Stronger

by Blue Ashcroft

  I have feelings for him.

  I hold him tighter and wonder when that happened. He nips my earlobe, and I squeak, but then sigh as he runs his tongue over the shell of my ear, up, and then down again to the lobe, nipping it once more and moving to place a soft kiss at the spot right beneath it. My legs give out and he grabs me under the butt, not missing a beat, pulling me up and pressing me into him. Closer and closer.

  I sigh and put a hand up to stifle a moan as he moves down my shoulder, over my collarbone, down to my cleavage. His breath there is so warm, and it’s like every nerve in my body is acknowledging him. I press my hips to his, feeling like no matter how close we are, it can’t be close enough. I reach for his buckle.

  He groans, letting me fumble with it, then takes a deep breath, sets his hands on my shoulders, and pushes me back.

  It’s a mistake. With a little distance, he looks even more irresistible. Hair tousled from my hands. Lips pouty and swollen. Dark features lined with intensity, eyes full of a dark emotion that’s reflected in my own.

  “Geoff,” I sigh, reaching for him. He tries to resist, but I pull hard, yanking his mouth back down, and he settles against me with a soft breath.

  “Amy. Amy, I can never get enough of you.”

  The words thrill me as much as the lips that are saying them. It’s the right time. It has to be. Now or never. “Good,” I say. “Because I have something to tell you.”

  He nods and presses his lips to my neck, leaving his ear near my mouth, waiting for me to say something.

  I clutch his shoulders one more time, one more breath over my skin, one more second of pure pleasure before I drop an atom bomb on the moment. “I know who raped your sister,” I say softly.

  His lips snap shut, and for a moment he doesn’t move, just leans on the table and grips me around the waist. Then he slowly pulls back, letting me go, and breathing out in a low hiss.

  “Damn Amy, I don’t know whether to hate you for not telling me sooner, or love you for figuring it out.”

  “Don’t decide yet. I’m not telling you who it is,” I say.

  His eyes narrow. “Like hell you aren’t.”

  I guess we’re going to have another fight today after all.

  Geoff

  She has to pick the worst timing ever. Here I am wondering if this is heaven because she’s in my arms, wondering about breaking all of the stupid promises I made to myself not to be happy, wondering if it’s worth it, and then she drops that on me.

  My world stopped turning for a moment. Nothing moved, no air, no sound. Deep down, maybe I never expected to know, maybe I always knew it was good not to know, because then I’d give my life to avenge Camille and things would really be over.

  But now I know it’s within reach, and my walls are tumbling around me, and Amy has the gall to say she won’t tell me who it is.

  “You’re going to tell me, Amy.”

  “How will you make me?” She says, brushing her hair behind her ear. She looks sexy as hell, hair mussed, lip gloss smeared, lips swollen and thoroughly kissed, eyes sparkling with leftover pleasure from moments ago. Her skin is flushed and beautiful. I want to reach out, stroke her face, touch her hair, gather her to me and thank the universe that someone like her could let someone like me touch her, but I can’t now.

  Now she’s my enemy. She’s in the way of everything I want. Holding it in my face and taunting me. What was the point of telling me if she wasn’t going to tell me?

  “I won’t make you. But I can make your life miserable until you do.”

  “Just tell me, why do you have to know? What is it going to accomplish?”

  I narrow my eyes. “Justice.”

  “How?” She shakes her head, looking away, but I can still see the sparkle of what looks like tears in her eyes. “Camille is gone, Geoff. She wouldn’t want this from you. I can promise you that?”

  “You can promise, huh?” I throw up my hands. “And how can you do that? How do you know what she wanted? You’re pampered as hell. How would you know her dreams? Her thoughts? She’s not here, and how dare you say you could promise me she would want or not want something. You didn’t even know her.”

