End of Day (Jack & Jill #1) (44 page)

“Cage’s game … next week.”

He narrowed his eyes for a moment then nodded, pulling her back into his hold. “His game … next week.”

Day

J
essica returned to
San Francisco with fifteen-hundred dollars, a medal, and the biggest motivation ever to overcome her issues. In true Mr. Stuffy Pants fashion, Luke insisted they keep up their arrangement: cleaning and counseling.

“Miss Day.” Luke smiled while holding open the door to his condo.

They hadn’t talked since returning from the race. Not even their newfound relationship could distract from the post-triathalon coma they fell into, sleeping for almost eighteen hours straight.

“Jones,” she reached for his neck, craving his touch.

“No, no, no…” he dodged her advance “…work then play.”

Her jaw dropped. “Are you serious?”

“Deadly.” He turned, walking toward the bedroom.

“Did you not say you were madly in love with me?”

“I did and I am.” He turned into his bedroom and continued to the closet.

The reaffirmation gave her a giddy shiver. “Just one kiss.”

His unexpected one-eighty degree turn had her bumping into his chest. Chanel No. 69 poisoned her thoughts as he looked down at her. “It could never be just
one
kiss.” Those dark blue eyes held so much promise, so much expectation.

“Fine. But I don’t want to do any chores.”

“Why not?”

“Because it will distract me from what I’m going to tell you.

Luke leaned back against his closet door, hands in his back pockets. “What are you going to tell me?”

Her eyes locked to his. “Everything.”

*

Jessica and Claire
had been friends since the first day of kindergarten. They were ketchup sisters since Claire was too scared to poke her finger to be certifiable blood sisters. Claire nearly passed out when she got her first period, and she wore clip-on earrings because the thought of having her ears pierced made her queasy and ashen in the face.

It was all kinds of fucked-up karma that she died in the bloodiest way possible—one slow cut at a time. By the final cut, the one that sliced through her femoral artery, Edwin Harvey sealed his fate. Something shifted in the universe, an imbalance that had to be set right. An eye for an eye. His death would be cataclysmic and at the hands of Jessica Day.

“You’re next.” Edwin tossed the bloodied knife on the card table and wiped the remainder of Claire’s life from his hands with an old rag.

Trigger cursed when he discovered their cocaine stash had been depleted. “Eddy, I’m going out.” He grabbed his phone. “She’s mine when I get back. You’ve had yours.” He smirked at Jessica.

Claire’s blood pooled along the floor, seeping through Jessica’s soiled shorts. It was still warm—a last kiss goodbye. There should have been tears. Any normal person would have been screaming and crying in a fit of hysteria. But when Claire released her last breath, something broke inside of Jessica. A piece of her humanity, the innate part of her that was programmed from birth to do no harm. It was severed and her grief remained buried under the desire—the need—to end Edwin’s life.

“H-how many days h-has it b-been?” Jessica rasped through her dry, raw throat, feeling a new wave of dehydration seizing her body. The dog bowl had been dry for quite some time.

“Three, bitch. Why? You have a date or something?” Edwin continued to scrub at the blood under the single light that hung from the basement ceiling. The wretched smell of death and other bodily fluids hung stagnant in the dungeon air.

“Yes…” her eyelids fought to stay open “…with Jude. H-he’s going to try and k-kill you, b-but I w-won’t let him.” It wasn’t hope, it was certainty. Jude tracked her phone at all times and it was on when she and Claire arrived at the hellhole. He’d know her last location, even if the battery died.

Edwin laughed. “I don’t know who the fuck Jude is, and I don’t really care, but I’m touched that you’re going to save me, sweetheart. Why the sudden love for me? Your slutty friend steal your boyfriend and therefore deep down you’re grateful that I ended her pathetic little life?”

Jessica rolled her head side to side. “No, because
I’m
going to k-kill you.”

His laugh grew to a roar. “Well this will be interesting. You can’t talk without stammering all over the place and you’re sitting in a puddle of blood and piss with your arms and legs restrained, yet you’re going to kill me?”

She forced her tired eyes to meet his sadistic gaze and then she nodded once before passing out. Voices mixed with jolting sounds echoed like a tunnel, and random flashes of light blurred into hazy outlines—then black.

*

“Wake up so
I can fucking kill you,” a voice whispered in her ear.

Jude came into focus as she peeled her eyes open.

“Stop it!” her mom pushed him aside. “Hey, honey.” She rested her palm on Jessica’s cheek. “You’re going to be fine. Two broken ribs but thankfully they didn’t puncture your lung.” Tears swelled in her mom’s eyes despite the smile of relief on her face. “Dad’s in the waiting room handling some things. I’ll go tell him you’re awake.” She kissed her forehead.

Jude moved to her side again, greeting her with a scowl. “I’m serious, as soon as you get out of the hospital I’m going to kill you.”

She managed a faint grin through the residual effect of whatever drugs they’d given her. “At least I’ll die at the hands of a worthy adversary.”

Jude’s expression softened. “Claire is …”

“I know.” Jessica averted her gaze, guilt-ridden that she had yet to shed a single tear. “Did you kill them?”

