The Last Breath (28 page)

There’s movement to our left, movement I don’t take much note of until the shape acquires a voice. “Well, isn’t this sweet? Two bitches for the price of one.”

Lexi and I freeze, and the blood drains from my face. Not from the source of the voice or even his words, but the unmistakable threat they both carry.

As one, every person in the yard turns to where Dean is standing, in his filthy pajamas and bare feet, his greasy hair sticking up on one side. How the man is still upright is beyond me. He is, for lack of better words, completely wasted. One hand flails through the air for balance. The other hand, his right, is steady as all the rocks holding up Rock City.

Which is unfortunate, because his right hand is the one holding the gun.

38

Ella Mae Andrews, March 1994

WHEN THE PHONE
rang for the third time in a row, Ella Mae knew it was Dean. She knew without getting up from where she lay on the couch he was plastered against his living room window again, phone pressed to his ear and staring daggers across the yard. And by now she knew him well enough to be more than a tiny bit afraid. Afraid of how he made her feel. Afraid of how he hurt her. Avoiding him seemed like the safest option.

The sharp rings died abruptly, and Ella Mae puffed a sigh of relief as the house around her fell silent. She closed her eyes and nestled deeper into the couch. Was she this bone-tired last time she was pregnant? Like every step was uphill, every simple task a chore? She honestly couldn’t remember that far back. It was as if her brain was clogged with cotton balls or something. She gave in to the confusion, letting her exhaustion pull her under.

And then a door slammed and a voice carried across the lawn. “Ella Mae!”

Shit. Dean, and loud enough for all of Appalachia to hear.

She jumped off the couch and scrambled down the hallway to the front door. But she wasn’t fast enough.

“Goddammit, Ella Mae, I know you’re in there!” His voice echoed through the house, his fists pounded against the wood. “Open up, before I break the door down.”

Ella Mae didn’t have a lick of doubt he would do it, too. She flipped the lock and opened up just wide enough to stick her head through. “Jesus, Dean! Do you want the entire street to know our business? What if somebody heard you?”

“You didn’t leave me with much choice. I’ve been calling you for days.” His eyes narrowed to accusing slits. “Are you avoiding me?”

“No, I’m not avoiding you.” She planted her bare feet in the door opening, not swinging the door any wider, not inviting him in. Even though Gia and Ray were off visiting colleges and she’d just seen Allison disappear down the driveway with the girls. Ella Mae didn’t trust herself with Dean near. His pull on her was still too dangerous. “I’ve just been so tired.”

Dean studied her with obvious disbelief, and Ella Mae tried not to fidget. That last time with Dean, in that hotel room off exit 23, he’d taken things too far, with his toys and with his fists. The blow he’d dealt her had worked like a cold shower, washing away Ella Mae’s lust and showing her a side of Dean she didn’t like, a kinky side, a painful side, one with handcuffs and paddles and clamps and angry hands. After that day, she began to see this affair with Dean for what it was. Sick. Perverse. Over.

“C’mon, baby, let me in.” He smiled that smile of his, and his voice took on that low, crooning quality he knew from experience made her squirm with lust.

But the mother she wanted to become this time around wouldn’t lose her mind over her married neighbor, no matter how charming, no matter how handsome. Ella Mae bit down on her bottom lip, and she didn’t let him in.

He propped a palm high on the wall and leaned close enough for her to feel his warm breath on her cheek when he said his next words. “Please? I’ll make it worth your while.”

Oh, Ella Mae knew he would, and then some. At the thought of how he might make it worth her while, something down there stirred. Despite her best intentions to end this affair, despite her determination to no longer be affected by Dean Sullivan, she still wanted him, dammit. Her body was a traitor, a goddamn traitor. She had to grip the doorjamb to keep herself from pouncing.

Dean could tell he was wearing her down. He smiled, leaned even closer and dropped his voice until it was like warm caramel, smooth and creamy and so damn sweet. His hand curled around her wrist. “Baby, I’ve missed you so much these past few days, I can barely sleep. Let me in and I’ll prove how much I missed you, I promise.”

