by Karina Halle
Did he know? Did he know?
He spat the cap out then emptied the contents of the bottle straight into his mouth. He did the same to another bottle.
I watched in silence, hovering nervously like a bird, wiping my hands up and down my sides, unsure what to do with myself or what I was to him anymore. He’d come so far, all this way, just to make sure I was okay. I didn’t want to tell him what a mistake it was, that he’d wasted it all on a terrible, terrible girl.
He’d gotten shot. For me. And I was sleeping with the enemy, believing this man would never come save me.
Now Camden was watching me, his breath slowing. The look in his eyes was dark and calculating, reminding me a lot of the time he discovered me trying to rob him. Only he didn’t have the gun to my head.
I wished he did.
“What happened?” I asked, before the guilt could eat me alive in silence. “How did you get shot?”
“Mexican police,” he said unscrewing the next bottle. His eyelids were drooping, his gaze lazy and if I looked closer, full of something like contempt. “We were driving on the highway outside of Tampico. They took a shot. Lucky shot.”
“We?”
He nodded slowly. “Me and Gus.”
“Gus!” I exclaimed. “Where is he, is he okay?”
“He’s not shot, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he said rather coldly. “He’s up in the hotel room.”
“You’re staying here?”
“Came all the way down to Veracruz to get you, Ellie.”
I blinked, tried to say something intelligible, but nothing came out. I took a seat on the corner of the bed and put my hand on his knee. He eyed it until I took it away. Something had changed so terribly much and I was so afraid to find out what it was. He was looking at me with the eyes of a stranger.
I gave him a weak smile. “Well, thank you for coming to get me. I don’t even know how you found me.”
A shadow seemed to fall across his face. He looked like a shell-shocked soldier, older, wiser, harder.
He licked his lips. “It wasn’t easy.”
“How is Sophia and Ben?”
He let out a sharp, cold laugh. “Oh, Sophia and Ben? Oh, they’re just fine. Especially since they got rid of their chump Camden.”
His voice was twisting, slicing, going to a bad place.
“What—”
He sat up straighter, sneering through the pain in his shoulder. “They’re absolutely fucking fantastic. Maybe a bit mad that their little set-up didn’t work. Oh yeah, Sophia, her brothers, probably your little boyfriend Javier, they were all in on it.”
My eyes widened at the term “boyfriend.” I felt like my lungs dropped through to the floor. No …
He went on, louder, his eyes watering, blazing angrily into mine, “Nothing like finding yourself on the front cover of the LA Times, wanted for assault and homicide. Nothing like having to run for your fucking life while trying to track you down!”
I couldn’t breathe at the memory of Javier reading the LA Times …
“Nothing like going to fucking Mississippi to find you and end up in your old fucking house that you shared with him and then learning what he had planned to do with you.”
I shook my head, the tears springing to my eyes, unable to make sense of what he was saying, where this was going. Though he was set up, he still went all the way to Ocean Springs to try and save me.
“What was the plan?” I whispered.
He leaned forward as if he was going to tell me a secret, eyes glinting. Darkness was falling fast outside of the window but I was too frozen to try to turn on the lamp.
“Javier brought you there to kill your parents.”
Ice. Pure ice.
“What, why?” It didn’t make any sense.
Camden shrugged with his good shoulder. “’Cause he’s fucking Javier and he’s fucking insane, that’s why. Just how brainwashed are you?”
“I’m not brainwashed.”
He laughed again, this one more brutal. “Oh, that’s a good one. So, tell me, what did he say or do to you to get you to come down here and kill Travis?”
“He told me he’d kill you,” I cried out in indignation.
“And you believed him?” he asked.
“Of course I fucking believed him! I wouldn’t have done it otherwise.”
“If you believed him,” he said softly, rolling the bottles of tequila back and forth over the bedspread covers. He smiled once, to himself. “If you believed him, that he would do such a terrible thing to me, that he had that power …” his eyes flicked up to meet mine, “why would you go ahead and fuck him?”
The world was pulled out from under me. One fell swoop, and everything I had to stand on, everything I thought was solid was gone. I was falling, straight into my guilt. The tears rolled down my cheeks, I struggled to keep the sobs inside.
I couldn’t look at him anymore. I couldn’t look at myself ever again.
“I’m so sorry, Camden.”
He waited a few moments, rolling the bottles back and forth, before saying, “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter. I didn’t do it to hurt you. I don’t know why I did it.”
“Because you’re weak,” he shot in. Another half shrug. “And you never really gave a shit about me.”
“Camden, please!” I sniveled, reaching for his hand. He let me hold it, cold, no life in it for me. “Please, listen to me. I didn’t think you’d ever come for me. I thought you would go on in your new life with Sophia and Ben. I thought I was alone and I’d stay alone as I’ve always been and …”
“Nice sob story, Ellie Watt.”
“It’s not a sob story! It’s the truth.”
“Oh ye of little faith.”
“Well … I don’t have faith in people. You know that.”
“I know nothing!” he screamed. “I came all this way for you because I thought you were in trouble and you aren’t! You’re in the kind of trouble you want to be in. I. Know. Nothing. About you.” He seemed to have overexerted himself and lay back against the headboard, eyes rolling into the back of his head which he gently shook back and forth. “I’m so fucking tired of being shit on.”
