Darkest Before Dawn (16 page)

Maybe that girl is exactly what will put me in the grave. I would do anything to save her, to keep her, to take all the things I’ve done to her away. If I had to, I’d give my own fucking life and that is what makes me believe love is actually a real thing. When a selfish man become selfless—that is love. Pure and fucking simple.

And I just let it go.

M
y heart bangs
violently against my ribcage. So hard I’m certain it must be about to falter and stop for good.

I watch the red glow of the taillights as he pulls away, and before I even know what I am doing, I’m running after him, screaming for him to come back. My feet pound over the pavement with such force it shoots daggers up my shins.

Here I am, set free right in front of my parents’ house, but instead of running toward the safety of that house—all I want is the safety that I found in him. His taillights disappear and I’m left, out of breath, in the middle of this dark road. My lungs burn from the cold air I’m sucking back, my cheeks sting, and my heart is shattered. Crying, I turn and head toward the entrance of the driveway, and for a moment I think maybe I should just lie down on this road and let it all go. At this moment, death—the very thing I wanted to escape—well, to my broken heart and wounded spirit, death seems peaceful.

Headlights shine across the highway as a car turns out of my driveway. The bright lights cause me to squint. The brakes screech to a halt and the driver’s side door flies open, my mother clamoring out, her hand plastered to her mouth. She rounds the front of the car and stops, leaning over and bracing her hands on the hood while tears stream down her face.

“Ava…” she sobs. “Please, God. I’m not losing my mind.” Her eyes narrow and I take off in a sprint toward her, my legs weak with fear at what I’ve lost, at who I’ve now become. “Ava!” she screams, her cries echoing into the cold night.

Colliding with each other, we wrap our arms around one another. She grabs onto me, holding me so tight I can’t pull in a full breath. She kisses my forehead, my cheeks, thanking a God she doesn’t even believe in for bringing me home as she breaks down. I rest my head against her shoulder and stare into the headlights of the stopped car. I’ve been set free, but what good is freedom to a bird who has no wings?

M
y brother wanted me dead
.
I let that set in and sink deeper beneath the covers.

And instead of me being the one dead, it’s him. They waited until this morning to tell me, and had I not asked where he was, I don’t know how long they would have waited. He was murdered. He had enough drugs on him to be considered a dealer, so the investigation didn’t go too far. The police chalked it up to a bad deal. But I know better.

I know Max did it, and that proves to me he loved me. Brandon was going to kill them and take the insurance money. Max protected not only me, but my family—my father who killed his family—he saved even my father from death, and what more selfless act is there than protecting your enemy? I think maybe Max knew one day he would let me go and he didn’t want me to suffer the same loss he had.

That. Is. Love.

And it is gone, forever.

There’s a knock on my bedroom door before I hear the doorknob twist; the hinges creak.

“Ava, feetheart?” My father’s deep southern drawl sends a sense of comfort sweeping through me. He steps inside, a sympathetic smile on his rugged face. “You know I love you.”

“Of course.”

“But…”—scratching over his salt and pepper beard, he crosses the room and takes a seat on the edge of my bed—“I’m trying to be understanding, I am, but I need to know who this man was.”

“I don’t know who he was.”

And that’s not a lie. I don’t know who he was outside of that room. Daddy takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. I watch him swallow and exhale.

“Ava. You are doing no favors by not telling me. I will find him.”

I shake my head. “You can’t find a ghost, Daddy.”

His gaze narrows on me, deep wrinkles settling on his forehead. “I have little tolerance for this, Ava.”

“He didn’t hurt me. The men who did—he killed them. He saved me.” I feel my chest tighten, my throat constricting. “He saved me, Daddy.”

My father tosses his head back on a groan and stares at the ceiling for a moment.

“Daddy?” He drops his head and looks at me. “What matters more to you? Me or revenge?”

He grabs my foot and squeezes. “Always you. You and your mother are my world.”

“Then leave him alone. It’d break me to know you killed him. Please, Daddy.”

Closing his eyes, he releases a hard sigh before grabbing me and pulling me to his chest. “You’re asking an awful lot of me.”