She pressed a hand to her fluttering belly, still flat despite her baby growing underneath. The reminder snapped her right out of Dean’s spell, gave her the strength to take a single step back and break his grasp.

“Go home, Dean.”

Ella Mae pushed on the wood, and the last thing she noticed were Dean’s eyes, widening in astonishment, right before the door exploded. The hinges groaned, and the wood made a crunching sound when it crashed into the wall behind it, missing Ella Mae’s shoulder by less than an inch.

Faster than she could blink, Dean was inside the house. He kicked the door shut, seized Ella Mae, whirled her around. One hand grabbed a fistful of hair and yanked, forcing a sharp whimper up her throat before she could stop herself. Ella Mae knew better than to scream.

Dean would like it if she screamed.

“You think that after everything that’s happened between us—” his words squeezed, deep and deadly, through clenched teeth “—you can send me away? I own you, Ella Mae Andrews. I don’t intend to go home until you’ve learned that little lesson.”

Ella Mae couldn’t have responded if she’d wanted to because he covered her mouth with his. When his tongue batted up against her front teeth, he jerked painfully on her hair, pulling Ella Mae’s head back until her mouth fell open.

What Dean did then wasn’t even remotely a kiss. It was rape by tongue, invading her mouth and consuming her soul and stealing her breath until Ella Mae’s vision went dark around the corners. She flapped her arms by his shoulders until he lifted his head and she gulped air, but he didn’t let her go.

He smacked her cheek, not too hard, but hard enough to sting. She made a sound of surprise, and he clapped a palm over her mouth.

“Are you going to be a good girl?”

Ella Mae nodded. By now she knew there was no refusing him. He was too strong, and far too determined. She figured her best tactic was to play along, pretend she was just as crazy for him as he was certifiably insane. And then, as soon as his pants hit the floor, she would run upstairs, lock herself in her bedroom and call the police.

She forced her body to relax in his arms. When his grip on her loosened, she pressed herself flush against him and made another sound, a throatier sound, and he smiled in approval. He dropped his hand from her mouth, and Ella Mae dropped to her knees. She reached for his belt buckle.

“That’s a very good girl.”

“No, Dean.” She licked her lips and gave him a smoldering look through her lashes. “I’m a very bad girl, and as soon as I’m done here, I think I’m gonna want a spanking.”

Ella Mae peeled his jeans and boxers down his legs in one smooth motion, leaving them both jumbled around his ankles. Dean was more than ready. He threw back his head in anticipation.

Now.

She braced her palms on Dean’s bare thighs and shoved with all her strength, using his body as leverage to push up and out, to give her a head start up the stairs. For a split hair of a second, she thought she might make it.

“You’re gonna be sorry you did that.”

Ella Mae already was.

Because instead of hitting air when she’d pushed him, Dean’s shoulders rebounded right off the front door. She wasn’t even halfway up the staircase when he tugged his pants to his hips and caught up to her, all in five seconds flat.

She was even sorrier when Dean snatched one of her ankles out of the air, and Ella Mae dropped to the steps with a scream. Pain burst up a shoulder, across a hip bone, down a calf. With one flick of his arm, Dean flipped Ella Mae over like a sirloin steak. She felt a dull pop, somewhere way down deep inside, and warmth spread across her abdomen.

“You thought you could get away from me?” His lip curled in an ugly sneer. “Think again, bitch.”

He raped her right there on the stairs. First on her back, and then he flipped her over and raped her again. And again and again and again, every which way. Ella Mae tried to keep still. She tried not to scream or cry or fight back, because she knew it only wound him up more, made his fists fly even faster.

But there were a handful of times she couldn’t help herself. She squealed or whimpered or wailed. The pain was too much.

And once—just once—she’d cried out in pleasure. She hated herself for it, hated her body for still responding to Dean’s touch, but she hated Dean more.

And then, as suddenly as he’d started, Dean’s body went still.

“What the...?” He looked down, and his brow crumpled in surprise. “Jesus, Ella Mae, you’re bleeding.”

