Shark Out of Water (Grab Your Pole, #3) (53 page)

So yeah, at this point I think it’s fairly safe to say that Jillian and I were both holding our breath again but this time, in complete and utter shock. Shock about many different pieces of information we’d just learned too. One, Brandon’s last name is Darcy. Darcy as in the ultimate good guy from
Pride and Prejudice
.
The
hero. I don’t know why, but that’s pretty ironic in my opinion. Brandon’s not exactly the first person you’d think of to describe someone who prides himself on his rigid morals, upstanding behavior, or his superior breeding and social standing. Two, it sounds like Brandon’s getting in trouble inside at the moment with Keith, who’s made at minimum six trips to his room to refill his flask with the tequila he’s been downing ever since Brandon showed up with Melissa. Three, the guy on the phone actually just admitted to being a participant in a gang rape. And four, the guy on the phone is Evil. Oh and five, Evil smokes. Which shouldn’t be a surprise really, being that he’s Evil and all, but still…

Goddamn it if Brandon and Tristan weren’t one hundred percent right about him the whole fucking time. I was so unbelievably tempted to lay him out flat right then, but Jillian, feeling the coiled tension in my body, was looking at me and shaking her head no. Then, hearing Evil continue, it was
my
turn to stop
her
…

“Well, that’s what I wanna know. I’m gonna pre-game her with the X but I don’t wanna give it to her too soon, you know, it’ll look weird if she starts to act wired while we’re still downstairs. … Because I’m done fucking around! I thought for sure she’d be easy with the rep her ex has, you know? … Right, that’s the guy, … Yeah, Saman— … Well, I’ve been playing it cool, you know, just bein’ the nice guy but it’s gettin’ me nowhere so I’m gonna move things along. … Mm-hm, I’m gonna give her the roof— … No, I’m not gonna use Rohypnol, she’ll fuckin’ pass out completely and forget, and after that fiasco last year, I think it would raise too many questions so Doug gave me some GHB and I figure that plus the X and I’ll be good. She’ll remember everything and think it was all her. … I know, right?!”

Jillian was shaking with rage, but after hearing what Evil had already done and what he’s now planning to do, I knew knocking him out right now wouldn’t do a goddamned thing except prevent Camie from being date raped tonight. Obviously that’s the primary goal here, but in addition to that, this guy really needs to go to jail. So I held Jillian tight and told her to be quiet with my eyes. Holding them, she looked almost scared, but putting her trust in me, she nodded and we continued to listen, with me hoping to hear some more details I can use to come up with some kind of proof that’ll warrant a phone call to the police.

“No, I took care of the room earlier today. … Eh, I can just say I got it last minute or something if someone asks. … Where? … Oh, I’m gonna go up and get the X in a minute so I can spike her drink down here, but I’ll leave the roofies and booze up in my room. … Totally, I think she’s gonna be the best fuck thus far but if she isn’t, which come on, not with that guy as her boyfriend, you
know
she knows how to fuck. … Yeah, from what I heard, and I’m done fucking virgins. … I dunno, it got old. … Probably. Anyway, if she isn’t or if she passes out early, I’ll ditch her and come party with you. … Dude, look who you’re talkin’ to…of course I’m still gonna get my dick wet even if she passes out, I just meant after. … Okay, sounds good. … So you think I slip her the X about forty-five minutes before we go up? … Okay, cool, I should probably do it soon then, I think I saw some people leaving when I came out here…”

Evil’s voice drifted away as he began walking back to the doors of the hotel. I looked at Jillian and she whispered, “You better know what you’re doing because I will never forgive you if that…that…”

I gave her a kiss on the forehead when she couldn’t even come up with an appropriate word for…for…huh. All I got is Evil. “He needs to be arrested, Jillian, you know that.”

She sighed and looked at me. “I know, but if he hurts my sister, I’ll be the one getting arrested.”

I grinned at her. Being as protective of her family as she is, I wouldn’t put it past her to seriously injure or maybe even kill him, but, she’d never get caught. “Okay, so here’s the plan for now…we don’t tell the others because, you know, he’ll never stand a chance and he won’t really pay for what he’s done. I’m gonna follow him to see where his room is and then I’ll lift his key when he comes back down…maybe I can even get the ecstasy, but if not, you don’t let Camie eat or drink anything he’s had access to. I’ll go back up to his room and make sure I can find the other drugs and we’ll go from there.”