“I know,” I said quietly. I looked down at my hands like they were foreign objects. “You are the last person I’d ever want to hurt.”
“But you did. Who else have you hurt today? Javier? Travis?”
“I don’t know who I’m hurting anymore. Camden, please, you have to believe me. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. I slept with Javier because … because I loved him once. And he’s made me believe that I belong with him, with this kind of life, that this is the best that I can get.”
“He’s right.”
I looked up at him in shock. He was looking at me, our past written all over his face. I don’t think I’ve ever had a knife stuck in me so deep. I don’t know if I’d ever deserved it as much as I did then.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CAMDEN
I knew I hurt her.
Her face crumpled like a demolished building, pretty and strong in one moment, a ruin in the next. I knew she was hurting, feeling it, feeling everything. I knew she felt like absolutely nothing. Worthless. Rotten.
I knew she felt like I did. That’s what I wanted.
She looked away from me, the tears frozen in her wide eyes, always threatening to spill over but never quite doing it. No release.
As angry as I still was, as bitter as the air tasted, there was a pang of sorrow somewhere in my chest. For fighting so dirty and hitting so low. No matter what Ellie deserved, how broken and utterly messed up she was, I still loved her. Deciding to not love her anymore wasn’t going to be that simple.
Besides, I had to think about the big picture, about Gus, about Ellie. My feelings for her, what we had shared, didn’t even have to come into the equation. I came there to rescue her, to save her from all of this, and until the bitter end, that’s just what I was going to do.
I only wished it hadn’t hurt so much. I wished I had the strength inside me not to care.
“Ellie,” I said quietly. I reached for the last tequila bottle tossing it at her.
She caught it and stared at it numbly. She was in shock, dazed, lost in her thoughts and a million waves of remorse. I knew that look too.
I nodded at the bottle. “Drink up, baby.”
She quickly screwed off the cap and drained the contents into her throat. She coughed a bit but got it down then chucked the bottle across the room where it landed on the tiles with a clatter.
My back twitched in response. That was going to fucking kill me in the morning. I couldn’t tackle her in this place without hurting her. What was a little bit of extra pain for me in the long run? My shoulder was already killing me, my heart doubly so.
“Camden,” she started, looking down, shoulders slumped as she sat on the edge of the bed. For the first time since I’d known her, she looked frail, easy to break. It didn’t suit her. Another face of Ellie Watt, another person I’d have to get to know. “Were you … are you sure that Javier wanted me to kill my parents?”
I nodded. “You believe me, don’t you?”
She looked at me, all brown eyes. “Yes. I do. I’ll never doubt you again.”
I didn’t particularly trust that. Ellie doubted everyone and everything that ever crossed her path. It was hard for me to blame her when I saw it everywhere she went. Even now, she was discovering it with Javier, though she surely should have seen that coming. Oh, I couldn’t wait to get my hands around that man’s neck.
“I don’t understand why he’d do that, why not just tell me?”
“Gus and I have been trying to figure it out too. You did say he had a twisted code of ethics and that he kept his promises. Look what happened to Uncle Jim.” Yes, look what happened to Uncle Jim, I wanted to repeat for her benefit. He killed your uncle then you still slept with him. You fucked a murderer.
The rage was dying to sweep in again. This was going to eat me alive until the end of my life.
Only if I let it.
I took in a deep breath. “Ellie, I know for whatever reason you must trust Javier or have some sort of connection to him. I know you believe that what you’re doing is right. I understand the vengeance you want with this man and I know what you’d do to get it. I only want you to realize that you don’t have to do any of this if you don’t want to. You can leave here with me and Gus, tonight. We can put this behind us.”
“Would killing him be so wrong?” she said quietly. I had to fight the urge to wrap my arm around her and bring her into me, to hold her close, tell her that I loved her, that I wouldn’t let another thing happen to her. I’d take another bullet for her. I’d be here no matter what she chose, even if she wanted another lover, another life. I would still be there when she fell. When she wanted to run. When she wanted to come home.
“Do you feel that killing him would change anything?” I asked. “Would it make a difference in your life, for the better?”
She mulled it over, her eyes searching aimlessly while the wheels in her beautiful brain turned. Whatever she’d say, I would understand. Because I knew what it was to have that anger so deep inside you, you think the only way you’ll ever be rid of it is to be rid of the person who put it there. But then you only realize later on what the truth is – that no one put that anger there. No one except you. And you have to live with yourself while someone else is dead or suffering or destroyed. Another body to add to the funeral pyre. Another weight on your already laden soul.
Finally she said, “I don’t know. I’ve wanted this for so long, this retribution for myself. That if I kill him, I’ll be free of everything that’s held me down and told me where to fit in this world. Told me what I am. That if I kill him, the man who made me bad, I’ll be good. Sometimes …” a tear rolled down her cheek, the dam breaking, the release. She sniffed, “Sometimes I’d do anything to be good.”
Damn it. God damn it. My heart was breaking all over again, just when I thought I didn’t have anything inside me to break.