39

ONE OF THE
hardest things in the world is to look someone in the eye when they’re aiming a gun at your heart, but that’s just what I do. I untangle myself from my sister and turn to face Dean Sullivan, doing my best to stare at his face and not down the barrel of his gun. My heart rate rockets up to a billion times ten.

“Have you seen what those animals did to my house?”

His words are so slurred they’re almost incoherent, but I know without asking he’s talking about the bloodred
A
slashed across his front siding, and the newer, even bigger,
liar
in black block letters. I want to tell him I had nothing to do with the graffiti, but my tongue won’t cooperate. Maybe it’s because I feel at least partly responsible for the vandalism of his home, even though I wasn’t technically the one wielding the can of spray paint.

“Folks are saying I committed perjury, maybe even murder.”

I nod. “I know, and I’m really sorry, but—”

My apology seems to infuriate him. His brows dip and his lips curl in accusation. “You should be sorry, dammit. I’ve turned into a freaking joke. Rogersville’s own loony tune. All because of your family.”

He punctuates the last word by stabbing the gun in our direction, and a gasp goes through the crowd. Even as drunk as he is, his right arm is steadier than it should be and the distance close enough to make it a fairly easy shot. I pinch my eyes shut and brace myself for a bullet that doesn’t come.

My mind flies through my options. Surely by now someone had enough sense to call the police. Maybe I can keep Dean talking until they get here or he passes out, whichever comes first. Or Lexi and I could make a run for the house and pray the Jack Daniel’s has derailed his aim, but what if Dean takes his vexation out on the crowd? I chance a glance at them, wide eyed and frozen to the pavement at the end of the driveway, and I want to scream in frustration. This is Tennessee, for crap’s sake, where guns are allowed in bars. Where are the vigilantes when you need them?

I turn back to Dean with the only ammunition I have that will take away his. “I know you didn’t murder Ella Mae.”

“Damn straight I didn’t. I loved Ella Mae. I would’ve never hurt her.”

I hear Lexi take in air for what I know will be a smart-ass comment, but I elbow her in the ribs before she can get it out. If she gets Dean even more riled up, he won’t hear my next words.

“Dean, listen to me. You didn’t murder Ella Mae. My father murdered Ella Mae.”

A gasp rises from the crowd to my right, and someone mutters, “I knew it,” but I don’t turn. I watch for Dean’s reaction, which is, quite frankly, anticlimactic.

He lifts a sloppy but apathetic shoulder. “I know. Because she was gonna leave him for me.”

Now isn’t the best time to tell him about the letter, or point out Ella Mae was planning to leave them both. But still. Dean is missing my point. I just told him, in front of a couple dozen loose-mouthed witnesses, that my father killed Ella Mae, so why is Dean still aiming a gun at my chest?

Lexi goes for her most appeasing tone. “How ’bout this, Mr. Sullivan? You take yourself and your weapon back inside to your whiskey, these fine folks will head into town and—”

“Shut up.”

“—tell everybody that Ray’s the killer, and Gia and Bo and I will forget this ever happened. That way everybody wins, right?”

“I said, shut up!” He swivels his gun between me and my sister. “You two are trying to trick me.”

Lexi’s hand throttles my fingers. “Nobody’s trying to trick you, I swear.”

I chance a glance up the porch. Bo is frozen in shock at the edge, strangling the railing with both hands, but I don’t see either Cal or Fannie. Even more people have materialized up at the mailbox, sneaking out of their houses and through the woods to watch the show, but none of them seem to be reaching for either a cell phone or a concealed weapon. And where the
hell
is Jimmy?

Relief floods my senses and loosens my bones when I hear an engine roaring in the distance, then bubbles into intense, giddy joy when Jake’s truck crests the hill. He stops with a screech of brakes at the mailbox.

Dean’s reactions are delayed and unsteady, but after a few extra beats, he swivels his body to Jake’s parked truck. A warning scream sticks in my throat.

Through the front windshield, Jake’s eyes find mine for a brief second, and he winks. There’s nothing the least bit flirtatious about the gesture. It’s meant to calm me, to reassure me.