  She blinks up at me, tears welling in her huge brown eyes, and I feel slightly guilty for using that tone. “I know. I wish I had. You think I don’t wish I could go back too? Be her friend, see if I could make things right? Not throw that party?” She wipes at her eyes with her arm. “I would go back, but I can’t. But I do know how she would feel about this. She would want you to be happy. Even if she couldn’t be.”

  “How would you know that?” I say coldly, cruelly. “In what world can you understand anything about her?”

  “I know why she didn’t want to tell you,” she says, leaning back on her hands like she can barely stay standing. It must have been hard to bring this up with me. I understand that, but I’m still pissed as hell that she expects to dangle this over me and not tell me. The worst kind of tease. Maybe it’s payback for jerking her around.

  “And why is that?” I say, not recognizing the dark tone in my own voice. So much darkness now, all around me. I can’t even feel light anymore. Was there ever light in my life? I look up at the ceiling, wishing I could see the sky. Camille, where did you go? Come back…

  “Because she loved you. Loves you.” She puts one hand over her eyes, pinching the top of her nose, and then looks up at me with honest, bloodshot eyes. “And I love you too.”

  It slams into me for a moment, making me shocked and surprised, but I won’t be deterred. “Yet you won’t tell me his name.”

  She slams a hand down on the pool table. “To protect you! Not him, you!” She bites her lip and glares to the side, away from me.

  “To protect me? How?”

  “So you don’t do something stupid, so you don’t ruin yourself over something that can’t be undone!” Another tear falls down her cheek and a stupid longing in me to wipe it away rises and I swat it away.

  “Do you think I want that kind of protection? I want justice. I don’t want to live high on the back of her death. Mom wouldn’t have even left Ben if Camille hadn’t died.”

  “You don’t know that,” she says, glaring at me and folding her arms. She seems to be finally calming down. “But even so, I think she would have been happy. She wouldn’t want to see you sad. If you were dead, would you want her to be sad?”

  I don’t want to listen to her. I’ve hid behind this wall too long to come out from behind it now. “I don’t want to be happy. I don’t have anything now.”

  She slaps me. Somehow she covered the distance between us in an instant. “You have everything. You even have her, rooting you on somehow. I know she is. Now listen to the people who love you and move on.”

  “But if you know who he is, then he’s still out there, and he needs to be stopped.”

  “There’s nothing you can do unless you catch him in the act. Even then. Some evil can’t be stopped.”

  “Just tell me one thing,” I say. “How did you find out?”

  “I can’t tell you. I can tell you I’ve been looking into things for you.”

  I nod, a knot in my throat that’s bigger by the second. It seems like years ago that we made out against the table, when all I wanted was to push her down and make her mine right there. Since I almost moved on. But you can’t build anything on secrets, so I can see why she stopped it.

  But now we’re at a crossroads, and I don’t see anyway to go ahead together. She’s standing in my way, refusing to help me. “So you won’t help me? Then I don’t want to be around you,” I say, turning away with folded arms.

  “I can’t. Not if you’re going to put yourself in jail.”

  “You don’t trust me,” I say softly, studying her face and finding the truth there. “You don’t trust me to do the right thing, to want the right thing?”

  “You said you would murder him.”

  “If that’s the right thing.”

  “It sounds like
you don’t think anything else could be the right thing.”

  “So you wouldn’t trust me, that if I murdered someone, that it was the right thing for me to do?”

  “It’s not that,” she says, looking up at me through sparkling, long lashes. She’s so beautiful. “It’s that I’m selfish. I don’t want to lose you. If you’re in jail, not only can you not have anything good, but I’ll never get to see you.”

  “That is selfish,” I mutter. “If you really cared, wouldn’t you let me make the choice?”

  “I could take it, if it was just losing you. But I can’t let you give up your future. So if you want to hate me, go ahead. If you want to throw away our friendship, go ahead. But I can’t tell you when you’re like this.”

  “Like what?” I say, throwing up my arms. “This is who I am. And I guess we never had a friendship if you could pretend to help me and then throw it in my face and not tell me.”

