A Vault of Sins (3 page)

Our lawyers don’t want Casey, Valerie, and me seen together in public, especially with the inevitable outcome of the trial. We need to be viewed as starting over—resetting ourselves and breaking ties with the dark aspects of our former lives. Publicly bonding with other Compass Room survivors isn’t severance, it’s flirting with the deviance we’re trying to bury, especially since the world thinks we made up lies about what happened in the Compass Room.

Liz is adamant about every trail, anything that could be tapped or hacked or intercepted. Because of this, there has hardly been any hashing out between me and Casey about
us
.

The idea of
us
is emotionally masochistic, a fantasy fed on the idea that one day we could cultivate a functioning, normal-person relationship. We’re murderers and supposed liars, hardly able to exist and thrive on our own let alone
be
with someone else. And that’s not even considering falling in love—honey-sweet, pitter-patter
loooovvee
—after sixteen days of a wilderness torture chamber.
Yeah, okay.

Yet it’s not my own well-being at the end of this trial that I’m obsessing over night after night or
my
miserable future. It’s his. So since I can’t speak to him, I learn everything I can about Casey Hargrove from the news archives on the Internet.

His father owned a mechanic shop, his mother a waitress until Casey’s birth, when she decided to stay home. She had two miscarriages before him. How the media knows about Stefanie’s unborn daughters is a mystery, although I’m sure they dug into his past thoroughly. We CR deviants are scandalous entertainment, after all.

The miscarriages allude to Stefanie being either stressed or beaten consistently by her husband for their entire marriage. None of the articles use this knowledge as an excuse for Casey’s crime, but to simply enlighten readers further as to how fucked up his family life really was.

My head fills with hundreds of vicious voices wanting to dissect Casey—his manner, his temper, his hate—and he becomes a character in my mind. I find myself questioning whether or not the Casey I know is built upon faux memories that bandage my brain from every screwed-up thing that happened in the Compass Room. Everyone thinks I’m lying—maybe I
am
making stuff up.

The thought fills me with cold dread, and for a week, I wonder if I’m going insane. Finally, one afternoon, as I’m sitting on my khaki-colored bedspread with my tablet in my hands, tabs of Casey news articles scattered across the screen, he calls me.

“Incoming call from Casey Hargrove. Accept or decline?” the mechanical voice chimes.

I stare at the screen of my phone, the text of his name illuminated. I’m not hearing things.

Fuck caution.

“Accept.”

Our lines connect, and I wait to speak, listening to his slow breathing over the speaker.

“Evalyn?”

“Yeah,” I stammer. “Yeah, I’m here.”

“I need to see you.” When I don’t respond right away, he continues. “I know I’m compromising—”

I cut him off. “Where?”

***

A new high-speed train line was built three years ago, connecting San Antonio to the Chicago track. It’d only take me a few hours to get to him, but he won’t let me. After useless arguing, we decide on the flat middle of the country, halfway between him and me. Missouri, Middle-of-Fucking-Nowhere, population 298.

The shitty hotel has a cash-up-front option. I didn’t even know places like this still existed. Everyone wants to know your information, or at least who you are and where they can charge damages if you destroy a room. Here, the paint peels off the walls and the carpet smells like cigarettes. Half the letters in the cheap florescent vacancy sign have died, and I’m sure the strung-out guy at the front desk wouldn’t care if we burned the whole place to the ground. He gives me the grimy metal key and I text Casey the room number. Then I sit on an itchy, stained comforter underneath a dim, bare bulb and wait.

Half an hour later, he knocks. I swing the door open and Casey greets me with a wince, leaning against the frame.

He’s getting worse, but even pained and out-of-breath, all I see is perfection.

“I should have come to you.” I pull him inside by the front of his shirt and shut the door.

“We should work equally as hard to see each other,” he argues.

“Chicago would have been easy to—”

“Fuck Chicago.”

I push him down onto the bed and slide onto his lap. His hands find my neck, but before he can kiss me, I place a finger against his lips. “Wait.” I exhale, my nose brushing his. I need to savor this, the moment of waiting we never have. We were too busy sneaking kisses in the seconds we have alone. Time is a luxury I didn’t acknowledge until recently.

