Blood on the Bayou (13 page)

What he’d done wasn’t about love or lust or hating women or hating me. It wasn’t about me at all. It was about proving that he could have what his smarter,
better-looking, more successful, mommy-loved-him-best brother could have.

And that only made it worse, made it impossible to look into Hitch’s accusing eyes and defend myself. Because I shouldn’t have had to. Because Hitch should have known what a waste Anton was and given me the benefit of the doubt. At least. At the very, very least.

“I remember it sometimes,” I find myself saying, words spewing without permission. I think about slapping my hands over my mouth, biting my tongue until it bleeds—whatever it takes to stop what’s coming—but I can’t. Not anymore. I just
can’t
. “I remembered it a second ago. What his face looked like . . . during. So angry. Why would I remember that, if it wasn’t true?”

“What are you talking about, baby?” He puts a gentle hand on my back.

Baby
. He hasn’t called me baby in forever. Not since the night he found out that I slept with his brother while he was pulling an all-nighter at the hospital. His brother. His fucking brother.

“Anton.” I spit out the name, hating the way it feels in my mouth.

Hitch’s hand turns to stone. I can feel how much he wants to pull away. I save him the trouble and scoot on my ass through the dirt. His fingers slide down my spine and contact is severed.

It feels better. And worse.

I grit my teeth and hunch around my legs, digging my chin into the top of my knees. “I remember being
scared and trying to scream for help,” I continue, voice wavering up and down as I try to get a grip. I’ve never said any of this out loud. Not even to the therapist I talk to once a year during my FCC annual training, not even to myself. “But I couldn’t. I couldn’t move and I was already fading out again.”

I sniff and my entire body shudders in response. My arms are shaking and my heart is racing and it’s getting harder and harder to speak, but I’m not done yet. I’m going to finish this, get it all out to the only person who ever cared and maybe then it will be done. Maybe then Anton’s face will fade from even my buried memories.

As long as I don’t look at Hitch, as long as I keep my eyes on the slow seep of blood from Gerald’s head, I can do this. “But for a few minutes, I was there. And I know I didn’t want to be. I
know
it. No matter what Anton said. I didn’t want it. I didn’t want
him
.” Deep breath, hold it tight for a second, will down the pressure rising in my guts. “And when I woke up the next day, I was bleeding.”

There. It’s done. My next breath comes easier.

But I still can’t look at Hitch. I can’t. Not now. Maybe not ever. Maybe I’ll never look at anyone ever again. Maybe I’ll sit on the ground in the junkyard forever, staring at the second man who tried to rape me. At the moment, it sounds like an okay idea. I can sit here, curled up and hugged tight, the danger behind me, refusing to stand up and walk back to my house or go on with my life or admit the possibility of living through any more of this same damned shit.

Shit.

My life.

There are moments when it’s good, but there are so many more when it’s bad. And maybe that’s my fault, too. I don’t know. All I know is that I wish I were like Tucker and could go invisible at will. I don’t want to be seen anymore. I don’t want to meet Hitch’s eyes and know what he sees when he looks at me.

He doesn’t say a word for a long time. A really long time. But I know he understood me. He sits so still. Frozen. As if he, too, has decided that stopping time right here, right now, is for the best.

He’s probably right. Where do we even go from here? What was the point in telling the truth?

“Because it’s the truth,” I whisper, shocked to find I believe it. I used to think the truth only mattered if it made a difference, but maybe the truth matters simply because it
is
the truth. People perceive things differently, politics and opinions come into play, there are shades of gray and alternate points of view, but sometimes, a thing is just
true
.

Marcy didn’t deserve a father who terrorized her. True.

Grace Beauchamp and Deedee’s mom didn’t deserve to be killed. True.

Fernando didn’t deserve to take the rap for a murder he didn’t commit. True.

I didn’t deserve what Gerald tried to do. I didn’t deserve what Anton did all those years ago. I didn’t deserve a boyfriend who thought so little of me that he didn’t stop to consider I might be innocent.

True. True. And true.

“I don’t know what to say.” Hitch sounds empty, hollow. I can’t tell if he’s angry or sad or feels anything at all.

