Bloom

by Cassia Leo

  He smiled tentatively. “I’ll be right back.”

  As he left, I couldn’t stop my mind from wandering back to the night of the murders. Replaying the events on a loop, I tried to think of things I’d missed that would make sense now that we almost certainly knew the identity of the murderer. My brain fast-forwarded past the moment I said goodbye to my mother, as Jack and I left her to care for Junior while we celebrated our anniversary. I slid past the memories of the meal and wine we shared at the restaurant, my mind skidding to a stop at the recollection of having sex with Jack on the waterfront.

  My silk rose-patterned skirt fluttered in the soft evening breeze on the waterfront. Jack squeezed my hand as I tilted my head back and inhaled the earthy scent of the gorge. In previous years, when it got too hot during the summer, the decaying plant life in the river gave off a more musty scent. But it was the middle of August and a refreshing fifty-eight degrees tonight, as the weather began its downward descent toward autumn.

  “Do you remember the first time I took you windsurfing at The Hook?” Jack asked as we stopped in the middle of the trail that curved around the semi-circular sandbar of Waterfront Park.

  He sat down facing the water on the low stone wall, which separated the concrete footpath from the sand and sea. In one direction, the trail curved back toward Portway Avenue, where we’d come from Solstice bar and restaurant. In the other direction, the trail followed the waterfront around various water basins and the fork, where Hood River flowed into the Columbia River Gorge. It was one of the most popular tourist destinations in Oregon for good reason.

  The scenery was stunning, the moss and foliage an emerald green so deep and lush it was arresting, a color chosen by a violently imaginative god. The towering waterfalls gentle enough to bathe in, yet powerful enough you could feel the mist they expelled from hundreds of feet away. A guy in one of my classes at Oregon State called the gorge heartbreakingly beautiful because he knew he’d be heartbroken when he graduated and had to return to the Nevada desert.

  I slid my pumps off and set them on the wall next to Jack, smiling as my toes sunk into the cool sand. “How could I forget my first windsurfing lesson and the abject humiliation of falling in the water and screaming like a banshee when something very alive and very slimy brushed against my leg?” I replied as Jack pulled me onto his lap so I was seated sideways with my legs dangling over his right thigh.

  He chuckled as his hand slid under the hem of my skirt. “Well, you’re not supposed to try to carve on your first time out.”

  I shook my head. “You told me there were no fish in the cove. You totally lied to me!”

  He laughed in my ear as his hand crawled farther up, until his fingers bumped against the softness of my abdomen. “No panties?”

  I tried not to feel self-conscious about how my skin had remained stretched after the pregnancy, but I couldn’t stop myself from trying to push Jack’s hand away from my belly.

  He brushed his lips over my earlobe and whispered, “What’s wrong?”

  My breathing quickened as the sensation of his breath in my ear raised goose bumps on my cool skin. “I don’t like my body right now. Can we do this without you touching my stomach?”

  He let out a soft grunt and laid his hand over my abdomen, pressing the heel of his palm into the soft flesh. “You’re crazy if you think this doesn’t make you even more gorgeous than you were before. This is proof that you’ll always be mine. This,” he whispered, lightly brushing his fingertips over my skin, “is the sexiest fucking thing I’ve ever felt.”

  The sound of footsteps stopped me from savoring his compliment. I immediately tightened my arms around his shoulders as if to convince any possible passerby we were just cuddling. Nothing naughty going on over here. Glancing toward the sound, I smiled at the elderly woman walking her yellow Labrador retriever at 11:30 p.m. She nodded at me and continued about her way, probably fully aware of what Jack and I were up to.

  “She’s probably going to call the cops on us for indecent exposure,” I said, reaching down to undo Jack’s belt and unbutton his pants. “We have to hurry up before she comes back.”

  “You dirty girl,” he said, sliding a finger inside me as I set his erection free. “You’re as wet as the river.”

  “And you’re as engorged as this gorge,” I teased him.

  Grabbing my waist, he lifted me off his lap so I could yank my skirt out from underneath my ass. Then, he slowly lowered me onto his cock.

