Hopelessly Yours (10 page)

She bit her lip and finally looked at me. She was still making up her mind. That or planning her escape. "How many?"

I winced inwardly, the number seared on my brain. A number too high to do me any favors. "Seventeen."

"
Seventeen
?" Her eyes bulged as she staggered backward. I was losing her again. I could feel her slipping between my fingers.

"I know this all sounds bad—"

"One sounds bad. Seventeen sounds—" She shuddered, like she was trying to wrench the images of broken bodies from her mind. "Terrifying."

"I'd never hurt you," I stressed. "Not in a million years." But I saw that my words had no effect. If I could just hold her—

She recoiled from my touch. She wasn't on the fence, deciding if she'd been wrong about me all along, or if somehow this wasn't the real me. She looked through me with hate burning in her eyes.

"You don't get to touch me ever again. Not with the same hands that hurt all those people.” Her eyes flashed, something eating her up inside. “Did you hurt Mark Benton?”

I wanted to lie. I wished I could have. I didn’t want to do that to her. “Yes.”

Her face crumbled. “You nearly killed him, Jace. And now you're telling me you did that to sixteen other people?"

She paused, chest heaving up and down.

Paused...that meant she was giving me an opportunity to explain myself. This was my chance to make it right. This was my chance to do more than scribble on a piece of paper. That was the coward's way out. I couldn't manage more than three words then, and they weren't even the three words she deserved to hear. 

I gulped hard as she tilted her chin up defiantly. She was listening, and it better be good—or else.

"As far back as I can remember, I've felt like shit,” I said finally, my voice raw and exposed. “My mother dropped me off when I was a few days old. Told my grandmother she was running errands. Must be one hell of a shopping trip because I haven't seen her since." I let out a strangled chuckle, my eyes releasing hers for a minute. I couldn't handle the pity that softened her gaze. It was almost as bad as the disgust.

This was all shit I kept buried deep. Scars that throbbed every day. I'd never talked about this to anyone. Not to the court ordered therapist I was required to see after I beat the shit out of Josh in high school. Not the lackluster counselor at Clint Alternative School, who was more interested in checking his email anyway. This was more than tearing off the old band-aid. Ripping the scab. Going to this place of darkness and pain was like dragging my nails into the wounds until they bled.

"I know it's hard to believe, but my grandmother was actually nice tonight. She didn't call me a worthless piece of shit. She didn't throw a wine bottle at my head. She even spared me one of her favorite lines: You should never have been born at all."

The gasp fell from Victoria’s lips like a bomb. It laid waste to my plans to be strong; to give her the highlights. My heart, my soul needed to confess.

"You know what school was like for me, then I came home to more of the same. I lost track of how many times I wanted to walk into my uncle's bedroom, put the gun in his nightstand inside my mouth, and—"

I stopped. I didn't need to finish that thought. Tears flooded her eyes.

"I felt so powerless. And then the fight happened. After Josh lay bloody at my feet, he looked at me with something that I used to feel when he and his asshole friends strode into the room. Fear. I looked around, still holding the bat, and it was a ripple effect. Before, I was either invisible or a sad loser. But in that moment, I was God.

"So I went to Macone. My uncle works for him, and that's a man that no one wants to mess around with. I wanted that. After losing you and that fight, I needed it. I was too young then, of course. But he told me on my eighteenth birthday, the job was mine." I crossed my arms. "I rationalized it at first, told myself they were bad people. Bullies. But that didn't stick. They cowered, they begged, they fumbled for pictures of their family. And I discovered that even though I looked nothing like the Jace I was back then, scrawny, with long hair to shield me from the world, more introspective than was healthy, I knew I still had my conscience. I drowned in their blood, and then I tried to drown out my demons with girls and booze. I made a plan, an endgame. I'd save up enough to go away forever. To put this town and all the bad things that were done to me, that I did to people, behind me. And then I saw you at the party."

