Two Roads

by Lili St. Germain

  I burst into tears.

  “Hey, mamacita,” Luis says softly, coming to sit beside me. He pats my back, maybe in an attempt to snap me out of my own wallowing.

  I catch sight of myself in the full-length mirror at the end of the bed, and what I see disgusts me. Where is the strong girl, the girl who dealt with her enemies in poison and fire? Where is the girl who thrived on pain, the girl who got off on the suffering of her foes, who tasted the salty tears of Dornan Ross and declared herself the winner? Where am I under the layers of trauma and scarring?

  Who am I anymore?

  I look away from the mirror. I can’t bear to see any more. The weak, thin girl with the swollen belly, the girl who carries the weight of her lies inside her like a toxic virus. I’m tired. I’m desperate.

  “Please,” I beg Luis. “Please, I can’t. I need the real thing.”

  His blue eyes darken, and he shakes his head emphatically. “Think of your mama,” he says.

  “I don’t want to think about that bitch,” I snap. “It was better when I thought she was dead.”

  I press a hand to my mouth as I hear my own words.

  “I didn’t mean that,” I whisper, taking my hand away just long enough to let those four words out before clamping it back down. I didn’t mean that, I didn’t mean that. What is happening to me? My desperation, my utter despair at needing what I cannot have, just one little hit, curls around me like poison ivy, dragging me down to the earth. Suddenly, I am so heavy I could sleep.

  “A few weeks, bebé,” he says, reaching underneath his shirt and taking out a chain, black rosary beads and gold with a black and gold cross hanging from one end. He drapes the long chain over my head, letting it fall onto my chest.

  “Are you going to tell them?” I whisper, fingering the delicate cross. I feel bad, taking this from him. I don’t believe in God, not anymore.

  “Nah,” Luis says. “We can do this, Giulietta. You’ll be all right in a couple weeks.”

  I feel guilty. Taking his rosary beads. “I can’t take these,” I say, hiking the beads back off myself and holding them out to him, tangled up in my fist. “I’m not even remotely religious. It wouldn’t be right to take your beads like this.”

  He shakes his head, his eyes soft, and pushes my fist back toward me.

  “It’s a loan,” he clarifies, giving me a wink. “You need something to fidget with when you’re thinking of the smack, bebe. You get past that, you give them back to me then.”

  He’s got a point. I remember my mother digging at her own skin until it bled on the few occasions she either tried to quit cold turkey or had run out of her beloved heroin. “Thank you,” I whisper, untangling the beads and putting them back around my neck.

  “Hey, Julz?” Elliot calls from the kitchen. “Where you at?”

  I look toward Luis, who shrugs.

  Time to face the music.

  Luis excuses himself to pick up more supplies, tearing off in his jeep with the guy who looks just like him. He’s said his father is dead, murdered by Emilio, so I have to assume that he is another relative. Mariana’s relative? The obsession with figuring out how it had all gone down all those years ago is killing me. I want to know.

  The three of us sit around a scuffed laminate table that rocks on the floor. I’m not sure what’s at fault - the table or the uneven floor itself. I rest my elbows on the table, a dull warmth forming in my stomach, and survey Jase and Elliot as they sit across from me.

  Elliot looks relieved, Jase worried. They wear matching poker faces, but I’ve known these boys a long time, and even in their blank looks I find the truth.

  I can tell what they’re thinking. Elliot thinks now I’ve been rescued, the horror is over. Happily ever after. He rescued the girl, he made the deal, and he made it out alive. I know Elliot McRae, and I know he thinks this is finished.

  I glance to the left, to where Jase is grinding his jaw noiselessly, and I know what he’s thinking: It’s only just begun.

  I reach my hands across the table, wiggling my fingers at them. “Hands,” I say softly, and they each slowly break out of their own worlds. Jase darts his hand over to mine, crushing it with his.

  Elliot watches as Jase’s hand hits mine and hesitates.

  “El,” I urge, reaching across the table. “We’re all friends. Fucked-up friends, but friends. Come on.”

