by Coralee June
“It’s easier to blame you,” Roe sniffled.
At that point, I would have given her anything, and that desire wasn’t driven by guilt. It was fueled by compassion and care. I wanted to take away her pain. Now that there weren’t any secrets between us, I was able to let myself feel the things I wanted to feel. I still didn’t deserve her, though. But what else was new? “You can blame me, Pretty Debt,” I whispered while stroking her sweaty back. I didn’t even care. I wanted to hold her as long as she’d let me.
“Okay,” she replied before pulling away.
We went upstairs in silence, and I made her a PB&J from supplies I’d gotten from a gas station outside of Phoenix. When she emerged from the steamy bathroom, wrapped in a fluffy towel, I openly observed the bags under her eyes and the way her legs wobbled with every step. I itched to get up and carry her to bed, but even when breaking apart, Roe Palmer was strong and prideful. It was one of the many things I loved about her.
God, I loved her.
She sat down on the bed, and I handed her the food and a bottle of water. She stared at a blank space on the wall. Her body seemed vacant, and her mind was time traveling through all the memories. I knew with complete certainty that she was overanalyzing every moment leading up to her mother’s death, searching for an explanation. This was what I wanted to avoid. Why did I fucking tell her?
“You were tired of keeping the secret,” she answered me. I hadn’t even realized I’d said that out loud. It was like I’d completely lost control of my mouth. “You told me because you were tired of it keeping us apart.”
She nibbled her sandwich while continuing to stare at the wall. I wanted her golden brown eyes focused on me. I wanted to find and dissect her thoughts. Once half the sandwich was gone and the entire water bottle was empty, she went to brush her teeth and change into pajamas. When she came back, she slipped under the covers, and I turned off the lights. I’d gotten us a single room so I could have a thinly veiled excuse to sleep by her again.
In the darkness, I spooned her under the motivation of providing comfort. She didn’t relax against my chest, but she didn’t pull away, either. With our synched breaths and wide eyes, the both of us lay there in silence for what felt like hours. Even though exhaustion pulled at my eyes, I didn’t dare fall asleep until she did.
“She could have gotten better,” Roe whispered.
I lied back. “She could have.”
“But we’ll never know.”
“We won’t.”
I watched her body shake as silent sobs escaped her. “I believe you. I—I remember the yellow dress. And CPS.” I held her tighter. “I remember mom saying she’d make it all better.”
“I’m so fucking sorry, Roe.”
“Did she suffer?”
It was the most humane kill of my life. “No.”
“Did you?” she asked.
Every day of my fucking life. “Yes.”
“Good.” My chest constricted. “Why me?” she then asked. “Why didn’t you feel a debt for my mother? She was the one that paid the two grand. She was the one your mother betrayed. Why didn’t you save her like you saved me?”
I had asked myself that question plenty of times over the years and had come up with a reason after leaving Roe. “Because she died when your father died,” I answered. “I felt like it was already too late.”
Roe wiped her tears on her arm. “She was alive, Hunter. People change all the time. Even you. Just because we change for the worse, doesn’t mean we don’t deserve to live.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell Roe that it wasn’t just change that afflicted her mother. She’d become a shell. There was nothing left to save. “You’re right.”
I played over her words in my mind.
It’s easier to blame you. It’s easier to blame you.
I’d take the blame if it prevented Roe from becoming the shell her mother was.
ROE
Yellow Dress.
I forget how to breathe.
The fabric so tight it feels like hands plastered to my body.
You say it’s supposed to feel that way.
Our love is stitched together with your rules.
Yellow Dress.
Just above my polished knees.
No concrete scrapes or scars from the playground.
I’m a pretty, porcelain doll for you to dress up.
Your lies are tied together by the crisp apron around your waist.
Yellow Dress.
Bury me in soft silk.
Fabric the color of sunshine.
Mourning feels like cotton ruffles and chapped smiles.
My life is held together by the ribbon in my hair.
