I’d been in bed with a guy. A guy who was clearly ready to do more than just kiss, which was itself still new to me.
Down the hall Tristen kept talking. I could hear his deep, masculine voice.
What would we do when he came back? Kiss some more? Talk about . . . condoms? Did he have condoms? Would he ask if I took the pill? Or would he assume that I didn’t? Would my obvious inexperience be enough of a clue?
Sitting up, skin hot and prickly, I crawled off the bed.
I hadn’t meant for us even to kiss when I’d climbed in next to Tristen. I’d figured he was too hurt and too exhausted to even think about . . . what we’d been doing. But suddenly it had started happening, anyway, when he’d sort of pressed my shoulder back to the mattress—which I’d wanted but . . .
I started moving nervously around his bedroom, not sure what I should do and getting kind of frustrated with myself.
That girl who’d kissed Tristen in the chemistry lab, the one who’d come out when I tasted the formula in his mouth, she wouldn’t be tugging down the hem of her blouse like she was trying to stop his fingers from moving up any farther. No, that girl would have taken off some clothes. But I wasn’t her . . .
I kept pacing, moving to Tristen’s desk. That’s when I saw, buried under some other books, his first edition copy of Jekyll and Hyde. The novel that he obviously wanted to keep out of my reach.
Down the hall, Tristen was still talking. I couldn’t make out what he said, but I knew the caller wasn’t his father like he’d hoped. Or feared. He was too calm, and he sounded kind of formal, like he was on the line with somebody he didn’t know very well.
In front of me the forbidden book sat, tempting me. Why wasn’t I supposed to see it? I’d let Tristen keep my family’s most important things. What was he keeping from me? Didn’t I have a right to know everything about him? We were sharing a bed. . .
On impulse I darted out my hand and slid the novel from under the other books, flipping it open to the inscription that I’d caught a glimpse of back in the classroom.
To Tristen, with gratitude for being strong when I was weak. Never, ever doubt that your actions were just, despite how the world . . . judge Keep . . . remem . . . me
I couldn’t make out some of the words, and the writing, which was faint to begin with, got more scrawling and erratic as it ran across the page. And there were the smudges that I’d noticed before, just under the signature. A wide smear and a smaller fingerprint. I knew that I was looking at blood because I’d seen plenty of it.
I peered more closely. Blood, just like my dad’s on the list of salts . . .
“Jill? What are you doing?”
My head snapped up, the book snapped shut in my hands, and I spun around to see Tristen standing in the doorway with his arms crossed, watching me.
“Tristen,” I stammered, torn between guilt and a vague, but very real, unease, “what, exactly, did you do?”
Chapter 57
Jill
“JILL, I’VE TOLD YOU not to touch that,” Tristen said, moving into the room and closing the door behind him. His eyes were a little cold, like he was mad at me. “It’s private.”
My cheeks flushed with embarrassment over getting caught, but I held my ground and didn’t put down the book. “But, Tristen, I’ve shared everything with you.” Well, almost everything . . .
He came even closer to me and gently but firmly pried the novel out of my fingers. “Jill,” he said, and I noticed that his face was pale. “I don’t think you want to know everything about me.”
I looked up at him, shaking my head. “That’s not fair, Tristen. You can’t decide that for me.”
He was keeping a secret. A bad secret.
Awful secrets were like bloodstains in my life. I knew enough about them to recognize them before they’d even been revealed. The evasive, haunted look in Tristen’s eyes told me everything I needed to know—except for the truth itself. “What happened, Tristen?” I demanded. “I deserve to know.”
We’d just been in bed together. I’d shared with him the key to banishing his own demons and stayed by him when he’d nearly died. He owed me the truth. Tristen had an obligation to explain the strange dedication . . . and that bloodstain.
“Oh, Jill,” he said, cracking easily, like maybe he’d secretly longed for a confidant. He set down the novel and dragged his good hand through his hair, eyes no longer cold. On the contrary, he looked guilt ridden and grief stricken. “I don’t know how to tell you this,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if it was even true until recently. I hoped it wasn’t true, and tried to convince myself . . .”