“You don’t have to say anything,” I say, realizing that’s the truth, too. “I just couldn’t lie about it anymore.”

“Why?” Hitch’s voice cracks. I risk a peek at him out of the corner of my eye and watch him . . . shatter. Lines that I’ve never seen before crease his face, like what I’ve said hit him so hard it made permanent slivers of brokenness across his skin. “Why didn’t you
tell
me?”

“You didn’t ask,” I say, angry for a split second.

And then he pulls in a breath and says, “You’re right,” and buries his face in his hands. And cries.

Hitch is crying. Not the angry tears he cried the night he screamed for me to get out of his house. Not the happy tears he cried the time we found a bunch of kids alive and safe in the back of an iron-plated eighteen-wheeler after Hurricane Katrina wrecked the gates around New Orleans.

Sad tears. Hopeless tears. Tears that come from deep inside where I can tell he feels as lost and wrecked and afraid as I do. A person can’t cry like that if they have real happiness, real hope. Despite the perfect education, the perfect job, the perfect fiancée, and the promise of a perfect family, Hitch isn’t happy. He’s not even okay.

I put a hand on his knee. A part of me shouts that it’s stupid for
me
to be comforting
him,
but the rest
of me knows feelings don’t play by the rules. Some things may be black and white, but emotions are always red. Messy, sloppy red that bleeds outside the lines and stains and stings and doesn’t care about labels like
accuser
and
accused
.

“I was waiting for it to happen,” he says, rubbing the back of his hand across his face. “Since we first went out.”

“Waiting for me to cheat on you?” Now I’m angry again. “Why? What did—”

“No. It wasn’t—” He makes a frustrated sound and his hands clench. “I don’t know. I guess I was . . . You were so beautiful. And smart. And you didn’t give a shit what anyone thought. You’d do crazy things. And you were never afraid. And I was . . .”

“So ugly and stupid.” I shake my head, floored by what I’m hearing, by the truth I see in his face. Cocky, ambitious, brilliant, sex-on-a-stick Hitch had doubts about whether he was good enough for me.
Me
. The fuck up Sweet Haven kid who only brushed her hair every other day, wore the same pair of jeans to class for a week, and lived on frozen fish sticks and beer. It’s . . . dumbfounding.

“And you loved me.” He catches me with those soft blue eyes I used to see every morning. It’s Hitch without barriers, all the sweet, wicked, messy, perfectness of him. “All of me. Even the parts I hated. It felt . . . too good.”

Too good. It’s crazy. Because I felt the same way. About
him
. And now . . . about Cane. He’s too good. At least for me. I really believe that, but maybe . . .

Maybe . . .

I thought I was afraid to commit to Cane because I was still carrying a torch for Hitch. But maybe I’m simply carrying the baggage I’ve always had, the same baggage that ruined my first relationship.
Helped
ruin it, anyway. It takes two to kill something like what Hitch and I had. If I were a normal person, I would blame him for thinking the worst of me and be done with it. If I stay true to my own destructive bullshit, I’ll blame myself and my innumerable flaws and keep loathing myself enough to make sure that a bottle continues to be the most significant attachment in my life.

But maybe there’s a third option, something between blame and responsibility. Maybe there really is such a thing as forgiving and forgetting. Or at least moving on.

“What happened with Anton . . . What I
thought
happened, was confirmation of what I was afraid of. I was too ready to believe and . . .” He swallows and his left eyelid does that twitchy thing it does when he’s really upset. “I would say I’m sorry, but that doesn’t come close to what I am.”

“Me, too.” I scoot closer. “I should have told you the truth.”

“I probably wouldn’t have listened. Not right then.”

“I still should have tried.” I lean my head on his shoulder. “We’re too much alike.”

“You think?” The familiarity in his voice twists things in my chest, makes me want to start crying all over again.

My arms find their way around his neck, threading
through that curly hair that was once one of the most familiar, comforting textures in my world. “I don’t want you to hate me anymore.”

“I never hated you,” he says, fingers digging into the small of my back. “Ever.”

