The Secrets That We Keep

by Lucero, Isabel

  “Okay, thanks Jade,” I reply before hanging up.

  I walk into the living room and flop down onto the couch and just stare out the window. I know I need to start looking into things, but I have no idea where to begin. I took that picture of those guys in the SUV but the picture isn’t very clear, you can’t make out anybody inside the vehicle. I could try to talk to Michelle and see if she remembers anything the guys from the club had asked or said, but even that was a long shot because I already knew she was wasted. I’d be lucky if she remembered even being there that night. I guess I could still give it a shot; I planned on calling her anyway to see if she was okay..

  I could always go to Julian, after all, he does work with the FBI, his job is to investigate people and do surveillance. Ironic that I married a man who would have the best chance at finding out my secret if he really wanted to. Good thing he doesn’t know I have a secret.

  I never doubt Julian and his work ethic He puts his all into what he does and it infuriates him when they are unable to gather enough evidence to put the criminals in jail. He has come home before, going on and on about how there shouldn’t be people like that on the streets. I don’t know what “like that” means, I imagine it’s people responsible for violent crimes and stuff like that.

  If I did bring my problem to Julian though, he would just question why I thought people would be following me and trying to track me down. What would I say to him? Could I tell him why I thought people might be looking for me?

  “Annabella? Are you okay?” Julian asks from behind me. I didn’t even hear him make his way downstairs. He’s leaning over the back of the couch, looking at me with his brows furrowed.

  “Oh, hey baby,” I answer, slightly startled. “I’m alright, just feeling a little out of it.”

  Julian walks around the couch and comes and sits next to me. “Are you sure? You don’t look alright. Do you wanna talk about it?” His voice is full of concern and he brushes my hair away from my face, looking deeply into my eyes. At this moment I want to spill my guts to him. I want to come clean and tell him everything, and hope that he’ll understand and still want to protect me.

  “I think somebody was following and watching me,” I say to him quietly.

  Julian’s face instantly changes, he no longer has the look of concern and love but instead his face is hardened and he looks pissed. “What do you mean, somebody was following you? How do you know? Did they approach you at all?” The more he asks, the more I can tell he’s having a harder time controlling himself.

  “No, nobody approached me, but there was this car that was tailing me when I was driving to meet my clients. I’m pretty sure I saw them hanging around at the park where I was taking pictures, too. They might actually be in some of my pictures!” I practically yell the last part because I had forgotten about those pictures; maybe we’ll be able to see who they are. “Oh and when I met with Jade in the city I saw the same car outside the coffee shop we met at, a little down the block, but it was two guys again and they were wearing baseball caps.”

  Julian looks agitated and his legs are bouncing up and down, he’s chewing on his bottom lip as if he’s in deep thought. “What did the car look like?” he asks.

  “Umm, it was a dark SUV. That’s all I know.”

  “You’re gonna have to show me those pictures, Annabella. I’m not gonna have some assholes following you around. Just know, I’m going to find out who these bastards are and I’ll make sure they never come around you again,” he says vehemently.

  His sudden anger and seriousness makes me nervous. “Babe, maybe it’s just a coincidence, maybe I’m just being paranoid. Who would want to follow me around anyway? I’m boring,” I say with a forced laugh, trying to joke and make light of the situation. It doesn’t seem to work.

  “Yeah well, we’ll just see about that,” he says as he gets up and stalks off towards the backyard. “Get me those pictures Annabella,” he demands as he pulls his phone from his pocket and slips out the back door.

  Well, maybe he’ll figure out it’s nobody. Maybe they were just some bored teenagers with nothing better to do. Then again, maybe he’ll find out something I may not want him to. I knew I shouldn’t have said anything. Dammit!

  I walk over to where my camera is sitting and pick it up and start looking through all the pictures I took today. I took over three hundred so it’s gonna take a while to find the ones where the guys were in the background. I walk back over to the couch and get comfortable and keep clicking through them all.

  I finally get to the ones that those assholes ruined by being in the background. Maybe I could get lucky and be able to edit them out and still have the picture look okay.

  I find one and zoom in to see if I can see their faces, but they seem to be looking at each other and it’s a bit blurry. No good. I click past a few more to one particular one that seems to be my best bet. I think this is after I noticed them and I had focused the camera more at them then at my actual subjects. I zoom in and get lucky because they are both actually facing the camera. Their hats are slightly covering their eyes but luckily they didn’t have their heads down or anything. I keep zooming and bring my face closer to the screen, the picture still isn’t the clearest but I can make out a lot more than I had thought I’d be able to. One of the guys was tall and lean, the other short and stocky. For some reason the way the tall one was standing looked vaguely familiar. I continue to zoom as much as I can and keep staring at the picture looking at every little detail.

  I’m about to give up when something catches my eye. The tall guy seems to have been in the middle of adjusting the blue and orange hat on his head, his arm is raised and it’s then that I notice the tattoo on his arm. It curls around his forearm all the way up around his bicep and into the sleeve of his shirt. It’s such a unique design, intricate, and not just some regular black and grey ink. The color is a mixture of blues and greens.