“It’s okay, Tristen,” I said. But I felt scared. “Just say it.”
His cheeks got even paler, and his lips were a thin, white line, but he met my eyes as he stated, very directly, “I murdered my grandfather, Jill.”
Chapter 58
Jill
“WHAT?” I WANTED HIM to repeat that, because I hoped I hadn’t heard right. “Tell me again, Tristen.”
“I killed my grandfather,” he said. “Or the beast did, through me.”
We stood facing each other, his body blocking the door that I wanted to run through. “How?” I asked. My voice sounded strangled. “What did you . . . ?”
“A knife.” He winced like a blade was slashing him again. “That seems to be the way it prefers to kill.”
I knew that Tristen wasn’t really responsible for whatever had happened to his grandfather. Logically I knew that he wasn’t to blame. I’d seen him change, and I knew that the beast was something separate from the boy I loved. But I still found myself staring at his hands—which had plunged a blade into his own flesh and blood. A man he’d loved . . . who had given him the gift of music, of composing. Tristen’s hands had wielded the knife . . .
In my confused mind the images got tangled with imagined scenes of my dad being slaughtered, a knife dragged across his windpipe. “No, Tristen!” I cried, shaking my head. “I don’t believe you did it!”
“I didn’t do it, Jill,” he said. But he didn’t sound sure himself. “I mean, my body performed the act. But it wasn’t me. You were there that night when I changed . . .”
I heard him, and I knew he was right, but my shock and horror overcame reason. I’d been lying next to a killer. Not a potential killer like Tristen had feared becoming but a real killer. Somebody who’d already shed blood. I kept shaking my head, backing away from him. Those fingers had just been touching me . . . “No, Tristen.”
He stepped toward me, hand out, talking more quickly, the confession spilling out. “Please. Try to understand. My grandfather begged me to help him die. He knew the terrible things he’d done, and he couldn’t live with himself anymore. He was bedridden, nearly paralyzed, and all day and all night, long-repressed memories flooded back, torturing him. He implored me to steal pills from my father, a lethal dose, but I couldn’t do it. I loved him too much to lose him forever. I was selfish, too selfish to end his misery.”
“Tristen . . .” I backed farther away, bumping against the wall in a room that was starting to get dark. Too dark. “Stop!”
He followed my retreat, confining me in the effort to reassure me. “You’ve got to understand, Jill. Grandfather provoked the beast inside of me, summoning it on purpose. He taunted me, calling me a coward, weak—too weak to face the truth about our family. And he spoke about the thrill of killing, talking directly to the monster, urging it to emerge, to have its way with a knife, to take its first satisfaction on his flesh. I begged him to stop . . .”
Although Tristen confessed without the slightest quiver in his voice, I saw a tear trace down his cheek, but my blood was so cold that I couldn’t feel sympathy. I couldn’t feel anything.
“I don’t remember anything else,” he said. “When I came to myself, I was at home, my hands spotless when the police arrived to say that grandfather had been found by his cleaning woman, dead in his bed, his wrists slit with a butcher knife. Suicide, they co
ncluded.” His eyes darted to the novel. “But I had the bloody book, and it had been inscribed. I tried to tell myself that, at worst, the beast had given him the knife. But I was kidding myself. Grandfather could barely use a pen, and his one arm had been cut to the bone . . .”
Tristen closed his eyes, grinding his palms against them, maybe shutting out the images or maybe punishing himself by crushing his broken wrist against his skull. “I’ve never said this aloud before. Oh, god, Jill . . .”
He was in agony. But I didn’t reach out to him.
I used the opportunity when Tristen’s eyes were closed to dart past him and run through the house, tearing out the door, jumping off the porch, and scrambling into my car. My fingers were so shaky that I seemed to take forever to lock myself in. Then I jammed the key in the ignition and pressed hard on the gas pedal, spinning out of the driveway and tearing across the grass in my desperation to get away, put space between us.
