Us (3 page)

Chapter 4
– J

I didn’t want to force Elle to tell me anything she didn’t want to, but at the same time, I knew whatever sh
e'd dreamt about was tied to the events of the past few days. I lay in bed, catching pieces of her conversation and doing my best not to eavesdrop. I knew she was talking to Chris, so she must be a part of what happened to Elle that made her have such a terrifying nightmare. The bond those two shared was more like that of sisters than friends. It would make sense that whatever demons were plaguing my girl had to do with Chris.

I was jolted out of my musings when the door to the bathroom flung open, illuminating the previously darkened room.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to bust in like that. The door is lighter than I thought.” She seemed nervous standing in the doorway, the light shining behind her, illuminating her like the Golden Goddess she was to me.

“It’s OK. You coming back to bed?”

She stood in the towel, her hair now in two braids that hung down either side of her neck. Unmoving, I watched her contemplate her answer. Just when I was about to ask again she dropped her towel and moved toward the bed.

“Yeah. Scooch over.”

I opened the covers to her and “scooched” as she requested. As soon as she got in the bed, she melted into me. I wrapped my arms around her, letting her know I was there for her. I’d always be there for her. Did she realize that?

“You know I’m always here for you
, right? You can tell me if you want, but I won’t push.”

“No, I want to tell you. It’s just that it’s not my story alone. It’s Chris’ too. I had to make sure it was OK for me to tell you.”

“And?”

She hesitated. “And… I knew it would be. I guess I needed to hear her voice first. Chris and I feel like it wasn’t coincidence we met. Shit, we met in the most fucked up way possible.”

I listened to her tell me a story, a true story, and it took everything I had not to jump out of the bed and hunt the fuckers down who tried to hurt Chris and forced Elle to become a killer. She was justified in her actions of killing the guy, even if she didn’t know at the time that is what she was doing. It was obvious that she hadn’t dealt with it. Now she had two lives she’d taken, two deaths on her shoulders. I knew firsthand how heavy those could be, the knowledge that you took a life from the universe. 

It made sense
now why she was so comfortable with a knife. I guess I never thought about the fact that she held one in her hand eight hours a day, five or six days a week. Well, before the night at the drug house with Fernie at least. Still, she spent six years with a knife in her hand. I understood why she said it felt like an extension of her arm. I doubt Fernie knew this when he gave her the giant blade she stabbed the guy with in the car. Maybe it was fate giving her a weapon before she even knew she would need it. Who the fuck knows.

I also had a better understanding of her relationship with Larry. Did he think he failed her? Fuck, I did. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to kick his ass for sending her to that party, or thank him for taking care of her. No, I wanted to kick his ass. She shouldn’t have been there in the first place, but really, who was I to talk? José made it clear I was to blame for Elle’s falling apart. I was. I owned that, but it didn’t mean I was giving her up. I’d be by her side until she no longer wanted me there.

When her story was finished, she was silent. I knew I needed to say something, but I was speechless. She was right, her and Chris met under fucked up circumstances, but it was meant to be. I pulled her closer to me and kissed her forehead.

“Fuck, baby. I’m not sure what to say. Chris is lucky you were there, but I’m so sorry you had to live through that.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” she said on a sigh. “It’s over. I just haven’t thought about it for a long time. I kinda forgot. Even after killing ole boy yesterday, it didn’t hit me. Not until you brought it up last night.”

“Shit, I’m so sorry, baby.”
Fuck, I was an asshole! It was all my fault she had that nightmare.

“Don’t be. Better to deal with it now than later. I’m glad you were here. Chris and I never talked about it. We watched Entourage and were BFFs the next day. I don’t talk about it with anyone, not even Larry.
”

She paused, and I thought she might be done talking. I didn’t push her, instead letting the heavy silence permeate the air. It was uncomfortable, but I didn’t feel it was my place to force her to speak. Just when I thought I’d gotten all I was going to get, she spoke, uncertainty lacing her voice.

“I think—fuck. I’m not sorry. I regret it… yet… I don’t. Neither of them, the guy from the night I met Chris and the guy from yesterday. If I had to do it over, I guess I could tell Chris not to hit the blunt, but if she did I’d still have stabbed the fucker. Same with yesterday. I didn't know what those guys were gonna do to me, but I know it would’ve been bad. If you hadn’t shot the tire out and got them all riled up, I may not have had my opportunity. You saved me.”

“Yeah.” I didn’t want to be a monster anymore, and the fact that I killed that guy trying to hurt her without a second thought should have bothered me. I
t didn’t. Like her, I’d do it again if I had to. I told her I’d kill for her, and I meant it. As much as I never wanted to take a life again, I’d kill a million motherfuckers if it meant saving her from harm. She was my light. Without her, I was nothing, my life was meaningless. I guess the monster may never go away. Was I OK with that? Fuck.

“Hey, you OK?” She pulled away and looked me in the eye
s as she asked.

“Yeah, I was just thinking about the monster.”

“What monster?” She looked perplexed.

“Me.”

“Come here.” She pulled my head to her chest, and I wrapped my arms around her waist. “You’re no more a monster than I am. And if being a monster means killing for those you love, well I’d say that’s a hero not a monster.”

“That makes you a hero too, baby,” I reminded her.

“I never thought of it like that.”

“You’re a hero to Chris, to your teens, and to me.”

“Who did I kill for you?” she asked with an air of humor in her voice.

“You killed the monster in me. The one who killed for Burns, not the ones I love. You saved me from myself. You’re everything to me, you know?” I looked up at her.

“Well, fuck.” Tears shone in her eyes.

Despite how great it felt to have my head nuzzled up in her naked breasts, I let go of her waist and took her head in my hands. I kissed her tears away before they could fall.