  I gasped at the shock of pain. “Don’t stop,” I begged as he began to lift me again.

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “I know,” I said, clutching his face in my hands and planting a soft kiss on his lips. “I know. Don’t stop. Please.”

  He lowered me farther down, his girth filling me, stretching me. I flinched slightly when he met the resistance of my cervix.

  I whimpered as I held his face and pressed my forehead into his. “Oh, Jack,” I breathed.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “No,” I whispered, sliding my hands to the back of his neck to hold myself steady on his lap. “Fuck me, Jack. Fuck me harder.”

  As he used his sheer strength to slide me up and down on his cock, I suddenly had the distinct feeling of being watched. I turned my head slightly to the left, glancing over Jack’s shoulder toward the restaurants on Portway Avenue, where we’d come from. Two men stood across the street in the shadowy parking lot between STOKED Coffeehouse and pFreim Brewery.

  My body froze as I buried my face in Jack’s neck, which was now damp with sweat. “Stop. Someone’s watching us.”

  Jack paused and I slowly slid farther down on his erection as he turned to look behind him. “Where? I don’t see anyone.”

  I snuck a peak toward the parking lot and it was empty. “Oh. It must have been shadows. Never mind. Don’t stop. I’m almost there.”

  Jack chuckled as I hooked my arm around his neck, leaning my forehead against his for extra stability as I slid my other hand down the front of my skirt. As we breathed into each other, he continued lifting me up and down on him, like a lonely buoy bobbing on a dark and stormy sea. I dug my fingernails into Jack’s neck as our bodies trembled. He held me still and let go inside me, burying his face in my hair as his hot breath roared in my ear.

  As I slid my hand out of my skirt, Jack grabbed it gently and laid a soft trail of kisses from my palm to the tip of my middle finger. He draped my arm over his shoulder and leaned in to kiss me. It was a slow kiss that stole my breath and made the ache between my legs return. He was still inside me. His erection gone, but still twitching with signs of life every time I made the slightest movement.

  He pulled away slowly and placed a tender kiss on the tip of my nose. “I love you, pixie.”

  I smiled and tightened my arms around his neck as I gazed into his eyes. “That’s my favorite.”

  “Your favorite nickname?”

  I nodded enthusiastically, accidentally head-butting him in the process. “Ow!”

  He laughed as he rubbed his forehead. “We’d better get home before we get arrested. Though, I have no doubt you’d look extremely hot in prison stripes.”

  Jack entered the bedroom with the rustic wooden tray we used whenever we had breakfast in bed. I sat up and he set the tray down on my lap, revealing a pack of saltine crackers, a bottle of Dramamine, a glass of water, an empty coffee mug, and a bottle of mouthwash. I hastily rinsed my mouth out and spit out the minty liquid into the empty cup. Then I downed another Dramamine with the entire glass of water.

  “You should eat some crackers,” he insisted, grabbing the pack of saltines and pulling it open.

  “I remembered something,” I said, pushing the tray to the foot of the bed so I could hug my knees to my chest.

  “What are you talking about?” he replied, holding out a couple of crackers for me to take.

  I shook my head. “From that night. Do you remember when I thought someone was watching us?”

&n
bsp; He scrunched his eyebrows together and shook his head. “Do you mean someone was watching us in the house? What are you talking about?”

  I was silent for a beat as I tried to recall what I’d seen, but the memory was so fuzzy. “When we were at the waterfront. I thought I saw a couple of men watching us from the parking lot between the coffeehouse and pFreim.”

  He set the crackers down on the tray and narrowed his eyes as he sat on the edge of the bed. “That sounds so vaguely familiar.”

  “I know what I saw. I mean… I don’t remember it very clearly, but I don’t think it’s my mind playing tricks on me. Someone was watching us. Should we tell that Boise detective? Or—or that private investigator?”

  He shook his head again, then fixed me with a fierce gaze. “What did they look like?”

  “I—I don’t know. I… I barely got a glimpse of them before I looked away, and when I turned back they were gone. I figured it was probably just shadows. I thought nothing of it.”

