“You make it sound like you’re gonna go sell fudge pops from an ice cream truck.”
“That job sounds just as cool.”
“It’s not.”
He kissed my cheek again and led me to my mom’s car. I pulled the keys from my purse and clicked the lock button, folding my body inside. Unsurprisingly, he watched me buckle my seatbelt. I peered up at him. “I’m sorry.”
“No more apologizing. Don’t forget how awesome this day was. We are gonna celebrate on Wednesday, yeah?”
“Sure.”
He kissed my cheek one last time. “Proud of you, Sunshine.”
The door clicked shut. He waved at me before disappearing down the sidewalk in the opposite direction of SevTeck. He no longer seemed disappointed and his smile before he left was nothing but genuine. Maybe I had caught him off guard or maybe he’d done a good job at hiding his anger. Shame overtook me. I felt like I’d jumped into a pool and forgotten to plug my nose. My insides burned, the air in my lungs got pushed out, and tears pricked my eyes.
I felt like I had betrayed Wren, though at the same time, I felt like I hadn’t. I confided in my counselor about the person who saved me from my kidnapper. How the hell was I supposed to know how much he’d come to mean to me? I flexed my hands against the steering wheel and took deep breaths, reminding myself there were laws in place. Repeating how sweet Julie is and always has been.
Wren and all he is will be safe.
I told myself that simple fact enough times but still didn’t believe it. Something was gnawing at me. Guilt. Shame. I had no idea. But it was there, and it fucking hurt. It yanked at my chest over and over, as if someone tied a rubber band around my lungs and were snapping it repeatedly. It was overwhelming and made no sense.
Wren wasn’t mad at me, and Julie was still as awesome as ever.
Right?
I rested my head against the back of the headrest and did something I hated doing.
I started to truly think.
21
Sage
I did not trust my own instincts. The natural impulse had failed me many times before, and I didn’t trust it in any sort of way. Thinking back, there was nothing happening inside me that told me not to go inside the bank that day. There wasn’t an eerie feeling crawling up my neck. Nothing inside my bones that made me feel heavy. My mind wasn’t racing. My palms weren’t sweaty. I didn’t feel anxious or scared or on edge. I felt normal. I walked right into that bank, my arm linked with my best friend's without a cloud of doubt hovering over me.
Since then, I cursed my instincts and damned them straight to hell. They couldn’t be trusted. I’d argue I had no instincts at all. Some people were born without certain limbs. I was born without instincts. And I knew it might not be fair of me, but I wished I could give one of my limbs for some instincts that actually worked.
Maybe my best friend would still be alive.
Maybe I would’ve felt someone behind me and ran before that bag was secured over my face.
And maybe I would’ve thought twice before driving to Julie’s house after dark and knocking on her front door.
As it turns out, I wasn’t the best thinker. There wasn’t a right or a wrong way to think, was there? If you asked me two years ago, I would’ve said there wasn’t. A person’s mind is supposed to be their safe place. A place to think and analyze and pick apart people and situations in any way they choose. I did not believe in mind readers so every thought inside my brain should’ve been safe. As long as I didn’t voice them aloud, my horrifying thoughts and painful memories were safe from truly hurting anybody. That’s what I’d always thought. But then as I sat inside my car, on the side of the road beside a sandwich shop, it dawned on me my thoughts weren’t safe from hurting everybody. They hurt one person especially terribly.
Me.
And if there was one person in the world who knew how to navigate my thoughts into a territory that didn’t totally suck, it was Julie. But by the time I’d come to the conclusion I needed to talk to her, the sun had already set and her office hours were over. Luckily for me, I had her address. She put it in my phone during our second appointment and told me she’d make herself available at any time.
I pulled into her driveway and walked up the cobblestone pathway to her front porch. I hesitated to knock on the bright red door and just stood there, deciding if I should interrupt her night. What would I even say?
