I wish it weren’t a growl coming from him, but it is.
“I was with you most of high school. We were not just some couple.” Rebel covers his face with one hand, and I’m certain I hear the rip of his heart shredding. “We were everything,” he says softly.
His pained, water-filled eyes and furled brow panic me. Where do I go with this now? How do I undo what I’ve done?
Rebel quiets for long minutes as he paces in circles, while I schlep through the hell in my mind to come up with something to pacify him. But nothing, not one idea, feels right. How do you mend a hole with edges that are so frayed you can’t find the threads to snug them together? How do you put a love that’s missed years of knowing looks and trust and layers of lost time back together? A love that was meant to blossom but instead was plucked apart one delicate petal at a time. A love that feels like a held breath you’re finally releasing as you ready for the next beautiful taste of life and all of its unpolluted air.
“I waited years for you to come to me,” he says. “You should have told me this…told me back then. Why would you punish me? What did I ever do to deserve this?” He stifles what might have been a tormented cry. “How did I not know this is who you were? I knew you… I thought I fucking knew you.”
My sadness flips inside out, anger flooding me. “You’ve been asking me for something and I’ve given you a piece you don’t like. Don’t ask for more. It only gets worse. You can’t even handle this. You think I want to hurt you more?”
Rebel stomps away, swinging his muscular limbs, punching the air. I hug my legs, deciding if I should stay and watch him implode or leave him be to calm down.
“What happened to Opal?” he shouts, his red face and his brutish tone another attack on my delicate self-worth. After slogging toward me he plants his fists on either side of me and positions his sweat-beaded face inches from mine. “I can see it on your face. Guilt. She knew I loved you, and I’ll bet she walked in on you fucking that guy. Is that why you won’t tell me who? Because you destroyed her too?” He groans out a pained sound as he stares at the sky. The veins in his neck fill with blood and hate as they bulge. “Is it Rowdy? Tell me!”
What is it that makes us want the ugliest truths? Why do we stop and gawk at accidents? What is the irrational thing inside us that craves the sins of others laid bare? Every promise I made to myself about finding him again evaporates with every second as time stands still.
I made it through all these years by telling myself I’d find him someday. I lied to myself that he’d be single. Convinced myself, no matter what life he was living, that he’d take me back. What a selfish thing to do to one’s own heart. Feed it with things it will never be able to live on. Was it preservation or greed? Maybe they’re borne of the same need.
I shouldn’t have come. Shouldn’t have dreamt about us. Because the nightmare unfolding in broad daylight between me and the love of my life is a toxic punch I may never recover from.
“No, wait. Oh my fucking God.” He slams a hand on his forehead. “It was one of the Kline boys, wasn’t it? You finally let ’em have it. Which one?” He laughs out a sinister sound. It’s a train wreck colliding with hope. It’s a future of two lovers that will never fulfill their fates. “Kent?” he asks.
My insides burn with shame.
Goodbye, soul.
“Yeah, I’ll bet it was Kent.” Rebel glares at me with something I’ve never seen in a man’s gaze besides the Kline boys.
It’s disgust. And it sinks me to my core. Sinks me and returns me to that night. But the martyr in me knew that it would come to this if he pushed too far for answers. I wonder if he feels anything for me beyond hate. Is he already missing the morning kisses he’ll never give me? Or the whispers in the dark I’ll never hear?
He sneers when I choke out a sob. Because he thinks he’s uncovered the real me. We think we know people. We don’t. You don’t. You never will because everyone buries parts of themselves. No one wants to be as raw as the first flesh they’re born with.
And, once again, I play the martyr. I’m good at this. I’m willing to take a blow for him. For love. I’m willing to let him think he knows who I am—though it chips away at my hard-built exterior—so he can keep his farm, his hardware store, and his humility. Why? Because, once you’ve lost as much as I have and you’re still thriving, you find your strength and take on more for those you love so they don’t have to suffer.
But, still, I’m numb. Not everywhere, just where it hurts the most: my heart.
