Pull (Push #2) (5 page)

Redemption is impossible.

But maybe life isn’t.

“You might doubt yourself, David, but I do not,” she declares, my thoughts still ringing through my brain.

She is either the most amazing person on this planet or the biggest fool in the universe.

“Don’t make me have to kick your ass,” she says, without so much as a trace of a smile.

“Yes, ma’am,” I say quietly.

With those two words, her face cracks open and everything that is good and right and insanely brilliant about us shines straight out of her smile and into me, fusing my pieces back together and forcing me to believe, just for a second, that maybe she’s right.

Maybe I can be born-again.

I get up out of my chair, walk over to her side of the table, and stand over her. Her eyes are still filled with fire, and it excites me to see such strength in them. A pulse of eagerness jumps into my chest, and before I can say another word, she reaches up and puts her hands on my face, tilting my head down toward hers. Her breath brushes against my face and then her lips are on mine, pressing into me and lapping into my mouth. With each swipe of her tongue, I am comforted, soothed. Her wordless mouth is telling me she isn’t going to back down. It’s telling me there’s not a single doubt in her mind; she
knows
we are right. She
knows
I am done. She believes in a me that no one has ever seen before. Not even me. Her tongue tells me all these things and somewhere, deep inside, I can see him too. He’s just a shadow for now, but for the first time ever, there’s a chance that he exists.

She stands up, and I put my hands around her waist. My thumbs press into her hip bones, and I pull her body to mine. I want to find a way to thank her. To show her that I need her to keep believing in me, even if she’s the only person who ever does. She’s pressed against me, and I harden as her hips grind forward into mine. A few minutes later, when our lips part, she tilts her head back and closes her eyes. I lift off her shirt and drop it to the floor. The dog tags hang there, reassuring me with their stiff, meaningful presence. I want to touch her, to let her know how much I fucking feel for her. I grab the back of her neck with one of my hands and use the other to drag down her shorts. I lift her by the ass and put her up on the table, kissing her and tugging off her panties. Those panties. She’s wearing the light blue ones again. The ones with the black lace. The ones that melt me into nothing. She knew this would happen. She knew I would fall.

I step away from her and stand there, holding her panties at my side. Thoughts of her body beneath mine remove all the doubt. All the questions. I look at her for a minute before I turn and walk toward the bedroom. “Come on.”

She follows me to the bedroom. By the time we get there, I’ve taken off my shirt.

The sight of her body, clothe-less and freckled, pushes me to the edge. I need to feel her from the inside. Her eyes burn through me as I walk over to her and begin to skim my hands lightly across her body, touching her everywhere. Her shoulders, her stomach, her wrists. When I am behind her, touching her lower back, my breath hits her neck and she shivers. My hands roll over every inch of her skin. She is naked in front of me. I could do anything I want to her body, but instead, I only want to touch her. Like this. Forever.

The last part of Emma’s body I touch is her face. Her neck, her cheeks, her lips, her temples. I string her freckles together with a soft swipe of my fingertip. And when I am done, I kiss her closed eyes. A second later, her mouth is back on mine, kissing me full and hard, soothing me yet again. She slides her arms down between us and unzips my pants, pushing them to the floor. She tugs me over to the bed and we lie down together, on our sides. Face-to-face. My hands begin to touch her again, but this time there’s no tenderness. There’s only heat and want.

I push her shoulder against the bed. She’s flat on her back now, panting for me. I lean over her and begin to circle my fingers into the soft, wet flesh between her legs. That beautiful, deep place that makes her mine. She looks up at me, her eyes fire-filled and certain. Her hips respond to my touch by arching up and curling into me. She is writhing against the bed now, and I know she’s close. I stop touching her and position myself between her legs, driving myself into her over and over again.

Fucking hell. She lifts her hips in time with my movements and wraps her legs around my waist. I want to pound into her, to sink myself so deep inside of her that we both forget who we are and where we came from. My motions become more forceful, more impatient, and my hips smack against her skin and vibrate through her bones. I can feel us both rise.