“Wait,” I repeat.

His eyelashes flutter against me as he blinks. I count, forcing myself to wait a full minute before our lips meet. His tongue coaxes me open, hands fisting the back of my shirt.

I unwrap him, fingers fumbling on every button of his coat. He shrugs it off, and my hands roam from his collar to his belt, sliding beneath his shirt to risen scars. Familiar territory.

“Fuck the media. Fuck everyone. I can’t live like this.” He flips me onto my back and slides on top of me, even though I know he’s hurting. “I can’t keep ignoring you. I can’t keep pretending I don’t give a shit about your life when half the country would kill you if they had the chance.”

“It’s too dangerous.” The second the sentence leaves my mouth, I know it will never persuade him. Hand cupping the back of my neck, he says, “I’d take a bullet for you.”

“Don’t you ever say that again,” I threaten.

He rolls his eyes. “Regardless, we’re fucked anyway, Ev.”

No,
I want to say.
I’m fucked
. And it’s the truth. Before we entered the Compass Room, we signed a contract that said we could be retried for our original crimes. Casey’s lawyer is fantastic. His sentence will be minimal.

Me on the other hand—no further evidence has been found unearthing what really happened the day of the shooting; it’s a closed case. If I’m lucky, I’ll be sentenced to life in prison.

I don’t remind Casey of this. It isn’t just his hip that pains and slows him. I see the shape of his soul in his eyes and the lines of his face. And I want him, as selfish as that is. While I deserve all of this self-loathing, being with Casey reminds me that I’m capable of other emotions too.

I nod. “Then we’ll make something work.”

His smile reaches his eyes, skin crinkling around his lashes. He leans in, and our kiss is slow. His sweeping tongue savors me, and the feeling borders between euphoria and pure torture.

My fingers fumble with his belt buckle until he stops me.

“Not tonight.”

I gape at him, but before I can argue, he cuts me off. “Evalyn, I have three more hours before the sun comes up and all I want to do is stare at you. Let me.”

I relax in defeat and touch my forehead to his. His eyes search mine and I want to ask what he’s looking for, but the question would be too much of an interruption.

So for three hours, we say nothing. His fingers comb through my hair as I think of our confessions of love in the Compass Room, wondering if they were contrived by circumstance—by desperation. Maybe they were and maybe I don’t care. Casey makes me feel human. It’s different with Mom, and even with Liam in the brief moments I’ve seen him since I escaped. In the same breath they say they believe me, they also want to forget, hoping I’ll reboot and begin again.

Casey knows better. He knows it’s more complicated than starting over.

At five in the morning, we call our cars and leave our shitty Missouri hotel. I shut the door behind me, and beneath the eaves, he leans in and kisses me on the cheek.

As he limps toward his car, I realize we haven’t exchanged a word in three hours. And those three hours were exactly how they should have been.

***

The story is published before I arrive home.

Secret Love Affair Between Criminals? Evalyn Ibarra and Casey Hargrove Seen Together at Missouri Hotel

“This?” My mother cries as she pushes her tablet displaying the story (with incriminating photos) in front of my face. “How could you be so careless?”

I watch as Todd finger paints on the dining room table, completely oblivious to what’s going on around him. My refusal to make eye contact with her is the nail in my guilty coffin.

“You didn’t even take a guard with you!”

“It’s not what you think,” I lie.

“
Please
, enlighten me.”

I glare up at her. Why does she need to be enlightened? I’m old enough to make my own decisions, and my own mistakes.

My phone starts to ring. I pull it out of my pocket, praising my good fortune, until I realize that it’s Liz.

When I’m in my room, I pick up. “Hello?”

I can tell she’s furious and trying to hold it together. I listen mutely, sitting on my bed as she scolds me.

“Here’s the thing, Evalyn. You already have it in your head that you’d rather sacrifice yourself than see Casey or Valerie go down. I’m not going to let you do that because I’m your lawyer, but this . . .” She sighs. “Casey has a real fighting chance. His original crime already had sympathizers. If you care at all about the outcome of his trial, you need to stay away from him. I
mean
it, Evalyn. I believe your story. I always have. And I’ll do my damnedest to prove it to the rest of the world if we’re taken back to court for the shooting. But until that happens, people will still think that you are a conniving manipulator, and for your sake and his sake, Casey Hargrove cannot be seen as your pawn.”

