“But that will take some getting used to,” she said with a smile in her voice.
“Did it hurt?” I asked, worried now that maybe she’d endured the pain just so that I could get off. “I mean, I know it had to hurt some, but—”
She shook her head. “It hurt a little, but I liked it, too.”
I breathed a small sigh of relief and then looked up at the ceiling.
“Though…,” she started to say in a “nevertheless” manner, and my head fell back over to one side to face her, “… I doubt I’ll ever be able to get off like that.”
A blushing smile cracked in my face and I let out a small laugh. Then I rolled over onto my side, pulling her naked body against mine. I kissed her shoulder before I nuzzled my head next to hers.
“Say no more,” I said, as my free hand slid down her belly and toward her inner thigh. I pulled her legs apart and took my time getting her off with my fingers.
* * *
Sunlight poured in through the crack in the curtain from the office window the next morning. I remembered that Tate planned to leave first thing after the bank opened, so when I glanced up at the clock on the wall and saw that it was already noon I woke up quickly the rest of the way.
I shook Bray’s shoulder gently. “Bray, baby, get up.”
It worried me that Tate might’ve already left; I didn’t hear any voices in the house except from the television.
I crawled off the couch bed and got dressed pretty quickly. Bray followed, though she wasn’t nearly as awake as I was. Her eyes were still heavy, and she seemed out of it as she clasped her bra behind her and pulled her shirt over her head.
“I hope he didn’t leave already,” I said.
Bray followed me out of the room and into the den. Tate and Jen were still there. And so was Caleb. Adam was still there, too, and they were all staring at the television.
Bray and I stopped cold in our tracks behind the couch when we saw our faces on the television screen. I clutched Bray’s hand. She was shaking.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Elias
“Elias Kline’s car was found abandoned on Luther Road near the Charlotte County fire station last evening. He and Brayelle Bates are wanted for questioning in the death of Jana McIntyre, whose body was found near the Ocoee River in Georgia last month. Authorities believe…”
I let the rest of what the reporter was saying fade into the back of my mind somewhere.
Everyone simultaneously turned and looked at Bray and me, wide-eyed and as speechless as we were. I felt Bray’s fingernails digging into my hand, and I could feel her heartbeat pounding through my palm. Or maybe it was mine.
“It was an accident,” Bray blurted out.
“Holy shit, you’re wanted for murder?” Jen said. She was turned around fully on the couch facing us, her knees pressed into the cushions. I couldn’t tell whether or not she was disturbed by it or fascinated.
“Questioning, not murder,” Tate corrected her.
“I knew it,” Caleb said, smirking. “I mean I didn’t really think that was it. It was a joke. Damn. But a deal’s a deal.” He held out his hand to Tate sitting next to him. “Pay up, bro.”
“Subtract it from what you’re going to owe me after we get to Corpus Christi.” Tate never took his eyes off us. “What happened?” he asked, looking straight at me.
“Just what Bray said. It was an accident.”
“If it was an accident, why’d you run?” Caleb asked.
Bray burst into tears. I pulled her into my arms.
“We ran because we didn’t think anyone would believe us,” I said, holding Bray’s head in my hand, pressed against my chest. “It was self-defense. But the girl stumbled back too far, tripped, and fell over the edge.”
“The edge of what?” Adam asked. He looked far more nervous than anyone, his mouth partially agape, the whites of his eyes beginning to show.
“A cliff. Overlooking the river. It was an accident.”
Tate got off the couch and came toward me. Bray continued to sob into my shirt.
“What the hell are you gonna do, man?” He looked truly concerned and not at all accusing or put off, as I expected them all to be. Maybe he understood more than I knew, having to deal with his own issues with Caleb. “Seriously. I’m not going to judge you, but shit, man, you know they’ll catch you.” I saw him glance over at Bray. He knew this was all about her. He looked back at me. Sympathetically. I wondered what he was really thinking, but then thought it better that I didn’t know. Because I had a pretty good idea and I didn’t like it.
