Vengeance to the Max (31 page)

Yes, Bud had been playing the divide and conquer game.
Cameron had an affair. Cameron didn’t love you
. She’d almost fallen for it. Now she had to arm herself with every detail about the night Cameron died, the before, during, and after.

But God, what worse things were to come?

Know the demon and it can’t hurt you
.

“You can start by remembering that I loved you with all my heart. No matter what happened between us that night.”

Oh God, the demon was bad. Really bad. Mustiness and truth rose like a cloud from the box, from his clothes, his underwear. His shaving kit. A sob rose in her throat. She sliced it off, but couldn’t stop the plea. “Tell me you weren’t leaving me.”

Cameron didn’t answer.

Her eyes stung. If he’d been corporeal, she’d have flung her fist through his gut. “You weren’t leaving. Tell me.”

“Look in the box.”

Don’t be a coward
.

She couldn’t see, the dark all-encompassing. Magically, the light beside the bed flipped on. Fear of Witt discovering her vanished with what she saw.

She hadn’t closed the flaps. She’d thrown everything back in willy-nilly, leaving a jumbled mess that, with new knowledge, formed a picture of their last night.

They’d argued about adopting. She was against it. Adopting meant her body was inadequate,
she
was inadequate,
barren
. What a horrible word. That’s what she’d told him. It hadn’t been the whole truth. She’d never told him the whole truth about anything, not her feelings, not her childhood, not her uncle, not the reason she couldn’t have kids.

“Tell me now.” No anger, no judgment, only his need.

What did any of it have to do with fortifying against Bud?

Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. But like Bud’s weak point was his own victimization, hers lay half concealed in that box.

She clenched her teeth. Her nose tingled and began to run. But she told Cameron the thing she should have told him the night he died, the thing that might have kept him from going to that damn 7-11. “I was afraid I’d fuck up a kid as badly as I was fucked up. I was afraid I’d turn out as bad as my uncle.”

As bad as Bud?

Cameron cried softly. She always knew when he cried. She could always feel his pain inside her head and deep in her bones. She tasted his helplessness laced with peppermints. Part of her wanted to cradle him, but the biggest part, the worst part, wanted to make his pain as big as hers. Remembering was the way to do that.

When he pushed, she’d gotten mad. When he lit up, she attacked. Grabbing his last pack from the coffee table, she’d marched into the kitchen and crammed it down the garbage disposal. After she’d gotten out of the hospital, after Cameron’s funeral, when she went to use the appliance, it choked. She’d had to replace the damn thing, but never thought about how it had been broken in the first place.

“You never should have smoked in the house.”

“That’s what you said that night.” His voice wavered.

“And that was the last straw, wasn’t it?” Hunkered down on the floor as she was, the heels of her pumps dug into her butt. She kicked them off.

“You never did want to face the real problems, Max, always deflecting, always shutting down if I got too close to something you didn’t want to remember.”

“You wouldn’t have understood. You’d have told me to get over it.” He’d always told her to get over it even when he didn’t know what
it
was.

That night, as she’d chewed up his cigarettes, shutters fell over his eyes. She knew he was going to walk out like he had all the other times before.
Go on, run away. And by the time you come back, we’ll both have forgotten all about it
. She’d known
she
would. Only this time Cameron said he wasn’t coming back. She’d followed him into the bedroom where he’d dragged his leather bag from the closet—no, she hadn’t noticed it already contained a book and a gun—threw in his shaving kit, toothbrush, underwear, socks, the white shirts he wore to work, ties, cufflinks, and the damn tie pin his father gave him.

Max owned the memory but refused the bitterness and grief tearing through layers of tender flesh.

He’d walked out. That was that.

From the box at her knees, she pulled a rolled pair of socks and a shirt, still creased in the right places, yellowed with age, dust, and disuse. “I used to iron them for you every weekend. Like I did for my uncle when I was a kid.”

Had Wendy ironed Bud’s shirts, shined his shoes, folded his laundry?

“I never asked you to do any of that for me.”

“That’s because men never
ask
for anything. They expect it.” Everything was all so clear now. “That was your problem, Cameron. You always expected too much from me. You could never let me be. You were always trying to fix me.”

“You needed fixing.”

The room turned red, as if finally something had burst inside her head and tinged her eyes with blood. “Like I do now?”

“Yes, like now.”

She clutched the shirt to her chest. “Then why the hell don’t you leave like you did that night? Haven’t you figured out I’m not going to change?”

A tense silence. He broke it first. “That’s why I left back then.”

Her fingernails dug into the material. “Why the hell did you come back? I would have gotten over it if you’d left me alone.”

“You would have died.”

“Then we could have been together forever.” Her tone slashed, contradicting the words. “Is that what you’re afraid of? That I’ll be a millstone around your neck for eternity?”

“You’re a millstone around your own neck. All I’ve ever wanted is for you to heal. Face your past and heal yourself.”

“You fucking bastard.” She threw the clothing aside. “You were playing God. When it didn’t work, you left me. Don’t give me this noble crap. You ran out on me. And—” She cut herself off.

“Go on.”

