One Perfect Love

by Jessie Evans

  I turn, unable to keep my eyes from tracking up and down her nude form, admiring her slim legs and large breasts with the dusky nipples. She’s gorgeous, but her eyes don’t look like the eyes of a girl who wants a no-strings-attached relationship. Kimmy is looking for love, whether she realizes it or not, and I’m definitely not in the market.

  “You seem like a nice girl,” I say. “But I—”

  “I’m four years older than you,” she says, giggling, her smile making her even prettier. “You can boss me around in bed, but you don’t get to call me a girl, college boy.”

  My lips curve the slightest bit. It isn’t a smile, but it’s closer than I’ve come to one in a long time.

  Suddenly, I don’t hate Kimmy, and I hate myself a tiny bit less.

  “I thought you might have a nice smile.” She grins. “Come on, let’s have a drink and hang out. No pressure, just good times.”

  “Why don’t we get out of here, instead,” I say, deciding there are worse ways to spend the rest of the evening, like going home and trying to sleep while Caitlin’s brutalized body flashes behind my closed eyes. “We could get burgers and beers?”

  Her eyes light up. “Sounds perfect. Give me two minutes to freshen up.”

  She disappears through a curtain of glass beads that leads into her closet and the bathroom on the other side. There’s no door on the john, and I can hear her peeing and running water to wash her hands, hear her humming as she fixes her makeup. The sounds are intimate sounds, and for a moment I feel less alone.

  The realization makes me reach for the door again.

  I deserve to feel alone, I deserve to suffer and ache until I find out the truth, until I know if I hurt the woman I loved, or if I’m reading the clues all wrong.

  Please let me be reading them wrong. Please, if there is a God, let this be okay.

  Let Caitlin still be alive.

  “You ready?” Kimmy swishes back through the beads before I can make a break for the stairs. Her frizzy hair has been smoothed into slightly damp curls, and her smudged mascara replaced by black liner that makes her eyes look even bigger.

  “Ready,” I say, forcing a smile as I open the door for her.

  I don’t deserve a stress-free night, but I need one. I need to put the horrible images I saw tonight aside before they drive me crazy. I’ll add them to the rest of my clues, close the lid on the puzzle, and wait until I have enough pieces to form a complete picture.

  Or you could quit before it’s too late, move on with your life before you learn something that will ruin your second chance.

  The thought teases through my brain as Kimmy and I file down the three stories of stairs to the ground floor of her building, one of the oldest in historic downtown. A long time ago The Merrylark was a hotel, then a rooming house for men working in the textile plant, and now it houses apartments that are supposed to be funky and retro, but from what I’ve seen are simply cramped and poorly designed.

  But the building is centrally located, right across the street from Harry’s twenty-four hour diner, two blocks from the old courthouse and central library, and just a block from The Neptune, a Greek restaurant that serves burgers and fries, as well as traditional Greek fair.

  “How about Harry’s?” Kimmy asks as we emerge onto the sidewalk and are swallowed into the humid heat of the July night.

  I glance across the street at the neon sign flickering above the diner and feel a tickle at the base of my brain. Another memory rises inside of me—something about the diner, something that happened there, something to do with Caitlin—but I banish it with a shake of my head.

  “No, let’s go to The Neptune,” I say. “They’ve got colder beer.”

  I have no idea if that’s true, but it’s as good an excuse as any not to go into Harry’s. I don’t want to face any more memories tonight. Or maybe tomorrow night, either. Maybe the gutless voice in my head is right, and I should quit fighting to reconstruct last summer before it’s too late. I’ve never considered myself a coward before, but now…

  The image of Caitlin’s bruise-mottled neck and tear-streaked face drifts through my mind again, but then Kimmy takes my hand and starts telling me a story about when she was little and her mom would take her for midnight breakfast, and the image fades away, replaced by Kimmy’s blue eyes and open smile. By the time we push through the door to The Neptune, and are enveloped in the smell of garlic, fried meat, and mint, there is nothing but the present and a girl who seems to want to help me put the past behind me.

