It was all I wanted.
Before I realized it, I was stepping up even closer, the lights of the pier blinking in and out too much for anyone far away to notice me. The water was black, the blackness inside of me, though now even that was starting to fade. In pretending to live life, I had really started to live it, and soon the blackness would take the numb away.
I looked over the railing, though I hadn’t remembered climbing up and over it. Only a few stars were lingering in the open sky, and from far away the screams of delighted tourists were being unleashed from the Tilt-a-Whirl. The Ferris wheel was alight with neon scopes of blue and green.
Like eyes I’d never see again.
“Did you know 8% of deaths are drowning?”
I whispered it to myself, not even knowing where it came from or why I had said it, but it seemed like such a logical solution that not doing it seemed more impractical than not.
I leaned forward enough to inhale the sea. If Charlie’s remains were still out there, then maybe mine would meet his.
Instead of slipping, my hands willingly let go of metal railing, still warm despite the lack of sun. My scabbed and torn fingers were uncramping, giving in to what the rest of me wanted.
And then they weren’t.
Something wrapped itself around my left arm, twisting and pulling so hard I thought for an instant that my shoulder might have been withdrawn from its socket, that instead of falling into fierce waters I had landed on something else.
“You ain’t getting out of this that easy.”
Weary, narrow brown eyes peered into mine, swearing and calling me names. Their owner tossed me back to the boardwalk like I was little more than a stuffed animal.
“Reid?”
Before I could get out anymore, shouts were being called from a distance and he looked away from me to their direction, angrier than ever.
“Get up,” he commanded.
I was somewhere in between that place of astonishment and fascination. I didn’t think the first person I’d see in hell would be Reid, but then again…
“Get up,” he said again. “If I have to make you, you’ll be sorry.”
I did as instructed, knowing now from the shouts of glee echoing off the waterfront that I couldn’t be dead. As far as I could see, I was still on the pier, still in Long Branch.
The sea hadn’t taken me after all. Even the water didn’t want me.
“Reid, what—”
“Follow me and be quick or I’ll drag you out of here by your hair.”
I would have followed him anyway, this ghost who had probably come to torture me some more. His large strides were epic in comparison and I had to half-run just to catch up with him, dodging the curious looks of people who had happened to gaze at the end of the pier in those moments.
Apparently we had attracted a scene.
“What’s going on?” I shouted from behind. I struggled to keep-up as he effortlessly worked his way into the crowd, but I couldn’t lose him now.
He led me out to a parking lot, where the sight of a very familiar orange car lingered under a street lamp.
I watched him get in. I waited.
“This—this isn’t p-possible,” I stuttered, still very much out of breath. For an instant I thought back to the ocean and the pier, my pathetic lungs wouldn’t have lasted two minutes.
The car started, revved up, and without being told, I got in. Maybe, I thought, he was here to drive me into the afterlife.
“Y-you’re here,” I muttered as we raced down sandy streets, horns blaring at us and pedestrians waving angrily.
“You are not pulling this crap again,” was all he said. “Selfish little bitch.”
I ignored his insults. I didn’t care what he called me. “What are you doing h-here? Charlie?”
“Ruining what’s left of his life, but you’re gonna fix it,” he said, his eyes riveted to the road. “And if not, you’ll sure as hell wish you’d taken the ocean route.”
“Charlie—”
My mind wouldn’t let me believe it but my heart had already started to flutter, digging itself up from the blackness I had buried it in. I closed my eyes and counted to ten.
“They won’t let me into the hospital,” I tried to explain. “I’ve been trying for weeks.”
“We got him out of there, but he wasn’t at the meet spot. The dumbass probably went off to see you, your house probably.”
I watched the lights fly by. “No,” I said. It was suddenly all so clear. “But I do think I know where he went.”
Pulling up at the entrance gates, I was almost jumping with excitement. If I was right, then I might see Charlie, if wrong, then I could be walking into something far worse than suicide.
“Here?” Reid laughed. “You think he escaped from lock up to look at some flowers?”
“Shut up, Reid.”
I made a move to get out of the car but he stopped me before I even had my hand on the door. His grip on me was as tight as his stare, and for a moment I thought I saw something mixed in with his hatred for m., Was I so daft to think it was concern? Certainly not for me, but for Charlie, maybe.
“You may have everyone else fooled with this innocent act, but I ain’t buying. “Get him back here in five minutes or I’m coming back for you and it won’t be pretty.”
I shrugged him off. “Quit your threats and go do something useful like steal a getaway car.”
“Hey,” he sneered, “didn’t I just save your life?”
I slammed the door behind me. “Like I said, something useful.”
The atrium looked different at night during the summer. Everything was in bloom and the perfume of a dozen different flowering species flushed my nose, making me both inhale and sneeze at the same time. My eyes had a hard time adjusting without the light, but I jumped at every animal in the bush, the cooing of anonymous birds in the trees.
I immediately went to the willow trees, stuck somewhere between hoping and knowing that Charlie would be there. Of course every logical part of me knew that he probably wouldn’t be, but I had to try. This place was probably the last secret we had left.