I slide my hands under her back, against the mattress, and roll us both over so that she’s on top of me, sitting on me with her legs straddling my hips. My hands move to her ass, and I lift her up and drop her back down as my hips rise up to meet her body. I watch her with awe. Jesus, she is perfect. Words come out of her mouth. A chain of hot, wicked words that make me shove myself into her even harder. She’s on the edge again, and when she tells me not to stop, I go faster. We force ourselves against each other, and it isn’t long until she is singing with pleasure as she lets go. I hear her grunt as I come. Hard and fast.

When we still, she wraps her fingers into my hair.

Emma lies on top of me for a very long time, breathing against my chest. I lift my hands up to her ass and brush the flesh there with the tips of my fingers. Her skin is warm and soft. Still mine.

For some ungodly reason, my mother’s face flashes into my brain. It’s the first time I’ve pictured her since I was a teenager. I used to dream about her all the time, about that night, on the Laurel Bridge. And in my dream, things were always different. I was strong enough to save her. In my dream, I would pull her out of the water, and we would swim to the shore with our hands locked together. Once we were out of the river, she would smile at me and tell me I’m brave and strong. She would tell me how she loves her bright little bird more than anything in the whole, wide world. She would thank me for loving her enough to give my life to her. To die for her. That’s the kind of love the world needs more of, she would say.

That’s the kind of love I felt for her.

That’s the kind of love I feel for Emma.

“I love you,” I say to the top of Emma’s head.

It’s the first time those words have ever come out of my mouth. She lifts her face off my chest and looks up at me. Her eyes are wide and bright and sure.

                            -------------------------------------------------------------------

I almost can’t bring myself to leave her. She’s sleeping so soundly, her naked body wrapped around mine. My eyes adjust to the dark, and I brace myself for the conversation I’m about to have. I have a story to tell, and now there’s even more of a reason to make it one that sticks. I have to fill in all the holes and answer his thousand questions without faltering. I slide out of Emma’s bed and out her front door.

Chapter 9

After Sarah

I am standing on Clawsen’s Bridge looking at the round ripples in the water. It’s cold as hell. I put my hands together and blow a puff of my own hot breath into them. It doesn’t help.

Right before she fell off the bridge she called me a sick motherfucker. She said my plan was ridiculously stupid. Fuck her. She agreed to it, didn’t she? It couldn’t have been that stupid or she wouldn’t have been smiling when she got out of the car to run into the hardware store for the rope and sandbags. She was looking forward to playing this sick little joke on her father. The guy’s an asshole, after all. She said he deserved to have the shit scared out of him.

The end part though—that wasn’t something I planned. I never intended to actually push her off. But it was kind of exciting to control her like I did. To push her forward over and over again, and then pull her back at the last second, watching the tension build in her. Watching her lose her composure. I’m starting to think that maybe it’s the same feeling Alex Burson got when he bullied all the other kids in the fourth grade. Maybe he liked metaphorically pushing us all over the edge, watching us melt down into nothing but raw frustration. If this is the kind of rise he got out of it, I get it now. I see the appeal. Witnessing Sarah rendered down into nothing more than primal emotions was surprising. Seeing her anger and fear grow was far more fulfilling than I ever would have expected. The primitiveness of it all is making me feel heady and intense. It’s twisted. But it’s the truth.

And now, I’m standing here looking at the ripples where she hit the water and wondering if I should jump in and try to save her. My heart races, and my hands shake from more than just the cold. My mind quickly sifts through my options.

If I
do
jump in to save her, how will I even do it? Surely she’s sunk to the bottom by now. She’s probably already exhaled her last morsel of air and gulped down enough water to fill a bathtub. Plus, I don’t have a knife to cut the rope. Nor do I think I could even find her in the darkness. Still…it would be the right thing to do.

If I
don’t
jump in to save her, what will happen? She’ll die, of course. But more than that, everyone is going to want answers. Everyone is going to want to know what happened.