  “It’s not like that, Geoff. I don’t know what to do. But I’d betray Camille if I did the thing she didn’t want to do. I think I understand why she did what she did, or didn’t do, and now that I do, I can’t go against it. We’ll both protect you, even if you hate us for it.”

  “You. Aren’t. My. Sister,” I say, glaring.

  “Well, I hope not,” she scoffs, gesturing at the pool table. For just a moment I’m tempted to kiss her senseless again, take her against the table until she moans and promises to tell me anything I want, to give me anything, to trust me with anything.

  “I’m leaving. If you want a ride, better be at the bike before me,” I say.

  She sniffs and hurries out, tossing my jacket at me on her way past. When I get to the bike and see her standing there, stiff spine and chin in the air, I push the jacket at her. She pushes it back.

  “I don’t start the bike till that’s on,” I say.

  She shrugs, then takes it with a sigh and slips it on. She puts her arms around my back reluctantly, and we take off.

  On the way home, I can’t tell if she’s crying, or just shaking against my back. This is all so fucked up, but that’s just my life. She shouldn’t have expected a happy ending with me.

  When we get to her house she jumps off without my help, throws the jacket at me, and stumble-runs to the door. She opens and closes it with a slam, still without a word or a look in my direction. I shrug and put my jacket on. It’s warm and smells like her. I breathe it in for a second. I’m such a sap.

  I wait for the anger to fade, but it’s not fading. I take deep breaths, try to do the relaxation techniques my shrink showed me.

  It’s not working, so I rev the bike and take off, back to my apartment to chill out. I don’t usually drink, but tonight’s one of those nights.

  I settle in with a beer from the fridge and flip through channels on the TV. Amy knows who I need to kill. So why am I here rather than there, refusing to leave until she tells me? Am I just a coward, who can’t go through with it after all? Or am I just giving myself time to think?

  I stare down at the can, then set it on the table the TV sits on. I’m not going to resort to that. Camille’s dad, my step-dad, drank all the time. Couldn’t hold a job. He married my mom when I was just two and she was four. She was my sister since I can remember being alive. And she watched out for me. Played with me, didn’t complain about me following her around.

  She loved me.

  And I swore I’d pay that back when I was bigger than her. I’d watch out for her. I never got the chance. No, I got the chance and failed. What was it I told Knight, that she’d made her choice and I need to live my life? What bullshit. Sounds good on paper but every time I start to reach for something good it slips out of my fingers and revenge takes its place.

  My phone buzzes and I ignore it. I can’t think of anyone on the planet I want to talk to right now. Nothing on TV, so I just keep flipping channels. Then a loud thump at the door makes me jump out of the chair, looking around wildly. “Who is it?” But I don’t go to the door.

  I can hear footsteps moving around the house, and then someone’s at the back door. A tall man, with dark hair and blue eyes and the tanned, lean build of a man from an Armani ad.

  Knight. Camille’s ex-boyfriend.

  Might still be her boyfriend if she was still alive. He raises a fist and pounds on the back door, looking in through the dirty glass until he sees me.

  “Geoff, get your lazy ass out here. Now!”

  Maybe it’s just the little boy in me who used to idolize him, maybe it’s that he’s one of the only people who understands what I’m going through, but it gets me moving. I slump to the back door and slide it open.

  He folds his arms and glares down at me as he walks in. I’ve got him in size, but he’s a couple inches taller. “Geoff.”

  “Knightly.”

  “Don’t call me that,” he mutters.

  “Call you what I want,” I reply, knowing I sound like a child.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he says, once I’m back on the couch. I reach for the beer and he slaps my hand. “Come on, you know better than that.”

  “I’ve had a bad day,” I say.

  “No, I know about that,” he mutters darkly. “I mean, what’s wrong with you, letting Amy go over something like that?”

  “So you know that she knows? Does everyone know but me?”