The next morning, we woke up and awkwardly untangled our limbs. It both disgusted and comforted me to know that I slept in Hunter’s arms. Things had changed so quickly. One moment I was willing to cross the country for him, now I craved distance. And yet, he comforted me last night. I wasn’t sure what to think of the way he held me and stroked my back with his steady hands. At the time, I just needed someone to hold me together, but in the light of day and in the cramped cab of his truck, I was thinking about every moment.
There was this little voice in the back of my mind, a dirty, nasty voice that I hated. She wanted to celebrate. She wanted to feel triumphant. She was whispering, He saved you, Roe. There’s no more secrets to keep you apart now.
How on earth could I find something positive in such a disastrous revelation? And why did I seek his comfort again?
The truth was like ripping open my grief once more. I felt like the little girl that had to bury her mother alone, once more. I could almost taste the birthday cake on my tongue. I’d moved past my trauma, but it still stuck with me. Waiting. Watching. Anxiously prepared for the right moment to strike me with despair.
We were back on the road long before the sun had risen. The truck had a full tank of gas, and we had a couple day’s drive ahead of us. I spent most of the time breathing in the rosewood scent that saturated his seats. We kept moving and moving, time a slow passing of excruciating worry. It gave me a lot of time to think. About everything. I hated it.
We had a lot of ground to cover, both literally and metaphorically. I still didn’t understand why we were driving and not flying, but I trusted Hunter’s expertise. He was the skilled assassin, after all, I thought bitterly. I didn’t really have a choice but to go with him. He was the only person that could get Mack back. He was also the only person with enough information to find him. I was a strong, independent woman, but I knew my limits. I needed Hunter Hammond.
During the long yet empty hours of driving, I let my mind wander and work up scenarios. The pavement stretched endlessly before us, but I was completely consumed and trapped in my thoughts of Mack. Was he still alive? Would I lose yet another person I loved? I felt so incredibly helpless but at the same time hopeful. Even though Hunter’s involvement in my mother’s death brought out a deep conflict within my soul, I held onto the hope that he would help save the man that raised me.
“Have you heard anything from Gavriel?” I asked while massaging my thighs. I was sore from my workout last night. Sitting in the car had made my bones grow stiff. I wanted to rest my feet on the dash, but Hunter gave me a murderous glare every time I inched my legs up to prop them against the console.
“Nope,” Hunter replied. “And I won’t hear from him until the job is done, either. I’ve gone ghost.”
Gone ghost? What did that even mean?
It was then that I realized I’d never really had the opportunity to talk to Hunter about his work for the Bullets. He was gone before I had time to comprehend it all. Maybe part of the allure was his mystery. I think I was subconsciously transfixed by his life because it felt like a giant puzzle I needed to figure out. His job was like the last little corner piece to the bigger picture. If I could understand his role as an assassin, there would be nothing left to make sense of. There would be nothing left to hold on to.<
br />
“What does going ghost mean?”
Hunter passed an eighteen-wheeler before answering me. I listened to the angry groan of his truck as he accelerated. “It’s what I do when my target is very public. High-profile kills require a certain amount of sensitivity. No traffic cams. No airports. Basically, anything where my presence can be detected is off-limits. Gavriel won’t call me because he doesn’t want it on record that we spoke. On the off chance I’m caught, he needs plausible deniability. And I need to be able to hide my tracks. You notice I’m picky about where we stop?”
He made sure to stop at tiny mom-and-pop gas stations, and even last night’s motel seemed to be family-owned. Every time we got out of the truck, he scanned the building, as if looking for cameras. “So what? Are you going to slip in, kill him, then slip out?”
Hunter flashed me a smile, probably the first one he’d given me since I arrived in Joshua Tree. “That’s an extreme oversimplification of what I do, but it’s probably better you don’t know the details.”
I bounced my leg as he continued to drive. Tall trees that cast shadows over the road passed by in a blur of brown and green. “Why does Gavriel want Mayor Bloomington dead?” I asked.
“You should probably forget that name if you know what’s good for you. And I don’t know,” Hunter replied easily. “Unless the reasons affect my ability to do my job, I typically don’t ask.”