“I know.”

He holds me for a few moments. I can hear his heart thumping angrily against his chest, because I have just asked a man who lives for blood and retribution to forgive—to let go. Without a word, he stands and makes his way toward the bedroom door.

“Only for you, Ava…” He opens the door, closing it quietly behind him and here I lie, alone with my thoughts. I try to daydream, I try to read, I try to do anything but think about Max, and I fail miserably. Finally, I decide to take a bath and I stumble into the bathroom, turning the taps and watching the water pour from the faucet.

I sit on the steps of the marble tub. Sweeping my hand through the warm water, I listen to the echo of the deep basin filling. This bathroom is bigger than most people’s living rooms. It’s open and luxurious—something I once took for granted. Music plays over the speakers in the ceiling. I stare at my reflection in the mirrors surrounding the bath. My gaze drifts up to the crystal chandelier centered above the massive soaking tub, and I laugh. Such extravagant things, such
unnecessary
things. And all bought with blood money.

One hundred and sixty-eight hours. Seven days. That’s how long I have been home. How long I’ve been “safe.”

I turn the taps and slip my robe off before stepping into the scalding water. Hissing at the slow burn, I lower myself beneath the water. It feels good to hurt because I’ve grown so numb without him. I lean back against the slope of the tub and stare ahead of me at the reflection in the ceiling to floor mirror. I should know that girl right there, but I don’t, and the truth is, I never have. Just like everyone else in this family, I’ve spent my life as a chameleon.

Anyone who has looked at me must have thought I was happy; how could they not have? I was a cheerleader. Popular. Pretty. I smiled, but I did those things—I was
that
person because it was who I was expected to be, and when you are a mess on the inside, you just want to look put together on the outside. You smile and no one asks you what’s wrong, but when you cry—oh, when you cry people won’t leave you alone.

That girl staring back at me right now, she’s not smiling because she can’t. She’s tired. She is destroyed on the inside.
That
girl, that is who I have been all along and it hurts to finally see her. It makes me feel ashamed and stupid and lost. What was so wrong with me? Why, out of all the people in this world, did those things happen to me—no, it doesn’t matter that they happened to me, why do those things happen to any-fucking-body? And why, fucking why do we let those things destroy us? Why do we hide our scars? I’ll tell you why: because scars are ugly, that’s what we are taught. Oh, pretend to be happy, pretend to be perfect, because no one wants a mess. But scars are the story of our lives. The good, the bad—that is what shapes us, for better or worse and the thing Max taught me is that if we were only more open, we would find those people who truly love us and we wouldn’t be so bothered by the ones who can’t understand that true beauty is found within the imperfections. For if we were all perfect, there would be no beauty at all.

I sink lower beneath the water until the surface is teasing the bottom of my nose. When I close my eyes, I see him. His smile. Those intensely dark eyes that knew me before I even knew myself. My chest tightens and that darkness closes in on me. It weaves its way through my mind like a spider, tangling my senses within silken threads of grief. And I cry. I sob. My heart breaks over and over because he left me. He saved me only to kill me by abandoning me. He made himself a ghost, and being in love with a ghost is a pitiful place to find your heart.

And some things, well, now I do believe that some things are worse than death.

The water ripples, the light from the chandelier reflects off the surface, tempting me.
What would it do to mother if she found me drowned in this tub?
I shake that thought from my mind and force myself up in the tub because I don’t trust myself. But moments later, I find myself sinking lower and lower, closer and closer to the water. I want this. I
long
for this because loving him is a prison, and I believe my freedom shall only be found within the cold grips of death.

I let my body slip below the water and I lie at the bottom of the tub, eyes open, peering up at the distorted view of the surface. I
am
in control of this. I
can
control my life after all, and in that, I find peace. All I have to do is pull in a breath.

One. Deep. Breath.

I wonder what it will feel like…and then, I just let go. My hands grab onto the slick edge of the tub, because my mind wants me to fight, to survive. But the heart is a much stronger beast and I use those hands to hold myself under.

