He was speaking a language she had never heard before and didn’t understand, but something inside her brain was telling her to be slow and soft, to agree with him. That same voice that had told her to keep him talking. It was like being in that dorm room again, her hair over her face as she pulled on those brown ankle boots, her mind putting a divider up inside her thoughts, only letting certain ones through and pushing the other ones back.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
No, no, wrong book. Fuck. What was so important about Wuthering Heights? What was he even talking about?
“I wasn’t going to be like Heathcliff,” Henry was saying, and she tuned back in to him with a sense of complete unreality, the absurdity of it all so strong she was almost tempted to laugh. “Fucking Edgar. You think I was going to let you be with him? After Josh Tyler and the random guy at college?”
Again, looking at her as though genuinely wanting an answer.
“Edgar?” she said blankly.
“Andrew!” He waved an arm and she flinched. “Fucking Andrew! You wanted to be with him. You were going to be with him before today, it was obvious. I was going to tell you, by the way. Even if you hadn’t come down and heard him. I was going to tell you what he’d done. Hadn’t done. Whatever. I’d never keep something like that from you. Not like how you kept stuff from me.”
Jealousy. So simple it almost relieved her at this point. This she knew. This she understood.
“Andrew?” She gave a small, light laugh. Ridiculous, that laugh said. “I wasn’t going to be with An—”
RING!!!
RING RING
Her phone going off in her purse. The high chime of bells, the plastic vibrating so hard she felt it through her bag.
She reached into her purse, pulled it out.
“Who is it?” Henry demanded.
Catherine closed her eyes.
“Who is it?”
“Hi, you’ve reached Catherine Ellers. I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you leave your—”
Andrew shut it off, then immediately redialed.
“Not picking up?” Bob asked. He was parked down the street from Catherine’s house, waiting with admittedly limited patience for Andrew to tell him where to go next.
They’d gone first to Henry’s house—empty, Henry’s car gone from the driveway, an absence that seemed to drop Andrew’s stomach into his feet—then to Catherine’s. Andrew rang the doorbell as Bob waited down the street. It had been Bob’s idea and Andrew didn’t argue; he couldn’t blame Bob for not wanting to sound the alarm for something that might be nothing.
Please let it be nothing.
“No, Catherine’s not here,” her mom said with a frown after she answered the door. “I thought you all were at Henry’s?”
Andrew shook his head, trying to mirror her expression, then checked his phone. “God, I’m an idiot. She texted me ten minutes ago to meet them for dinner. Guess I didn’t hear it.”
But her mom’s frown deepened. “Bit of an early dinner, isn’t it?”
“Looks like we’re getting coffee beforehand,” Andrew said, still pretending to scroll through the message. “Anyway, sorry to bother you—”
“Wait.”
He turned back to her, his heart beating very hard.
“Can you tell her to come home?” Her hands were pressed together in front of her, so tightly the fingers were white. “I’d tell her, but, well, lately…” She trailed off. “Tell her we want her home tonight. It’s been a hard day, what with the funeral and all….”
“Okay,” Andrew told her. Promised her. “I’ll do that.”
But now he had no idea where Catherine even was. Had Henry taken her out to dinner? To a movie? To one of the fifteen coffee shops in town? Or had he taken her somewhere else, somewhere more private?
Hands shaking, Andrew put the address in the GPS on his phone because he’d never actually been there. “Go straight,” he told Bob. “Then left at the stop sign at the end.”
After just two more turns, Bob looked at him. “What is this?” he asked Andrew, though his tone was still calm, almost kind, like Andrew was a child to be indulged. “Do you think he’ll return to the scene of the crime? That’s TV stuff, you know. Doesn’t always happen.”
Andrew said nothing.
“That’s him, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”
His hands grabbed at her but she cringed, trying to shove the phone down between the seats, but her hands were slick with sweat and panic and his were like pliers pulling her fingers back. He wrenched the phone away.
She watched his face as he looked at the screen, silent now but still glowing with another call; then his eyes flicked up to hers.
He hit her.
Not a slap, either, but a fisted blow to the left side of her face, phone still in hand, the hard plastic cracking against her skull.
Her face snapped to the side, slamming into the passenger-side window. She flung her arms over her head, her eyes shut against the pain. When she opened them again, the world was a small oval edged in red. Dazed, she blinked blood out of her left eye; she could smell it, like rain on metal, and taste it on her teeth.
“Jesus, Catherine,” he said, panting. She heard the window grind down, saw the arc of his arm as he threw her phone into the grass. “Why are you doing this?”
Those sentences again, everything backward, locks with no keys. Nothing that made sense.
The window was still open. The cold air hit her face and seemed to hiss there along her cheekbone, where everything was swelling heat.
And with the pain came clarity. Something falling inside her mind. A wall coming down and every thought trapped behind it rushing to the front: Leyna’s warning and James’s hair and Henry’s alibi—but that last part didn’t matter. She was sure, even though she didn’t understand. The pain made her sure, took away her confusion and her doubt. It didn’t matter why he’d done it, or when. She was seeing them both as though from outside the car: a boy and a girl who looked like each other, and one was bleeding and the other one had locked the doors and she had been so, so stupid.