That answer shocked me. How could Hunter so flippantly murder someone without knowing the reason why? “You don’t know?” I asked incredulously.
“Nope. I’m not the judge or jury, Pretty Debt. I’m just the executioner.”
His smooth voice rolled over that familiar nickname effortlessly, making my chest constrict with a familiar pain. I ignored the way I wanted to hear it again. “That sounds like a cop-out. Shouldn’t you want to know why you’re killing these people?”
Hunter glanced at me for a brief moment before returning his gaze to the road. “People think the man that pulls the trigger is solely responsible. I guess you could say it helps me sleep at night to know that Gavriel Moretti is the one that calls the shots. It helps to know that I’m just an employee doing my job. He’s the one with the vendettas and blackmail and goals.”
“So you don’t think you’re responsible for any of their deaths?” I asked. I wanted to understand Hunter’s thought process, because I thought it would help me connect the dots to our own relationship and what he had done. But it just felt so robotic.
“Maybe I’m fucked in the head,” Hunter said. “I could blame it on my childhood, could blame it on Gavriel, or I could even blame it on my lack of empathy. I just do a job. A job I wanted to quit until you came back.” I refused to feel guilty for my part in this, but shame still slapped me in the face. “I don’t care about the people at the end of my gun. There’s only one person I care about in this world, and that’s you. And there’s only one kill I regret, and that’s your mother.”
My traitorous heart panged at that statement. I didn’t want to be the pathetic girl that gave in to pretty words despite his unforgivable actions. But there was power in the purpose and motivations of a man.
“What about Mack?” I asked. We were driving across the country to save him—or to fulfill Gavriel’s job, whichever way you looked at it—but he had to care about Mack at least a little.
“Don’t you see?” Hunter asked. Though we were both staring out the windshield, it felt like I was locked in a tension-filled staring contest with him, just waiting for the words that would follow. “I care about Mack, obviously. But I’m driving across the country and risking my life because he’s important to you. I would have done the same for Nicole, but something told me Gavriel was bluffing.”
Those words left a bitter taste in my life. His answer should have flattered me, but it didn’t. “I guess that’s just hard to believe. You’ve spent so long convincing me that you hated me, that any sort of compassion or care feels inauthentic.”
Hunter immediately crossed three lanes of traffic to pull off the highway. I screeched in confusion as an old Honda honked its horn at us and zoomed past. Hunter put his truck in park, then turned to face me. “Listen,” he said. I kept my gaze fixed on the window. His hand reached over to grab my chin, jerking my attention to him.
“I’m listening,” I gritted.
“I spent a ridiculous amount of time being cruel to you. I twisted your mind. I convinced you that you meant nothing to me, because I was terrified by the idea of obsessing over you. I had a lot of guilt over the death of your mother, a feeling I wasn’t used to. You make me...empathetic. You make me care. I know that this thing is over. I can feel it. There used to be this strong tether between us, and yesterday it snapped.”
I could feel it too. Things did feel over between us. And even worse, I was saddened by it.
“But when you leave here to live the rest of your life, free of me, I want you to at least know that you’re the only person I’ve ever truly felt something for.”
I was? Having the validation of hearing what I meant to Hunter felt freeing. I’d been wanting those words for so fucking long. “I just wish you would have been honest with me in the beginning.”
“I don’t regret it,” Hunter replied honestly, his thumb now stroking my cheek. I reveled in the warmth of his hand. “If you had known, you would have never let me kiss you. Touch you. L-love you. It might have been a lie, but I’m thankful for it.”
Love me.
Me too, I thought. It felt sick, and dirty, and wrong. I hated how easily I melted at his kindness. It gave me such whiplash. Not enough time had passed for my damage to air out. And yet I was thankful for the lessons Hunter had taught me. I was thankful for the journey. And most of all, I was thankful for the truth in the end. This moment felt a lot like closure, so why did it hurt so fucking much?
