Wrong

WRONG (NAKED, BOOK 4)

by Kelly Favor

©
WRONG. 2013, all rights reserved.

Caelyn tried to understand was Elijah had just said to her. His lips had moved, he’d spoken words, but she couldn’t seem to make sense of them.

“What?” she said, and her voice sounded far away, as if coming from somewhere else.

“You need to get out of here,” Elijah told her, as he closed the door behind him and immediately began stripping off his bloody clothing.

Caelyn was still standing beside the kitchen table. In fact, she was still holding her cup of coffee, as if Elijah might decide to sit down and join her at the table for a morning chat. She watched as he stepped out of his pants. He was now wearing only his boxer shorts, standing just inside the doorway of the apartment.

His legs were muscular and powerful, like a sprinter. His torso and shoulders were perfectly sculpted. Everything about him was like a statue—the body of a god—

come to life.

Except for the blood. Splotches of blood were still visible on his forearms, his hands, even his neck, and there was a smear of red on one cheek.

It suddenly occurred to Caelyn that he’d gone out and murdered someone, and that’s why he was bloody and ordering her to leave the apartment. He’d killed a man—

maybe more than one man.

Or perhaps Elijah was hurt. She didn’t see any wounds, but all of that blood…

The thought of him being injured jolted her out of her strangely unreactive state.

She sprang into motion, putting her cup down and running towards him. “What happened?” she asked. “Are you hurt?”

Elijah shook his head. “No.” He held out a hand for her to stop. “I don’t want you getting any blood on you.”

She stopped and looked at him. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“I need you to get me a garbage bag from under the sink, and some paper towels,”

was all he said. His expression was neutral, his voice firm and calm.

Caelyn felt confused. “What happened, Elijah?”

“Just get me what I asked for.”

She turned and went back to the kitchen, returning to the entrance of the apartment, where Elijah was standing beside the pile of bloody clothes. When she got within a couple of feet, he reached out and took the garbage bag and paper towels from her.

Then he knelt down and scooped the clothes into the trash bag in one quick motion. After that, he cleaned the worst of the blood from his hands and arms using the paper towels.

Standing up, Elijah finally turned his attention to her once more. “I know you’re scared and I get that you want to know what happened. But there’s no point in telling you any of it. You need to get out of here, Caelyn.”

“I’m not leaving you,” she said, and only as the words left her mouth did she realize how much she meant them.

Elijah smiled a little at that. “I wish it was as simple as us wanting to be together,” he told her.

“It is that simple.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head, “it’s really not.”

“Tell me why you’re kicking me out.” She felt the tears starting to burn her eyes and blinked rapidly, frustrated at her own weakness. But she was even more frustrated with Elijah’s heartlessness.

“I’m not kicking you out.” He picked up the trash bag and tied it.

“Look at me, Elijah.”

He looked at her and his eyes were pained, but his expression was determined.

“This is what needs to happen. If there was any other way—“

“Of course there’s another way.” Her voice was choked.

“If you stay here with me, something bad will happen to you. And I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you.”

“Then we can leave together, go to a motel, somewhere far away from here.”

He shook his head slowly. “It’s time for you to go now.”

“Will I see you again?”

He turned away from her then, walking to the bedroom as she followed behind him, desperate for answers, clinging to the slim hope that she could convince him to change his mind.

Elijah put on a fresh pair of jeans and a new t-shirt.

“Can’t you at least stop for one second and tell me what’s going on?” she asked.

When he was dressed, he ran a hand through his hair. Somehow he managed to look perfect once more, as if he’d spent the morning lounging around the apartment instead of engaged in whatever violent acts he’d been doing while he was away.

“I don’t want to incriminate you,” he said. And then he began moving again.

She followed him back into the hallway, where he picked up the trash bag and opened the door to the apartment. “I’m going to throw this in the dumpster behind the building. Get your purse and anything else you need—and then go. I can’t drive you anywhere, but there are plenty of cabs on Mass Ave. I’ll give you some money.”

Caelyn shook her head as a silent sob wracked her body. She held it back, resolute that she wouldn’t let Elijah see her cry and freak out. He didn’t deserve to see her true emotions anymore. He was rejecting her—sending her away after everything they’d been through together.

All of the betrayal and rage she felt suddenly coalesced into an icy calm that flowed through her veins like a drug. In seconds, she became strangely composed and unaffected. “Okay, I’ll get my things.”

He turned to her once more, his face a mask of barely concealed agony. “I need to tell you something before you go. The truth is, I—“

“Don’t bother,” she replied, cutting him off intentionally, wanting to hurt him.

She saw that she’d been successful, as he flinched as though she’d slapped him.

He blinked at her. “Caelyn, you have no idea how much you mean to me.”

She almost laughed at that, but contained her laughter into a tiny smirk of disbelief. Is this how he treated someone that meant a lot to him? “I’d really hate to see how you treat someone you don’t care about,” she said.

“I guess I deserve that.”

“You should probably just go and throw away the evidence,” Caelyn said, pointing at the trash bag, “instead of wasting time talking to me.”

Elijah looked down at it as if he’d forgotten he was holding it. “Caelyn,” he sighed. “I don’t want it to be like this. But I can’t allow you to be hurt by my actions and my life. You understand, don’t you?”

She nodded curtly. “Sure.”

“Okay, I’m going to dump this stuff.”

“I won’t be here when you come back.”

His jaw tensed and she saw his throat working. “I know,” he said, after a moment.

“Bye, Elijah.”

He started to say goodbye to her in return, but then his voice choked a little and he simply turned and left. As he turned his back to her, Caelyn couldn’t believe the pain she felt throughout her entire body.

It was as if someone were pulling her apart from the inside.

***

Caelyn didn’t take a cab. She took a bus and then the red line across the Charles River, getting off in Harvard Square and then walking half a mile to Cambridge University.