Again.
Amy, telling her to look. Screaming at her to see.
Now she was looking. Now she knew.
“God, I’m so sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to do that.”
What was he talking about? He hadn’t meant to kill Amy? But then his hand was on her hair, touching the blood in it, and she realized: he was apologizing for hitting her.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m fine.” That voice again, telling her what to say, her restraint coming back to her by millimeters, like a slow pull of rope. Before she could make herself move, to do something, anything, his hands closed around her wrists. At his house, he had held her hands, but this grip was harder, different, and she fought not to fight back. Not yet.
“You’re not.” He looked upset, even regretful. “I didn’t want to do that.”
“I know.”
“I just got…so angry.”
“I know.”
“You do always know me.” His fingers stroked the inside of her wrists, down to her palms and up again. “I knew that was all that needed to happen, really. You, knowing me again, like when we were kids. See, that was the problem with Heathcliff and Catherine: they drifted apart. We drifted apart. I know it’s a little weird, the book, thinking of us like that, but she had your name. It seemed like a sort of…sign, don’t you think? And now, seeing you again. Being near you again, after all those years away. It was like the book was trying to tell me something. I couldn’t let you go away, not again. So I knew I needed something to make you stay, make you want to be around me. Not my own loss—I didn’t want your pity—but one of yours. I didn’t want to wreck you completely, but I knew it needed to hurt. So I could help you through it. A Goldilocks k
ind of grief, I guess you’d call it. Not enough to kill you, but enough to make you stay.” A pause. “Also, I thought a child would be easier.”
Outside the car, the rain had shifted to snow. She saw the slow drift from her right eye, but even that was red at the edges, as though each snowflake had been dipped in blood before falling through the night.
“I saw Amy after I ran into you,” he was saying. “She was on her bike. I went to my house, got a piece of paper. I left it on her bike. Then I went to James’s house. I still…wasn’t sure, though. I mean, I had the hair, the note, I knew she’d meet me, but still…Then I got your text message, and I knew I had to do it. I already had plans that night and really, I should have canceled them. But then I thought maybe that would look bad, later, canceling plans. So I went. When I realized Brittany’s dad was a cop…”
He shook his head. Catherine watched the movement of his hair across his forehead, his temples. She couldn’t stop staring at him. It was like looking at Henry and, at the same time, like looking at a stranger.
“You have to understand. I didn’t know how far Leyna had gone. I knew she’d gone to the cops and they’d sent her away. My parents told me that much. But I didn’t know Pechman knew. I almost had a heart attack when you told me what you’d overheard at the church; thank God you thought it was James. I’m so done with the police at this point. I hated even going to the station, having to make a scene outside your house so you’d come out. God, all the risks I took for you. But I couldn’t make it seem like I was nervous around the cops, like I was avoiding them. How weird would it have looked if I didn’t want to come to the station with you? But actually, everyone was pretty chill about me being there. Maybe that was Pechman, though honestly, they probably saw Leyna for what she was and didn’t care what she had to say. I guess Grant was the exception because I made the mistake of taking his daughter on all of one date. Dads, right?” Henry sighed. “So I came home. Then I went out to meet Amy. I can’t explain the time thing, though. That was a bonus I didn’t really need but I wasn’t going to complain, you know? Anyway, I want you to know, I didn’t do anything to her. I wouldn’t do that. I mean, Jesus, she was just a kid. Not that I think what happened to you, like, ruined you or anything,” he added quickly. “You being raped didn’t change how I feel about you. You’ve always been the same to me.”
For whatever reason, it was at this point she remembered the knife in her bag.
“I understand,” she said.
“You do?”
“Yes. Now you explained it. I understand. Thank…thank you for telling me.”
“Yeah. And you have to admit, it did work, right? We’ve spent so much time together lately. It’s been nice, hasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I did it because I love you. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t love you.”
The snow was light, dusting, scattering across the windshield. The left side of her face still burned where he’d hit her, her cheekbone swelling up to her eye. His hands were still around her wrists. “I love you, too,” she said.
He smiled at her then, a Henry smile she remembered from years ago. It made a thin flame of hope spark inside her chest. He believed her. He’d take her home. He’d let her go.
“Catherine,” he said. “Don’t lie to me.”
The road leading to the clifftop was dark when they turned onto it, and Bob drove slowly, grumbling about there not being enough streetlights here. Andrew didn’t reply. He was very aware of the crunch of gravel under the tires; it sounded indecently loud.
He’ll hear us, Andrew thought.
And then what? Henry thought he had an alibi. Hell, he did have an alibi. He wouldn’t be spooked—
He would, though. Andrew knew it with the same certainty he’d felt when he hit the door in the dorms again and again, his palm on fire, panic making him pant. Because people—criminals, murderers—did worry about getting caught. If they saw a police car coming up behind them, chances were they’d do something desperate.