Rebel traces my hairline with his fingertips then rubs them across my trembling lips. “His mouth never stopped watering over you. The one time I wasn’t there to stand between you and him…you opened your legs like the little slut he’d been praying you were all along.”
I don’t want to hate him. I only want to love him. But his words—Jesus, they cut me. Almost more than the physical pain I’m on the other side of.
He claps his hands when I bow my head in repulsion and loss. Honesty wants to surface, but if it does, we’ll both drown in its stink.
“Congratulations, Ruby. You now hold a few records in our town. Track star. Supermodel. Bitch extraordinaire.”
Chapter 23
Rebel
Her eyes might say she’s livid, but her soul is filled with sin. Of all the shit I thought she might have stored away, this was not a possibility I considered.
“Don’t ever come near me or my family again. Don’t come into my hardware store or on my road or on my end of the lake. You hear me?”
“Rebel, please, don’t do this.” Ruby reaches out to my hand as I back away. “Don’t bulldoze what we have.”
“What we have?” I laugh and laugh. She’s lost her shit now. Certifiable. “The fuck are you saying? We have nothing. Sounds like we never had anything. Did you consider that for one second when you let him bone you?”
I should stop talking and go home. I have nothing left here to dissect. She’s laid out something so vile and confusing that I’m not sure what to make of her or the fantasy I foolishly turned us into.
“You need to stop,” Ruby says between sobbing pants.
I shouldn’t feel pangs of worry. I shouldn’t feel anything but numb.
“You’re talking out of your ass,” she says, “saying things you can’t take back. Calling me names no one should be called. Especially not your girl.”
I take two steps toward her, closing the empty space between us. A space I called sacred minutes ago. “Let me tell you something ’bout my girl. She’s buried at the cemetery. Her name was Paris Louise Long. She had more respect for me in her sparkling eyes and loving heart than you could in ten lives of your corrupt soul.”
Ruby storms past me and into the bar. The screen door screeches then slams shut with a howl. I follow, not giving two fucks that she’s crying over her boo-hoo lost virginity. No wonder she couldn’t tell me about the ring. Of course she couldn’t wear it if he fucked her while she had it on. Lost it, my ass. The only thing she lost was her virginity. And me.
“You feeling like getting out of here, baby?” I ask Verushka so loud that I know Ruby hears it while whispering to Rowdy.
“Anytime you’re ready,” Verushka says, winking.
“I was ready for you hours ago, gorgeous.” I loop her arm in mine, giving a nod to the fellas as I turn to leave.
Ruby spins to face me then grabs a fistful of my T-shirt in the fingertips of her cast hand as she gets up in my face. “You’re going to regret this,” she says.
Her sneer is so sincere that I nearly believe her. But I can’t trust a fucking thread of her shit now.
“I’ll give you one chance to tell me you’re sorry,” she says, “but that’s it. I put myself out there and you turned me into the devil. I didn’t have to tell you shit. But you pushed and pushed, so I gave in, knowing it was a risk for my heart and yours.”
But what she gave me was my new hell. Why would she do that to someone she loves? Why didn’t she li
e to me? I pushed—that’s why. We want the truth, or so we think… Then we scorn it once it’s delivered and has ruined what we have because of our selfish needs. All of us beg for the truth, thinking it’ll save us…
We’re idiots. The truth can answer, yes, but it can also destroy. It can ruin years of love. But is the truth worth it?
“The only regret I have is all those wasted years I could have been fucking the cheerleading squad in high school while I blue-balled it waiting for you.”
She slugs me across the face with her cast. “Fuck you, Rebel!”
“No, that would be the guy who popped your cherry.” Blood rivering down the side of my face tickles. “The only thing you get to call me is ex.”
I scoop my date’s arm in mine and take three steps from the table. Ruby screams so loud that the entire bar goes pin-drop silent save the song playing. “You and Me” by Lifehouse. The first song I learned to play on my guitar because it was Ruby’s favorite.