  He rests his palm atop mine, but doesn’t do the whole almost break my fingers thing Jase did. He is more reserved, and I see the way he holds back. The way his body language and the distance in his eyes says this isn’t my girl anymore.

  I take a deep breath as I study the two people in this world who are my absolution.

  “Thank you,” I say, squeezing each of their hands, tears welling in my eyes.

  “Thank you for getting me out of there. For risking your lives. And…”

  Even now, I find it so hard to admit fault. I am so stubborn. Just like my dad was.

  “I am sorry,” I whisper, with every ounce of emotion that lives inside me. The overwhelming gratitude. The crushing sorrow. I bundle it up into those three words, I am sorry, and hope they believe me.

  “You don’t have to be sorry,” Jase murmurs, staring at my hand, the one he’s holding. Elliot swallows thickly, his eyes glassy. These men have done everything in their quest to save me, and I can never repay them for that.

  “I do,” I murmur, tilting my head back and blinking so the tears don’t fall. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about this. I was selfish, and I used you both, and I’m sorry.”

  They don’t speak. Elliot fixes me with his sorrowful stare, waiting for me to continue.

  “I don’t like the person I’ve become,” I press on, the truth stinging me. “The things I’ve done. If I met me right now, I would hate me.”

  Jase shakes his head, running his free hand through his short hair. “Nobody hates you, Julz.”

  Except Dornan.

  “My father would be so disgusted by me,” I whisper, tears dripping down my face, my voice remaining strong by some miracle. “He would hate me.”

  Elliot looks frozen, like he can’t form words. Jase drops my hand and sits back in his chair, lacing both hands behind his head. He looks like he’s aged five years in three months.

  My fault. My fucking fault.

  Elliot uses this time to drop my hand, too. He gives it a gentle pat, before standing and walking over to the window. He parts the curtain slightly, looking outside, close enough to still be a part of this discussion.

  “Your father would be proud of you,” Jase says finally. “Horrified, but proud. He raised you to be a fighter, Juliette. He’d be fucking proud.”

  A flash of the past bites at the back of my mind, of the first time I walked into Dornan’s office after six years dead and let him put his hands on me, welcomed it, and even got off on it in some perverse way. I shudder, wondering how I ever thought it would end up anywhere other than here.

  Dornan was always going to find out. I think I knew that, deep down, but I pushed it aside, assigned that horror to future Juliette, because present Juliette just wanted to drown her pain and her grief in a dirty little cycle of fucking and killing.

  “I could’ve just bombed that fucking clubhouse and let them all burn to death inside,” I say, my words thick with grief and realization. This is the first time I’ve ever acknowledged this out loud. And it hurts. I am a bad person.

  “I could’ve paid a dude with a sniper rifle to take each one of them out, end it all in a day. I could’ve figured out a way to frame them for something, get them arrested and thrown in jail.”

  Elliot’s expression says devastated, Jase’s says numb.

  “But I didn’t,” I finish, the truth like a stab to my gut. “Because that would be too kind. That would be too unsatisfying. You understand? I had to do it like this because I needed to watch them die. I needed to know that they knew who I was, and feel the same fear I felt when they thought I was dying at their han
ds.”

  I am a bad, bad person, as bad as they come. Because this is my truth.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Jase says suddenly, but I press on. I have to finish.

  “I’m so sorry I risked both of your lives for my fucked-up vendetta.” I am so fucking sorry. “Elliot, I’m so sorry you gave everything up for me. Your life, your career, and now your safety. I’m sorry you had to hide your family away because of my selfish crusade. I’m sorry you had to build a new life after you gave your old one up for me, and I’m sorry you lost that one, too.”

  He doesn’t respond. His face is drawn, his cheeks pink, as if, for the first time, he’s realizing how much that decision to save the dying girl six years ago has actually cost him. But he doesn’t look angry. He just looks really, really tired.

  “Jase, I’m sorry I lied to you. I’m so sorry I felt like I couldn’t tell you who I was. Because I should have known you weren’t like them, but after six years, I couldn’t understand how you were still there with them. I should have looked harder.”