But then I remember that no one even knows I’m here. And only her father knows she’s here. She called him just before I pushed her, to trick him into thinking she was going to commit suicide. He doesn’t even know about us. He doesn’t even know his own little girl has had a boyfriend for the past five months. Not a single human being on the planet had so much as an inkling that the two of us were a couple. And I know for a fact no one will even bat an eye at the idea of some teenager committing suicide. Everyone knows we’ve all thought about it. We’ve all considered it an easy exit out of the psychological torment that is high school. Especially me.

The sound of approaching sirens snaps me out of my own head. Her dad must have called the cops.

I start to run.

Chapter 10

Matt—Present Day

Jennifer Lawrence is wearing a bright red push-up bra and a black lace thong. She’s making me a sandwich in the cafeteria at my office. She looks up and smiles at me as she spreads the mayo across the bread. I look around the room, and it seems I’m the only one who notices her. Everyone else is just sitting at their tables chattering away and shoving their lunch into their mouths like a bunch of starving convicts. Jennifer lifts the sandwich plate up over the sneeze guard, and when she does, her bra snaps open and her breasts come flying out onto the glass. The next thing I know, she’s on my side of the counter, dressed like Katniss Everdeen in a black leather jacket with her hair in a braid. She’s holding an arrow in one hand and the sandwich plate in the other. I’m about to kiss her when Brent starts pounding his fist on a cafeteria table. I snap my head to the side and glare at him. He’s smiling at me as his fist pumps up and down against the table’s surface. And then I hear his voice, but his mouth isn’t moving. He’s shouting something at me without even opening his lips.

“Matt,” he says, “let me in. Come on. We need to talk.”

What the hell. That’s not Brent’s voice. And he isn’t pounding on a table; he’s pounding on the door. He’s pounding on my apartment door.

Someone’s pounding on my door.

My eyes open, and I realize it’s David’s voice I hear. He’s outside my door, shouting at me to let him in. I look over at my clock. It’s one in the morning. What the hell does this man want from me? I climb out of bed, put on a pair of jeans, and walk out to the living room.

I open the door, and David’s standing there in the same clothes he had on last night. The same ones he had on when he pulled Emma from the water. Why is he still wearing the same clothes?

“Hey,” he says as I open the door.

“What are you doing here? Is Emma still in the hospital? Is she okay?”

“She’s fine. She’s sleeping at her place.” He puts his left hand into his pocket and fidgets with something inside.

“Good. I’m glad she’s alright.” I turn my body to the side and gesture for him to come inside. “Come in. You look like hell.”

David walks into the room and sits down on the couch. He leans forward and puts his hands on his knees. I turn on the small lamp on the end table and sit down on the chair across from him.

“I feel like hell, too,” he sighs, keeping his eyes on the floor. “I’m sorry to wake you up again, man, but I need to talk to you before you see Emma at work. I know we’ve got some explaining to do, and I don’t want her to be the one to have to do it.”

It’s then that I notice David has something small and yellow under his left index finger. He’s rubbing whatever it is along the top of his knee. I’ve never seen him fidget before, and it strikes me as very un-David-like.

“I’m just glad she’s okay,” I say with genuine compassion. I want to know everything that happened up there. I want to know what and how and why. David told me on the phone he couldn’t stop himself from doing something. Yet on the shore, after he pulled her out of the water, I swear her eyes told me that the whole thing was her doing. Whatever they did, she wanted to do it, too. He said he was going to ask her to do something for him, but it’s pretty clear that, whatever it was, her answer was yes.

“What happened up there, David? What the hell were you guys thinking?” My voice is thick and steady. I lied for them. I lied for
him.
To the police, for Christ’s sake. I want answers.

“It was stupid. I know that, and Emma knows it now, too. Thank God you were there. I might not have made it to the shore if I hadn’t known you were so close. I cannot thank you enough for having my back.” If that’s all he thinks he has to say, he’s sorely mistaken.

