by Lili Valente
So surreal that Pitt is turning purple by the time I realize Gabe doesn’t intend to stop.
He’s going to kill him. Gabe is going to kill Pitt. I know I should stop him, and we should go to the police, but a part of me doesn’t want to. A part of me is crouched on her haunches like an animal, howling for Gabe to finish this. She can’t wait to see Pitt dead, to dance around his body and celebrate the stilling of his evil, fucking heart.
I would have let it happen, I know I would have, but just as Pitt is going still, Gabe cries out, hands flying to grip his head. He moans and sways, falling off of Pitt, hitting the floorboards with a thud that makes me flinch.
I’m already on my way to him when Pitt sucks in a liquid breath and begins to choke.
I freeze, gaze flicking from Gabe moaning on the floor, to Pitt choking right beside him. I have a split second to make my choice, and then I’m on top of Pitt, picking up where Gabe left off.
I don’t know what’s happening to Gabe, but if Pitt gets up off the ground, we’re both screwed. I’m still chained to the wall. If Pitt recovers enough to get up and out of reach, I will have lost the upper hand and might never get another chance to save myself, to save the man I love.
The man who calls my name as I straddle Pitt’s chest and lock my hands around the bastard’s throat, leaning forward until all of my body weight is bearing down on his windpipe, sealing it off. I hear the encouragement in Gabe’s voice, know he wants me to do this, to save myself, to save us, and I grit my teeth and hold on.
Pitt thrashes beneath me, but not with near the strength he was thrashing when Gabe started this. He’s weak and that one gasp of air he managed to suck in isn’t going to hold him for long. He’s going to die. I’m going to kill him. I can feel the truth in the way my fingers crack as they dig into his flesh, see it in the way Pitt’s beady eyes bulge from his face, smell it in the tangy, sour smell of urine that soaks the front of Pitt’s pants, making me grateful I’m sitting on his chest.
I don’t want any more of his piss or blood or spit or breath on me. I want this to end. Now. And then I want to set everything on fire and watch it burn.
I grit my teeth, a sob catching in my chest as Pitt continues to wiggle beneath me for what feels like an eternity. His death stretches on forever and then…suddenly, it’s quiet. It’s quiet and still and I can feel the change in air pressure that is one less soul occupying this space, one less monster to hide in the shadows, looking for something beautiful to destroy.
I don’t know if I’m a monster like him or something else, but I know that I’m so fucking glad it’s over.
Slowly, with a concentrated effort, I unpeel my fingers from Pitt’s throat, one by one, staying perched on his body long enough to make certain he’s not coming back to life before I turn and half-fall to the ground beside Gabe. I’m crying, sobbing, tears streaming from my face, but not because of Pitt, at least not just because of that. It’s because of all of it, because it’s too much and I don’t know how to hold everything that’s happened in the past few minutes in my head. I just know I need to get to Gabe, to make sure he’s okay. If he’s okay, everything will be okay.
“Gabe? Are you all right? What’s wrong?” I reach out, barely able to touch his furrowed brow with my fingers. My chain is too short to let me cradle his head in my arms, but I pet his hair with a trembling hand, praying for him to open his eyes.
“Gabe, please,” I rasp, emotion and the bruises on my throat making my voice thin. “I can’t finish this without you. Please, open your eyes. Please, come back to me.”
“I love you,” he says, the words thick and slurred, but so beautiful they make me cry harder.
“I love you, too,” I sob. “What’s wrong? What’s happening?”
“I’ll be okay in a minute,” he says, sounding steadier, though he doesn’t open his eyes. “They’re coming in waves. I have…time between. Sometimes hours.”
“What’s coming in waves?” I ask, a horrible knot of fear forming in my stomach.
“I have…” He sighs and finally his eyes open, his stunning eyes that are full of love and pain and relief. “I’m feeling better. He’s dead?”
I nod, not trusting myself to say the words out loud. I’m holding together so far, but eventually the knowledge that I’ve killed a man is going to penetrate and I’m going to be devastated.