  “How could you forget something so important?”

  My jaw dropped at the insinuation. “It didn’t seem important enough at the time. I thought it was a trick of the light. I didn’t know I needed to burn the memory into my mind. And I wasn’t exactly in the right state of mind after we got back that night to put two and two together.”

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,” he said, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his thighs. His hands were clasped together, his forehead propped up on his thumbs as he appeared to be concentrating on something. “I’m just… I’m really fucking blindsided by this. I need to think.”

  I pinched my bottom lip hard between my thumb and index finger, savoring the feeling of the pain as it kept my mind off the sense of dread building in the pit of my belly, the first sign of an impending panic attack. “I messed up,” I whispered, squeezing my eyes shut against the gory images in my mind. “I totally screwed this up, didn’t I?”

  Jack’s arm wrapped around my back as the other slid under my knees to pull me into his lap. “None of this is your fault. You did nothing wrong.”

  I rested my forehead on his clavicle and tried to breathe normally. “Of course I did nothing wrong, but that’s only because I did nothing at all. Sometimes doing nothing is worse than doing the wrong thing.”

  As the words came out of my mouth, I thought of how utterly guilty I was. I’d done nothing to save my mother and son from being killed. And last night, when presented with the opportunity to do nothing with Isaac, I chose to do the wrong thing instead.

  Jack tilted my chin up to look me in the eye. “I hate to be the one to remind you of this, but the coroner’s report specified that Beth and Junior were most likely killed very shortly after we left at seven p.m. Your mom hadn’t even set the alarm yet. We went to the waterfront at 11:30. If what you saw was the perpetrator or perpetrators, it would have been too late to save them.”

  I covered my face with my hands. “This is like a nightmare that never ends. It never ends.”

  Jack held me close, crushing me against his solid chest and stroking my hair.

  “Please make it end,” I begged as each breath grew more shallow than the last. “Please. I don’t want to feel this way anymore. Please make it end.”

  He kissed the top of my head. “I wish I could, pixie. I’d rip the sky in half if it would make the pain go away.”

  We sat like this for a while, I curled up in his lap, head tucked into the warm crook of Jack’s neck. His hold on me slowly loosened as my breathing returned to normal. I didn’t know how much time passed, but when I woke in Jack’s arms, both of us lying in the bed, the tray resting safely on the rug, I knew I couldn’t tell him about Isaac yet.

  I needed to give him time to get his bearings before I dropped yet another bombshell on him. Part of me knew this was selfish. I should confess now instead of waiting until the earth had solidified beneath him. But another part of me knew if I told him now, after everything he’d learned in Boise and after what I just told him, that would without a doubt be the end of us.

  I knew now, after everything we’d survived, that Jack and I would never be as good apart as we were together. I needed to give us a chance. We deserved another chance to get this right.

  Four days later

  “I’m going to the yoga studio. Do you need me to pick anything up on the way back?” I asked Jack as I pulled my plum-colored GORE-TEX jacket off the hanger in the coat closet.

  I was going to yoga, but not with Drea. My best friend and I still hadn’t made up after her refusal to help me lie to Jack. I understood why she refused, but that didn’t dull the sting of being rejected and possibly judged by her, even if I did deserve her judgment.

  I was also going to make a stop at the drugstore on the way home from yoga, to pick up an at-home pregnancy test. Using an online calculator, I learned that yesterday would be the first day I could expect to get an accurate result. To err on the safe side and prevent any misunderstandings, I decided I would wait one more day.

  My day of reckoning was here.

  Jack sat on the edge of the soft gray sofa in the living room, leaning forward as he hunched over his laptop, which was perched on the industrial style coffee table. “I’m good, baby. Thanks for asking.”

  I grabbed my yoga bag off the hook in the coat closet and slung it across my chest. But as I made my way toward the front door, that nagging sense of dread returned. I slid the bag off and dropped it on the floor. Jack looked up just in time to see me walking toward him. He opened his mouth to say something, but I quickly grabbed his face and silenced him with a deep kiss as I climbed onto his lap.