“We don’t know yet,” I answered.
Bray couldn’t take anymore. She broke away from me and ran back into the office and closed herself inside. I started to go after her, but I needed to deal with Tate and everyone else first.
I looked at Tate.
“Better cut them loose,” Caleb warned from behind. “We’ve got enough shit to deal with.”
Tate looked back. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said reproachfully. “We’ve got enough to deal with because of the shit you got us into. I love you, little brother, but you’re the last person in this room to be talkin’.”
I really appreciated Tate for that.
“I hate to say this,” Tate went on, looking at me again, “but Caleb’s not too far off the mark.”
“I know,” I said. “And I don’t expect you to keep us around anymore. If it was me, I know I wouldn’t.”
“So then what are you going to do?” Jen asked.
“Well, they definitely can’t stay here,” Adam said, looking more nervous every time my eyes passed over him. “And I’m sorry, but the sooner you two leave the better. I’m not trying to be a dick, but—”
I put up my hand. “No, Adam, you’re right. No hard feelings.”
I looked around at everyone else. “But I just hope you all believe that it was an accident. We could never do anything like that on purpose, not even out of anger.”
“You keep saying ‘we,’ ” Jen said. She got off the couch and stood next to Tate.
I nodded. “Yeah, uhh—”
“They were both there,” Tate stepped in. I saw a warning look hidden in his eyes. He was covering for me, and I was surprised by this. “It was Bray’s accident, but Elias saw it happen, so he’s calling it ‘their’ accident. I’d do the same thing.” He shrugged.
I thanked him with a private look.
“You knew about this?” Jen asked.
“No,” Tate said. “It was just a wild guess.” Then he said looking back at me, “Am I right?”
I nodded.
“Look,” Tate went on. “I would help you get back, but all of my extra cash flow is going to the Caleb Fuck-Up Fund—”
I shook my head at him, waving a hand in front of me in refusal. “No, I wouldn’t take your money anyway. You’ve done enough already by letting us hang around the past couple of weeks. I have money in the bank and I intend to pay you back every dime. I’ve just been afraid to access my account.” I inhaled a deep breath and glanced at the floor in thought for a moment. “Bray and I were going to figure out what to do within the next three days and then, whether we came up with anything or not, we were going to go back to Georgia.”
“What could you possibly do other than just turn yourself in?” Jen asked.
It was a fair question.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I really don’t. Maybe I’ll call my father and see about getting a good lawyer. I just… don’t know.” And it was the truest thing I had said in days. Sure, I could go back to Georgia and say I witnessed the accident, but any other ideas continued to elude me, and it seemed as if they always would. But the part of me that wanted to do everything in my power to help Bray wouldn’t let me believe that. So I stuck to my three-day rule. I thought that maybe by some miraculous chance a better idea would fall into my lap and blindside me out of nowhere. Not likely, but possible.
Tate reached into Jen’s purse on the side table
nearby and took out a pack of cigarettes. He tapped the end of the pack with his finger, and a cigarette shot out the open end. He had it between his lips and lit seconds later. He smoked too much.
“Shit, Tate,” Adam argued from the side. “Not in the house.”
“Oh, sorry, man,” Tate said and started to head to the back door just a few feet away that led out onto the porch. He drew his head back, indicating for me to follow, then he said to Jen, “Baby, get your stuff ready. I don’t want you to miss your plane.”
I left the den and went outside with Tate. “Where’s Jen going?” I asked.
“I got her a plane ticket back to Miami,” he said, and took a long pull from his cigarette. He sat against the concrete porch railing. “She starts a new job in two days. But she didn’t want to go with me to Texas, anyway. And I wouldn’t have let her.”
I figured that must have been why he didn’t leave early this morning like he had planned: he wanted to wait until after she got on her plane.
“Why don’t you just tell Caleb to leave what drugs he has left on him here so you two can fly to Texas? Corpus Christi is a long drive.”