I slowed my pace as I approached the grove. Though I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, I felt eyes on me instantly. My brain told me it was an animal, a curious night creature, but my heart told me it was something, someone entirely different altogether. Pulling back the willow curtain, I peeked into the hiding spot the tree accidently created. Gnats immediately attacked my face so I pulled back, stumbling over the brush.
Laughing.
Someone was laughing at me.
I never thought I could be so happy to be so awkward.
“Charlie.” I blinked to make sure I wasn’t seeing things, and yet sure enough, when I opened my eyes, he was still there. His eyes dulled by the dark and fog of night. A thin pad of white gauze was taped to the side of his right temple, a heavy looking cast of white plaster on his arm; I looked at it, unable to stare at anything else.
“Hi,” he breathed.
“Hello.”
“P-please don’t scream. I swear I ain’t gonna hurt you. I—I’m gonna leave in a minute. I-I just wanted to see you before…” he trailed off, unsure of how to finish. “I ain’t gonna bother you no more. I promise.”
I nodded, choked back my tears. “I understand.”
We waded in the pause, neither of us daring to look at one another, perhaps for fear of what we might see. I already knew what a mess I must have been, but it genuinely surprised me how distraught Charlie was. Head wound aside, he was unshaved and disheveled. His hair was considerably longer than usual, and as I stepped closer I could have sworn I even saw a twinge of gray at the root that even the dark of night couldn’t conceal. He wore a clean olive colored t-shirt, but it was way too big for him, and his usual oil stained jeans, but his boots were dotted with the brown remnants of blood, though from who, I didn’t dare to ask. I flinched at the sight and turned away.
“A-are you okay?”
he asked.
“How…” I asked. “How did you—”
“The fellas.” He didn’t even smile. “They haven’t given up on me yet.”
I nodded, grateful beyond words.
“Elise? The guys?”
He nodded. “Everybody’s all right.”
I sighed with relief. It seemed like awfully great lengths just to avoid me, but then again, they were probably avoiding the police as well. I stared at the ground, waiting for the rest of the words to come.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be,” he said. “I want you to be happy.”
“I don’t deserve to be happy. If I did something that encouraged you to do this—”
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t be sorry. “Believin’ you loved me w-was the greatest lie of my whole life. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Especially freedom.”
“Wait. What?”
“I’m serious. I’d serve ten life sentences if I thought you loved me. It doesn’t matter that you went to the cops—”
“The cops?” I couldn’t have been hearing him right. There had to be something wrong with my ears. “Charlie, I didn’t.”
He stepped away, like getting further away from my words would help deter the truth. “Hey, it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Charlie, I’m telling you I didn’t—”
“It’s all done.”
“Do I have to hold a gun to your head to get you to listen to me or what? I’m telling you I never told the cops anything, nothing true, anyway.” I took a step closer, feeling an unprecedented daring. With Charlie alive and well, the world was an entirely new place and everything seemed possible. I could consider my safety important once more, but still entirely irrelevant at the same time. With this adrenaline, with Charlie, I was invincible.
“I’m trying to tell you what I’ve been doing. I spoke to the press on your behalf, lied when they interrogated me again…” I said. I wanted to reach for him, to wrap my arms around him and kiss away any skepticism he may have had. And yet it was scary for me, too. What if his injuries had caused memory loss on a short or even a long term scale? “Didn’t anyone tell you that? I’ve been to the hospital every day since—Dad insisted I go to Long Branch this last week but—I was there, waiting for you.” I laughed. “I even tried praying the other day, if you can believe it.”
The tears were hot on my cheeks, but I couldn’t stop them from coming, especially when his hand reached out for me. In spite of this, he stopped himself and pulled away, something calling him back to himself at the last second.
“You feel guilty.” His lip twitched enough to almost be considered a smile. “It’s okay, though, you don’t have to. I-it makes sense that he would make you happy.”
He spat those last words at the ground, not accusingly, but smoldering with disgust instead. In his mind he knew a truth that didn’t exist, and instead of listening to reality, he was trying to pardon me for an offense I hadn’t committed. Still, he couldn’t hide the anger we were both so familiar with, and despite that forgiveness he was so desperate to grant, he couldn’t escape his own instincts. If there was ever was a time to use that to my advantage, it was now. The temper kept Charlie alive, kept him on his feet and going when he wanted to give in to something that wasn’t real was the same temper that had helped get him into so much trouble in the first place. Now I’d have to see if I could make my anger work for me. If fury was all Charlie would listen to, then I would make him listen.
“He? Charlie, you’re the only he that could ever make me happy.”
Charlie stepped away as I moved closer. “Do you hear me? Your jealousy was only ever that.”
As the pain started in my chest, I questioned the odds of someone my age having a heart-attack, waited a second to see if the ache would shoot up my arm like I had read about so many times. When it didn’t, it occurred to me that it was only the terror coming back, my body bracing itself again for what might happen if I couldn’t make Charlie believe the truth.
“You have no right to accuse me of being with anyone else. No right at all! I’ve never done anything to give you any indication that I’ve ever wanted anyone but you.”
“You mean you never—that Fed?”