  My jaw drops, my heart races and I’m sure I’ve just lost all the coloring in my face. I would recognize that tattoo anywhere. It belongs to Lucas Smith, my ex. That rat bastard!

  Chapter Ten

  I’m sitting here with my mouth agape and I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that I am looking at a piece of my past. A stupid, egotistical, insolent, piece of my past. I want to reach into the camera and strangle him. How dare he be following me? And what for? He made it clear all those years ago that he didn’t want anything to do with me anymore. Asshole. Okay, maybe I’m being a little acrimonious, but this guy is one of the main reasons why I still feel so broken. It’s because of Lucas that I have a hard time trusting people, why I don’t put much faith into people’s promises to me, and why I’ll always have a fear of people abandoning me. I needed him back then and he knew it. He promised me he’d always be there for me, that he’d always protect me and keep me safe, and he failed on every single one.

  Lucas wasn’t always bad, I had been in love with him. He was my first, and at the time, I thought he would be my only. When my family was still alive and we were together, he was admirable; my family had loved him as much as I did. I couldn’t deny Lucas’s good looks either. Back then I thought he was the most attractive guy that I had ever seen. He stood about 6 foot 3, had the physique of a swimmer, toned arms, broad shoulders, a slim waist and well defined abs. His hair was a dirty blond, beautiful blue eyes were framed with eyelashes that every female would be jealous of, and he had a smooth, clean cut face. He was the complete opposite of my Julian, but still attractive in his own right. Julian is bulkier, more masculine with his thick muscles, five o’clock shadow, and chiseled jaw.

  I remember Lucas and I making plans to be together forever, I remember everything he said to me about our future.

  “If I could have my way Bell,” Lucas whispered to me while we were wrapped around each other in bed, “I would wake up every day to the warmth of your breath and the softness of your lips on my neck, the touch of your fingers caressing my skin, and the feel of your he
art beating with mine, because I know that I will never find that feeling with anyone else but you.”

  “Promise we’ll be together forever?” I asked.

  “I promise I’m not going anywhere, I’ll always be here with you,” he answered, rubbing circles on my back with his fingers. “Nobody will love you the way I love you. You are my absolute everything Bell, you know that right? I can’t go a day without you in my life. You’re stuck with me sweetheart,” he finished with a laugh.

  I moved my head from the crook of his neck to look him in the eye and put my hand on the side of his face. Staring directly into his eyes I say, “It’s not considered being stuck with you when I choose to be with you, and I will always choose to be with you. Don’t forget that.”

  He lets out a little laugh. “Okay baby, I’ll hold you to that, so make sure you don’t forget it either.”

  I shake my head of the memories that are now flooding my mind. I shouldn’t be remembering all the good things Lucas and I had. He had left me, just up and gone with no explanation as to what had gone wrong. When I asked him, he merely said, “Bell, just move on with your life, okay? It will be better this way, I promise. I can’t protect you anymore and you need to find someone who can.”

  What the hell had that meant? Was he referring to the fact that he felt he couldn’t protect me from my own self destructive ways. I know I had started drinking heavily and had some crazy mood swings. I mean, what the hell was I supposed to do? My family was dead, of course I was angry, and of course I wanted to drown my sorrows. He couldn’t be mad at me for that. So he wanted me to find somebody else to deal with my problems? Lucas got scared and didn’t know how to handle me. He couldn’t figure out how to help me, so instead he made it worse by abandoning me and leaving me all by myself when I needed somebody the most. I would never forgive him for that.

  The slamming of the back door pulls me out of my memories and back to the present. Julian has just come back inside and is heading towards me with a look of determination in his face.

  “Give me the camera, I need to see those pictures,” he demands, while reaching out for the camera that’s still in my hands. I slowly hand it over to him while eyeing him carefully. His jaw is clenched and he looks really annoyed so I decide not to mention to him that one of the guys in the picture is my ex. I just don’t think it would lead to good things. He knows about Lucas, I’ve talked to him about our relationship before and how we had broken up and that I never saw him again. Julian doesn’t know what Lucas looks like though, so he would never be able to guess who is in that picture.

  Julian is scanning through the photos with his back towards me, so I continue to sit there and just stare at his back, waiting for him to question me about these guys. He finally turns and sits down next to me on the couch, his arm rubbing up against mine. “Okay, how do I zoom in on these?” he asks. I reach over and show him the little magnifying glass button and press it.

  He presses the same button a few more times trying to get as zoomed in as possible. He leans into the camera like I did and squints his eyes, no doubt trying to get a good look at these guys. He zooms back out and goes to another picture and does the same thing. Finally, after looking through all the pictures that the two men are in, a look of recognition, perhaps shock passes his face and then his face is hard and serious. I’m sitting there just waiting for him to say something but when he does, it isn’t what I was expecting.

  He raises his eyebrows briefly after looking at the last photo, the photo I had recognized Lucas in, and then he puts the camera down next to him and his hands ball into fists and he places them on his knees. He turns and looks at me and I hesitantly look up into his face. The anger radiating off of him is scaring me.

  “What the fuck Annabella? You don’t know these guys? Are you sure?” he asks accusingly.