Tate flicked his ashes over the porch. He was slow to answer, which made me think there was more to it.
“I guess since you’re not exactly a threat to Caleb anymore, you being in more shit than even he’s in, then it’s OK I tell you that he’s still on parole and isn’t supposed to leave Florida. He could go right back to prison if they ever found out he was in Virginia. It’s the main reason why we’ve been driving everywhere.”
“Geez, what did he do?”
“Sentenced to five years for rape. Only served two, and he’s on a five-year parole.”
I blinked. “He raped a girl?” I couldn’t believe it. Caleb was a dick, sure, but I never would’ve taken him for the type.
Tate shook his head. “My brother didn’t rape that girl. And before you think I’m just backing him because he’s my brother, I know he isn’t like that, and I know for a fact he didn’t do it. That bitch fessed up to someone my sister, Everly, knows. She admitted that she’d lied just to get back at Caleb.” He shook his head and ground his teeth together behind his tightly clamped jaw. “Caleb told me everything. He was going through a bad breakup with his girlfriend, Cera. He got shitfaced one night, met this girl at a party, one thing led to another, and he fucked her. Well, Caleb felt like shit the next day for sleeping with her. He loved Cera. So, when he told this girl it was just a one-time thing, apparently she didn’t like that much. My brother was loyal to Cera.” He pointed at me as if to underline what he’d just said. “That might not seem like him, loyal, but he loved her. He was going to marry her. Anyway, that bitch got pissed off because he wouldn’t acknowledge they were ‘together’ ”—he quoted with his fingers—“so she cried rape. Claimed she regretted it after the alcohol wore off, but by then she was too afraid to tell the truth because then charges could be pressed against her.” He hopped up on top of the concrete railing and let his legs dangle over the side.
“Did you report what you overheard?”
“Fuck yeah I did, right after I confronted her myself—it was the one time I really wanted to punch a girl,” Tate said as smoke streamed out of his nostrils. “I told Caleb’s lawyer and the police, and I tried to get that now ex-friend of my sister’s to stand up in court and tell everyone what she was told, but she denied it.” Tate shook his head, smiling disappointedly, as if to this day he still couldn’t believe it. “Long story short, Caleb was sentenced and served some of his time. His girlfriend of five years left him, and that was the end of Caleb’s life. Wearing a bright fucking rape badge on your chest is pretty much a life ender, even if you didn’t really do it. After that, Caleb wasn’t the same anymore. He got out of prison and he was changed. I didn’t even know him anymore. I still don’t. When I look in his eyes I don’t see my little brother anymore, and I don’t think I ever will.”
I thought about Bray then, about the possibility of her going to prison. “You think the time in prison made him that way?” I asked.
“Nah,” Tate said, wrinkling his nose. “He wasn’t in prison that long. I think it was a combination of everything. Losing Cera. Being convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. Facing a bunch of asshats when he got out. Some people did everything short of stoning him to death in the street. He lost his job and a lot of his friends because they all believed he was a rapist. Shit like that can really mess with a person’s head.”
I leaned my back against the concrete beam and crossed my arms. All I could picture was Bray, dressed in an orange suit. And after hearing about what Caleb went through, I became even more hell-bent on keeping her out of prison when I thought I couldn’t possibly be any more determined than I already was. Suddenly, I was terrified for her. The system failed Caleb Roth. I knew, with every fiber of my being, that it was just as likely to fail Bray.
She was right all along. She was right to be afraid. She was wrong to run, but her fears were absolutely justified.
“Go ahead and come with us to Texas,” Tate said. “Use the ride there and back to figure out what you two are gonna do.” He pointed at me briefly. “But my advice, if you want it, you need to talk that girl into turning herself in.”
I was confused, and I know I must’ve looked that way. After what Caleb went through unnecessarily, I thought Tate would know Bray would probably go through the same thing.
“She thinks it’s too late for that,” I said. “And I can’t say I disagree with her.”