“This could have ended so differently. You know that, right? I mean, even with me there, she could have drowned. You could have drowned.
I
could have drowned. We could all be dead right now.”

“I know,” he says coolly, “and the idea of it still scares the shit out of me. I didn’t intend for it to be that way, trust me. It was supposed to be easier. I know what we all risked, and now I owe you an explanation as to why.” He picks up the small, yellow object under his index finger and stands up as he pushes it back into his pocket. He walks around to the back of the couch and puts his hands on the backrest, leaning forward and facing me.

“I concocted this whole plan to make it look like I pushed Emma off that bridge to get rid of her. I needed it to look like she drowned,” he explains.

What the hell? Why would he need to do that?

David drops his eyes to the floor and shakes his head from side to side. After a brief pause he adds, “It was only supposed to take a minute for me to save her, but instead it took nearly five, and I’ll never forgive myself for that.”

“Why on earth would you want it to look like she drowned?”

“For her own safety. Plain and simple.” David shrugs his shoulders. He stands up straight, runs his hands through his hair, and starts walking around the room. Words come flying out of him. “I don’t know how much Emma told you about her stepfather, Michael, other than the fact that he died and she wasn’t the least bit sad about it. And I’m not sure how much she would want me to tell you, but essentially, the guy was such a prick that one of his own stepsons beat him to death with a baseball bat. Michael was about to go to trial for tax evasion and illegal business practices. Emma’s brothers, Evan and Ricky, knew that if their stepfather was found guilty, he would have to go to jail and pay a huge fine. His assets would be seized and there would be nothing left for his stepchildren to inherit. But if, instead, Michael were dead, the three of them would wind up with a shitload of money. So in a junked-up haze, Evan decided to get rid of Michael. Only he’s a moron, and he got caught bludgeoning his own stepfather on a surveillance camera.”

“Holy hell,” I say with a breathy stutter.

“Just wait. It gets even more insane. So Evan is in jail, which is great, but the problem now is that the older brother, Ricky, is an even bigger asshole. Only he hasn’t been caught yet. Somehow the guy tracked Emma down and decided he was going to blackmail her because he said she doesn’t deserve her share of the inheritance. He hired some shady-ass lawyer to draw up papers and backdate them to look like Emma declared independence from Michael when she was seventeen, making her ineligible for any of the inheritance. He said she had to sign the document, and if she didn’t, he was gonna tell the cops she was the one who talked Evan into killing Michael because of years of abuse. Evan will back up his story, knowing his sentence will be reduced if he does.

“Emma, of course, told Ricky to fuck off. But that just served to piss the dude off. So then, he showed up here and threatened her. Apparently he’d been watching her for a while.”

“That’s messed up.”

“Yep,” David continues. “He wouldn’t leave her alone about it. The guy was relentless, and there was no way in hell Emma was going to give in. Then the motherfucker actually had the balls to tell her that maybe he’d just get rid of her like Evan got rid of Michael because then he’ll get
all
of Michael’s money for himself—even if she never signed the fucking papers.”

“This is straight out of some messed-up movie. And this is her own brother? That’s crazy. Tell me she didn’t give in. Tell me you beat the shit out of him instead.”

“She didn’t give in, and I didn’t beat the shit out of him—because I had no idea all this was even happening. She only told me about the whole mess after he threatened her life. I wanted to beat the shit out of him, trust me, but she wouldn’t tell me where he lives. So instead, when she was sleeping, I took her phone and got his number and called him up. He’s a twisted, sick motherfucker. He said he knew who I was because he’d seen Emma and me together. He’d been following us. He threatened me, too. It was a crazy phone call.”

David is standing across the room from me, and he crosses his arms over his chest. I can see how tense he is. I had no idea all this was going on with the two of them. This whole mess must be why he brought her to poker that night and why he had me take her home and stay with her when she was too drunk to function. He was looking out for her. Protecting her from her own family. I’ve spent practically every weekday with Emma since she moved here, and now I feel like an idiot.