Hey, Julie. I think I upset Wren but I suck at thinking so I was wondering if you could do it for me?
I fidgeted subconsciously and rocked on my feet, wanting to leave and not wanting to leave at the same time. I wanted just to go home and accept the genuine smile Wren gave me. But I knew I couldn’t. I knew the idea that he hated me would still be there, chomping at me while I tried to sleep. I knew the only way I’d be okay was when Julie told me she didn’t have mimosas with the FBI on Sunday mornings. It was that thought that prompted my fist to raise and drop light knocks against her door.
Julie’s home matched her personality effortlessly. If I had to describe Julie in one word, it would be colorful. The colors she saw in the world matched her outfits, her office, the handbags she carried, the flowers that lined her front porch. Julie did not see the world in black and white. She saw it for what it was meant to be. That was made so evident by her canary yellow windowpanes and electric blue Toyota sitting in her driveway. The day I met Julie, I was reluctant to speak to her, not because telling somebody the truths that soaked my brain made me vomit, but because there wasn’t an ounce of darkness in her life.
I did not want to be that darkness. But then she told me something that changed me forever.
I harbor darkness, Sage. I use the colors to mask it.
At the time, that sentence excited me. I didn’t question what her darkness was or what she was trying to mask with the paintings on her wall. All I wanted from her at that moment was a lesson on how to mask my own darkness so it’d stop hurting my family.
After the fourth knock, I started wondering if I should’ve at least enquired about her so-called darkness. That’s what a sane person would’ve done, right? After spending two years in darkness, the last thing I should’ve wanted was to confide in a woman who claimed to harbor it. But again, there was nothing inside me that made me reluctant to sit down in her office and answer her questions.
Even now, as I perched on her front porch and kept knocking, there was nothing that told me to go away. Nothing that told me my sixth knock was a bad idea. I raised my fist to knock a seventh time when the front door flew open. I cried out when a hard hand locked around my outstretched wrist and yanked me inside so forcefully, the joint in my shoulder began to flare up. A scream barreled out of me when the door slammed behind me. The sound of a deadbolt locking into place penetrated my ears as I pulled free of the grip on my wrist. My body scrambled as far away from the assailant as possible. It wasn’t until I was separating our bodies did I look up.
“Sage, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to touch you like that. Did I hurt you? I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Julie?” I pulled my wrist to my chest and wiped a tear that escaped my eye. Yes, she did hurt me. It felt like the dozens of bones in my wrist were taking turns exploding but I was unable to express that. I tried to, but the words fled my brain when I got a good look at her. “Oh my God.”
The long locks Julie always had curled or twisted nicely into a braid were unrestrained and matted. There was mascara smeared down her cheeks and a tear in the loose dress she was wearing. She shook as if she were a feather that had gotten picked up by a gust of wind and stared at me like I often stared at her. I peered into her wild eyes and saw something familiar.
Fear.
“Sage, go home right now.”
I ignored her words and the rasp in her voice that made it seem like she’d been screaming for hours. I stepped forward and examined her closely. Bile rose in my throat when she tilted her head and a chunk of hair that was masking her f
ace fell behind her shoulder. It revealed a handprint across her cheek. Bright red and so defined, I could see each finger of the person who’d put it there.
“Sage, please go home.”
I should’ve. I should’ve run home right then and there, but of course, that’s not what I did. And it wasn’t even about instincts this time. It was about her. And our strange friendship.
“Julie, who did this to you? Your husband?” I didn’t admit it, not to her and rarely to myself, but I knew what an abusive relationship looked like. The signs were on the fingernail marks down her arms and the crack in her bottom lip. “Is he still home?”
“I don’t have a husband.”
She breathed the words so quietly, I stepped closer and tucked my hair behind my ear to hear her better. “What?”
“I don’t have a husband, Sage. I lied to you.”
“Oh.” I wasn’t sure what that had to do with whatever had happened to her but I stood still and listened anyway. “What about the man in your photos?”