Or not, which would be devastating in its own way.
Gabe blinks, but doesn’t seem surprised, or displeased. “Then we should start…taking care of things. We might not have much time.”
I shake my head. “Tell me what’s wrong. Are you sick? Is that why you couldn’t run the other night? Is that why you’re trying to leave me?”
“I can’t leave you,” Gabe says. “I didn’t last a day. I missed you so much I drove by to sit out on the street and watch the house. I would have ended up in your bedroom, begging for forgiveness, if I hadn’t seen Pitt’s car pull away.”
So that’s how he found me. My shoulders sag. I’m relieved that I’m safe, relieved that I’m not crazy, and that Gabe does care about me as much as I care about him. The relief lasts only a few seconds, however, before Gabe says—
“I told Danny to call the police if he didn’t hear back from me in twenty minutes. I blacked out on the way here and when I came to, my cell wasn’t getting service. I was going to turn around and drive closer to town to call him, but then I saw the railroad trestle. I realized Pitt must have you, and had to get to you. I couldn’t think of anything else.”
He lifts a hand, cradling my head. “I’m so glad I got here in time. I’m so glad you finished it. You did the right thing.”
I take a shaky breath, love and fear and adrenaline mixing inside me until it feels like my heart is going to burst through my chest. “Why don’t you go downstairs and call Danny, tell him not to call the police. I’ll check Pitt’s pockets to see if I can find a key to the cuffs.”
Gabe pushes into a seated position, holding his head in a careful way that makes me think it must still be hurting. “No. They might get the phone records. It wouldn’t look good for Pitt’s last call to be made to your house.”
“Okay, then we’ll just have to hurry.” I turn back to Pitt’s body, clenching my teeth against the bile that rises in my throat as I force my hand into his urine-soaked pants pocket, searching for the key to the cuffs. I find it in his back pocket a moment later and glance back to tell Gabe, but he’s already across the room at the attic stairs.
“I’m going to find bleach and something for you to wear. We’ll have to burn your tee shirt along with the rest of it. It got blood on it while you were fighting Pitt.”
I glance down, blinking in surprise. “I forgot I was naked.”
“You’re probably in shock,” Gabe says. “Just get yourself free and wait here. I’ll be right back.”
“Look for a recording device while you’re down there,” I say, already reaching down to unlock my bruised ankle. “Pitt was recording everything the past twenty minutes or so. I’m not sure what I said, but it was probably incriminating. We have to destroy it. And probably his hard drive while we’re at it.”
Gabe nods. “All right. Hang tight.”
I unlock my ankle as Gabe thumps down the stairs and spring to my feet, making use of my newfound freedom to pad across the attic and rip the camera from its place in the rafters. I smash it to pieces on the floor, slamming it into the boards until it shatters to bits, shocked to discover how okay I am with being naked right now. I don’t feel vulnerable the way I did when Pitt was ordering me to strip. I feel powerful, primal, ready to tear my enemy to pieces, bury the bones, and put this night behind me.
Maybe Gabe is right, and I am in shock, maybe not, I only know that when Gabe returns, and we start cleaning up the blood and mess, my hands get steadier. I don’t tremble as I throw on a plain white tee shirt and a pair of men’s khaki shorts, rolling the waistband over until the fabric is tight enough to stay on my hips. I move ca
lmly from one task to another, and in ten minutes Gabe and I have everything in the house cleaned up, a suicide note emailed to the school from Pitt’s account, and Pitt’s body positioned on the mattress.
“I’m going to soak the mattress and make it look like he dropped the lighter,” Gabe says, pressing a soft kiss to my forehead before beginning to spray the kerosene we found in Pitt’s garage over the body. “Run down to the garage and wipe down the inside of the trunk with the bleach cloth. Make sure you look for any stray blond hairs. If the fire department gets the fire contained before it reaches the garage, we don’t want them to find any evidence that you were ever here.”