I looked back only once, checking the rearview mirror as Tristen’s house got smaller in the distance.
I didn’t see him standing on the porch.
I didn’t think he even tried to follow me.
Chapter 59
Jill
IT HAD BEEN A LONG TIME since I’d needed Mom to hold me while I cried. Even when Dad had died, I’d understood that she was in no shape to be strong for me. But driving home from Tristen’s, fighting back tears, all I could think was I want my mom.
As I parked the car in the garage, I saw a light on in her bedroom, and I hurried inside, running upstairs and knocking on her closed door. “Mom?”
“Come in!”
I opened the door, planning to fling myself into her arms. I knew that I couldn’t tell her about Tristen, not what we’d almost done that evening or what he had done in England. But I thought I could at least say I’d had a terrible day at school and needed a hug.
But when I saw her, I stopped in my tracks. “Mom?”
Was she wearing a dress?
“How do I look, Jill?” She smoothed her skirt, seeming uncertain. “Is this okay?”
“You look great,” I told her, not understanding. The dress was a black one she used to wear to nice restaurants when Dad would take her out. “Are you going somewhere?”
“Just out with friends,” she said, turning her back on me and facing her mirror. “Some people from work.”
“Oh.” I fidgeted in the doorway, unsure, too. I still wanted to run to Mom. But she looked almost . . . happy. Who was I to intrude on that?
Mom must have misunderstood my mood, because she added over her shoulder, “I hope you don’t mind. I know I should try to get some extra hours at the hospital now that I’m doing better. But Frederick thinks it’s important for me to have fun, too.”
Frederick. The beast who’d brought my mother back from the brink of oblivion. He’d healed my mother, but he was dangerous and violent . . . just like Tristen.
“Mom,” I said, struggling not just with my sorrow but with sudden fear for my mom’s safety, “do you think you still need to see Dr. Hyde? I mean, you seem like you’re a lot better.”
“Yes, Frederick agrees.” She smoothed her hair, eyes fixed on her reflection. “I’m not seeing him professionally anymore.”
I was so relieved by that news and so caught up in my own misery, my heartbreak, that I overlooked one key word.
“I’m going to my room,” I said when Mom kept staring at her reflection, seeming to forget about me. A small smile played on her lips, and I knew I couldn’t burden her with my sadness. “I’m kind of tired,” I added. “I might go to bed early.”
“Okay, Jill.” Mom flipped open her jewelry box, chose an earring, and stuck the post into her ear. “I’ll see you in the morning. Keep the doors locked!”
“Sure,” I agreed, closing her door as tears started to well in my eyes again. Would my mother ever be there for me again? Tristen certainly wouldn’t . . .
I wasn’t sure how I held myself together as I walked down the hall to my room. Tristen had committed murder. His secret had become my burden, had destroyed us, left me completely alone again.
When I shut myself in my room, I let the tears come flooding out, but as quietly as possible, burying my face in my pillow until Mom rapped on my door and called goodbye. When I heard the back door slam closed I really sobbed. But it didn’t help. Maybe I’d cried so often in the past year that tears didn’t hold the power they used to. They certainly didn’t wash away the anger and the hurt.
I wouldn’t give my heart, my soul, my body to somebody who had ended a human life—especially in the bloody, violent way that my dad’s life had been snuffed out.
Tristen should have been stronger, when his grandfather had begged for death.
He hadn’t fought hard enough.
No. I would not love Tristen Hyde.
But the whole time I cried, a small voice inside of me kept protesting that I still did love Tristen.
That voice . . . that’s what drove me to unzip the compartment in my backpack where I’d put the stolen formula. I’d planned to give it back to Tristen, telling him that I wasn’t sure how it had wound up with me. But that nagging voice, the devil on my shoulder, the opposite of my conscience—which insisted that loving Tristen was wrong—it was that voice that made me pull out the stopper and take a sip.
I just wanted to silence that voice. Maybe for a few hours. Maybe for forever.