“Thank you for being honest with me, Hunter. I wouldn’t have changed it either.” I wasn’t planning on admitting the last part of that, but I did it anyway. He was right. I never would have fallen for him had I known. But now the lines were blurred. The loyalties were skewed. Would I align myself with the ghost of my mother?
Or would I forgive the living, breathing man that saved me?
Hunter was right. Mom died long before she took her last breath. I just felt like I was supposed to feel a sense of loyalty to her. I was supposed to be outraged.
But I wasn’t.
I was just sad. So, so sad. Sad for the woman that died before she could heal, and sad for the relationship lost before it could start.
He leaned forward, staring at my lips for a lingering moment as more cars passed on the highway. His truck shook from the force of another passing eighteen-wheeler, and I pressed closer. “You’re welcome, Pretty Debt,” he whispered.
HUNTER
Gracie Mansion mocked me. The yellow wooden house on the Upper East Side of Manhattan was surrounded by shrubs and thick trees that seemed immune to the incoming fall weather. Hardly any leaves had fallen, and the branches were covered in foliage. Mayor Bloomington’s home looked over the East River, but the open water had no covering, so a boat was too obvious for long-term watching. I ended up finding a vacant Airbnb close by. It didn’t have ideal views, but at least I could settle for a bit and observe the perimeter. When dealing with a high-profile kill, you had to be willing to get creative.
Guards walked the front lawn with guns holstered to their waist. They looked like the men Gavriel employed and nothing like the clean-cut suits a proper mayor would hire. Tats covered their tanned arms, and I caught a few of them smoking joints along the side of the house. They looked dangerous, but they were relaxed. This could play in my favor. But what they lacked in organization and clout, they made up for in numbers. Twenty men were stationed on the lawn, and there was no telling how many were kept inside. Was Bloomington always this heavily guarded? Or was he anticipating retaliation from Gavriel? Something told me the answer was a little bit of both.
I
couldn’t get close enough to do a proper stakeout, and my eyes were blurred from the exhaustion and staring into my binoculars for the last two hours. I watched for patterns. When shift change was. Who was coming and going. If there were any known criminals sneaking in through the back door.
It was like a miniature White House, hidden away from the center of the city, with enough security to protect the President. As a man familiar with death, I knew that this ancient home reeked of it. I read once that Alexander Hamilton was brought here to die after a duel. My exhaustion imagined ghosts fluttering across the lawn.
I struggled to keep awake. My mind was muddled with thoughts of Roe and stretched thin by our drive here. We made it in three days, switching off every six hours for the last day and a half so we could get here faster. I was thankful we could divide the ride. I wasn’t sure how many more secluded nights in small motel rooms I could handle. It had been a long while since I had to go ghost, and I’d almost forgotten how exhausting it was. Adding Roe to the mix just made me confused, depressed, and sexually frustrated. I needed a good shower and a hot fuck. Not necessarily in that order. And then I needed to hold her. I needed to pulse forgiveness through her veins.
After rubbing my eyes, I continued to watch from my perch. Mayor Bloomington ran a tight ship, but with a little patience, I caught some important details. I saw Lorelei Brand, his rumored mistress, seamlessly stroll through the front door without care. She wore an easily detectable, bright red dress with her tits practically hanging out. No paparazzi sitting by the lawn dared take a picture, though their relationship was a well-known scandal in the city. My guess was, everyone feared the bastard and didn’t want to put gossip about his sex life on a headline, because he had a habit of making people disappear.
So did I.
Seeing Lorelei made me realize that Bloomington was bold as hell. My preliminary research on the car ride here told me that during the election season, he sold himself as a bona fide family man. His wife and teenage twin daughters followed him on the campaign trail, boasting of ethics and values important for the city. His wife was a pretty woman. He had to either be pussy-whipped or egotistical to think the city wouldn’t care about who he sneaks into his bedroom which was funded by taxpayers. Either he was good at controlling the narrative surrounding him or he was lucky to have enough influence and power to not care. Either way, it wasn’t good for me.