“Stop the car,” Andrew said.
“What?”
“Stop the car. If he sees your cruiser, he’ll panic.”
“If he’s even here.”
“He is,” Andrew said, with more conviction than he actually felt.
Bob stopped the car and turned to Andrew. Snow was falling gently onto the windshield, melting on contact and running down like tears. “Well, I’m not letting you go on your own.”
“I thought you said this was nothing.”
“It is. There is a ninety-nine-percent chance this is a complete waste of time.”
“But not one hundred.”
Bob frowned at him, then took out his radio. “This is Officer Harper. I’ve got a possible ten-fourteen at Lookout Point. ETA two minutes. Requesting backup.”
After a moment, the radio crackled. “Ten-four, Bob. Ten-seventeen. ETA five.” The radio crackled into silence again.
“What’s ten-fourteen?” Andrew asked him.
“Report of a prowler,” Bob said. He pointed a finger at Andrew. “You’re staying here.”
“I’m not staying—”
“Then I will handcuff you to this car. I’m waiting for backup, and even when they get here, you are staying the hell out of this. Whatever it is.”
“I’m not lying,” she said.
“You are. You think I don’t know when you’re lying to me?”
“I—”
“Kiss me.”
She opened her mouth, closed it.
“If you love me, kiss me. Unless you don’t—”
She leaned forward and pressed her mouth to his. He opened his mouth at once and she shut her eyes, feeling his hand creep up her face. She wondered if he’d leave fingerprints in her blood.
She made herself wait, then broke away.
“There—” she said, trying for light, playful.
But he pulled her toward him again and she flinched as she felt his tongue between her teeth and one hand tight at her waist while in her mind she pictured two children in a backyard and, one by one, every summer garden light around them went dark.
“Henry,” she said.
But his mouth was over hers, taking her words and swallowing them. He smelled like night air from the open window, tasted like whiskey and ice. The pressure of him kissing her was like a knife into her bleeding temple and a white-water current of adrenaline was crashing endlessly and the black terror of it all was so much she thought she would break in two along the fault line of her heart.
He pressed her back, his mouth still on her, his hands moving down her body, and it was like she was made up of separate parts all screaming together.
She tried to make herself relax, make her muscles limp, let him arrange her the way he wanted. She’d never be able to respond, could never bring herself to give him anything close to that, but maybe she could manage a kind of submission. Would that be enough? She pictured him moving her, pulling off her clothes, her underwear, parting her legs, pushing the seat back so she was flat underneath him. Tried to tell herself it wouldn’t last that long. That he’d be inside her for minutes, then it would be over.
But the whole time she’d have to stay under him. The whole time she’d have to not cry. Not scream or push back or fight. He’d kiss her neck, pull down her bra. She’d feel him on every single part of her and she’d have to pretend that was okay, or he’d—what?
Kill her? Wrap his hands around her throat the way he’d done to Amy? She pictured that, too, the pressure of his thumbs under her jaw, her hands scrabbling uselessly before dropping to her sides again. She held those two images in her mind like weights as he pushed her back, his hands sliding up her shirt, his fingers touching the bottom of her rib cage: the placid, prone girl, or the one who got to scratch and claw and scream. It wasn’t even close.
&nbs
p; Then kill me, she thought. Almost dared him.
Because I’d rather die.
She pushed him off her.
“Don’t,” she said, cringing back, one arm twisted behind her, a sudden thrill of dread rolling over her. “Henry—”
Henry sat back in the seat and rubbed his eyes. “Catherine,” he began.
Her finger felt along the door handle. But he’d hear the lock click up, wouldn’t he? She began breathing harder, more through her mouth. She was supposed to scream now, lash out, fight back, but the light behind his face dazzled her eyes, scattering black diamonds across her vision, and she couldn’t do it.
“I didn’t want this to happen,” he said.
“Right.” Her breath, panting, five fingers moving, pressing. “No, of course not—”
“But I thought it might.”
“Okay.” Keep talking, making noise. Tears slipped down her cheeks. She ignored them. “Henry—”
“You have to be realistic about these things, you know?”
Her hand froze. That had to be the lock. Had to be. She waited for him to speak again, one finger braced.
“I knew if I told you, you wouldn’t understand. You say you do, but I know you don’t. Just like I know right now you’re trying to get out of the car.”
Her heart fell, then jolted back up in panic.
“You’re not getting out, Catherine.” He reached for her and she cringed but he seized her hands again, his grip fierce, brushing against the edge of pain. “I had a plan, just in case. Because I know life sometimes is like the books. Not just you having her name, but being like her too. Betraying your own heart. It’s why I didn’t want to tell you. I knew you wouldn’t be able to handle it. But now…There’s no going back after this, is there?”
A sudden gust of wind scattered snow through the open window. She thought of her father on the front porch. Smells like snow, doesn’t it? It had landed on her jeans, her face, her open eyes. She couldn’t say anything. Terror had stolen every word she’d ever known.
Monsters Among Us Page 26