“Meet me in two minutes, or I’m coming back up,” I say, still worried about him, though he’s been acting fine since he recovered.
“No, you head into the woods,” Gabe says. “The police could be here any minute.”
“That’s why I’ll be back up to check on you,” I say, heading for the stairs, ignoring his protest that making sure I’m not caught is the top priority.
I don’t want to lose my freedom, but I don’t want to lose Gabe, either. He’s necessary to my existence, even more so after tonight. He may have been part of the reason I was almost killed, but he also saved me. He’s brought danger into my world, but he’s also brought joy and passion and life.
I was only half alive before I met Gabe. I know that now. I was a shadow of my true self, going through the motions, spending my life responding instead of acting.
Now, I don’t put out fires, I help light them, and I won’t go back, not even for the kids. Maybe that makes me an awful person, as much as killing Pitt or stealing or anything else, but I can’t help it. It’s true. I won’t give up Gabe, not for safety or love or family. He is a part of me, and I will never let him go.
By the time the police sirens pierce the still, humid air, the attic and the roof of Pitt’s house are burning brightly enough to light up the night sky and Gabe and I are through the woods to the abandoned chat dump where he parked the Beamer.
I start around to the passenger’s side, but he stops me with a hand on my arm and drops the keys into my hand.
“Just in case,” he whispers. “I just got you back, I’m not going to risk an accident taking you away from me.”
I nod, swallowing the questions on my lips until we’re safe. I start the car and pull down the narrow gravel road, heading away from Pitt’s house and the sirens growing closer and closer, howling like dogs chasing a train they’re never going to catch. Gabe and I are gone, and all the evidence is burning away. Even if they get the fire put out, Pitt will be nothing but charred remains. There will be no fingerprints, no hair or spit or blood or anything to tie me and Gabe to Pitt’s death.
Together, we’ve killed a man and gotten away with it and it feels…okay.
Not great, not a rush like the other jobs, when we could barely wait to get back to my house and make love, but okay. He was a horrible man who had already murdered one person, and who would have tortured and killed me if he’d had the chance. I can live with his blood on my hands. As long as I have Gabe, I can live with anything.
“I know something’s wrong,” I say as I steer the car down back roads, instinctively guiding us toward the highway, not caring where we’re spit out. I know the area around here well enough to get us home in minutes as soon as I see a mile marker. “But I want you to know that I’m not going anywhere. I want to help, no matter what it takes.”
Gabe sighs. “Okay.”
I blink, and cast him a surprised glance out of the corner of my eye. “That’s it?”
“I was expecting you’d say that, and I know how strong and determined you are. I knew it when I was driving to your house tonight, but now…” He looks over at me, admiration in his eyes. “Now, I wouldn’t put anything past you. You were amazing. I’m proud of you and I love you so much.”
Tears fill my eyes, but I bite my lip, using the pain to hold them at bay. “I love you, too. But don’t ever try to get rid of me again, okay? I can handle anything, but that.”
“I won’t,” Gabe says. “And I won’t leave. At least not willingly, I promise.”
I sniff away the stinging in my eyes, swiping the back of my hand across my nose. “What should I do with these clothes?” I ask, not wanting to think about the last thing he said, or what might be so wrong with him that he felt compelled to try to destroy us in order to shelter me from it.
Better to concentrate on the things I can control, at least until we’re back at the house.
“I’ll take them home and burn them in the back forty tomorrow,” Gabe says. “The police shouldn’t have any reason to come to your house tonight, but even if they did, I pulled those from Pitt’s clean laundry. They shouldn’t have any DNA or anything on them that would connect them to him or that house.”
I nod, feeling a little of the tension leak from my arms. “Okay.”
We drive in silence for a few minutes, before Gabe softly asks. “Can I ask a favor?”
“Anything,” I say, meaning it. I would do anything for him, and I know he would do anything for me.