She brushed the tears from her cheeks, her voice low. "And I saw you. Girls hanging all over you like we were at the Playboy mansion. I couldn't believe my eyes. I couldn't believe you were my Jace."

My heart clenched. ‘My Jace’. "That's just the thing. When I saw you, I realized that if I lived a hundred years, I'd never stop loving you. Everything that changed in my life, the things I'd done—all of it faded to black. There was nothing, and no one, but you."

She pushed off the door, the space between us a memory as she bit her bottom lip the way that drove me wild. I could feel the need radiating from her. I stroked her jaw with my fingertips, whispering across her soft skin as she leaned toward me, her lips asking for the last thing I expected.

I kissed her, our breath mingling, my heart soaring as she moaned into my mouth. There would be no one else for me. Victoria had me, body and soul.

She gave me a final peck, her lips lingering before she let out a sigh. "I'm so sorry that happened to you, Jace. I had no idea things were so bad at home." Her voice hardened. "But I thought we had no secrets, you and I. I gave you something precious, and you swore you'd never leave. That you loved me."

I ran my fingers through her chocolate strands. "I do love you—"

"But I can't be with you,” she cut in. “I can't be with someone who needs to hurt people to feel powerful. To escape." She squeezed her eyes shut like she was gathering strength, then retreated to the door. "I deserve better."

I didn't stop her even though everything in me was screaming to keep her here until she understood. When the door clicked shut behind her, a part of my soul died.

Whatever chance we had walked out the door.

She was done with me.

I
needed a drink.

When I climbed behind the wheel and sped away from Jace's confession, I wanted to keep going, not stop for anything until I hit campus. I would finally take my friends up on their invitation to party on Greek Row. Get trashed until I forgot my name. Until I forgot Jace.

Until I forgot that the boy I loved was really gone.

I couldn't stop shaking, my body rattling so hard that my teeth chattered. It wasn't fear, even though I should have been afraid after I saw what he did to Mark Benton's face.  I felt like someone had taken a butter knife and carved my heart right out of my chest. I could feel the pulpy, bloody muscle slowly withering and dying. All the hope I felt for the future were erased in one fell swoop.

I angrily swatted a tear as I straightened my spine. I went into damage control mode. How could we make it work? My mother was the district attorney. He was a criminal. There was no making it work. No redemption. No more flirting. No more...kissing. Or touching.

My skin turned to goose flesh, remembering how right it felt to be touched by him. How my body came alive beneath his fingertips.

I punched the power button on the radio, hoping music would drown out the war in my head. On one hand, I was disgusted by what he'd done, how far he'd gone. But then, there was his grandmother. I'd seen how terrible she was with my own eyes, and from the hurt in Jace's when he told me about his childhood, that wasn't the half of it.

He thought there was no escape. No other way.

"There's always a way," I whispered as a tear splashed down my cheek. This town wasn't dead. He could have worked retail or fast food like every other kid our age.

But that was just the thing...Jace wasn't like us. He had so much intensity, so much passion. An old soul. That was what drew me to him. The beauty.

The darkness.

But I never imagined the darkness would pull him to Macone.

My gas light flickered to life on my dashboard. I was feeling antsy anyway, so I pulled into the next gas station I saw.

It was one of the old school ones. There was nothing fancy or electronic, everything covered in ancient rust. I half expected someone to trot out to the car and ask me if I wanted them to pump the gas for me.

I stepped out of my car, stretching my arms to the overcast sky. It's funny how sunny and upbeat it was on the way to The Heights, and now it looked moments away from dumping buckets. I’d driven out with so much hope tucked in my heart, and Jace shredded it all.

Swallowing the tears, I fished a twenty out of my wallet and walked into the gas station.

I frowned. There was a register, but no one was behind it. I opened my mouth to alert whoever was working in the back that they better come quick. Their only paying customer was tempted to test her luck and go to the next station. A sound choked the words before they passed my lips.

Since I'd just been doing a fair amount of crying myself, I knew what a sob sounded like. And it was followed by a commotion, like something, or someone, had fallen to the floor.

