Stronger

by Blue Ashcroft

  “You couldn’t, I mean, he didn’t manage it, and the cops…”

  “I know. But he’s following me now. He’s probably going to attack at some point. It’s a matter of time. And when that time comes, I’ll scream, and scratch, and make sure his DNA is under my fingernails for when the cops come.”

  “No, we won’t let that happen to you.”

  “Then how do we stop him from being out there running around, free to hurt innocent women, and men like Knight and Geoff?”

  “You’re kind of starting to sound like Geoff, I think.”

  It stops me in my tracks. She’s right. I’m starting to buy into what he says. That you can’t negotiate with evil, or placate it. You have to stop it, confront it, do something about it. I just don’t agree with his way of doing it, sacrificing himself. But Rain’s right, sacrificing myself is just as bad. “You’re right. But I guess I’m starting to see his way of thinking.”

  She nods. “Then rely on people like me to keep you sane again, like Geoff has relied on you.”

  I hug her tight. “Thanks so much, Rain.”

  “Sure,” she says.

  “Can you stay over tonight? It’d be fun to have a girl’s night, just in case.”

  “Yeah, but can we call Allie over? I mean, if there’s a creeper around, and you don’t want any guys over, she’s a good person to have around.”

  “Do you think she’d mind?”

  “Allie? Mind the chance to beat up on perverts? It’s like Christmas for her.” Rain picks up her phone and has a quick conversation with someone on the other end. It’s only a few seconds long, and she hangs up. “You should have called her sooner Amy. You’re so eager to help others but so bad at letting other people in.”

  “I know,” I say. “I let Geoff in, though.”

  “Knowing Geoff, he forced his way in.”

  “Well, he does have a pushy way about him.”

  “So how are things with Knight?”

  She blushes and smiles, trying to hide it behind her hand as she turns away. “Fine.”

  “Looks more than just fine. Damn, that boy is hot.”

  She nods. “Yeah. It’s more than that though.”

  “I knew it,” I say, playfully hitting my fist on the pillow. “He’s deep too, huh? Bitch, for swooping in out of nowhere and stealing him.”

  “You were never that interested and you know it. You like ‘em a little rougher,” she says.

  “Yeah, like me,” Ally says, right before appearing in front of us, after kicking the door open. It hits the wall and comes back towards her and she puts up a fist to stop it from hitting her, grinning at me apologetically.

  “You can never just open a door normally, can you?” Rain says, palming her face.

  “Where’s the fun in that?” Ally replies, walking fully into the room, an intimidating presence at almost six feet, with silver blonde hair and silvery eyes. She shakes her short hair off her forehead and slams one hand into the other, cracking her knuckles. “Now whose ass do I need to beat?”

  For a minute, Rain and I just stare at her, then we both look at each other and burst into hysterical laughter. Ally walks forward and stares down at us, glaring with folded arms.

  “What am I missing?”

  “Oh Ally, you always know the right thing to say,” I say, bounding forward to give her a hug.

  “Hey now, I’m a spoken for woman, ya know,” she says gruffly. But she puts a hand in my hair and pulls me close in a rough hug anyway. “But I guess Ryan won’t mind if you need a little comfort.”

  “I’m glad he can spare you.”

  “Honestly, were you not calling me because of that? Because I’m going to be pissed if that’s true.”

  I stay silent, knowing that says it all. “Why would you be pissed?” I hug her, thinking I should have called her sooner. Rain is right. Maybe she’s better at giving advice than I thought. I look over and see her giving me a smile that’s only a little smug, but mostly relieved.

  “Why would I be pissed? Because you’re my girl, and because no man controls me,” she says. “I’m a free spirit, I gotta be free.” She makes a soaring motion with her hand. “Even though I really could spend all day with that man. Now if I can just talk him out of the no-premarital sex rule—”

  “Ally, you’re the best,” I say, pulling away feeling a million times better. I plop on the bed next to Rain, who puts an arm around me. Ally strides to the head of the bed and stares down at us with a commanding glare, like a general ready to give orders to an army.