“Them? You mean him?”

Her eyes shot to his. “Them. There were two.”

Jude shook his head. “One. When we arrived there was only one, Edwin Harvey.”

“No there was another. He left, I think for drugs. Trigger, he called him Trigger. He carried the gun and waved it around with an itchy finger.”

“Claire … who killed—”

“Eddy or ‘Edwin’ … he cut her—only him. But I think …”

Jude sat on the edge of her bed. “You think what?”

“I think I somehow belonged to Trigger. I was his toy and it was going to be his turn.” She sucked in a shaky breath. “You didn’t answer me. Did you kill him?”

“No. I wasn’t alone. Dad was there too and you kept coming in and out of it, but the only thing you said was ‘don’t kill him.’”

“He’s alive?”

“Yes. He’ll never see the outside of a prison cell, but he’s alive.”

“Good.” She nodded.

“Good?”

“Hey, baby girl.” Their dad walked in the room.

“Hi, Dad.”

He kissed the top of her head. “We need to talk.”

She nodded.

*

Luke poured her
another glass of wine as they admired the view of the city’s lights welcoming the sunset from the balcony. He listened to every single word, but it wasn’t enough. She held the pain too tight and too close to her heart and he couldn’t take it from her. It was a part of her and it always would be.

Mostly she stared into the night as if she were looking at everything and nothing at the same time, but she’d give him an occasional glance filled with worry, searching for judgment in his eyes.

“Jessica …” he held out his hand, having reached his limit, no longer able to resist. He needed her touch.

She looked at it for a moment before taking it. He pulled her over onto his lap.

“I’m all in. Do you get that?”

She worried the edge of her lip between her teeth, giving him a barely detectable nod that lacked true conviction.

“You don’t
really
get it, do you?”

She frowned. “It’s … well, I just told you that I didn’t cry for my dead friend and that I wanted to kill a man. And I’m not done. The story’s not over. I made good on my promise.” Her brow drew tight. “That’s a lot to be ‘all in’ for: the truth, the person I became that day—and to some extent always will be—my twisted mind, and morbid obsession. Can’t you see how hard it is to ‘get’ that any person with even half my sanity would willingly be all in?”

“Well, I am.”

“Well you shouldn’t be!” She shot off his lap.

He felt his heart rip from his chest, confirming that she had it, at least part of it.

“What is wrong with you? I’m getting ready to tell you I killed a man, but I’m not going to stop there. I’m going to give you every sadistic, gory, fucked-up detail about it. And then I’m going to tell you that I walked away and in the past decade I haven’t regretted it for one. Single. Second.”

“It doesn’t change anything.” He felt her agony, the torture, the unforgivable guilt that left a permanent mark on her heart, her conscience, and her self-image.

Jessica huffed a sarcastic laugh. “
Really?
” She paced the length of the deck several times before settling with her back to the railing, resting on her hands. “I wanted to die after I attacked my mom when she woke me the first morning home from the hospital. I was so messed up. My father worked round the clock to assure Four would never taste freedom again. But he was privileged, born into a family with an obscene amount of money, so he was released on bond. My family was outraged … everyone but me.”

Luke refused to cower under her glare, the one that said she couldn’t imagine how he could love her … all of her.

“His family sent him to stay at their private beach house to protect him from the media. It was almost too easy, too perfect. I’d been a mess for weeks, and Jude knew I needed something more than a guilty verdict. He was my decoy for getting into the beach house and my backup if anything went wrong. But it didn’t. In less than five minutes I had him restrained with
zip ties.
I was there for two hours and even that was too merciful. Forty-four … I cut him forty-four times, the final cut was to his femoral artery. He begged for mercy. I showed none—not one second of hesitation, not one moment of regret, not one tear.”

He waited for her to continue, but she just looked at him. Whatever awful reaction she expected him to have, he didn’t. She killed the man that stole her emotional innocence and murdered her best friend. He deserved everything he got. It wasn’t the professional opinion of Dr. Jones or even well-thought-out logic. It was simply Luke’s raw human emotion in that moment, his truth.

“He had it coming, Jessica.”

“Bullshit! How can you have a fucking degree in psychiatry and say that? Yes, he deserved to die, but it doesn’t make what I did right.” Her voice cracked as she fisted and pulled at her hair, squeezing her eyes shut. “My hands
didn’t
shake. Do you
get
that? I was a damn surgeon with every cut, immune to his pain, immune to his cries, immune to my own humanity.”

He sighed. “What do you want from me?”

She shook her head, tears growing heavy in her eyes. “I want to deserve your love and I want it to make sense.”

“Jessica—”

She wiped her tears and walked back inside. His muscles ached to run after her. But then what?

J
essica imagined telling
Luke everything would free her. It didn’t. Saying the words aloud, hearing them herself, and reliving the events only confirmed her insanity—how unworthy she was of anyone’s love. She could be the strongest most confident woman in the world, but it wouldn’t change her past, it wouldn’t change the truth. Edwin Harvey sealed his fate the day he took Claire’s life and Jessica sealed hers the day she took his. She was destined to live without love and the kind of happiness normal people dreamed about. That was her life—her prison.