I was frozen, fight or flight stalled. My brain was working a million miles a minute, even if my limbs wouldn't move. It told me to back out of the exit, climb back in my car, and as soon as I put a few blocks between me and this place, to call the police.

And then I heard it. Two distinct popping sounds that made me flinch. My heart stopped cold.

I'd seen action movies before: testosterone filled epics where bullets flew and the bad guys dropped dead. The sound I heard was loud and crude, so loud that I was surprised I didn't hear sirens immediately. The crack should have been easily heard at the police station dozens of miles away.

Someone had just fired a gun.

And from the silence that followed, I had an idea that they'd fired it into the person who had sobbed. Begging for mercy where there was none.

But I still couldn't move.

Not even when a man strode out of the back room. He was in all black, from his inky cropped hair to his black shirt and jeans, holding a black gun in his hand. A gun with a long chamber at the end.

A silencer? That sound I heard was suppressed? It was supposed to be a tiny splat, a whisper in the dark.

The movies got it all wrong.

I'd never been in shock before, but I had a feeling that's what this was. I should have been out the door, not comparing Hollywood to the grim reality in front of me.

I blinked, fear making me glad I hadn't had anything to drink recently or it would be puddling at my feet.

I took a single step backward as the guy in black raised his arm—and his gun.

I closed my eyes.

I was about to die.

Would they leave my body somewhere to be discovered, or would my parents always wonder?

Would Jace miss me?

"No!"

I thought the word came from me, but my mouth was clamped shut, terrified to utter a single syllable.

I popped my eyes open and saw a second man. He was taller than the first. Older, with long salt and pepper hair and familiar brown eyes.

He stepped in between me and the man with murder in his gaze.

He was my savior. He said only one word.

“Run.”

The other man didn't approve, but his curses were far behind me. My fingers felt foreign and useless, but somehow I got in my car and burned rubber. The world spun off its axis until I'd put miles and miles between me and the gas station. I could barely see the windshield through my tears, snot oozing from my nose. I was babbling and laughing like a crazy person.

Shaking and picking up the pieces of my sanity, I pulled into a McDonald’s parking lot. It was teeming with people and business. The man in black couldn't shoot me here. Not with all of these witnesses.

I pressed the call button on my steering wheel. "Call 9—" the rest of the number stalled on my tongue as I thought back to the second man. The one that stood between me and a bullet. The man with the bright brown eyes.

Eyes like Jace's.

I remembered the shrine-like vibe I got when I walked into Jace’s house. Every picture in the living room focused on a coarse, unsmiling boy, who became an even coarser, unsmiling man.

He was Jace's uncle.

My Bluetooth system had already given up, but I tapped the button again and said my command without hesitation.

"Call Jace."

The phone rang twice before his deep voice flowed from the speakers like honey.

"I’m not gonna lie—I had to do a double take when I saw you were calling. I'm sure you probably butt dialed me." He paused, probably waiting for me to say something smart.

Suddenly, I forgot how to form sounds and words.

"You there, Vix?"

No longer in motion, the reality of everything that happened in the gas station went full steam ahead. Slamming into me. Pulverizing me until there was nothing left to keep me together.

So I let go.

I sobbed. I screamed. I banged my hands against the steering wheel until the pain was a blistering thing that shouted down the fear. When I quieted, Jace's voice came to me in the darkness. Comforting me.

"I'm so sorry for what I did, Vix. I want to be better. I want to be the guy—"

"This isn't about Mark Benton," I sniffled.

I glanced around me, all alone except for parked cars. All alone. Which meant they could come for me. Finish the job. The movies may be wrong about silencers, but they weren't wrong about the bad guys offing witnesses. I'd seen photographs of crime scenes in my mom's office. People who turned on their bosses and joined her case against their former employers. The men and women who worked with her rarely made it to the courtroom. I saw their final moments in the photos, the walls painted with their brains.

No witnesses.

I started my car. "I think your uncle and some other guy may have murdered someone. I have to get home. I have to be safe—"