  “So troops, what’s the plan? Rain says there’s a creeper on the loose.” She cracks her knuckles again, a horrible, loud noise. “And I. Hate. Creepers. ‘Specially ‘round my girl.”

  I blush, it’s still hard not to be affected by Allie. She’s so gorgeous and fearless and confident. If I could have had her, maybe I could have kept ignoring Geoff. But I’m glad she’s with Ryan now, and happy. If only I could be that happy with Geoff.

  But that’s like a million worlds of impossible away.

  “You have to be able to keep it a secret. No telling Ryan. Or Knight, or especially Geoff,” I say.

  Her eyes narrow to silver slits and she frowns. Her slim muscles tense as she adjusts her stance. “I can’t promise that.”

  “Allie!” Rain says.

  “Look, I get guys better than you two. And those are all my friends. If I think they need to get involved, I need to involve them.”

  My heart sinks like the Titanic. “Then I can’t tell you.”

  For a moment it’s stalemate, just me and her in a stare down, and then she caves and sits on the bed. “All right, I’ll do my best.”

  “That’s not good enough. You have to swear,” I say, extending my pinky.

  “Hm,” she says. “You know promises made with fingers aren’t exactly set in stone.”

  “Then I guess I can’t tell you.”

  “Fine, under the sacred promise of your tiny, weak, finger, I will not tell anyone about what you tell me. Unless I have to.”

  “You’re awful,” Rain says from behind us.

  “You just say that ‘cause I got a taste of your boyfriend,” Ally says, smirking.

  Rain just growls.

  “But I promise, Amy. I promise to keep it a secret, if there is any way to keep it a secret. You have to trust me,” she says, staring evenly into my eyes. I do trust her. She knows all of us, except for Camille. Maybe she’s the one person we could trust to keep a level head.

  “I do trust you,” I say.

  “Good, now just tell me whose ass I gotta kick, and I’ll decide if I need extra feet to assist me.”

  I laugh and grab the note with shaking fingers, hoping Rain will help me tell the story if I can’t.

  Chapter 14

  “Well, uh…” Ally scratches her head as she sits on my bed staring down at the note. “I wish you hadn’t tried to eat it. There won’t be prints.”

  I nod. Though there are three of us, it’s so quiet in the room that the pink clock on the wall across from us sounds super loud. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock…

  Poor Geoff. I flop back on the bed, hands over my eyes. It makes everything dark and quiet. It’s funny how we’re all tied together. It started with Camille and will end with me. I don’t know how yet. I wish I could involve Geoff. He deserves the chance to face the person who hurt him so bad.

  I don’t understand how some people can be so evil. I don’t know how to deal with them. I don’t know how that works with Karma and the universe. I’ve never had a sister, but if I had, I bet I’d feel like he does.

  But he deserves more than this. He deserves more than going to jail. There’s no way for Mike to get what he deserves, not in this life anyway. Any attempt to punish him simply punishes the person trying to do it. I wish there was another way.

  “Are you sure we can’t involve Geoff?” Ally asks, sounding uncharacteristically tentative. “I mean it’s his sister.”

  “I don’t know
if I want to involve Knight,” Rain says. “He’s mentioned before that Camille wouldn’t tell him who it was, but that sometimes he felt like if she just told him, he could have killed the perp and ended the nightmare.”

  “Except it wouldn’t have ended anyone’s nightmare. Except, ironically, mine,” I say. “If they had caught him, I wouldn’t be in this position.”

  “Yeah,” Ally says.

  “But it’s no one’s fault,” Rain says, always the peacemaker.

  “I don’t know,” Ally says. “Why didn’t she tell her brother or her boyfriend? Maybe he deserved the beat down he would have gotten.”

  “It’s not that she was protecting him,” Rain says. “She was probably protecting them. Like Amy and I are trying to do now. Not because we don’t want the perp hurt, but because we don’t want to see the men we love become the type who hurt.”

  “Hmph,” Ally says.

  “Love? Who said love?” I ask.