She swallowed. “You ran out on me. And I followed you. To keep on fighting. To keep you.” Her chest constricted. “I parked in the lot, I went in ... and they shot you. Just like that. In a second. Before I could say a word.”

There’d been no chance to make things right between them. To say she’d change. She ...

“Don’t stop now.” His voice dropped to a whisper in her head.

She clenched her teeth to stop the prick of tears in her nose, her eyes. “I wanted to tell you I was sorry.”

“But you couldn’t.” He paused. She thought he was giving her breathing room. He wasn’t. “And who did you blame for that?”

Her lungs collapsed beneath the pressure of his question.

“Who did you blame?” A master of the right word, he carved away her resistance.

Blame
. Who did you blame when you couldn’t take the responsibility yourself? The one you loved.

“I blamed you.” Oh God. “I was glad you got what you deserved for leaving me.”

His essence flowed around her, trying to fill the bottomless pit inside her. “You see, Max, you chose to forget the worst. Like you always do. None of the rest of it was as bad as that, was it?”

“I only thought it for a moment,” she whispered. But it was that moment she’d managed to forget. The moment when he lay on the floor, and his blood had gushed down into his vacant eyes. Blood flowed over the Cheetos and Doritos surrounding his body. His blood. And she’d had that final terrible thought.
There, you fucking bastard, that’s what you get for running out on me
.

Guilt was always the worst. She’d been glad he was dead. She really had. Then guilt rained down on her head, the men took her, raped her, beat her, left her for dead. It was all nothing more than
she
deserved for what she’d thought. That was why she hadn’t cared what they did to her. Why she’d prayed for death, why she’d almost relished every slam of those steel-toed boots. Because she’d deserved the pain.

Her rear flopped to the right, her legs stiff beneath her, stinging with pins and needles. She pulled out socks, underwear, the shaving kit, clutched them to her breasts. In the box, lamplight glinted on the black surface of a video tape.
Lost Horizon
.

“Shangri-La never existed.” She reached down, stroked its smooth surface, picked it up in her fingers to stare. The bundle of his odds and ends fell to her knees and slid off. “You were never going to take me there because I was never the person you wanted me to be.”

“You were working on it.”

“No.” She bit the inside of her cheek until physical pain replaced emotional. “
You
were working on it. I wasn’t good enough the way I was. You wanted to change me, to make me worthy.”

“Maybe I did. I was wrong.”

The bubble of anger rose in her chest again. “You’re still doing it. ‘Remember your past, Max. Face your demons, Max.’” She stared at his glowing form by the top of the stairs. A shimmer undulating like heat rising off concrete, light reflecting instead of passing through. “Thinking you deserved to die was
not
something I needed to remember. Not for you and not to face Bud.”

“You need it to free yourself.”

“Free?” She stopped before she screamed, taking a deep breath. “
You
tried to get free of me then. You’re still trying now.” Her lips thinned and tightened. She strove for an emotionless tone. “So go. Who needs you?”

“Max—”

The rhythm and decibel scratched her throat. “Go on. Get out. Leave the way you planned.”

“Max—”

“Get the fuck out,” she shrieked and threw the tape with all her might.

“Holy shit, Max.” Witt, coming up the stairs, ducked and covered his head.

The tape slammed into the doorjamb and shattered. She’d missed him by less than three inches.

Cameron was gone, his faint shimmer scattered to the four corners of the room, a trace of peppermint all that remained.

“We’ve been through this throwing thing of yours, Max.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” Max didn’t apologize for almost knocking Witt’s block off with the missile.

“Trying to protect you. Where ya been? I told you to stay put.” He glared.

She snarled back.

“Where’s your car? Wouldn’t have known you were here except for the light.”

“Protect me?” She ignored the other dictatorial statements, otherwise she might have to pop him in the eye. “I don’t need anything from you. I can take care of myself.”

Witt’s nostrils flared and his jaw hardened, but he picked his words with care and spoke softly. “You’re in a helluva mess. Someone’s got to protect you from your own idiocy.”

“Idiot, am I?” She hated being called stupid, by him, by Cameron, by anyone except herself. Her muscles tensed for a fight, but she stayed on the floor, letting him think he had the advantage, letting him think she was in the one-down.

“I don’t wanna fight.”

Bastard.
She
wanted to fight.

“I’m trying to help you.”

The rage boiled over. Her fists bunched. Witt was the only one around to take her sizzle of anger. “That’s all men want, and the way they help is by changing a person, molding them, never letting them be who they are, never loving them the way they are.”

He raised a brow, and something flickered in his blue gaze. Fear? He’d better be afraid. “What’s wrong?”

She rolled her eyes, then leaned back to snap the light off so he couldn’t see her, and so she couldn’t see him beyond a silhouette in the doorframe. “What’s wrong?” She growled low in her throat like a rabid animal. “He hand-picked you, that’s what’s wrong.”

He shook his head. “Who?”

Confusion. Good. Keep him that way. “Cameron.”

Witt said nothing. Thinking he could wait out her insanity?

“You don’t believe me.” She snorted. “Sometimes I don’t believe myself. But he did. He wants you to take over where he left off.” Her lip curled without volition. “You’ve done so well, too.”