“I’ve never loved anyone but you.”
“I—I don’t believe it…” His voice trailed off as he plopped himself on the willow root. I sat down across from him, reluctant only because it seemed like sudden moves might make him flee.
“Why not?”
“Reid said—”
“Reid said what?” That flicker of anger I had felt was glimmering bright now, beaming away the black parasites until I was blinded white. I knew Reid didn’t like me, didn’t trust me, but to deliberately sabotage our relationship?
“He said a girl like you didn’t have a future with a guy like me, that you were thinking long-term, you’d be thinking ‘bout kids and houses and backyards and security, ‘bout all the stuff that I couldn’t give you.”
“What?” I dug my fingernails into the bark below me. I didn’t have the words to describe my rage, perhaps in only that it was undoubtedly rage. Although what made me more upset? The fact that I had thought about those things, or that Reid was the one to say them? “I’m going to kill him.”
Charlie smiled at me finally, and for the first time in months my heart lit up. “I tried that the first time he said it. But then that thing with the Albanians happened and I read those e-mails…”
My arm reached out for him. “Albanians? Wait, what Albanians?”
Charlie stared at the ground. “That scare we had a couple months back? Turns out it was a cohort of Albanians who cleared us out. We figured it was a dirty cop or somebody we knew—”
“Charlie?”
He looked at me sadly. “With the timing and everything, Reid thought—”
“Charlie…”
“But if it wasn’t you…”
“Charlie, we have to go.”
He looked up, eyes wide in wonder. “We?”
I tugged him by the arm until he was standing. He stared at me, mouth gaped open like I had just said something amazing. I was just grateful he let me lead him.
“Reid is going to steal a car to get you out of here. Are you okay enough to walk?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Charlie, please, don’t let them put you in jail. If you’re doing this to spite me or something, you have to reconsider, no matter what you think I’ve done—”
Finally, he reached up and let the thumb that stuck out from his cast trail along the edge of my face. He smiled, but it was sad, as though I said something he had already predicted. “Normally I like sayin’ yes to you, Vicious, but not this time.”
“What?” I sobbed, torn between wanting to scream and shout into the sky. Didn’t he know what an opportunity this was? “Why in the hell not? Don’t you know what will happen to you?”
His eyes trailed to my lips, the way they always did just before he kissed me, yet I knew he wouldn’t. How he could make me want to kiss in a situation like this was even more infuriating. “I wasn’t the only one Reid had convinced you were talking to the cops and that Fed maybe. Ben told Reid to go to your school, look around, be quiet about it. Course he can’t be quiet ‘bout nothing, so I found out and followed him.” He pulled away and turned his back to me, shuddering at something I couldn’t see.
“Charlie, you have to go. I’m sure Reid is waiting at the gate by now.”
“You wanna get rid of me that bad?”
I pulled him to me by the ends of his shirt. “I would have you with me every second of every day, but if you haven’t noticed, you just escaped prison custody and that isn’t exactly good for one’s health.”
“I’ll only go if you go.”
I shook my head. He wanted to play games? Now? “Charlie, people will assume the worst.”
“I’ll only go where you go, no matter what that means for me.”
“That’s ex
tortion.”
“I like happy shakedown a lot better.”
Every time I tripped over my feet, Charlie caught me but didn’t laugh. When we reached the front gate, my heart’s pulsing panic told me that Reid had taken off, forgotten about Charlie, abandoned him and taken off without any regard for him whatsoever. I hated him more than ever, wished terrible bodily harm to him and squeezed Charlie’s hand tighter. And then I saw the headlights blinking down the street.
We sat in the backseat together, hands still clutched, while Reid took off slowly as any normal driver would.
“It about time, ladies. Were we having tea?”
“Shut up, Reid.”
“You know what? I will shut up. I’ll shut up only because Jackass here is going to be telling me why he didn’t meet us where he said he was going to.”
“I had to make sure she was all right.” He still stared but I looked away.
Reid banged his head against the steering wheel. “Goddamn idiots…”
“As much as I hate to, I agree with Reid.”
Now both sets of eyes were on me.
“I left without telling anyone where I was going. My Dad is probably looking for me by now and if he hasn’t heard about your breakout by now, then it will be second now.”
“Great.” Reid sighed. “Great.”
“I don’t care ‘bout that. I need her with me.”
“It’s not safe for you, Charlie.”
“Yeah, Charlie,” Reid mocked. “And this car is a domestic. It’s going to be reported by morning.”
“My brother’s car.” The words bubbled out of me with uncontainable excitement. “We can take that.”
“Great idea, brainiac. That’ll be the first thing they come looking for.”
“Not if I call him right now and tell him I borrowed it. I’ll tell him I went to visit my roommate.”
Even Charlie seemed skeptical. “He’ll buy that?”
Frankly, I didn’t know if Robbie would believe me or not. And I didn’t know if I wanted to lie to him, either. “It’ll buy a few hours. And since I’m less threatening, I’m less likely to get pulled over than either of you.”
“No—”
“Yeah.” Charlie pulled me close enough so that I was almost in his lap.
Conviction (Wated Series Book 2) Page 21