“But then I came up with a plan to get him out of Emma’s life,” David says with a shrug. “And in the process, she would get some of that inheritance, too, and Ricky would never be the wiser. I lied and told the guy I wanted in on his plan. I told him Emma and I were falling apart, and I need money more than I need her. I told him I would drug her up and get rid of her myself if he gave me forty grand. Then he would get all of Michael’s money to himself, and I would get Emma out of my life. The fucker jumped at it. I couldn’t believe it.”

“So last night was you pretending to get rid of Emma?” I’m stunned. I can’t believe how messed up all of this is. This kind of shit is not supposed to happen in real life.

“Exactly.” His shoulders drop and his body slumps over on itself as he sits back down on the edge of the couch. He looks deflated. “I told her everything on Wednesday night. I told her about my phone call and about my plan to get Ricky out of her life. I asked her to let me tie her up and push her off the bridge. I told her I would jump in after her and pull her out. And if I couldn’t, then you would. We agreed it would be the best way to make him believe she was gone. I told her to act like I drugged her into compliance, like she was so junked-up on something she couldn’t even fight. She had sandbags on her feet, but they weren’t tied on properly. That’s why she didn’t get pulled under.”

That explains what I saw on her feet. I saw the sandbags.

“Holy shit. Does he know you went through with it? Does he think Emma’s dead?”

“He was there,” David says.

My eyes open wide, and my jaw drops in disbelief. “He was there? Seriously? Where?”

“He watched the whole thing from his car. He was parked at the end of the bridge, behind the berm. And when he saw me push Emma off, he drove past me and threw a backpack with forty grand in it into my open car window. That’s why I had to wait to jump in after her. I had to wait until he drove away. He couldn’t see me save her. He can’t know she’s still alive.”

“Damn,” I sigh. I raise my hands and steeple them under my chin as I lean forward and put my elbows on my knees. I can barely believe what I’m hearing. “So what happens next? I mean, are you just keeping the backpack full of money and hoping he doesn’t come back?”

“I called him on my way over here and told him it was over. I told him I stood on the bridge until the bubbles stopped. I told him she’s definitely dead. And just to make sure he had
everything
he needs, I told him I forced Emma to sign those papers anyway. The backdated ones his lawyer drew up. That way, no one would have any reason to come looking for her, and it would keep the police away from both of us. Ricky would get everything regardless. I dropped the papers into the mailbox on my way here tonight.” David leans back on the sofa cushions, takes a breath, and opens his mouth again. There’s something else.

“But then, just to make triple sure he never comes back,” he continues, “I told him that if he ever tries to contact me again, or if he tells anyone about what happened, I will not hesitate to tell the police everything. Even if it means I go to jail, too. I told him I recorded our phone conversations, and I would see him in hell and not a moment before.”

“Shit, David,” I say, leaning back into my chair, “remind me to never piss you off.”

“I owe you, man. I owe you everything.”

“I’m just glad she’s alright. I hope it works. I hope Ricky stays away from both of you.”

“He won’t be back. He got what he wanted.”

Though I don’t say it out loud, I also hope Emma doesn’t quit her job now that she has a backpack full of money. She’s a really good engineer, and it would be a shame to lose her.

We sit in my living room in silence for a few minutes before David talks again.

“I just have one more favor to ask you.”

“What?”

“Don’t push Emma too far on this. Don’t make her talk about it. And please don’t ask her about her stepfather or her brothers. She needs to think you are completely in the dark about how fucked up her childhood was. She needs this whole thing to be behind her. It’s the only way she’s going to be able to move past it.”

“You got it,” I say with a small smile.

David stands up, holding the yellow object between his left thumb and index finger again. He’s rubbing it in small circles, fixating on it. He takes a deep breath and reaches his right hand out to me. I stand up, and we shake hands. He thanks me again and apologizes for waking me up.

When David’s out the door, I head to the kitchen for a shot of something strong. I down a dram of Scotch and head back to bed, knowing Jennifer Lawrence and her red push-up bra will not be back tonight.