“I knew the bank had to sell it at some point so I kept an eye on it. I made my bid before I’d even left town. Figured you’d want to keep it no matter where we ended up going. It took those money fucks almost a year to accept my offer, and almost as long to close the damn thing. When it was finally mine, I had it all fixed up for you. Then, I realized you probably wouldn’t have accepted it from me as a gift after what I’d done.”
He was right. “Nope. I certainly wouldn’t have.”
“I didn’t even know about Georgia then, or I would’ve put some cool kid shit in here, too.” He kissed me on the nose and continued. “I made sure I had personal approval of the new tenants. I had only two flyers made—one they posted in the window of the office, and the other I was going to have Reggie give to you personally. You were so quick to sign the lease that I never had to go with Plan B.”
Even when he was gone, he was protecting me, looking out for me.
“You were all I thought about, Bee, the whole time I was gone – this whole four years. When I finally worked up the courage to call Reggie a few years back to ask him about you, I was scared to death he’d tell me you’d packed up and left town, or shacked up with someone else... or gotten married.”
That broke my heart a little. “You thought I was with Owen.”
“It crossed my mind. Makes me sick to my fucking stomach that I ever considered it a possibility.” He ran his fingers under my jaw and pulled my face to his, pressing his forehead against mine. I loved it when he did that. “But when Reggie told me that you weren’t with anyone, that you were still living in the apartment and working at the shop, I made myself believe it was because you still needed me. But you didn’t. You had it all sorted out long before I tried to step in and help. Reggie never told me about Georgia though, probably because he didn’t know how I would react. The bastard. I owe him a punch in the fucking jaw for that.” He laughed.
I didn’t know what to say about it all.
Jake continued. “I came to the conclusion that if I couldn’t be with you myself, I was going to at least try and give you everything I could to make you happy, even if it was from a distance —even if I wasn’t going to be part of it. I’m just sorry it took me so long to do it.” He brushed his lips over mine. “Turns out you were okay without me after all.”
“I wasn’t okay, Jake,” I assured him. “I wasn’t at all.”
“That’s what I was afraid you would say. Abby okay is not the same as everyone else okay.” Jake said. “Look at your arm. Look at my brave fucking girl and her warrior ink.” He ran his fingers down the artwork covering my right arm. “I know this is one of your pictures, and this is obviously me.” He tapped the angel of death image on the motorcycle. “And this is our quote, but what is this one?” he asked, his fingers landing on the black and gray version of “The Scar” painting.
“It’s my favorite painting. The real one is in color, but I had him do it in black and white instead. It’s a woman with a scar down the middle of her entire body.”
“But he didn’t tattoo the scar itself?”
“He didn’t need to.” I’d had the artist use one of the reddest, most jagged of my scars as the red line down the center of her.
“Wow,” Jake said. “It’s beautiful and fucking amazing, just like you.” His eyes were darkening, but it didn’t push the crystal blue out entirely. Both the devil and angel in him were with me that night. “I don’t know how I ever survived without you, Bee.”
I hadn’t thought of it from his side. At least I’d had Georgia. Jake had no one. I could see how the last four years were so difficult for him.
“I turned off my feelings the second I walked away from you on the bridge,” I told him. “But when Georgia was born, it was like she just broke through it all. It was hard to do, but I had my baby, and when you have a screaming three month old with colic who won’t sleep through the night, it’s hard to get caught up in your own bullshit. The things that happened to me in the past just started not to matter with her around. They still hurt, and I didn’t avoid them. They just weren’t the most important things in my life anymore. She saved me.”
“You both saved me,” Jake said. “As much as I can be saved.” His tone became serious. “I need you to do something for me, baby.”
“Anything.” If he asked me, I would do it. It was that simple.
“I need you to tell me why you took those pictures, the ones of you after…”
“I took them for you,” I admitted. “I wanted you to see what he did to me. I wanted you to be mad because I wanted you—” I stopped just short of saying it.
“Say it Bee,” he insisted. “I need to hear it.”
“I wanted you to kill him.” The words didn’t hurt, and I wasn’t embarrassed. It was actually liberating saying aloud that I wanted Owen to die. “There’s something else, too, besides what he did to me and Georgia.”
His eyes were fully dark now. “What is it?”
“He killed Nan.”
“I need to see them, the pictures, now, and I need you to show them to me.”
“Why?”
“Because, baby, I am going to leave here tonight, and I’m going to track him down wherever he is, and I’m going to take him out of this world. I’m going to bury the pieces of him where no one will ever find them.”
I hadn’t looked at the photos since I developed them that night in the high school darkroom. I didn’t know if I could see that part of my life again. “What difference will the pictures make? You know what happened.”