  “You put that note in your mouth and tried to eat it. You weren’t going to let anyone help, but especially not him. You were willing to put all the stress on yourself to try and protect him. If that isn’t love, what is?” Rain looks non-plussed.

  “He’s a friend. It sounds stupid to say it, but he is.”

  “He’s always been into you,” Ally says. “When we got hired together, and you came on to me, he asked me about you.”

  “That’s because he wanted to get close to me to ask about a party Camille was at. One I threw.”

  The girls are silent for a moment. Then Rain pipes up. “But he’s definitely interested. Knight says he would wait in the office for you to get off work so he could catch you. And he’s the one who talked to Knight about getting you protection when he heard about Mike. If it was just the party, he could have just asked.”

  “He’s interested, all right. Interested in getting into my pants. And nothing else.”

  “He wouldn’t be helping with Mike if that was it.”

  “You know, the more I think about it, the more I think it’s bull that he just wanted to get to know you to figure out Camille’s mystery. He wouldn’t have waited a year. If you ask me, he was interested from the start, and used that as an excuse,” Ally says.

  “No,” I say. “He’s dead serious about catching the person who raped her.”

  “As he should be. But I think in the meantime, he’s been living more than he thought he should, and then feeling guilty about it, and then he reverts back to being obsessed about Camille.”

  “Wow, oddly astute of you,” Rain murmurs. Ally blows a raspberry in response.

  “I do think he’s very conflicted. When we made out…” I touch my lips. It was so soft, so hard. So controlling and passionate. I like conflicted, I like complicated.

  I like riding on the back of his bike, and starting fights outside his bar. I like when he rubs my head, or pulls me close. I like when he gets overprotective and weird.

  “When you made out?” Ally raises an eyebrow.

  “Um. It was good.”

  “Let me guess, he likes being on top?” She smirks knowingly.

  “How’d you know?”

  “Just a guess. Plus, I’ve always thought he was a lot like me.”

  “So, Ryan lets you take charge?” I tease.

  “Hey, we aren’t talking about me here,” she says, blushing and flapping a hand in front of her face like she can wave her embarrassment away. “None of your beeswax.”

  Ally’s boyfriend Ryan is gorgeous. Tall, muscled and very quiet, with gorgeous long hair and green eyes. We were both peer mentors in high school for kids with special needs. They look like they both fell off a billboard.

  “Fine,” I mutter. “I can’t picture Ryan that way, anyway.”

  “Good. Not for you to picture.”

  I smile at Ally’s possessiveness, wishing someone felt that way about me. “Hey Ally, have you ever wanted more out of life?”

  “Like how?”

  “Like, you know, more than life guarding, or a menial job?”

  “I’m in school, aren’t I?”

  “Yeah, but are you actually planning on doing anything with it?”

  “No. I’m not cut out for that. I like physical stuff. Can’t hurt to get some learning though. College is cool.”

  “See? I wish Geoff was like that. It’s like he has no drive.”

  “No drive?” Ally purses her lips and folds her arms. “How do you mean?”

  “I guess kind of like you, except he doesn’t seem like he only likes physical work. He seems like he could do more if he wanted.”

  “Rude.”

  “No, I’m just not saying this right. It’s just that you seem happy with the track you are on. And at least you are in school. But back when I used to ask what you wanted to do other than life guarding, you said that was it. Geoff says that too. That’s how you’re alike. Except he doesn’t seem to have the same reasoning you do. Reasoning that makes total sense, by the way.”

  “Ohhh. I get it now.”

  Rain is just watching us intently, staring down at her phone once in a while, probably wondering if she should text Knight or not as it gets later. We’ve talked so long that it’s getting dark outside.

  “Well, Geoff and I are different. He probably should do more. He’s got money and all.”

  Oh no, how had I not asked more about that? He told me that he had the scholarships Kyle thought he was lying about. I should have pressed further. “He said something about that.”

  “Yeah, his step-dad is super rich. A lawyer. He switched high schools midway, went to a fancy one. He said he got into some good schools. This was back when I was getting to know him when we were training together. It didn’t make sense for him to only want to lifeguard. Makes sense for me. I got no family, no support. I mean, Ryan’s family is kind of mine now, and I’m looking up a bit, but yeah. For Geoff it should be a no-brainer.”