I wonder if there is a heaven or a hell and I think about whether I’ll go to hell, fearing I’ve already been there. I suck in another mouthful of water. It burns and stings. My chest feels like it is on fire, my heart quivering with each fast beat. My vision wavers. Weakness envelops me, and the next thing I know…I’m falling into the darkness that has been calling me all along.

And within that darkness there will be peace. Peace and nothingness and…

T
he tape sticks
to the rubber gloves and I fight to pull it free. I’m sealing the envelope with the tape because like hell am I leaving any fucking DNA. I printed off the letter inside from a Kinko’s on the outskirts of Lafayette. I outlined everything, telling them what the sheets of papers crammed inside mean. Letting them know all those girls were taken and sold, that all the men who have them are criminals for buying another human being. I paid some kid outside of the bus station fifty bucks to handwrite the address to the police department on the envelope. My pulse races as I roll the window to the truck down. I pull into the New Orleans post office parking lot, stopping beside the mailbox—gloves still on—and I slip the envelope into the mailbox then drive off.

I travel for a few hours with no direction, finally stopping at some small café in Biloxi.

“More coffee, sir?”

I glance up from the empty cup at the young waitress. Her dark hair is pulled back in a ponytail, her eyes made up with too much eyeshadow. She smiles as she holds the steaming pot of coffee up. I slide the mug across the table and nod.

She doesn’t leave once she’s filled it so I glance up at her again.

“Like your tattoos. They’re hot.” She flips the end of her ponytail flirtatiously to the side and smiles.

“Thanks.” My attention shifts back to the mug, and she finally walks away.

What the fuck am I going to do with my life now? I have no one. I may have covered my

tracks, but still, I am paranoid. All of those women know what I look like, but part of me believes they still love me, still feel some deep sense of loyalty and will protect me. But really, what does it matter?

I close my eyes and all I can see is Ava. This is fucking grief and I don’t understand it. Two months with her—that’s it, and she has bled into my being like a terminal illness. The sounds around me all fade together: the rattling of dishes being cleared from tables, the dull conversation, the crying baby.
There’s a darkness inside of me…
I can hear her saying that. Literally,
hear
her saying those words as though I’m listening to a record of it. The mind is a mysterious and fucked-up creature. And I wonder how you are to ever let go of things when they can occupy your mind without you wanting them to. Her face, her scent, the feel of her skin beneath my palms—I want those memories to go the fuck away before they drive me insane.

The waitress stops by again to check on me, and I find myself staring at her, thinking her hair is the same color as Ava’s and wondering how easily she would break, contemplating how hard it would be to strip her bare. And I realize how fucked up I really am.

“
S
tockholm Syndrome
,” Dr. Barnes says. “Have you read that book I gave you regarding it yet?”

“I read the first chapter, and it’s not the same.”

She sighs and shakes her head. “Those feelings, I won’t say you didn’t have feelings, but they were distorted. It was a way for your mind to deal with the trauma of being a captive. It was all manipulation on his part.” She leans across her mahogany desk, locking her eyes with mine. “Manipulation.”

I avert my gaze from hers. I hate that word. Max told me that’s what it was, and never have words sliced so close to the bone. Stockholm Syndrome—I guess that is easier for anyone else to believe, because then there’s a reason that something so depraved seemed so right.

“That’s not what it was,” I whisper.

“Okay, read the book, please. I understand this is difficult for you, Ava, really I do, but you have to learn to move past this. I think if you would let the authorities do their job, maybe then you would see him for what he is.” She pauses, waiting for me to respond, but I have nothing to say to her. I just watch the secondhand on the clock tick by, waiting for this hour of bullshit to end.

“Ava…” I glance up at her. She looks empathetically at me, and it makes me hate her. It shouldn’t, but it does.

She can’t have empathy for me, sympathy maybe, but
not
fucking empathy.

“Honey,” she says. “You do realize you aren’t helping matters by not giving the police any information, right?”

I glare at her. I hope she can feel the abhorrence radiating from my gaze. “I don’t have anything to tell them. I only know his first name. I know nothing else.”

“But you won’t even tell them his first name.”