“I need to see exactly what he did to you, because the more I know, the more detailed your description of your pain… the more satisfying it will be for me when I kill him, and the more I’ll enjoy it.”
“You want to enjoy it?” I knew right away that I was judging him. Who was I to judge anyone? Beneath that was a curiosity within me about what he felt when he did something like this. Jake had so many things at war inside him. I wanted to know as much as I could about what made him tick.
“Yes, I want to get off on it, as much as possible. I know that sounds fucked up. But in order to move forward, to enjoy what we have with our family and the rest of our lives together, I need to close this chapter first. But I can’t just kill him, Bee. I need you to understand…” He tightened his fists into balls. “I need to feel him die under my hands. I need to feel it so badly.”
He pressed his lips into my neck, and a rush of heat shot right to my core.
Then, he whispered into my ear, “When this is all over, what we have will be complete. The three of us under one roof, forever, as it should be, with no trace left of the fucker who tried to ruin everything for us.” His beautiful promises mixed with his warm breath on my ear made me whimper. “Not to mention, we have a lot of time to make up for, and I plan on spending a lot of that time with my head between your thighs.” He cupped his hand over my jeans between my legs and squeezed. I jumped at the sensation. “I’ve never gotten to taste that sweet pussy of yours, baby, and I think four fucking years is long enough to wait.”
I groaned.
“How about we start now?” I asked, pressing my chest to his. He shook his head and sighed, placing his hands on my shoulders and distancing himself from me.
“The second I get back Bee... the very second. I promise.” Jake leaned in and softly kissed my lips before deepening the kiss and opening his mouth to mine. His tongue danced across my lips, and then inside my mouth and over my tongue. It had been so long. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to wait much longer without bursting apart. He pulled away again as if he were reading my mind. He closed his eyes. “I love you, Bee.”
“I love you, too, Jake,” I said. “So much.” I’d never meant it more.
We spent the next hour inside, sitting on the living room floor. Jake sat silently while I told him the details of the night Owen raped me. I didn’t leave any detail out, as he’d requested. I used the pictures to explain each injury as it happen
ed. As I spoke, his mood darkened into a much more sinister version of himself. My sapphire-eyed Jake shared his body with a monster. I could feel him moving aside as the beast within him firmly took control.
By the time I’d finished telling him, I was shaking like it had just happened yesterday. I remembered the feeling when I woke up in unending pain, wishing I was dead. And yet somehow, I had made it through, and my little miracle Georgia had survived as well.
Jake put his hands on my shoulders and pulled me to him. He kissed me with so much raw anger and passion I didn’t know if I was going to be able to survive the overwhelming feelings building inside of me.
Jake may have had a monster living inside him. But nothing about either of us had ever been just one way. Nothing was black or white, light or dark.
Coral Pines was a place that looked like heaven on the outside and felt like hell on the inside. Owen, the golden boy of our town, turned out to be the biggest monster of them all. And Jake, who had become accustomed to living within the dark shadows of his tortured soul, turned out to be one of the brightest lights in my life.
I had lived my life in both the dark and the light. Having my new family meant I had to walk a blurry line between the two. I was never going to be a normal person with regular thoughts and feelings.
I’d never known what “normal” meant, anyway.
Maybe what set Jake and I apart from other people was our acceptance of our feelings and emotions—the dark as well as the light. All I knew is there was no darkness in the world that could compare with the love we had for our daughter. Jake love for Georgia was proof that even the blackest hearts were capable of love. He was the light and the darkness, all at the same time.
Jake the angel, who comforted me at the hospital.
Jake the killer, who stood to leave, tucking his gun into the back of his jeans and checking for the additional clip in his boot.
“Tell me again you’re okay with this, that you won’t look at me differently afterwards.” His tone carried worry.
“I knew Owen’s death would be coming from the very night he raped me, and I wanted it to be you who killed him.” I didn’t hesitate to tell him. “I still do.” I held up the last of the pictures to him. It was the photo I had taken last, kneeling in front of the mirror with my legs spread open for the camera. The lens caught the bruises and dried blood caked in every nook of my body, over every inch of my already marred skin.
Jake’s nostrils flared and his eyes lost their light. The killer in him was being fed. I turned over the picture. In my handwriting was a note I’d written years ago.
Send him to hell, Jake.
Jake took the picture from me and read and reread the note on the back before folding it and tucking it into his leather jacket. He picked me up off the floor and gave me one last furious kiss before putting me down and stalking to the front door in quick, determined strides. “Thank you,” he whispered.
“Make sure you come back to us,” I reminded him. I hoped I hadn’t needed to.
“Leaving you was the worst mistake of my life, Bee. I won’t make it again.” Then, he was gone, disappearing into the blackness of the night.
The roar of his bike announced his leaving, but in minutes it was silent again, only the echoes remained.