  Chapter Nine

  Two Weeks Later

  Caitlin

  “What is genius, but the power of expressing a new individuality?”

  -Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Just after four o’clock in the morning, I slip through the window and drop quietly to the ground outside Mr. Munroe’s five thousand square foot mansion. It’s an hour later than I planned—the sleeping pills I tucked into the meat took longer to knock out his dogs than I anticipated—but I have plenty of time to get back home before Isaac and the kids get up. I’m still on track to pulling off this job without getting caught, and have no reason to be worried.

  And then I hear it, a soft growl near the damaged portion of the fence, where I eased into the backyard ten minutes ago, on my way to steal Mr. Munroe’s hard drive.

  I freeze, my pulse spiking and my mouth filling with a sour, metallic taste. I hold completely still, straining my ears, praying they were playing tricks on me, but then it comes again, a low growl, closer this time. I scan the darkness in front of me, but I can’t see a damned thing. The moon has gone behind the clouds and Munroe’s yard is dotted with palm and fruit trees. There are shadows everywhere, dozens of places for a pissed off, drugged up dog to hide.

  I take a slow step backward that’s greeted with another growl. Seconds later, a small, compact silhouette staggers out from beneath the inky blackness beneath an orange tree ten feet away. It’s the smaller dog, the one that barked the loudest when I first appeared at the fence shortly after midnight.

  The sleeping pills should have knocked both of the pit bulls out for hours, but maybe the bigger one got greedy and ate more than his share of hamburger. Or maybe the little guy has a super powered metabolism and has already burned through his dose. Whichever is to blame, it doesn’t matter. The dog is awake and ready to defend its territory. Now, I just have to hope it’s still sufficiently drugged for me to have a shot at outrunning it before it gets a mouthful of my leg.

  Moving slowly, I tuck the bag containing the hard drive down the front of my pants, knowing I’ll want both arms free for my dash toward the front gate. I came in through the crack in the fence, but it took time for me to squeeze through. Now, I don’t have time. I’ll have to make a run down the driveway and jump the gate.

  There are cameras monitoring the front drive, but I’m wearing my blacks. Munroe shouldn’t be able to see any identifiable characteristics when he reviews the footage. And maybe—once he realizes that I’ve taken the hard drive containing the pictures he’s been using to blackmail a local elementary school teacher, and pictures of Munroe, one of Maui’s most upstanding county councilmen, in the middle of a circle jerk with two of his oldest male friends—he’ll decide against contacting the police.

  A girl can only hope, because I have no doubt that if Isaac saw the surveillance footage, he would be able to make me in a second, even with my entire body and face covered in black knit. Isaac knows the way I move, the way I jump, the way I pump my arms when I’m sprinting the last half mile of a run. He’ll know me if he sees me, but the thought doesn’t make me alter my technique as I turn and bolt for the front of the house, the dog’s claws scrabbling on the ground as it starts after me.

  I need to haul ass and I’m not about to alter the technique that makes me faster than Isaac, faster than Danny, maybe even faster than Gabe if he were still alive.

  I cling to the thought, imagining Gabe’s voice cheering me on, telling me I can make it
, telling me to fucking run like my life depends on it, as I race toward the front gate. Behind me, the dog’s growl has become a bark loud enough to wake the dead. Munroe is going to be out of bed any minute. If the dog gets its teeth into me, it won’t be long before Munroe is out on the lawn, ready to rip off my mask and find out who broke into his house.

  I can’t let the dog catch up. I have to run faster.

  I haul ass, arms pumping, ribs heaving as I draw deep, ragged breaths, fueling the muscles in my legs that are straining forward with everything they’ve got. By the time I reach the end of the drive, my lungs feel like they’re going to explode, but I make it without getting chomped.

