone.

  So, I left.

  She hasn’t spoken to me since that night.

  She drove his car out to the airport and pretended that he left her.

  I got rid of his body.

  She promised she’d never give me up. She said she owed me that much. But she said that whatever motherly obligation she had towards me, it was over after that.

  She said, “After this, we’re done.”

  I think she hated me for what I did. I think she didn’t want to admit it, because mothers aren’t supposed to hate their sons, but I think she despised me. As far as I know, she still does.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  -juniper-

  Did he tell me that story to make me feel sorry for him? Because I do. And I trust him too. Not completely, of course, but more than I did. It’s because he was willing to show me his own vulnerability. It’s the human equivalent of rolling over and showing me his belly. And with him tied up, it makes me feel like I’m in control.

  Of course, I can’t be sure. Maybe he’s done that on purpose. Maybe he’s luring me into a false sense of security before he… what? What do I think he’s going to do to me?

  I gaze into his eyes. “That’s awful about your mother.”

  He shrugs. “She loved my stepdad. I killed him. She couldn’t forgive that.”

  “But your stepdad didn’t deserve her love,” I say.

  “I don’t think love works that way,” he says.

  I narrow my eyes. “Is that why you burned down your girlfriend’s house? Love?”

  He chuckles, looking away. “I don’t know. Maybe I thought so at the time.”

  “You don’t now?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  I consider pushing, but I guess I don’t really care. I don’t want to talk about his ex-girlfriend anymore. She’s alive, so that’s a point in his favor, anyway, and I am feeling warm all over again when I look at him. I really wish he wasn’t so attractive.

  “Untie me,” he says again, his voice firm and soft and commanding.

  “Eventually,” I say.

  “I told you I’d help you,” he says. “Why don’t you believe me?”

  “Who says I don’t believe you? I do.”

  “Then why am I still tied up? What? You afraid of me?” His voice drops into a lower register. “I would never hurt you.”

  I square my shoulders. “I can take care of myself.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “That’s quite the swing you have there. You hit me hard.”

  “I’ve been building up my strength to kill Watson,” I say. “I knew I’d have to be strong to pull it off.”

  “Of course you have.” He looks me over. “I never thought you’d be this way.”

  “What way?” I say.

  “So…” He can’t finish the sentence.

  “Not girly enough for you?” I say.

  “Whatever you are, it’s all enough for me,” he says, and his voice has gotten even lower in pitch. “Untie me now.”

  I swallow. The bottom has gone out of my voice too. “You thought you’d save me, right, the damsel in distress?”

  “Maybe,” he allows.

  “That’s why you killed Graham.”

  “Graham didn’t deserve to live.”

  “But you didn’t rescue me, you just fucked everything up, and now you’re going to fix it.”

  “Yes,” he rasps. “But first you have to untie me.”

  “I’m not a damsel in distress.”

  “No, you’re not,” he says, and his voice is thick with admiration. “You are definitely not.”

  I suck in a shaky breath. “Stop that.”

  “Stop what?”

  “Looking at me.”

  “Where should I look?” He arches an eyebrow. “Maybe if you untied me, it would be easier for me to look in other places, but right now, I’m a little limited.”

  “Maybe I won’t untie you at all,” I say. “Maybe I’ll just keep you here, trapped in my house, until I’m finished with Watson. That way, you can’t interfere.”

  “You wouldn’t do that.” He looks a little bit alarmed.

  “Wouldn’t I?” I say. “You think I’ll be sweet and nice just because I’m a woman, because—”

  “No, men and women aren’t that different,” he says.

  And that’s when I kiss him. I don’t know why I do it. It’s stupid, and I shouldn’t, and I don’t think it will make anything make more sense or be any easier, but I remember what it was like to kiss him, and there’s always all this… charge in the air between us, and maybe this will dissipate it. Maybe this will make it easier to think.

  He kisses me back hungrily, his lips and tongue somehow claiming mine even while he’s tied up. He can’t touch me. He can’t hold me. He can’t pull me closer.

  And yet, I somehow feel as if he’s kissing me, even though I initiated this.

  Gasping, I pull away.

  His voice is ragged. “You won’t be able to keep me tied up. I’ll get out of this. Just try it. I’ll be free by morning.”