“Um, here…” she muttered and handed me her iPod which had me raising a brow in question, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I got most of it.”

Then I had to stifle a chuckle…not that there’s anything funny about this whatsoever, but I hadn’t even noticed Jillian had her iPod in her hand and had been recording what was being said. I looked at the elapsed time and realized she’d gotten the whole thing almost from the beginning. It’s an odd compulsion of hers, but hey, it comes in
really
handy every now and then, you know?

“I’m sure it won’t hurt,” I said and handed it back to her, “Alright, let’s go. Jeff’s been keeping an eye on her and Brandon and most of the guys have been watching him, so she’s completely safe as long as he doesn’t drug her and she’s not left alone with him…okay?”

She nodded, squared her shoulders and we left our hiding place, again, without holding hands. This time though, we weren’t holding hands because of me. I was wiggling my fingers and loosening ‘em up, getting the blood flowing all the way to their tips and blowing on ‘em to check their sensitivity level, all in preparation to commit a misdemeanor.

What? Yeah, I know it’s technically wrong, but committing a very minor crime in an attempt to prevent a major one and catch a felon at the same time is totally justifiable in my book…

If you try hard enough, you can justify just about anything ~ Tristan

Jesus, what the fuck am I
doing
?

Trying to justify leaving this letter for Camie at the hotel when I know I shouldn’t be even remotely close to here at all.
That’s
what I’m doing.

I told myself over and over again that it can wait until tomorrow, but, I still made the hour-plus drive to get my ass all the way over here from the lake. I know I need to give her tonight and I swear I’m not gonna even try to see her—well, that is, I’m
hoping
I can keep myself from trying to get a glimpse. If I do, chances are there’ll be some kidnapping and then, of course, fighting. I absolutely don’t wanna let our “passion” make me its bitch anymore, but I really need to get this over with. Over the last hours, I’ve been drawing strength and determination from music and listening to Linkin Park’s “What I’ve Done” helped me to see that regardless of the pain that’ll no doubt come, I need to forgive myself for what I’ve done so I can start again. And as the song says, “Today this ends, I’ll face myself, and let go of what I’ve done,” so my intention is just to leave the letter at the front desk for her. That way she can read it later tonight maybe and hopefully call me tomorrow morning so we can talk. Sans passion. Then I can forgive myself.

I sighed again and then drumming my fingers on the steering wheel of the bus, I first looked at my baby book on the passenger seat and then at the glove compartment again. I almost reached for the book but leaned a little further and pulled out the letter I’d written to Camie at the lake, under the stars and full moon. After I finished with my room, I’d gone out there this afternoon to start getting things for the party set up, but when the sun went down and the moon rose to shine like a silver dollar on the lake with the stars twinkling in the reflection of the water while the wind was gently rustling the leaves of the surrounding trees, well, it made me think of that day Camie and her parents had gone out there to get to know my parents and how when the sun set, she and I were at perfect peace laying on the bank of the lake together, fishing in the dark. Which made me remember how we ruthlessly teased each other via text messages the day of our first date, which lead me to thinking about finding the girls, and then how we ended that night on the porch swing in front of her house, looking at the stars together, and I realized there’s a lot more than just the truth that I want her to know. I don’t know how much I’ll be able to say once we start talking about her birthday though, so when I heard that song again that Jeff had asked about earlier in the day, “Please Read the Letter,” wafting out of my earbuds that were hanging around my neck, I decided to write her this letter.

I tapped it in the palm of my hand for a moment, opened my door to step out and then closed it again. Just like I’d been doing for the last twenty minutes or so.