  I extend both arms and leap for the top of the thick, wooden gate, grateful it isn’t one that opens automatically when approached from the inside. I am almost out of sprint power and the dog is close enough that I can feel its breath hot on my ankles as I swing my legs up and over. I land on the other side of the gate in a less-than-graceful tangle of arms and legs, but I’m up and on my feet in seconds.

  Knowing there’s no time to catch my breath, I turn and bolt down the darkened country road, heading away from the trail I used to get here, even though it’s the shortest route back to the house. But so far I’ve always kept true to Gabe’s signature job style—in and out in no more than ten minutes, always have at least three routes plotted beforehand, and never use the same route twice.

  By the time I reach the Hana Highway, the only major road leading to the east side of the island, a light rain is falling and my leg muscles are trembling, but I don’t let myself slow down until I am across the road and deep into the field of grass on the other side. Only then do I stop for a second and tilt my head back, lifting my face to the cool rain. The drops kiss my closed lids and hot cheeks, slipping between my parted lips to leave the taste of clean, island water on my tongue.

  I take a deep breath in and out, overcome with gratitude. I’m grateful to live in a place where the rain tastes like flowers and fresh sea air. I’m grateful that I took a chance and started pulling jobs on my own and that I’m doing my small part to make people’s lives better here.

  And I’m grateful as hell that I didn’t get caught.

  I love this island, but it’s smaller than it seems when you first arrive. A person can only go so far before they run into a beach or a jungle or a volcanic crater with no road leading to the other side. Sooner or later, I’m going to have to stop pulling jobs or take the breaking and entering elsewhere, otherwise there will be no issue of whether I’ll get caught, only when.

  The thought is a sobering one, and by the time I reach the house forty minutes later, I am more subdued than I usually am after a job. I ease into the shed and deposit the hard drive under the loose board in the corner. I slip out of my blacks and shove them into the hole next to the hard drive, making a mental note to wash them while Isaac’s at work, and change into my running clothes.

  I’ve just slotted the board back into place and am heading back out of the shed—planning to take a very short jog around the neighborhood before creeping in the back door to the house—when the door flies open, revealing Danny on the other side.

  “Shit,” I curse, my hand flying to cover my heart. “You scared me.”

  “Isaac’s been up for two hours,” Danny says in a low voice. “He was in the bathroom when I saw you come across the lawn, but he knows something is up.”

  I swallow and force a smile, ignoring the way my pulse leaps at my throat. “I went for a long run and got lost. It’s no big deal.”

  Danny watches me for a long moment, and his pale green eyes—so like mine, from the color, to the thick fringe of lashes, to the old-before-his-time look that flickers behind them when he’s thinking—study me in the dim light.

  Finally, he whispers, “Is everything okay?”

  I nod, fake smile vanishing. “Yes. Everything is fine. I promise.”

  “I get that you have things you need to do…” Danny sighs, glancing back over his shoulder toward the house before he turns back to me. “But if you’re going to keep it up, you’ve got to get rid of Isaac.”

  “You love Isaac,” I say, chest aching at how calm Danny sounds when talking about getting rid of a friend who has become like family to us in the past few months.

  “I love you more,” Danny says. “And he’s not like Gabe, Caitlin. If he finds out about any of it, even the stuff that happened before we moved, he’s not going to be cool.”

  “Let me worry about Isaac,” I say, hating that I’ve done such a shitty job of protecting Danny, and anxious that maybe I haven’t been as successful at hiding my illicit activities as I’ve thought. If Danny knows, Isaac must at least suspect something, though I doubt he’d make the leap to breaking and entering without some sort of evidence.

  “Seriously, don’t worry,” I add as I cross the shed to rest a hand on his shoulder, surprised to realize I have to reach up a little to do it. “Just be a kid for a little while longer, okay? Let the grown-ups handle the grown-up stuff.”

  “I haven’t been a kid for a long time,” Danny says, in a matter of fact way that makes it hard to chalk the statement up to teenage angst. “And I don’t want to lose this. Things are good here. I don’t want Isaac to screw that up.”