  “No, I only found out because Amy called Rain just now, and Rain didn’t know what else to do, even though she promised not to tell. I can read her like a book.” Knight looks pleased for a moment, then shakes the grin of his face so he can pin me with another glare. I feel small and guilty under his gaze. Guilt I’m used to, smallness I’m not.

  “So then you know she won’t tell me?”

  “She might have,” he says, shaking his head. “If you hadn’t been an ass and insisted you’d kill him.”

  I pause for a second, weighing my words. “But I would kill him.”

  “Bullshit,” he says.

  “You wouldn’t?”

  “No.” He shakes his head again and drags both hands through his hair. “There was a time when I thought that would solve everything, that it would bring her back to me, the way she was before. But after she died, what was the point? I’d never know, and I couldn’t do anything for her if I did.”

  I nod. “It’s my job then. I should have protected her.”

  “You did what you damn well could. You were a fifteen-year-old boy. And the only one at fault here is the man who raped her.”

  “So I need to punish him.”

  “You know what I think?” Knight asks, looking disgusted. “I think it’s an excuse. I think it’s your excuse to stop living, to stay rooted in the past and not move on. Pretty pathetic from the guy who told me to be with Rain because Camille would want me to be happy.” He cracks his knuckles in frustration. “You said you were going to try and live too. Was it all a lie? Are you a liar, Geoff?”

  “I’m not a liar, I’m just confused!” I hold my head as fog rolls through it. “I don’t know what I am. I want to live and I don’t. I don’t want to leave her behind.”

  “But she left you behind, Geoff.”

  My eyes burn instantly with unshed tears, and a sharp ache tears through my chest. “Stop it.”

  “She didn’t care enough to stay for you, or for me. She doesn’t get to decide how we live our lives.”

  I punch him through the face, somehow having launched myself across the room without even knowing I moved. His head flies to the side, his blue eyes are wide, and when his face snaps back, it’s good and angry. “Good, get that out now, while you can. Get it all out. She left you behind. She left you alone.”

  I punch him again, and it hurts this time, both my hand and my heart, because I do care for Knight, because we were friends so long. “Stop it!” I just want him to stop talking.

  “I’m surprised your therapist didn’t cover this,” he says. “Or did you not tell her? I think you’re refusing to live and bent on revenge be
cause it helps you believe that she’s still here, looking over your shoulder. Well she’s not. She’s gone.”

  I hit him again and he catches my hand, and because I can’t hit anymore, I start to sob. Deep sobs of pain and regret, more pain than I thought my body could handle feeling. He holds me up, with just that one hand around my fist.

  “She can’t be gone, she can’t.”

  He pulls me forward into a hug, holds me tight when I try to push away, and suddenly I’m fifteen again, and they’re taking her away in the ambulance, not even letting me say goodbye. And then she’s in the casket, looking grey and not herself. I could imagine her above me, floating above everything. That she was still there, talking to me.

  And she wanted revenge.

  But Knight’s right. She was never really there. I dig my nails into my fists and cry into his shoulder, wanting my sister back. Wanting her not to be gone.

  “It’s okay,” Knight says. “It’s okay.”

  But it’s not okay. She’s not coming back. She’s really gone. I hear noises come from me but I can’t register them over the screaming in my heart. She’s gone she’s gone.

  She’s gone.

  It echoes with finality, like I’m going to die because I’ve acknowledged it. And then a warm feeling comes. Comfort, from somewhere. I don’t know where. If I believed in an afterlife, I’d say I was feeling Camille, for the first time in so long. For real this time.

  “Wanna know a secret?” Knight asks.

  “What?” I mutter.

  “She may be gone from here, but I don’t think she’s gone completely. I believe that after death, we do go on, but better than we were. And I believe, if she was watching, she’d want you to let her go, and let go of your stupid vendetta, and do what you need to protect the people who do love you and still need your protection. Because you can’t protect Camille anymore.”

  “I’m sorry Cami,” I say, to the air around us. “I’m so sorry I failed you.”

  Knight swats the back of my head gently. “Stop it. Stop beating yourself up.”