“He’s dead.” There was a void in her eyes as she stared at a spot above my head. It’s like she was talking to me, but not really. She was just talking to talk. Talking because she needed to say the words. I knew what that need felt like, so I rooted my feet into her carpet and tried to give her what she needed. “My husband was in a car accident almost five years ago.” Tears dripped down her face. Her shaky and bruised arms drew into her chest as if she were trying to hug herself. “There was nerve damage in his leg after the accident. Damage that prevented him from being able to walk without howling in pain or falling over. Damage doctors couldn’t fix and refused to try to fix with surgery. So, we found some people who could help. I knew they weren’t good people, but they helped him walk. He stopped crying in pain and frustration, so I just let it keep happening.” A sob tore out of her frail body. “I should’ve stopped it.”
Her eyes pulled away from the spot on the wall and found mine. Tears filled them and poured down her cheeks like a fountain that kept overflowing. “I’m so sorry, Sage.” I had no idea why she was apologizing to me. Nothing about her physical and emotional state were making any sense. “They told me it was the FBI. They lied, and I’m so sorry.”
My mouth went dry at the acronym. “Julie, you know the FBI?”
She shook her head. “I wish.”
I was confused. So confused, and I didn’t know if my mind was spinning because I was me or if Julie was truly taking me on a mental ride. “Julie, do you want me to drive you to a hospital?”
“No!” She practically shouted the word, stumbling towards me and waving her hands at the front door. “Go home, Sage. Go home right now and know how sorry I am.”
There were a lot of people in the world who owed me a giant fucking apology. She was not one of them. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“I do, Sage.” She rubbed at her arms. “Those men who helped my husband…. they gave him drugs, Sage. Drugs that helped him walk but weren’t legal.”
“I’m not a cop, Julie. I-"
“It was Kade, Sage. The men who gave my husband drugs worked for Kade.”
My stomach rolled, and I threw up. Right there. On her carpet, my shoes, down my skinny jeans. I vomited so aggressively, I stopped breathing. Tears fell down my face and mixed with the sandwich I ate.
She knew Kade. She was in cahoots with the man who made a sport out of abusing me. The woman I’d poured my worries to. The woman who taught me how to numb my pain was friends with the biggest source of it.
“I never even met Kade. I swear. I didn’t meet any of them. My husband went every month, got what he needed and came home. I had no idea who any of them were or what they did to others until after my husband had already died.”
“They killed him, didn’t they?” My words sounded like somebody had put my vulva in a blender.
“They told me it was the FBI. They told me the FBI killed him during a drug raid, and I believed them.”
I shook my head violently. She shouldn’t have done that. They’re all a bunch of liars. And Kade was the worst. I knew that better than anyone.
She choked on a bucket of tears. “They said they were going to give the FBI payback for what they did to my husband.”
I shook my head again. Kade and his friends never did anything for anyone but themselves.
“They said the FBI killed their friends and took more into custody. They said the FBI had to pay for taking away their leader.”
My head snapped up so fast, I swayed on my feet. “What did you just say?”
She nodded miserably, tears coursing down her face at a rate that had me wondering if she was ridding her body of all its natural water. “The FBI raid that got my husband killed was the same one that saved you.”
My head spun. I found myself on the floor, next to a pile of my own vomit. I should’ve been disgusted but it wasn’t the first time. Or even the second. I laid there, my chest heaving and head throbbing while it tried to wrap around all she was telling me.
Julie’s husband got drugs from Kade’s cronies.
Julie’s husband died when the FBI came to save me.
Kade’s cronies told Julie it was all their fault.
“Sage, I’m sorry. I’m so so so sorry.”
I couldn’t move. I laid there, my mind going over and over all the moments I’d met with Julie. There was nothing that could have given me a hint. Nothing that could’ve told me the darkness she claimed to harbor was her relationship with a gang led by the man who destroyed my being.
“Sage, please go home. Please, leave.”