  “I’m the one who would screw it up,” I say softly, a wave of self-loathing rushing through me as I cross my arms at my chest. “Isaac’s not the problem, I am, and I’m sorry. I promise I’ll try to do better.”

  “But you have been doing better,” Danny says. “That’s the thing. Whatever you’ve been doing lately, when you go running late at night, makes you better. I get that. And I’d rather you do whatever you need to do than watch you zone out staring at the wall with tears running down your face. I hated that. I hated when you came home from the hospital all numb and sad and nothing we did could make you better.”

  I blink, surprised by the intensity in my brother’s voice. “I’m sorry,” I say again, feeling like more of a failure with every passing second.

  “Don’t be sorry, just don’t get caught,” he adds, pushing his long blond hair—almost long enough to get into a ponytail like the older surfers he admires—from his face. “I love you, okay?”

  “I love you, too,” I say, pulling him into my arms for a hug.

  He resists for a minute, but then his wiry arms close around me and he hugs me hard. We stand that way for a long minute, until the back door to the house opens and Isaac calls my name.

  “I’m here.” I pull away from Danny, holding my brother’s eyes for a beat, silently promising to take care of things, before I turn and cross the lawn.

  And I will take care of things.

  I won’t let anything hurt the people I love, not even me.

  Chapter Ten

  Caitlin

  “He said true things, but called them by wrong names.”

  -Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Isaac stands on the back lanai, dressed in his running clothes, his thick arms crossed at his chest and a frown creasing his once perpetually cheery face. My best friend says that the day I agreed to be his girlfriend was the best day of his life, but I’ve seen him scowl more in the past few months than in all our years of friendship combined.

  “Where have you been?” he asks, his voice rough, earning him a hard look from Danny as my brother heads into the house. “I’ve been worried sick.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, shutting the door behind Danny, figuring it’s best if Isaac and I stay outside so none of the kids can hear us fighting. “I went running, and ended up down by the beach. I started watching the waves and just…lost track of time.”

  Isaac shakes his head, and the frown wrinkling his broad forehead deepens. “That’s not okay, Caitlin. You can’t go running off and stay gone for hours without telling anyone where you’re going. There are people here who care about you, and who get fucking worried when you disappear in the middle of the night.”

  “I was fine, Isaac
.” I ignore the irritation that flickers in my chest. Isaac cares, that’s why he’s worried, and I’m sure I’d be concerned if the shoe were on the other foot. “I know you think it’s dangerous for me to go running alone, but I promise you, I can take care of myself.”

  “I seriously doubt that, Caitlin,” he snaps, his tone as harsh as it was the night he told me he thought Gabe was turning me into a callous, unfeeling person. “You’ve been one step away from falling apart for months. I know it, the kids know it, even Sherry knows it. We’re all just waiting for you to go running one night and never come back.”

  Now it’s my turn to scowl. “That’s not fair, Isaac. It’s been a tough year, but the kids are doing great in school, and so am I. And if Sherry’s worried, she hasn’t said anything to me. She seemed fine when we hung out last weekend.”

  “She’s afraid to upset you,” Isaac says. “It’s me she calls when you forget to show up for a coffee date, or blow off dinner without calling to reschedule.”

  “I’ve done each of those things exactly once,” I say, propping my hands on my hips. “And I told her I was sorry. I got busy studying and spaced about dinner, and the time I missed coffee was the day I had to sign the kids up for swim lessons. I was in line longer than I thought I would be, and didn’t have cell service to call and let her know I—”

  “Make all the excuses you want,” Isaac says, cutting me off. “But I know something’s not right with you. You haven’t been yourself since you started dating Gabe, and it’s only gotten worse since you lost the baby.”

  I flinch. We never talk about the baby. We never talk about anything that happened between when I started dating Gabe, and the day Isaac moved to the island. That parcel of time has been mutually declared off limits. Isaac doesn’t want to hear about it, and I don’t want to share the private memories of my time with Gabe with anyone, not even my best friend.