“Can we wait to talk until tomorrow morning? I want one more night. I just want to hold you and go to sleep with you on my chest and pretend that everything is the same. Just for one more night.”
My tongue slips out to dampen my lips and tears are slipping down my cheeks again, but I nod. “But tomorrow you tell me the truth, and we move forward. Together.”
“Yes. Together.” He reaches out, threading his fingers through mine. “I don’t want you to feel guilty about what happened tonight, okay? We didn’t have a choice. If he’d lived, he would have continued to be a danger to you and the kids. Even if I could have convinced him to leave you alone, he’d obviously developed a taste for what he did to his mother. He would have found another victim, sooner or later.”
I slow, braking as we pass under the overpass and prepare to turn south on the highway. “I don’t feel guilty.” I stop in the middle of the abandoned road, and turn to face him. “Do you think that makes me one of them?”
“One of the monsters?” Gabe asks, reading my mind the way he does sometimes. “No. Not even close.”
“Are you sure?” I ask, suddenly needing the assurance, making me wonder if maybe I am in shock, after all, and if any minute my fragile calm is going to come crashing down all around me.
“No, you’re an angel, the scary, beautiful kind,” he says, lifting his hand to my face, cupping my cheek in his warm palm. “You are…the most beautiful person I’ve ever met, inside and out. I love you, and I wouldn’t have you any other way than the way you were tonight.”
Tears slip from my eyes. “Is it okay that that’s enough for me?”
“Yes,” he says with such surety that I’m able to pull myself together with only a nod and another sniff.
We drive home in silence to find Danny sitting on the front porch with one of the pay-as-you-go cell phones Gabe bought under an alias clenched tight in his hand. Even in the heat of the moment, Gabe was careful to make sure the call to the police wouldn’t lead back to our family, and Danny was level-headed enough to follow directions.
Or crazy enough. I can tell Danny realizes something bad went down, but he doesn’t ask any questions. He just throws his thin arms around me and hugs me tight before doing the same to Gabe.
I look over to see Gabe’s big arms cradling my brother to his chest and I have an eerie feeling that Danny is like me, like Gabe, that whatever is missing inside of us is missing from Danny, too, but it doesn’t scare me the way it would have even a month ago.
Maybe more people are missing whatever this is than we think. Maybe other people aren’t near as good or pure or kind as they would like to believe. Maybe Gabe was right that first night in Sherry’s car, and none of us truly know what we’re capable of until we’re put in an impossible situation, until we step over the line and realize things aren’t so very different on the other side, after all
.
Whatever the truth is, I know Danny will be okay. He has me, and he has Gabe, and we’ll help him figure out how to walk a path that is good and honorable, even if it isn’t always a path other people would approve of. It can be done; I believe that. Anything can be done with people who love you by your side.
Half an hour later, it is almost three o’clock in the morning and Danny is tucked back into bed and I take Gabe’s hand and let him lead me into the bathroom to wash away the stains of the day, to spend one last night letting all the questions lie before the sun rises and exposes all our secrets to the light.
CHAPTER FOUR
Gabe
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken.
-Shakespeare
She’s still crying, though I’m not sure she realizes it.
Tears stream soundlessly from her eyes, like a leaky faucet that refuses to be turned all the way off. There have been times when the tears have been worse than others, but they haven’t really stopped since we left Pitt’s house.
She says she’s okay, but I can tell she’s not.
And why should she be? She was almost killed, maybe almost raped, too—I haven’t worked up the courage to ask her about that. I don’t want to know. I’m afraid it would make my head start exploding all over again.
Stress seems to play a role in the blackouts and dizziness. If I want to be here for Caitlin tonight, I have to remain calm, and hold my shit together. I can’t think about the fact that I’m dying, or that I’m going to leave her alone to carry the weight of what happened tonight all on her own. I can’t think about Danny’s thin arms trying to gather Caitlin up and hold her together. No matter how tough he is, he’s just a kid. He clung to me tonight like I was his dad, not some idiot barely eight years older than he is.