  I think of all the people who died at Dornan’s hands. Jase’s mom. Mariana. My father.

  “I should have known you’d never give up on avenging all that death.”

  His stubbled jaw tightens; he rubs his red eyes with his palms.

  “I’m sorry for what I did with Dornan,” I whisper.

  He shakes his head, covers his eyes. “Don’t,” he says. “I can’t talk about that, not now.”

  I swallow, nodding sadly. Elliot steps away from the window as a buzz emanates from his pocket. He drags his phone out and looks at the display. “Sorry, I gotta take this,” he says, busting the front door open and closing it loudly behind him. I imagine him on the stairs, talking to his ex, or maybe to his grandma.

  I turn my attention back to Jase. “My darling boy,” I whisper, my two palms outstretched. A sad smile ghosts across his face, his thick eyelashes glistening. He isn’t crying—he’s far too stubborn to cry in front of me—but he’s right on the edge.

  “I thought he’d killed you,” Jase says, distraught. “I walked into that room and there was blood everywhere, and I thought you were dead.”

  The lump in my throat is like a piece of razor blade, wedged in my neck; I try to swallow and talk around it, but it doesn’t budge.

  “You must hate me for the way I left things,” I say softly. “For the way I stormed out of your house, for the things I said. I don’t know what I was saying. I was stupid.”

  He shakes his head, “I don’t hate you, baby. I couldn’t hate you if I tried.”

  My smile is watery but full; the contraction of facial muscles squeezes more tears from the corners of my eyes. “Sometimes,” I whisper, “I wish we were different people. That we’d been born into another life. That we didn’t have to fight so hard just to have each other.”

  He simply nods, bringing one of my hands up to his mouth and kissing the back of it so slowly, so tenderly, I feel like I might break in two.

  “It’s worth it, though,” I add, my skin burning pleasantly where his lips have touched.

  He smiles. “I know,” he murmurs.

  He stands, taking my hand, leading me down the hallway back to the bedroom where Luis gave me the methadone.

  “You should rest,” he murmurs. “I’ll fix you a sandwich.”

  I don’t resist. I’m too tired, and so hungry I could eat a horse. I arrange several pillows against the headrest and sit against them on the bed.

  I am safe. I am free.

  It’s still so utterly foreign, and it makes me realize how crazy I must have been acting on the boat last night. When I refused to let Jase near me. Fuck, what a bitch I must seem. A damaged, crazy, bitch.

  It’s only afterward, while I’m chewing on the sandwich Jase has made me that I remember.

  I still have that craving at the back of my mind, that annoying, on-edge, cloying sensation that screams for another hit.

  But the itch that covered my body, it’s gone. The nausea is much less intense. And the pounding in my head is better, too.

  Maybe I can do this, after all. And Jase will never need to know how close I came to becoming my mother.

  Jase falls asleep on the bed next to me before I’ve even finished eating. He must be exhausted. I doubt he’s had much sleep at all, worried sick, staying up to make sure nobody hijacked our ship in the night as we drifted out of Dornan’s grip. I gently shift myself off the side of the bed and pad out of the room. It’s been raining steadily for a few minutes now, rain thrumming down on the tin roof, and I hear the guttering gush and creak with the onslaught of heavy rain.

  I spot the top of Elliot’s head as he sits outside, under the verandah, just like he always used to in Nebraska. There’s a peace here that didn’t exist in Los Angeles, even when I was somewhere hidden away from Dornan. A quiet stillness punctuated only by the rain that pours from the heavens above us. The little old house almost seems to rattle under the weight of it.

  I find a kettle and rinse it out, boiling it and making tea with the teabags I find underneath the sink. There’s no milk, not yet at least, so I put a little cold water and some sugar in each mug and give them a stir. Holding the two mug handles in one hand, I get the door open using a combination of my hand and my hip.

  Elliot glances briefly behind him, his hand going to the gun beside him on the step. When he sees me, he smiles briefly, taking his hand from the gun.