  “Uh...no, I don’t know who they are. Why would I?” I respond, only partly lying. I didn’t know both of them, only one, but I wasn’t ready to mention that now.

  Julian doesn’t say anything right away, he only narrows his eyes at me slightly as if he’s trying to figure out if I’m lying to him or not. I hope he believes me. What a joke, I hope he believes my lies. I feel so terrible for not telling him that it’s Lucas that’s in that picture, but I feel like I need to find Lucas first. To ask him what the hell is going on, what he’s doing following me around, and how he even found me. I need to get some answers for myself.

  “Really?” he asks, his voice dripping with disbelief. “You’ve never seen these guys before today? I need to know the truth Annabella. Have you seen either one of these men before today?” He runs his hand through his hair, something he does when he’s frustrated. I feel even worse now because I can hear the desperation in his voice. He wants and needs to believe that I haven’t seen these guys before. For whatever reason, he doesn’t want me to know them, so I give him what he wants.

  “No, I can hardly tell what they look like. I only noticed them today Julian,” I say, my voice slightly rising. “Why, do you know them?” I ask, almost accusingly and regret it because I shouldn’t be accusing him of hiding anything from me when I had just brazenly lied to his face. God, I’m a terrible person.

  He blinks and jerks his head back a little while looking at me with a confused look on his face. “How the hell would I know them?” he replies. I just shrug my shoulders and look down at my hands in my lap.

  “Are you fuckin’ kidding me right now?” he yells. “You think I have people following you? What the fuck do I look like? I don’t know these fuckin’ bastards.” He’s standing up now and staring down at me and the look on his face would frighten a grown man. I’m taken by surprise because at no point did I ever think Julian had people following me. Why would he need to keep tabs on me? I’m curious as to why he assumed that’s what I thought. I can’t help but think he has a guilty conscious. He has been asking me more about my daily plans lately, and let’s not forget he has been having these secret phone conversations that he has to leave the room or house to have. I wonder now what all this could mean. Julian hasn’t been acting like himself lately, and I need to know why.

  I stand up feeling instantly defensive at him towering over me. Even with me standing up, he still seems to tower over me, but I refuse to be this scared little woman sitting on the couch allowing her husband to yell down at her. “Are YOU kidding me? What the fuck is up with all the hostility Julian? I never thought you had people following me. What makes you jump to that, huh?” I have my hands on my hips now and I’m staring him down. I’m sure I’m not nearly as intimidating as him, but I’m upset.

  He flinches and hesitates momentarily, realizing that he was the one who threw out that idea, not me. “I don’t know, I’m sorry baby,” he says, his voice softening. “I just didn’t want you thinking badly of me. You know I’d never knowingly put you in danger.” He steps closer to me and pulls my hand in his and uses his other hand to sweep the hair from my face and tucks it behind my ear. I briefly wonder why he said he wouldn’t knowingly put me in danger, instead of just saying, he’d never put me in danger, but I shrug it off for now. “I’ll always protect you, you know that right? I don’t want to see anything happen to you Annabella,” he says and his accent is thick around my name. I’m instantly reminded of Lucas and his promise to always protect me and to always be there for me. He backed out of that promise, who’s to say Julian won’t do the same thing? I hope I’m wrong, but you never really know somebody do you?

  I smile and nod my head in response. He sighs and runs his hand through his hair again. I think he was hoping for a better response from me. “Bella, is there anything you want to talk to me about? Anything besides these guys following you?” he asks gently, probing for information. “I want you to know that you can tell me anything, I want you to trust me. So if you ever need to talk to me…just know you can, okay?”

  I don’t know how to respond at first. He seems to be asking me to come clean about something he already kn
ows about. But if he knew the secret I was keeping, there would be no way he would be this calm and understanding, so now I’m even more disconcerted. “I know, baby,” I say with a small smile. “You know me better than anybody else,” I continue, which is technically true. “If I need to talk, I know I can talk to you. There just isn’t anything that I need to tell you right now, nothing you don’t already know anyway,” I finish, knowing it’s not a complete lie but also knowing it’s not exactly the truth either. He seems to be satisfied enough with that answer because he pulls me into him and holds me tightly to his body. I love being in his arms like this, so comfortable and warm. He has one hand on the back of my head, stroking my hair and the other hand on my lower back, pressing me closer.

  I start to feel a vibration on my upper thigh and realize it’s Julian’s phone in his pocket. I pull away from him slowly. “You’re phone’s going off…again,” I say, not trying to hide the fact that I’m bothered with his mysterious long conversations every time his phone rings.

  He looks down at me and runs his hands up and down on my arms and gives me a tight smile. “Oh, it’s uh, probably just work again,” he says, ignoring the call altogether.

  “Why do they call you so often?” I ask. “What’s so important?” I’m trying to get him to tell me a little bit about this new case because I can’t seem to shake the feeling that whoever is calling is not actually calling about work.

  Julian looks at me and his lips quirk up on the right side. “I’m kind of a big deal babe,” he says jokingly. “They need me. I’m the best at what I do.”

  I look at him and twist my mouth up and glare at him playfully. “Oh yes, I forgot how big of a deal you are.”