I really shouldn’t be here…

Sighing again, I took the letter out of its envelope and thought about reading through it once more, just to make sure it says what I want it to say, and the way I wanna say it. I want her to know how I feel and that I’m gonna tell her the truth, but I don’t wanna sound like I’m trying to make her feel guilty for wanting to know the truth in the first place or make her feel responsible for me. I unfolded the paper and just stared at it. My eyes traveled over the words, unseeing, until I found myself subconsciously taking them in and reading again all the unspoken emotion I’d put on a piece of paper…

I’m going to tell you everything. The whole truth. And I’ll admit that I’m a coward, but even so, I’m not going to tell you in a letter. You deserve more than that and actually, so do I. What I don’t deserve is taking the easy way out. The truth is ugly and it’s going to hurt me to see what hearing it does to you, but it’s time for me to finally face the ugliness of what I did, and the only way for me to do that and be able to face myself in a mirror and not see a monster is if I face you first, so that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to tell you face to face. It’s not going to be easy for either of us, Camie, and I think you should prepare yourself, but I’ll tell you whenever you think you’re ready. Today, tomorrow, next week, whenever. I’m leaving the when up to you. However, once we start talking about how everything got to where it is, I don’t think I’ll have the opportunity to tell you some other things that I want you to know. And since I’m going with honesty from now on, even if I did have the opportunity, I doubt I’d have the courage or strength to say what I want to so that’s what this letter is about. I know this could’ve and honestly should’ve come long before now, but please know that although it was buried beneath fear, it’s not anymore and that every word of this is the truth and that it comes from deep within my heart.

I stopped breathing the first time I saw you. Literally. And it was the same the next time my eyes fell on you. And the next, and the next. I really thought there was something wrong with me, and come to find out, there was, but what I didn’t know was that God was fixing me. He was making me right by giving me you. The morning you walked into my life for real, I stopped breathing like I had all throughout the summer, but that time was different. That time my heart stopped with my breath and I didn’t start living again until I saw you in English four hours later. And that’s how it’s been for me ever since. Each and every day I wake up, I don’t truly live. My heart doesn’t beat and I don’t breathe until I see you. Until I can touch you and know that you’re real. I think that’s why we sometimes get jolted with electricity when we touch. It’s what brings me back to life after being away from you.

In the last four weeks that we’ve been apart, I’ve learned some things about myself that I’m finding hard to swallow, but in the last twenty-four hours, I’ve experienced some lightbulb moments that, hopefully, will help me live with my past and the regrets I have. I want the fairytale, Camie, and I want it with you, but I have to acknowledge and accept that because of the numerous mistakes I’ve made, all of which I think we could get past bar the big one, I might not get a happy ending here. But I won’t tell you that I can’t live without you because the truth is, I can live without you. That’s not to say that I expect living without you will be easy, as each day I’m alive I’ll still look to you for breath, but just that I know I can do it. I only tell you this so that once you hear the truth you don’t feel obligated to lie to me in return. I want you to feel safe from any kind of backlash you think your reaction might have on me. And because that probably sounds ominous in itself and I’m sure you’ll hear about it eventually, I’d much rather have you hear it from me so I’ll explain where it came from.

I felt like dying when you believed I was breaking up with you on your birthday. And then, three days later, I almost did meet my death. You didn’t realize it and even if you did, you thought you had just motive, but your simple belief that I would break up with you like that after everything we went through the week before drove a poisonous dagger straight into my heart. Instead of letting you see that you’d broken me just as you thought I had broken you, I put on a mask of ambivalence. I left you that day and took all the anger, hurt, and pain with me and allowed it to fester and become infected. What happened was unintentional and I was just trying to make the pain and you go away but, it backfired on me. I got too drunk and through my own inebriated stupidity, I wound up face down in the ocean on the brink of passing out and drowning. Death wasn’t my goal but the reality is, I would have died. The only reason I didn’t is because of two people’s selfless willingness to look past my mask. And for that, I will owe them for eternity. Just as I will owe you for giving me the gift of your heart, would that I’d taken better care of it while it was mine.

In one of my aforementioned lightbulb moments from the wee hours of this morning, I came to understand that while I’ve only been hurting you, I’ve been killing myself. By not being honest with you I’ve been slowly dying at my own hands. I didn’t understand why I felt a burden lift when I finally broke down and told Jeff, and then when I spilled my guts to Brandon last weekend the guilt of my actions lessened again, even if it was only a very small amount. But every time you asked for the truth, I refused you because I thought it would hurt you too much. I realize now that’s not true. Admitting to you what I did will hurt me. I’ve been hurting you to keep from hurting myself even more and without realizing that in doing so, little by little, I’ve been dying. I thought that if you didn’t know, there might still be a chance that we can love each other and have happily ever after, but last night in your room proved once again how incredibly wrong I was.