  “You really think very highly of yourself, don’t you?” I snap.

  “I could say the same thing to you,” he says. He fixes me with his dark eyes. “Come back here,” he rasps.

  I do it. I obey him, and I couldn’t tell you why.

  We’re kissing again.

  “I’m glad you’re not a damsel in distress,” he whispers against my mouth. “You’re like me.”

  I pull back. “I’m not like you. You’re a freaking murderer.”

  He raises his eyebrows.

  “What I’m doing, it’s different,” I say. “It’s vengeance.”

  “Yes,” he says dryly. “That is different.”

  “Fuck you,” I say.

  He wriggles suddenly, and the ropes tying him to the chair slide down his chest.

  “Stop,” I say.

  He doesn’t. He keeps wriggling. The ropes are loose. He wriggles and they get looser.

  I should go for the gun. Where is the gun?

  But now the ropes are so loose that he’s getting up from the chair. He’s getting free.

  I back up.

  He steps out of the rope, and now all he has to do is get his wrists untied, but they are tied behind his back. He strains, but the knots at his wrists hold.

  I keep backing up, but the house isn’t very big. There’s not far to go.

  He advances on me, but then goes right past me, into the kitchen. He backs up to the counter, feels around behind him to get a knife out of the knife block, and he slices through the ropes.

  “Listen,” I say, but I don’t say anything further.

  He rounds on me. He massages his wrists and touches the back of his head—gingerly—and then he stalks over to where I am.

  I cringe, because he’s going to be angry, and he’s going to take back everything he said about helping me.

  He stops inches away from me. His breathing is shallow and he is still rubbing the places on his wrists where the ropes dug in.

  I swallow. My heart is beating fast. It’s because he’s close, but I don’t know if I’m afraid or excited.

  He reaches out slowly, with one hand, and he caresses my face.

  Such a soft touch.

  I close my eyes, and my entire body feels hot.

  He presses me into the wall. His mouth assaults mine. I cling to him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  -deke-

  I fuck her against the wall and we don’t even take off all our clothes.

  I push up her shirt and I rip her bra and I unzip my pants.

  She wraps her legs around me and I brace her against the wall and I slam into her again and again and it’s good. It’s really good.

  She screams and I grunt and it lasts forever and no time at all, the way sex tends to.

  Afterward
, she pulls me onto her bed and she can’t stop kissing me, and I feel sleepy and sated and pleased.

  We should talk about this. We should talk about everything. We should talk.

  We don’t.

  We make out more and then we end up getting excited again, and we do it again, but this time we’re naked against each other and it’s slower and smoother and she makes these tiny noises when I touch her breasts, noises that I think will undo me.

  I can’t stay awake after the second time. I fall asleep with her warm body burrowed into mine, and everything is nice.

  When I wake up again, it can only be a few hours later. My arm is asleep because she is using it as a pillow.

  Carefully, I extract my arm from beneath her. Certain that she hasn’t awakened, I do my best to get out of the bed.

  She rolls over, sighing, and I’m sure that she’s going to wake up.

  But she doesn’t.

  I can’t find all my clothes. I think she is lying on my shirt. It doesn’t matter. I put on my jeans and then zip up my coat over my bare chest. I leave.

  I’m so paranoid about waking her up that I ease the truck out of the driveway in neutral and then start the engine when I’m further away. I drive home and the fire is cold and dead in my house, because I did not think that I would be gone for so long.

  I get some firewood and stoke up the fire.

  I sit in front of it, rubbing my hands.

  “Idiot,” I whisper to myself.

  Why the hell did I fuck her? I mean, maybe there was no way around that at this point. I’ve wanted her for so long, after all. But it does change things. It changes the way I feel about her. I know that men aren’t supposed to get attached from sex, but it’s never been that way for me. I don’t know if I’d a particularly pansified guy or what, but I can’t help but care now. I think of Juniper’s small, soft body curled into me, and I want to take care of her. There are quite a lot of things I would do to make sure she’s safe.

  One of them, however, is not to go to jail for her.

  She wanted Graham to be her fall guy.

  Now, she obviously wants me to do it.

  How long will she wait? Long enough for us to go into town and drink together, establish a relationship with the locals? And then she’ll kill Watson and call the police and blame me.