“Come here,” I said, leaning forward and bringing her down onto me. She lay with her head on my chest, sobbing quietly. “Hey, remember when we were kids and we’d lie like this on my trampoline?”
She sniffled. “I don’t remember crying back then.”
“No. No we never cried in front of each other. We were too cool for that. It didn’t mean we weren’t crying inside. Or for each other.” I cupped my good hand behind her head and held it there, took in a deep breath. “Ellie, I will help you with whatever you need to do. You won’t have to go through this alone. If you want to kill Travis, for whatever reasons you have, I will be there for you. And when you’re done, if you let me, I will take you back home. And if you want to back out of it now, if you want to disappear tonight and never look back, Gus and I will help you with that too. Whatever you’ve done or thought or planned or given up on, it doesn’t change the fact that we came here for you. We came here to help you, Ellie, in whatever way you choose.”
She stiffened on top of me, her limbs going rigid.
“You can start by hiding back in the closet.”
“What?”
She sprang up, eyes flying to the window. “Go now, to the closet, under the bed, hide. Somewhere! Go!”
There was no way I would fit under the bed quick enough, especially with my arm, so I quickly ducked myself back in the closet, sticking my good fingers through the slats and pulling it closed just as there was a knock at the door.
“Miss Eleanor Willis?” came a muffled voice.
I held my body as still as possible, my breath quiet and tried to look through the slits without bumping into the hangers again.
From the angle of my view, I could see Ellie getting up and going over to the door answering it.
“Hi, Enrico,” she sounded drunk, a little too drunk. An act.
“Miss Willis,” Enrico said. A large pause. I could tell he was looking at her oddly. “Can I come in?”
“Am I allowed to say no?”
Another pause. “No, miss. I’m sorry.”
“Fine, come in.” She walked away lazily and plopped down on the bed.
The door shut and he stopped in the middle of the room.
“What happened here?”
“Girls just want to have fun.” She punctuated that with a giggle. She was going on a bit too strong and I had to wince, hoping Enrico bought it.
“Are you alone?” He started to walk to the patio entrance, the one I came in through. He tried the door and I was glad I remembered to lock it.
“Of course I’m alone,” she said. “Least I was until you showed up. Can’t a girl have a few drinks in peace?”
He turned around and came back, stopping at the foot of the bed. Through the serrated slivers of my view, I could see his shoes and pants were both immaculately white. Enrico seemed like a nice enough boy when checking in, but he was obviously a friend of Javier’s which vetoed all innocent appearances.
“Miss Willis, your neighbors reported people yelling in here.”
Pause. “So? Was I keeping them awake? It’s not even nine o’clock.”
“You were the one yelling?”
“Yes, so what? Free country, isn’t Mexico?”
“Who were you yelling at?” he said, pleasant customer service patience being tested.
“Well obviously myself. What, you never had a good yell, a good cry, a good fucking mental breakdown when you’ve been pawned and screwed over by various drug cartels?” Her voice was rising sharply near the end and I could tell this wasn’t an act at all. Despite always being shit on, I was starting to feel a bit sorry for her.
The truth was, I knew Ellie didn’t do any of it to hurt me. Call me a fool, and I was, but I knew that deep down she’d do what she could to spare my pain. She cared enough about me for that. It still hurt, knowing that she believed I’d never come. I knew she never trusted anyone and
I was just another lover to her who would one day break her heart and forget her name, but she should have known I wasn’t like that. I wasn’t like them. I wasn’t like everyone else. She should have known what she was to me, that the only reason we were ever separated was because we didn’t have a choice. I guess she did have a choice, though both of them were shitty ones. Her sacrifice didn’t help us much in the end. It was all for nothing.
“Miss Willis, Javier wants you to know that you’re completely safe here.”
Javier. I almost put my fucking fist through the closet door but composed myself in time. That nasty, terrible blackness wanted company. I couldn’t think about him, or her and him together, or how she could still do that to me, even if she never did it on purpose. I hated, hated, how easily he was able to win her back over, to make her doubt herself, to coerce her into doing such things. Sex was sex and I understood that. What I couldn’t understand was his power over her. Or maybe I didn’t want to. She was better than that. I believed it. I knew it.
“How am I safe?” she asked snidely, adjusting herself on the bed. “Because I just had drinks with Travis Raines and I didn’t feel the slightest bit safe.”
“You are safe here,” he said, gesturing to the room. “He has people stationed all over now. There are two men just beyond the courtyard, on the other side of the river. If anyone comes in through there, they will find them. There are people at the front of the hotel too and of course I am here. You can call me at all hours of the night. You are protected, wherever you are.”
What Enrico, what Javier, was really trying to tell her was that she was stuck, held prisoner in her hotel. There was no way she could run off with me and Gus tonight or any other night. She was protected from one man and a captive to the next.
“Well, I guess that should make me feel safe,” she said. “Until tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yes, Travis wants to take me out for dinner. 6PM.”
“I see. I will let Javier know.”
“You can tell Javier that I don’t want to do it.”
Pause. He walked over to the other side of the room. “I will tell him that. I do not know what his answer will be.”