  He chuckled as he leaned back on the sofa. “Is this your idea of yoga with Drea?”

  I smiled as I look down at him, not correcting his assumption that I was meeting Drea. If I was pregnant, was Jack the type of man who would stick by me even if the baby wasn’t his? Or was Jack more like my father? Would he force me to choose between him and the baby? And if I chose Jack, was I perpetuating the cycle of abandonment issues and violence that eventually took Junior’s life?

  “What are you thinking?” Jack murmured as he slid his warm hands under the back of my athletic tank top.

  I planted a lingering kiss on his forehead, breathing in the scent of the lavender-mint shampoo we shared, which he claimed made him smell “like a girl,” but he didn’t care because it also made his hair “shinier than a masochist’s ass.”

  “Gee, your hair smells terrific,” I replied.

  It was a reference to an old shampoo commercial from the 80s my mom had told us about, one of her many colorful stories about “the good ol’ days.” Knowing the origin of the phrase, Jack didn’t laugh. Nor did he say a word. He laid a soft kiss on my chest and tightened his arms around my waist.

  I lay my head on his shoulder and we sat like this for a while. No words between us. No anger between us. No pain, just love.

  I sat up slowly and planted a kiss on his scruff. “I should get going. I’ll be back in a couple hours.”

  Jack grabbed my waist before I could stand up. “I’m supposed to get a call from Detective Robinson today. She said they recovered Brandon’s cell phone from his trailer and they were going to check his cell phone records to see if he had the phone with him the night of the murders. If he did, and his phone was turned on, it may have pinged some local cell towers. They’ll also be able to see if he called anyone around the time of the murders.”

  I nodded and stood up. “I hope I’m wrong this time,” I said, zipping up my athletic jacket.

  “You’d think you’d be used to that by now,” he teased me.

  I rolled my eyes and waved at him. “Bye, jerk.”

  He flashed me a sexy smile. “Love you, pixie.”

  I blew him a kiss. “I love you more.”

  As I left the yoga studio, I reached into my bag to retrieve my cell phone, then tossed the bag onto the passenger seat. Sliding into the driver’s seat, I closed the door and gl
anced at the screen. There was a text from Jack, which had come in about ten minutes ago.

  Jack:

  Going to the gym. I’ll be back in an hour or so.

  I narrowed my eyes as I stared at the message. Jack went to the gym at least five days a week and almost always went before six a.m. Sometimes, he got his workout in before I even woke. But I couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone to the gym in the afternoon.

  Dread crept up from the pit of my belly as I realized I was having suspicious thoughts of Jack because I was projecting my own guilt onto him. Shaking my head, I gripped the steering wheel and took deep breaths as I repeated the mantra I’d been reciting in my mind for the last four days: It’s almost over. Everything will be okay. It’s almost over. Everything will be okay. It’s almost over. Everything will be okay.

  I exhaled slowly then turned on the car and headed for the drugstore. I chose a store I’d never been to before, because it was two miles farther away from our house than the one I normally went to. Despite the November gloom and pouring rain, I wore sunglasses into the store. I also kept the hood of my jacket up as I picked out four different tests, and found myself glancing down every aisle and over my shoulder like a paranoid lunatic.

  Jack and I were very recognizable to the peaceful citizens of Hood River. Our faces had been plastered on local and national media. The story of the murders had even been picked up by some tech reporters in other countries who called Jack’s office requesting interviews.

  The first year was a media frenzy. But after I refused to go to the candlelight vigil on the one-year anniversary, and Jack stayed home with me in a rare moment of solidarity, the media madness quickly died down. People assumed our absence meant we no longer cared. The truth was quite the opposite. We cared so much it was shredding us apart from the inside out.

  Jack’s truck was gone when I pulled into the garage and closed it behind me. With hands trembling, I left my yoga bag in the SUV and grabbed the plastic bag containing the pregnancy tests. As I pushed the car door open, I realized my entire body was shaking. Sweat sprouted on my brow, my chest tightened, and I closed my eyes to take several shallow breaths. I couldn’t have a panic attack now.