  “Hey,” I say softly. “Am I interrupting?”

  Elliot’s always been a thinker. I know he likes his solitude; I don’t want to intrude.

  He shakes his head, accepting one of the tea mugs. “Nah. I was just sitting.”

  It’s awkward for him being here. I can tell.

  “What’s the plan?” I ask him. Jase likes to shield me from things, to give me vague half-answers because he thinks I can’t handle things. And he thinks I am so weak and defenseless and pregnant right now, I doubt he’d share anything vaguely important with me if he thought it might alarm me.

  Elliot shrugs lazily. “Get you out. And run. That was the plan. Now?” he takes a sip of the tea and pulls a face, “now, I don’t know.”

  I nod, staring into my own tea. I probably won’t even drink it; I just like the way it feels comforting to hold tea in my hands.

  “Where are the girls?” I ask, referring to Kayla, his daughter, and Amy, his ex.

  “Somewhere safe,” he says. “Somewhere nobody will look.”

  I nod. “And grandma?”

  His face drops. “She’s at home,” he says, with difficulty. “Wouldn’t leave her place. Said the diner was too busy, and that she’d keep her shotgun loaded.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  “I’m going to get her to change her mind,” he adds. “Stubborn old woman.”

  That makes me feel relieved. She shouldn’t be in the path of danger because of me.

  “I’m sorry I put you in this position, El,” I say, and I am so fucking sorry right now I feel like my heart might break in two.

  He nods, staring at the densely packed trees that surround the house. Some of them are so tall, I can’t even tell where they end.

  “Yeah, well,” he says, giving me a small smile. “It was always just a matter of time, right? Until they figured out what happened? I mean, that guy at the diner years ago—that was just a lucky fluke I was there, and that I was packing.”

  I nod, a chill settling into my bones as I remember the Gypsy Brother who inexplicably stumbled upon me, the girl everyone thought was dead, his greedy eyes lighting up in delight as he probably counted the bonus Dornan would give him for forcing me into his car and taking me back to him. You look pretty good for a dead girl. And then he hadn’t been able to see me at all, because Elliot had shot him in the head and buried the body in the woods.

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  We sit there, silent for a little longer, as our tea turns cold.

  “A baby, huh?” Elliot says, finally. I hear the angui
sh in his voice. The torment.

  “Yep,” I reply awkwardly, unable to meet his gaze.

  “I’m happy for you, Julz,” he says, patting my knee. “You deserve something good after everything.”

  Is it good, though?

  “And Jase is a good guy. As much as I fucking hate saying that, he’s proven me wrong.”

  He chuckles to himself, shaking his head.

  “What?” I press. “Some inside secret I don’t know about?”

  He shrugs, flashing me a dazzling smile. “Nah. Just that, I never told you how I almost killed him once.”

  This is news to me. “What?”

  He smiles self-depreciatingly, taking a sip of tea. “Had the motherfucker lined up in the crosshairs of my sniper rifle. Finger on the trigger and everything.”

  I feel sick.

  “What happened?” I ask, not sure than I want to know.

  “I breathed in,” he says casually. “I breathed back out, and my fucking phone rang.”

  “Who was it?”

  “It was Amy. She was calling to tell me she was pregnant with my kid.”

  Oh.

  He shakes his head in disbelief. “I packed that gun up faster than you could say Gypsy Brother, and I got the fuck out of there.”

  Huh. His girlfriend getting pregnant three years ago might have ruined any chance of him coming back to me, the girl who waited ceaselessly for him, but inexplicably, it had given me another chance at life with Jason. And, of course, the baby I carry inside me now.

  He stands, throwing the last of his tea on the dirt beneath the steps. “Tell that to your kid one day,” he says with an amused smile, offering me a hand up. “Make sure Jase hears every word.”

  I raise my eyebrows as he lifts me to my feet. “You are such a shit stirrer,” I admonish, shaking my head at him.

  “You better believe it,” he says, opening the door and ushering me back inside.