“And I don’t want to hate you.” I force myself to look up into his eyes, to ignore how close we are and how badly a part of me wants to be closer. “But even more, I don’t . . .” I swallow, try to force my tongue to form the words. But it’s so hard to sit here and be defenseless in front of this person whose love and loss has defined nearly a decade of my life.

“What?” he whispers.

“I don’t want to love you anymore. I can’t. It hurts too much. But I don’t know how to stop.”

I expect him to pull away, for the sadness in his eyes to turn to pity as he tells me it will simply happen someday, the way it did when he fell in love with Stephanie. But neither of those things happens. Instead his arms tighten until I’m pressed against him and his mouth finds mine and we kiss like we kissed that night I saved him from the fairies.

No. Not like that.

That kiss was as full of pain as it was pleasure. There’s pain now, but it’s different. It’s not sadness or hatred. It’s the desperation of two people trapped in the dark waiting for the bombs to explode. Terrified and almost hopeless, but grabbing hold of the only person who offers comfort. The person who understands, the person who’s as lost as they are, but in whose arms they are found.

His tongue slips inside my mouth and I taste Hitch—hint of garlic and mint and cherry ChapStick and that spicy saltiness that has always been the sexiest taste. My arms twine around his neck and the smell of him spins through my head and I’m twenty years old again.

We’re on our third date and we’re naked in the pond behind his house and every place he touches me is alive in a way it’s never been before and I finally know what all the fuss is about. I know what I’ve been imagining I feel with other boys isn’t even close to how good a man and a woman can really be.
This
is desire,
this
is a feeling worth killing for, dying for, burning up in the flames because annihilation by pleasure is the only way to go.

Even after what happened with Gerald, even with his limp body lying a few feet away, even with the memory of that night with Anton so fresh and the smell of the junkyard so very
un
fresh, it’s so easy to be pulled back. Back to Hitch. Back to the source, the start of the first road, the beginning of the person I thought I could be with him,
because
of him, back when loving him was the answer to every question.

But I didn’t become that person, and my answers turned out to be lies. Because we lost each other, and we can’t find our way back. And because I think I meant what I said.

I don’t want to be in love with Hitch. Not anymore.

I stop returning the kiss and push at his chest. He lets me go so quickly I almost tumble backward and he has to catch me and let me go all over again.
Afterward, we sit staring at each other, lips damp, breath fast, question marks stabbing into the air all around us.

Finally Hitch says. “Anton’s in prison.”

“Yeah?”

“If he weren’t, I’d kill him.”

“No, you wouldn’t. He’s your brother. And he’s not worth it.”

“But you are,” he says, a hint of the old passion-before-reason Hitch in his eyes.

I look at the ground. “You still wouldn’t kill him. That’s not who you are.”

“Maybe it’s who I should be.” He sighs. “But you’re probably right.”

“I know I’m right.” I stand on shaking legs and brush off the dirt, reach down and grab my purse. “And I know that you and—”

Gerald moans and shifts on the ground, preempting some strong words from me about knowing Hitch and Stephanie and the baby are going to live happily ever after.

For the best, really. I have no idea if Hitch is going to live happily ever after. If he were
that
happy with Stephanie, he wouldn’t have kissed me the first time he was here, let alone a second time. If he were
that
happy with Stephanie, he wouldn’t know how to cry like there’s no chance of a better life.

But Hitch isn’t my problem. I can’t let him become my problem, even if some part of me or of him thinks getting tangled up in each other again is a good idea.

“I have to get home.”

“We need to call the police.” Hitch stands beside me. “We can give a statement and get this guy locked up. At least for a night or two.”

I shake my head. “No. I don’t want to go to the police.”

I don’t want Cane to know what happened. I don’t want him to feel sorry for me, and I don’t want to get too close to the police until I figure out what Eli was talking about. If someone on the Donaldsonville police force is crooked, they could have their finger in all kinds of sketchy business. Maybe the black-market dealings down at the docks. Maybe even whatever’s going down at the cave. “There are some things I have to figure out first.”

“Like what?” he asks, eyes sharper. “Is this about—”

“I’ll tell you everything in the morning.” I need time to pull my shit together even more than I did before. “Six a.m. Piggly Wiggly.”