“You’re right, Rebel.” She saunters toward me, light streaking down her face like moonbeams along with glistening tears. “It was a Kline boy. Not just one. Both. And, yes, Opal was there—saw the whole thing. Feel better now that you know all my dirty secrets? You fucking fuck!”
Yeah. I feel good. Good and ready to vomit. But why does she look forlorn? Why is her face saying she lost when, in truth, I did? Why does it feel like she just delivered part of a nightmare versus a victory? What the hell am I missing in this mess?
I don’t know, but my anger still owns my tongue and speaks on its own volition. “I will when your slutty ass leaves my town.”
It’s immoral enough that she gave it away. But, of all the guys to give it to, the motherfucking Kline twins? Fuck them and her. I’d strangle ’em if they were alive. My bare hands would squeeze the life out of their smart-mouthed, rich, preppy, piece-of-shit-football-playing asses.
Their deaths were ruled a murder-suicide. Their guns were the same ones they used when they went deer hunting. The boys were hotheads who fought plenty over girls, sports, cars, titles. But murder? Now, though, thanks to Ruby, it makes some sense. One of them must have had Ruby and the other must have found out, gotten jealous, and gone after her for the same. Then some kind of fight over her ensued and boom, two shots.
I storm out of the bar, not another look back at Ruby or my past. After dropping Verushka off at the Valentine castle, and thanking her for playing along with my senseless charade, I head home.
Etta and I sit at the kitchen table while she plays Solitaire and I read the New Yorker, stewing over Ruby, a beer in my hand, a thimble-sized glass of sherry in hers.
I would have been there to stop her from making the biggest mistake of her life had I not been with Dad the night of graduation.
He’d told me earlier in the day that he was getting extra gussied up for the graduation party at the Klines’, where Mom was already helping set up.
I figured I’d do the same for once—dress up—even though going to the Klines’ was the last thing I wanted to do. Unable to find my tie, I went to borrow one from Dad. After a knock, and with an innocent turn of the knob, I opened his bedroom door and discovered the other life my father was living and hiding behind.
If only I had known what running away from him, would end up meaning for my future.
Chapter 24
Ruby
“Ruby?” Hazel clutches my arm as I track toward the back door to escape the bar. “What the hell was that?” she asks, her eyes wild and filled with wonder.
“I’ve got to get out of here. Want to join me for a drink?” I steady myself on a nearby table, the throttle on my nerves wrecked.
“I was meeting some of the hospital staff. Let me text one of the girls and we’ll go somewhere. You look like hell.”
After Hazel shoots off a text, she dabs my eyes with her sleeve and motions me down the alley. We walk two doors down and arrive at a little hole-in-the-wall bar.
“I think I walked in on the tail end of something,” Hazel says.
What have I done? It’s like I fell through a hole and guilt went on autopilot, steering my tongue while blocking my brain. This is how people ruin relationships. They say things with no thought or consequence. Spitting out half-truths, a trail of mystery with scattered clues.
“Let’s hope it’s not the end,” I say, my hands shaking so vigorously that I tuck them under my armpits to still them.
“You hated the Kline boys,” she says.
“Still do.”
We order beer then settle in a dark corner.
“Why did you sleep with them? You guys could barely have a civil conversation.”
I draw a long swallow from my bottle. “It wasn’t intentional.”
She pats my hand, her forehead creasing with worry. “Sex doesn’t happen any other way, honey.”
“Aww, Hazel. No one knows what I’m going to tell you. And no one has ever been a better secret keeper than you.” I start crying. A few small tears at first. Then I really let it go. “How do I tell you what they did?” The lump in my throat thickens.
“Oh, Jesus.” Hazel’s eyes fill with tears. “No.”
I cover my face, humiliation creeping up my skin like a poisonous rash. “It was me or Opal.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
“It was such a shitstorm. My family could have lost everything if I outed the boys. Mr. Kline had just given my folks a new mortgage even though they were dead broke and Dad wasn’t working. Opal had killed herself. I was a wreck…almost took my own life. Everything felt like my fault. I needed to run away. From…life.”