“Make him suffer, baby,” I whispered to no one.
I once wondered if two broken souls could heal one another.
I hoped the answer was yes.
We may not have been perfect, or even acceptable by anyone else’s standards. But together, we were perfect.
Together, we were just us.
Battered and broken. Dark and difficult. Impulsive and scared.
I’d accepted Jake for being all of those things, yet for so long, I couldn’t accept them within myself. I finally realized that it’s possible to love within a space that sometimes holds nothing but emptiness... or nothing but darkness.
After all, we all have darkness within us.
Some of us more than others.
EPILOGUE
Jake
TWO NIGHTS PASSED BEFORE I WAS ABLE to make it home to Georgia and Bee, to my family. My clothes and skin were soaked with blood, mud, filth, and the other remnants of the dark places I had been. Bee threw herself into my arms without hesitation the second she saw me, despite my disheveled condition.
I’d pulled Bee into her bedroom that night, and she didn’t even let me shower before she asked me to describe to her what I had done to Owen in detail. Then, we had ourselves a long overdue, blood-covered, lust-fueled fuck-fest that lasted all night. For a woman who had once been afraid of my touch, she now devoured every moment of twisted carnal bliss between us.
Making love wasn’t our thing. We already had love. We made that every day. It was in every look, every touch, every understanding word.
Our sex? That was about owning one another. Finally being able to feel after years of pushing that shit aside in order to live and survive was an amazing fucking feeling. I wanted to live inside Bee, and I almost believe I do. That girl had gotten under my skin and inside my black soul the very first night I’d ever laid eyes on her.
I would walk around wearing her on my dick if I could.
I never thought I would be calling the house that used to hold so many ghosts, my parent’s old house, my home again. Our home. Truth is I could call a hollowed out tree home as long as Bee and Georgia were there with me.
My wife, my daughter, my entire life.
The reasons for my existence.
Yeah, we got married. We didn’t make too big a deal out of it. It was just something we felt we needed to do. Not to mention I really wanted to. My girls were always meant to share my last name. It became more important to me than I thought it would be. Our wedding was just the three of us, a witness, and a justice of the peace. We had the ceremony in the orange grove clearing during sunset, where more than my secrets were laid to rest.
It was perfect, our kind of perfect.
I became a better person because of them. The monster in me had been tamed, tucked away for the time being. He was still there deep inside, in a sort of semi-permanent hibernation. It was a comfort to know I could call on him if I ever needed to. Because if my family were ever to be threatened or harmed again, he will be fucking called on.
Truth of it was, I needed them more than they needed me. I’ve never fooled myself into believing that I was even remotely good enough for either of them. Instead, I made a promise to myself that I would give them the life they deserved, and be the man they needed me to be, even if being that man took more work on my part than I imagined others needed.
I no longer traded lives for money. I put that behind me and focused on helping Reggie run the shop. We got ourselves another receptionist so Bee could focus on her photography.
I haven’t killed since the night I was given permission by my woman to end the man who killed her grandmother, raped her, and shot my daughter.
If it had been possible, I would have killed that fucker three times over.
A sense of elation washes over me mixed with pure heated rage when I think of that sick fuck laying his hands on Abby the very night she let me into her heart and into her bed. I can’t stand to think about my poor frail Georgia in the hospital clinging to life. Even when I think of a defenseless and harmless old woman, walking to her own death while thinking she was doing nothing more than helping people, I feel a rage I sometimes find hard to tame.
Abby and I stopped talking about Owen entirely after that. The people of Coral Pines assumed he was drunk one night, fell off the seawall and drowned, like so many of the town’s alcoholics before him. I’m sure they thought his body had been made a good meal of by an alligator or wild boar in the mangroves somewhere.
No doubt, some of the town folk had their suspicions about me. I’m sure they thought I could be responsible in some way. After all, Owen had always hated me, and we’d publicly brawled on occasion. They knew how little we cared for each othe
r. But, the sad fact was that not many people gave a shit about where Owen might have gone.
I had his very own mother on my side.
Bethany knew I killed Owen. How? I told her. I was no fucking coward. I told her while we were still in the hospital what I was going to do the second I knew my girl was okay. She knew she couldn’t stop me and said she wasn’t even going to try. She knew as well as I did that Owen was like a rabid dog and had to be put down.
What I hadn’t expected was for her to ask me to kill her as well. She practically begged me.
It was sad, really.
She told me she couldn’t live with what she’d done to our family, and she didn’t know if she could survive the death of her only son. She still loved him, no matter how broken he was.
Story of my life.
Bethany had called herself a ‘human wrecking ball’. Fitting, maybe, but not punishable by death. Honestly, I had considered it. But, I wasn’t a fan of killing women, and Georgia and Abby seemed