When she finally opened the door to her college suite, Nellie was standing in the middle of the dorm room. Her mouth dropped open when Caelyn walked inside, waving halfheartedly.

“Hey,” Caelyn said softly.

“Hey,” Nellie replied. “You’re the last person I expected to see. Alicia said you weren’t ever coming back to school.”

“I’m still not sure what I’m doing—but I have no place else to go.”

Caelyn and Nellie hadn’t ever gotten quite as close as Caelyn and Alicia had become during the time that they’d been rooming together. Caelyn had always suspected that Nellie felt somewhat excluded as her two other roommates had grown to be better and better friends.

“Well sit down,” Nellie said, gesturing to the chair nearby. “Tell me what’s going on. You look completely drained.”

Caelyn shrugged, but did as she was told. She sat down in the swivel chair and Nellie sat nearby on the small couch. Nellie watched her expectantly. When Caelyn didn’t say anything at first, Nellie leaned forward and grabbed her hand. “It’s okay. I won’t be mad.”

And that simple, kind gesture caused Caelyn to burst into tears. She sobbed like she hadn’t sobbed in her whole life—big, heaving cries as if someone had died.

She put a hand over her face and cried, unable to even say an intelligible word or stop the flood of tears.

“I’ll get you some tissues.” Nellie went to the bathroom and came back with a box of tissues and handed it to Caelyn, who was finally starting to get control of herself.

She wiped her eyes, laughing with embarrassment. “Sorry, I don’t even know what came over me.”

Nellie looked at her with big, serious brown eyes that seemed to know more than they should. “You don’t have to apologize for anything.”

“I feel like I should be apologizing for everything.”

“Well whoever made you feel that way is an asshole.”

Caelyn laughed, blew her nose, crumpled the tissue and threw it in the trash nearby. She sighed deeply. “I can’t understand how everything that I thought was my life could just change so fast.”

Nellie leaned towards her again. “Sometimes life just turns us upside down.”

“Did that ever happen to you?”

She nodded once. “Yes.”

Caelyn could see that her roommate didn’t want to tell her exactly what had turned her life upside down. But something told Caelyn that the other girl understood perfectly how she felt right at that moment. “I’m really confused right now,” Caelyn groaned.

“It’s okay to be confused. You’ll figure this out.”

“I will?”

“Yeah.”

Caelyn nodded gratefully. “Thank you so much, Nellie. You know, I’m really sorry if me and Alicia ever made you feel—“

Just then the door opened. “I heard my name,” Alicia said, striding into the room with color high in her cheeks. She saw Caelyn and didn’t bat an eyelash. “Were you saying something?” Alicia continued, staring right at Caelyn.

Caelyn had wanted to apologize to Nellie for not including her, for allowing Alicia to become the center of attention, but Caelyn knew that Alicia was already angry and would use any excuse to start a fight.

Caelyn shook her head. “I was just…whining.”

“What a surprise.” Alicia folded her arms and raised an eyebrow. “You look like something the cat dragged in.

“Alicia!” Nellie cried. “That’s not nice.”

“I’m not always nice, but at least I’m honest.”

“Sometimes it’s better to keep your opinions to yourself,” Nellie replied.

“Not my style.” Alicia walked over to the bookcase and started searching. “I could’ve sworn I still had my old statistics textbook here somewhere. I had the best notes and Ben was saying he’d love to use them.”

Nellie looked at Caelyn and mouthed a silent apology as Alicia continued to browse through the nearby bookcase. She seemed to suck up all the air in the room, Caelyn thought.

Caelyn finished blowing her nose and wiping her eyes. “Thanks, Nellie.”

“I didn’t even do anything.”

“You did though,” she replied.

Alicia pulled a book from the bookcase and stood up, spinning to face them.

“What did Nellie do?”

“She just listened,” Caelyn said. “And she didn’t get mad at me.”

Alicia pursed her thin, red lips. “I know you don’t want anybody to be
mad
at you, Caelyn. But you haven’t exactly made it easy for anyone to understand why you’re acting this way.”

“I know I haven’t made things easy.”

Alicia glared at her with annoyance. “So what is it? You don’t trust me now?”

Caelyn sighed deeply. “Of course I trust you.”

“Doesn’t seem like it.” Alicia was clutching her textbook so hard that her knuckles had turned white. “It feels like you suddenly decided that I’m not worth keeping in your life anymore. And I really thought we were friends. Like—I considered you my best friend, practically. I imagined us years from now, still meeting for coffee and laughing about the crazy college days.”

“Nothing’s changed on my part,” Caelyn told her.

“Nothing’s changed?” Alicia shook her head. “How can you seriously say that after the way you’ve acted? And now it seems like you think you can just come here and pretend everything’s back to normal.”

Caelyn felt her blood starting to boil. “You have no idea what I think.”

“That’s right, I don’t. Because you refuse to tell me anything.” Alicia’s voice was shaking a little bit.

“Alicia, this isn’t about you. This was something that happened to me, and I needed to deal with it myself.” Caelyn met her roommate’s gaze and held it firmly.

Alicia looked away. “Whatever. I’m going to bring this book to Ben. Maybe I’ll see you later if you haven’t decided to disappear again, Caelyn.” And then she turned and left, the door closing with a loud bang behind her.

***

Not long after Alicia left the room, Nellie had to go to class.

Caelyn finally got the suite to herself, which was kind of a mixed blessing. On the one hand, she desperately needed sleep, and time to herself. On the other hand, the time alone brought her face-to-face with just how much she missed Elijah already.

She imagined him standing there in her dorm room near the mini fridge, that mischievous gleam in his eye, the next witty remark poised on his lips. Somehow he always knew just what to say to disarm her, to confuse her, to make her want him more.