I blink to hold back the burning tears, and choke out, “Did you tell him this?”

“Yes, actually. And what I’m about to say is going to be hard to hear.”

I can imagine that conversation perfectly, Casey fuming, his voice shaking as he hisses through gritted teeth his response to Liz’s proposal. “He said that he won’t stop seeing me, didn’t he? He’d rather take the fall alongside of me than keep himself safe.”

“I’m sorry, Evalyn, I’m sorry this has to fall on your shoulders, but you must break his heart. For his safety and for yours.”

When she hangs up, I cradle my phone in my hands and curl up on my side. I let myself cry for the first time in a while.

Liz is right. Casey Hargrove can’t be in love with a psychopath. The world needs to see him without ties to his criminal past, cleansed and ready to live as a normal, functioning citizen. He has a fighting chance, and I can’t get in the way.

My whole body trembles, but I force myself to sit up. I think of the moment I found out that he had made it out of the Compass Room alive. I foolishly believed that because we were both breathing, he could be mine. I couldn’t have contrived a stupider thought. Our baggage can be spotted by orbiting satellites. We don’t deserve to move on side by side.

I should be happy. I should be happy that he might, for once, have a chance at a somewhat-normal life.

“Ev?”

I look up. The universe must be playing a cruel trick on me, because Liam’s standing in my bedroom doorway.

Uncomprehending, I watch him frown and scratch the back of his head. “I talked to your mom. She told me where you guys were living. Said you’d object to me visiting so I begged her not to tell you. I wanted it to be a surprise.”

I fumble, incapable of forming a coherent sentence in my stupor, and he continues rambling like he’s desperately trying to fill the awkward silence. “I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to see me.”

He looks like I just murdered his entire family. Somehow it’s still not clicking in my brain that he’s actually here—Liam Callaway, my boyfriend of five years—the one I never really broke up with. He looks tired—older. Behind those bright eyes, he’s afraid. Walking across the room, he sits on the bed next to me. Seconds pass.

“Say something.”

“This . . .” I inhale. “It’s just a really fucking bad time, Liam.”

“I needed to see you. To know how you are.” He rests a hand on my knee and squeezes. This used to be the resting place for his hand every time we sat next to each other, a move practiced over and over until it became subconscious. We clicked together like jigsaw pieces, his hand on my leg, my arm looped in his. If we were somewhere public, he’d lean into my neck and whisper as he spoke. Anything we shared was a secret.

It isn’t fair, what happened to us, that we were so happy. My sins were his suffering. To think that I hated him in prison after loving him for nearly a quarter of my life. I remember the shift in emotion—how fast it had happened. How broken I’d felt. Maybe I hadn’t given him the benefit of the doubt. My judgment of Liam had been clouded the moment I was dealt a really shitty hand. Anyone who couldn’t be right there with me had been against me.

I instead of linking my arm with his, I rest my hand on top of his slender fingers. “I miss you.”

There’s a beat of silence before I confirm my words again. “I do.” I squeeze his hand tight and let go. “But you can’t be here with me.”

“Ev, I’ve been following your trial. And I believe you—everything the three have you have been saying about what actually happened to you in there. I know you. I know you wouldn’t lie.” The tremble in his voice confirms that I have to focus on his hand. His face will shatter all the determination I have to speak the truth that Liam has earned.

“But you don’t know everything about me.”

For five years, I trusted him. I can do that again for the last time, can’t I? I owe him that.

Before he can argue with me, I tell Liam Callaway everything. I start with the shooting, about the relief I felt when I killed a man in cold blood, and how that moment was the first time I ever saw a glimpse of the monster inside of me.

But I don’t stop there. I tell him about the Compass Room. About Casey. About everything.

***

I’m on the couch nursing a beer when Mom sits down next to me.

“Is he coming back?”

I shake my head, and the disappointment on her face slices me deep.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I thought it’d be good for you to see him again, you know? But maybe I was wrong . . . maybe . . . you have feelings for that boy you were in prison with, don’t you?”