I sat up. I knew better than to lay flat on my back when I was vomiting. I made that mistake once, and I wouldn’t make it again. “Did they do this to you?”
“Yes.”
I knew the look in her eyes so well. The look felt like home. “They are coming back, aren’t they?”
“I think so.”
“What do they want?”
“Information.” Her throat bobbed aggressively with the force of her swallow. “About you. About Circuit.”
“What?” Sweat poured from every surface that covered my body. It wasn’t even me I was worried about. I lived through hell before and as fucked up as it sounded, I grew used to it. But Circuit? Wren, Ace, Cruz, Marshall, and all those who saved me? Not them. Never them. “They want Circuit?”
“I made a deal with them.”
If she signed a deal with them, she basically signed her death certificate.
“They asked me to move to Arlington and take a job as a therapist to a girl they considered a liability. I was supposed to keep tabs on her. Make sure she didn’t try to get the press involved or convince the FBI to keep searching for the men who’d gotten away.”
“Oh, God.”
“I’m sorry, Sage. They told me I just had to do it until they could get justice for my husband. But then they started asking questions about Circuit and I realized that’s who they were truly after.”
I threw up again, clutching my heaving stomach. “No. No. No. No. No.”
In the time it took to click his keyboard, Wren became everything I needed to survive. In one therapy session, I became everything that would get him killed.
“I didn’t tell them anything.” She sobbed. “I swear to God, Sage. That’s why they were here. The minute I met Wren, I stopped communicating with them! They don’t know anything about Wren or Circuit. I promise I won’t tell them.”
I stood on shaky legs and looked her dead in the eye, hoping to convey the truth behind my words. “They will kill you if you don’t.”
The look on her face told me she knew that already. “I’m gonna run.”
“They will find you.”
She knew that too. “My sister lives overseas. I called a car. I’m going to the airport.”
“Won’t matter.”
“I fucked up, Sage. I will not let you or Wren or the wonderful people at Circuit pay for it."
I shook my head, wiping
at my face and my mouth. “Jules…”
“Get out of here, Sage. Go find Wren and tell him he’ll be safe.”
I stood there, my legs refusing to move. I was caught between taking off towards Wren and my happy place and refusing to leave her all alone. I knew the chances they’d find her wherever she went were greater than the opposite.
“Sage, please.” She begged, tears running down her face. “Please.”
I was stubborn. I knew that, but it didn’t hit me how much until I planted my feet into soggy carpet and shook my head. “No.”
She approached me and lifted her head. “Go.” She demanded with a force so strong, I knew she wouldn’t back down. “The worst that can happen is I’ll see my husband again.”
I choked at the image that flashed in my brain. “Go, Sage. Please. It wouldn’t just be your family that’d miss you this time. What about Wren?”
I wanted to smack her for what she did. Bringing Wren into it was like dropping a bomb on an already destroyed town. The mention of him was all it took. I loved my mother. My father. My older brother, and all my new friends. But it was him I was afraid to leave. It was Wren I refused to shatter.
It was the mention of my sun that had me fleeing her darkness. Her bright colors were nothing but lies that plastered her walls. Her paintings, the cushions, her outfits, her handbags.
All lies.
Wren's brightness was not a lie.
My feet took off through her small house. I thrust my shaky hand at the deadbolt and flipped it. My feet stumbled backward at the force of my own strength when I wrenched the door back open.
“Hello, Sage. It’s been a while.”
The blood pumping in my body turned to ice in a nanosecond. My heart stopped, my lungs seized, and I quit functioning. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t move.
I was paralyzed.
Rooted in place.
My eyes roamed the familiar build of the man standing on Julie’s front porch. My muscles shook taking in that familiar half snarl, half smirk. I went light headed at the sight of the gun clipped to his belt. He winked at me with the eye that wasn’t behind his eyepatch and took a step closer.
Specter: Circuit Series Book One Page 20