“And I’m not telling
you
either, so give up already, would you?” I push out of the chair and pace in front of the window, stopping to pick a few of the brown leaves from the wilting plant on the windowsill.

“Ava?”

I continue pruning the plant.

“Ava?”

“What?” I groan with frustration.

“I know you think you are protecting him, but he is a criminal, he held you in that room, he
made
you think you loved him—”

“He didn’t
make
me love him. You wouldn’t understand.”

She sighs. My back is still to her, and I hear her tapping that damn pen of hers over the desk. That’s how I know she’s getting agitated. “I’ve listened to you twice a week for eight weeks. Sixteen sessions, and we are no closer to resolving this than on day one.”

“There is no resolving this.”

“There is, but you have to be willing to try.”

I spin around, my nostrils flaring. I’m angry. My blood is pulsing through my jugular and all I can think about is grabbing her pencil holder and hurling it across the room. And I know it’s not rational—because, suddenly, I feel tears build in my eyes. Just like someone has flipped a switch, I’m coming apart. “I have tried. I have, but you won’t listen to what I’m saying.”

“I do listen—”

“Stop listening with your degree and listen with your heart. I. Loved. Him. I felt it and there is nothing I can do to prove that it exists to you. No matter how wrong you and every-fucking-body else thinks it is, or how crazy I must be to think it, it is true.” I walk across the room toward the door.

“Ava…come back to reality for me.”

“Reality?” I scoff. “Dr. Barnes, reality encompasses everything which exists, even if those things are not comprehensible. And
this
feeling exists.” I open the door, slamming it closed behind me as I leave her office.

When I get home, mother is sitting at the dining room table, reading glasses on and sifting through mail.

She smiles as I pass through the foyer. “Oh, someone called for you about—” she says.

“Let me guess.” I stop at the end of the table. “A book deal, a lifetime movie deal, and they want three interviews.” Everyone wants to know this story, and I don’t want to tell a damn one of them.

She grimaces. “You only do it if you want to, honey.”

“Well, I don’t want to.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t blame you. Living through that hell once was enough for us all. How did therapy go?”

“Like shit.”

Mother sighs and pulls her reading glasses down the bridge of her nose. “I don’t know what to do to help you. I’m at a loss here, Ava. Tell me what to do.”

“Nothing.” I skirt around the end of the table.

“Honey…”

“I just want to go to sleep, Mom. I’m just tired. I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to sleep.”

“Ava, you tried to
kill
yourself. I lost your brother, I can’t bear losing you again, too.”

And there it is, the things she throws in my face any time she can’t understand this.

“Shit happens,” I mumble.

“Ava!”

“I don’t know what you want. I’m trying. I am—”

“I want my little girl back.” She pushes up from the table and I head to the foyer. I don’t want to have this discussion right now. “Ava!”

“That’s the problem, I’m not a little girl. You can’t fix this with a fucking Band-Aid, Mother.”

“Watch your mouth, young lady.”

Never have I uttered a cross word to her. I bite down on my lip, guilt racking my body. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—I…I just… I just need to be alone.”

I run up the stairs, my footsteps echoing into the tall ceiling. She’s still standing at the foot of the stairwell, looking up at me when I disappear into my bedroom and shut the door. I take my phone out of my jean pocket, lie down on the bed, and skim through Facebook, reading over everyone’s mundane posts. And then my phone dings with an email. The heading reads: I believe you love him.

I quickly open it, reading over the message:

I believe you love him.

D
ear Ava
,

I know you must have a thousand offers, and maybe you just aren’t ready to tell your story, but I can promise you, the story I want to tell is actually
yours
. I want the brutal and raw truth. I want to know why you love him, because call me a romanticist, but I do believe love is sometimes found in the most peculiar of places. I’m attaching links to other true-crime stories I’ve retold, an, as I believe you will see, I’m not into portraying the conventional side of things. If you are interested in discussing, I would be more than thrilled to speak with you.

Best,

Tabitha Strong

NYT Bestselling True Crime Author

Paddington Press

I
close the email
, uncertain of whether I’ll actually contact her or not, and I drift off to sleep in the middle of the day, praying to dream I’m back in that room waiting on him.