“You can cry if you want. I won’t tell,” I said lightly, trying to make a joke of it to ease the heaviness in the air.

“Shit.” She heaved a breath and more tears came.
Well, damn, if I didn’t just make it worse. I needed to close my fucking mouth. Elle reached out and smoothed her hand over my ruffled brow.

“It’s all good, my
darling Bear. It’s just that I told that to Fernie in County. He bawled on my shoulder. Not exactly thug style, you know?” She laughed and I exhaled.

“Fuck, baby.” I pulled her body flush against mine, making a pretzel with our limbs.
Once my lips were pressed against her shoulder, I took a moment to inhale the unique scent that was all Elle. “I fuckin’ love you so much. I don’t ever want to hurt you.”

“I know, and we’ll try our best not to do so, but if we fail, it’s OK. I don’t want to hurt you either. At least
, I would never do it on purpose. I know you wouldn’t either. We got a rough road ahead of us, though.”

“Word.” She pretended to smack me in the shoulder,
though really only tapping me, for stealing her common response. “So, what happened to the guy who tried to rape Chris?”

“You mean besides die?”

“Yeah. I mean, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.” Maybe I shouldn’t have brought it up.

“No
, it’s OK. Let’s get it out now, cuz I don’t think we’ll be talking about it again anytime soon if that’s cool?”

“O
f course. I’m sorry. You don’t have to—” She cut me off.

“He died, bled out on the floor underneath his own pool table. The cops came, and like Larry said, they didn’t care that another drug dealer was dead. They did some half ass investigation. No one
even came to question me. I assume the drugs were seized and, well, I guess that was all she wrote. Wait a minute,” she sat up in bed. “Was that one of your guys? Were those your drugs?”

I thought about it for a second. This would have been about four years ago.

“I vaguely recall… Shit. Yeah. I know exactly what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t have to—” I cut Elle off. Like her, I wanted to get it out now and be done with the topic.

“No, baby, let’s get it all out there on the table now. He was a dealer that went through MM. I forget his name. You know, it’s kind of all a blur. What I do remember is that the drugs weren’t seized. Burns took ‘em back. He had all the cops in his pocket. I was home, Gramps had passed, and the runs between here and Kansas City or St. Louis were just starting. I was still disappearing people and handling things at Checks and Eight Oh Eight, but when I started making the runs between cities Skinny took over with some of the disappearances.”

“Was this one of them?” Elle seemed hopeful it was.

“No. There were three of them. Burns was pissed that they’d brought attention to us. The dead guy under the pool table was all over the news.”

Elle
pulled out of my arms. Leaning against the headboard, she drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. “I know. I saw it on the news the next day and then didn’t watch TV for a month. I just wanted to forget.” She laid her head on her knees, turning her face to look at me.

I grabbed her hand in mine, and kept talking. “It was a lot of heat for the club. Burns was paying people off left and right to keep MM’s name outta the mix. There were three guys, but the one you—” I paused, not wanting to use the word kill. “The one you handled had been fucking up, and Burns already wanted to stop dealing with him, but he would’ve done it on the down low. After the first one was gone, his two partners had to go as well. Or at least, according to Burns they did. Skinny and I found them in a trailer on the edge of town. They’d been hiding out. It took u
s weeks to nail them down. We found them cranked out in the trailer, like they knew we were coming for them or something.”

“What’d you do?” Elle
lifted her head off her knees and looked up at me, her eyes wide with anticipation.

“What do you think?”

“They’re dead.” She wasn’t asking. She knew what I did. “Good.”

“What?” I asked her, surprised she
would be OK with the fact that she was in bed with a killer, a monster.

“The fuckers deserved to die. They were all going to take a turn with Chris. The only reason one died and the other two got a
way was cuz he insisted on having her before the others. While I was looking for something to use as a weapon, I heard them argue about who was going to fuck her first. It was fucking disgusting. When I found the knife, I didn’t hesitate. It was like I was on autopilot.”

“That’s how I felt when I saw that guy on top of you in the van yesterday. I didn’t think. I just shot him. I feel like I’ll never get rid of the monster. Elle, I shot him. I didn’t even stop to
think about it. I raised my gun, like it was an extension of
my
arm, and—pow. That was it. Fuck.” I laid my head in my hands, feeling like I’d never be able to get rid of the killer in me, like I'd always be tainted with a tarnished soul.

“Hey.” Elle grabbed my hand and pulled me to her. I
went willingly, allowing her to put my arm around her body, so she could curl into my side. “I killed the guy under the pool table, and because of it you had to kill his friends who deserved to die. At least in my book they did. And yesterday, it was me or them. You said it yourself. Baby, you’re not a monster. You had to do some fucked up shit, but that’s the past. This is the present. It’s still a fucked up present.” She paused and shrugged. “But we’re together.”

I swear I wanted to cry. It took everything I had not to burst into girlie tears. Despite all the drama Elle and I had endured in the past forty-eight hours, on top of the drama of the past year, she still wanted to be with me. Me—a monster. She still thought I was worthy of love. How did that happen? Part of me wanted to contemplate it, but instead I held her tighter. Elle broke my reverie, and her words made it impossible to stop the tears that came with her next words.

“If that shit hadn’t gone down at the party. If that guy hadn’t tried to drug me and Chris and then rape her. If I hadn’t stabbed him. If none of that happened, I’d never have met Chris. I may not have gone to Eight Oh Eight every weekend.” She looked into my watery eyes. “I may not have met you. You wouldn’t have watched me. We might have seen each other at Checks, but maybe it would’ve been different. Maybe I wouldn’t be laying in this bed right now.”

My heart sunk. “You mean maybe you wouldn’t be in Mexico, hiding from whoever tried to kidnap you,
putting that kid, Fernie, in danger, and YOUR own life in danger? And you wouldn’t be lying with a monster?”