“Maybe so,” he said, “but that’s some serious shit right there. You kill somebody, accidental or not, it’s not something that’ll ever get swept under the rug. The longer you run, the harder they’ll hunt you down, and the more you make yourself look guilty as hell.”
“Yeah, I know. Trust me, I know. I’ve thought about nothing but that since we left Georgia.”
Jen pushed the back door open, her eyes, wide with worry, framed by her long, cascading blonde hair. “Elias, I think you need to get in there with your girlfriend. She locked herself in the bathroom.”
Fearing the worst, and knowing what Bray was capable of, I rushed past Jen and ran back into the house.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Elias
I rapped harshly on the bathroom door. “Bray?”
I could hear her sobbing, but she wouldn’t answer, so I knocked and called out her name again. Jen and Tate came up behind me, but I was too busy trying to get the door open to pay attention. I twisted the knob both ways, knowing it was locked but hoping by some chance it might still pop open. “Bray, open the door, baby, please.” My heart was thrumming in my throat.
“I heard her crying when I walked by,” Jen said from behind. “I stopped and asked if she was OK, but she didn’t answer. I dunno why, but it just kinda freaked me out.”
“Bray! Open the damn door!” I pounded on it harder with my fist.
“Move out of the way,” I heard Adam say in a calm manner, as if he had it under control.
I stepped to the side and Adam went up to the door and stuck a thin L-shaped piece of metal in the doorknob. The door clicked and popped right open. Adam stepped away and I wasted no time rushing in there. Bray was sitting on the bathroom floor next to the pedestal sink with her back against the wall, her knees drawn up and her head atop them. She rocked back and forth on her backside, her body a trembling mess, her arms pressed together against her chest. I checked her over from afar, at first afraid to approach her.
No blood. There was no blood, and a great sense of relief washed through me like a crashing wave. As relieved as I was, I felt guilty for thinking she would ever do something like that after she promised me that she wouldn’t. I wasn’t giving her enough credit.
I sat down beside her on the floor and glanced back at everyone standing in the doorway.
“Let’s give them a moment,” Tate said and reached out for the doorknob. Just before the door closed he added, “I hate to rush
you, especially right now, but we have to head out in fifteen minutes so Jen can make her flight.”
I nodded and he closed the door the rest of the way.
Immediately, I turned back to Bray. Placing my hands on the sides of her face, I tried to lift her head. She fought me at first, but I managed to get her to raise her eyes to me. Her face was streaked with the black mascara she had borrowed from Jen. I tried to take her hands, wedging mine between her thighs and her chest to reach them, but she refused, jerking them away. Her dark hair fell over her shoulder and further concealed them.
“Why are you hiding them?”
That feeling in the pit of my stomach began to twist deeper.
“Elias…” Her voice was soft and pleading.
She didn’t want me to look.
I clenched my jaw so hard that pain shot through my teeth and I reached in and grabbed her by one wrist, feeling the coarse hemp rope material her bracelets were made from scratching against my fingers. I expected them to be moist with blood, but they were dry. She screamed at me and thrust her body backward, accidently hitting her head on the wall, but I wasn’t about to let go. Her eyes were feral and imploring.
“Stop, Elias, please!”
“No! What are you hiding?!” I wrenched her wrists into view and forced my fingers behind the bracelets, pulling them apart so I could see her skin. Still no blood. No cuts. I looked at the other one. It was the same, but as I moved a little to the left and the light in the ceiling filled in the shadow my body had been casting on her, I saw that her wrists were red and inflamed. Red streaks stretched from just below the balls of her thumbs downward to the center of her forearm.
Scratch marks.
I froze, my hands clamped down on her forearms so hard that she couldn’t move them. “What the hell is this?”
She shook her head. Tears streamed down her face, dripping off the end of her chin.
I shook her so hard that the back of her head hit the wall again. “What the hell is this, Bray?!” I roared in her face.
“It’s not that!” she screamed back in my face. “It’s not what you’re thinking!” Her face was contorted by pain.
Song of the Fireflies Page 19