Or did I want something else, like the freedom to be bad and wrong that the voice represented? Because I was in such pain, I wanted to do something bad. Maybe even hurt somebody else, the way I hurt.
I guess my reasons didn’t really matter as I fell to the floor, clutching my stomach, feeling the wicked pain course through my veins, shattering me and setting me free.
Chapter 60
Jill
THE DOUBLE ESPRESSO feels hot going down my throat. The new bra feels soft against my breasts. The stolen thong feels—
“What the hell are you doing here, Jekel?”
I smile up at Todd Flick, wondering what took him so long to approach me. What a gorgeous, detestable piece of shit he is. “What? Is this seat reserved for guys who lick Darcy Gray’s shoes?”
Flick stops smirking, and his pretty eyes flash. “What’s up with you lately?” he demands. “If you think having Hyde as a boyfriend suddenly makes you cool, you are so wrong. That guy is nothing.”
“He beat you up, didn’t he?” I laugh, pointing to Flick’s arm. “So what does that make you?”
“Hey—”
“And let’s face it.” I hold my hands about ten inches apart. “Tristen’s twice the man you are in other ways, too.”
“You bitch, “Flick snaps. “That’s bullshit!”
“Not according to the talk at school. I heard Darcy complain that you’re small—and you don’t know how to use it, anyway.”
“Shut up!” he cries. “Darcy never said that!”
“Look, Todd. It doesn’t matter to me. I’ll never have to endure your groping and grunting. Thank God”
“You couldn’t handle me!”
I laugh. “What? Would it slip right through my fingers?”
He stands mute, jaw flapping, so I down my espresso, plunk the cup on the table, and shove past him, making sure my tits graze his chest.
He watches me all the way to my car.
Chapter 61
Jill
I WOKE UP sprawled on top of my covers . . . and wearing new clothes. I felt them before I even saw them. A wire from the bra poked into my rib cage, and it felt like there was a string running between—
Oh no. I tugged at a tight skirt, trying to dislodge that string. What had I done? It was all hazy, like a dream I could barely recall.
Rolling out of bed, I ran to the mirror. My face looked the same, but my clothes . . . Where had I gotten them? I didn’t have money for new clothes!
My eyes darted to my backpack. The formula. I remembered drinking some . . .
Sweat trickling down my back, I tore off the outfit and fumbled to check the labels, sucking in my breath when I saw the designer names. I glanced at my chest. And the bra . . . It was pushing my breasts together so my A-cups looked like they belonged in Maxim.
Had I stolen all this stuff? I couldn’t remember . . .
My pulse raced and my head thumped. What else had I done? Where had I gone looking like that? Had anybody seen me?
I jammed the clothes into the back of my closet and hurried to the shower, where I scrubbed my skin until it was raw, like I could erase what I might have done. Then I put on my usual clothes and stole out of the house early, before I could see my mom.
Had I run into her last night? Talked to her? Was I in trouble?
And what would happen at school? Had I seen kids from school? Maybe . . .
I walked in the sunlight, gulping deep breaths of cold, fresh November air, trying to figure out what I would say if anybody mentioned seeing me. I also tried not to think about how I had felt wearing those clothes or wonder why I’d shoved them in my closet instead of the trash can at the back of our yard.
Chapter 62
Jill
I WAS IN ART CLASS clipping my junior year photo to the edge of my canvas so I could begin adjusting the eyes on my self-portrait for what seemed like the millionth time when a strange, uneasy hush fell over the room. In seconds all of the chatter that always went on while we set up our easels simply stopped.
Without even looking, I knew that Tristen had joined us, uninvited.
My hand fell to my side, and I turned to see that Tristen was indeed standing in the doorway staring straight at me while everybody else gawked at him.
I shook my head, trying to tell him to leave, but he came toward me, ignoring my teacher’s disapproving look.
“Tristen,” Miss Lampley said but without much authority. I think, like everybody else, she was leery of the gash on his face, the crude bandage, and his tired, hunted, but determined expression. “I don’t think you should be here.”