  “Maybe he’s hiding from something,” Rain says. “Maybe something he doesn’t think he deserves.”

  Both Ally and I look up at this. “Huh? How do you mean?”

  Her eyes cloud and she looks away, her face pained. “I don’t know how much you two know about what happened at my last job.”

  “Just bits of gossip. You did mention you’d done some grieving.”

  “You’re kind of an uptight—” I hit Ally on the knee to shut her up.

  Rain sighs. “I don’t like talking about it if I don’t have to. But if it helps you understand Geoff…”

  “Thanks,” I say softly, sitting closer to her on the bed.

  She sits back against the headboard, looks up at the ceiling for a minute, and it reminds me how Geoff looks at the sky sometimes.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Do what?” She looks genuinely confused.

  “Look up, like you’re looking at the ceiling, or the inside of the top of your eye sockets.”

  “Oh, habit. When grief comes, sometimes it’s sudden. It’s one way to keep from crying, at least for me.”

  “Oh.” Somehow I don’t think it’s the same thing for Geoff. It almost looks like he’s looking for something, but what do I know? I’ll ask him next time I see him.

  “Anyway, I made a mistake at my last water park. A boy died. A boy I had just agreed to date.”

  Ally and I are silent. There’s nothing appropriate to say in this situation.

  “You’d think it was clear cut right? It wasn’t really my fault, and we weren’t really dating yet. Just newly trying it. But somehow, seeing his body, crushed and mangled on the concrete, watching the blood pool around him, the grotesque look on his face as they lifted him to take him away, that mixed everything up.”

  Ally stares, mouth hanging open. I touch Rain’s knee and nod.

  “Our minds do funny things to cope, I think. That’s what my shrink says, the one I’ve been seeing since Knight made me go. Sometimes we do whatever we have to do to cope.”

  “Makes sense,” I say.


  “Yeah,” Ally murmurs.

  “Anyway, I convinced myself that it was my fault. I mean, how else do I make sense of it? It was my fault he was at that training. He’d been wanting to date me all summer.”

  “But you didn’t do anything wrong. Not that deserved what happened after,” I say softly.

  “Nevertheless, in my head, a connection was made. Something that made things okay when grief came and the guilt made me want to kill myself. I could tell myself I was making up for it, by refusing to live when he couldn’t, and it made it okay. It helped me go on with life, be able to keep working.”

  “But…” I trail off when she gives me a stern glare.

  “I know what you’re going to say. Knight’s said it a million times. That I can’t not live as a way to make it up to him. I get that. With a lot of therapy, I’m getting it more. But unless you see someone close to you die senselessly, when you’re both so young that everyone should still be invincible, you can’t understand.”

  “Oh.”

  She looks down at her hands. “There’s something incomprehensible about certain things. Things that are too painful, or too evil, to conceive. Things we aren’t prepared to deal with. Things no one has a handbook for. I was young. I’m still young. I’m lucky that Knight helped me push through and see the light. I’m lucky he could put up with me long enough to do so.”

  “He’s a good guy,” I say.

  Ally nods. “Hm.”

  “But it wasn’t easy. And it won’t be easy with Geoff. Because if losing a guy I’d known for three months could mess me up that bad, could make me feel that unworthy of living, imagine how messed up Geoff is after losing his sister.”

  “But it wasn’t his fault.”

  “Doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel directly responsible. You’ve seen how protective he is. Where do you think that came from? He was probably the one who always watched out for Camille. He probably felt like she was his responsibility. He probably spent his life taking care of her and making sure she didn’t get hurt. And then, one night, he’s not there and she gets hurt. Really bad.”

  “Oh…” I say, as the horror of it dawns on me.

  “And then, he’s not able to do enough. He can’t make it better. He can’t make her get help. I know some of the story from Knight. They both felt so impotent, so unable to do anything. She wouldn’t let them go after the guy, and she wouldn’t let them get her to therapy. And then she killed herself.”