Hazel threads her fingers with mine and squeezes. “How… I mean, when did it happen?”
“Graduation night. Rebel was supposed to come and join us behind the bleachers where Opal and I ran the stairs… He never showed.”
“But they did?” she whispers. “Oh, honey.”
Hazel hugs me, and the realization of what I’ve shared hits me with a tidal wave force. She’s the first and only person. It’s freeing and terrifying. What if she slips up and tells Rebel?
“Haz…Rebel cannot know. For lots of reasons, please not a whisper to anyone.”
“Of course. I am so sorry and in shock and…I can’t believe I’m asking this…” Hazel’s eyes widen, and she shakes her head.
“What?” I ask.
“Never mind. I’m an idiot.” Her face reddens.
“Did I have anything to do with their deaths? No. But I wish I had. If I could go back, I would.” A few people from Tincat saunter into the bar and I slouch in my chair to hide.
“Do you think it was a murder-suicide? Everyone in town questioned it.”
“I have no idea. But there are weird things I don’t have answers for. Rebel gave me a promise ring on a necklace the morning of graduation.” I toy with the salt shaker on the table, twisting the top off and on.
“I promised him my virginity.” I choke the words out. “They put their crosses on that chain along with my ring, tied it around my neck...and then they…”
Hazel nods, her hands cupping my face, both of us wet-cheeked. “Holy fuck. I was out of town when all that crazy went down, and then you’d disappeared by the time I came home.”
“The necklace and the ring and crosses… I yanked them off afterward. Then went back later to find them and they were gone.”
“Anyone who walked back there could have grabbed them.”
“Sure. And then sent them to my modeling agency seventeen years later?” I gulp a swallow of beer, tears falling again. My thoughts scatter in accord. Where is Rebel now? What’s going through his head? Will he ever forgive me? Would I forgive him if it were the other way around? He’d have to have a damn good excuse. One as massive as mine.
“Is that who you think murdered them? The person who sent them to you?”
“I have no idea. But it gets worse. You know Dick Kline is Rebel’s godfather. He assigned the boys’ fat trusts to Rebel, who then op
ened his hardware store, bought a massive farm on the lake, and paid for Rocket to become Etta. Can you imagine what he would do if he knew the truth about that night?”
“What a twisted mess.” Hazel dabs my eyes with a balled-up Kleenex she dug out of her purse.
“So, do I tell him?” I ask.
Hazel dips her face onto her palms and groans. “I honestly don’t know.”
“Now, he just thinks I’m a slut.” I swallow hard. “Nice feeling.”
“That’s disgusting.” She smacks the table with both hands, startling me to a jump. “He needs to know. What’s the worst thing that could happen if you tell him?”
“He’ll feel more guilt and pain than I do. He never showed up for our run, never told me why. He knows what all that money bought and provided. I’ll be a symbol of guilt to him, and not only will he lose faith in himself and carry the guilt I’ve been burdened with all these years…he may walk away. From everything. Me included. He may run like I did. He doesn’t do guilt very well.”
Rebel would blame himself for not showing up. I decided that it was my burden to carry. Mostly because of the fear of God they put in me when they slit Opal’s tongue so she wouldn’t talk and I wouldn’t, either. They said that, if I reported them, they’d come for her. And, after what they had done to me, I believed them.
That night, when Opal and I arrived home after the incident, our house was empty. She ran to the bathroom, crying, and I went to my bedroom and locked my door. I should have been there more for her, but I was in a cyclone of hell. Shock. A whirling shitstorm of confusion, anger, and pain.
On my bed was an envelope containing a modeling contract. Another one. It was the third I’d received. And, for the first time, I considered the idea. Maybe going to Northwestern, where the Kline boys were set to go, was a bad idea. Maybe I’d be better off leaving this country. I could live abroad, forget everything, and then eventually come back to Rebel.
Sunshine Bleeds A Black Edge (The Wild Things (standalone) Book 3) Page 11