It doesn’t work.

Jake slides out of the cab, confidently, casually, like people point deadly weapons at his head every day. He doles out greetings to the crowd as if this is a typical Tuesday morning visit. When he strolls his way down the drive, straight at Dean and his pistol, he might as well be whistling Dixie.

“Somebody decide to have a party and forget to call me?” Jake’s voice is measured and even, and I don’t know how he does it, but he manages to pull up a sincere smile.

“You again.” Dean’s spiteful tone, combined with the look of pure hatred on his face, has me dropping my gaze to his trigger finger, watching for even the slightest twitch. “Hold it right there, boy.”

Jake holds it there, a good ten-foot shot away, and he holds up both palms. “Why don’t you put that gun down, Mr. Sullivan, and we’ll talk this out.”

“Talking’s what got me into this mess in the first place. Talking about what I saw that night. Talking about the baby. If you don’t mind, I think I’m all talked out.”

“I don’t mind at all.” Jake glances over his shoulder at the people huddled together by the mailbox, then back to Dean. “In fact, why don’t I talk instead? Because I came over here with something to say, and it’s just as good I do so with an audience.”

And then he does the unthinkable. He turns his back on the man holding the gun and faces me.

Behind him, Dean looks stumped, and his shooting arm drops a good half foot.

“You left before I could tell you you were wrong,” Jake says as if we’re the only two people on the front lawn, as if a confused Dean wasn’t swiveling his gun, back and forth, between me and Jake.

I shake my head, not understanding, not caring that I don’t understand, not concerned about anything other than Dean’s bullets.

“You said all of our choices were irrelevant,” he says, inching to the right, “and maybe some of them are. But not the most important one, the one where I choose to love you, and you choose to love me back. I choose you, Gia. Choose to love me back.”

Greg Lawson’s mother presses a fleshy hand to her even fleshier chest. “Aw, ain’t that just the sweetest thing I ever did hear?”

Jake gives her an appreciative nod. “I thank you for saying so, Mary.”

“But you were right, too,” he tells me, taking another step. “There have been too many secrets, and I’m gonna do something about that.” He swivels his body to face the crowd. “Thirty-four years ago, Ella Mae Andrews had a baby boy. She was young and scared at the time, but mature enough to know she couldn’t give her son the life he deserved so she found a loving couple who could. I thank God every day for her sacrifice, because I’m that boy. I’m Ella Mae’s son.”

There are a few gasps, the loudest of which comes from Dean, and a flurry of whispers makes its way through the crowd. Jake uses the distraction. He takes a few subtle steps to his right, sweeping his gaze over Lexi and me until it lands on Bo, stock-still on the edge of the porch. An entire conversation passes between the two men in an instant, communicated not in spoken words but in subtly raised brows and squinted eyes and pinched mouths. Bo dips his head in understanding. Lexi cringes closer to my side. My heart stops.

Jake looks over at me, and he doesn’t say a word, but then again, he doesn’t have to. His eyes say everything I could ever hope to hear.

And then he returns his attention to the crowd. “I know I should’ve told you the truth that very first night I rode into town, and I know I should be sorry, but I’m not. Because if I had told you folks—” he points a long arm at me, shifting more to his right and planting himself directly in the line between the barrel of Dean’s gun and me “—then that gorgeous woman over there would’ve never loved me, and I would’ve never loved her back.”

My breath catches in my throat, and a shudder pummels my torso. I will not have Jake taking my bullet. I shake my head, frantic.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Bo duck around the corner of the porch and slip out of sight.

Jake holds my gaze, ignores my protests. “You and I are connected by our pasts, by people who made sometimes stupid decisions we had absolutely no control over. But here’s something we can control. Let’s forget about the people who came before us, and not allow their mistakes to influence you and me. Let’s hold each other up despite the way our parents beat each other down. Let’s write our own happy ending. Because whatever happened sixteen years ago has nothing to do with you and me, except that it brought us here to this place.”

It’s not his words, as beautiful as they are, but his willingness to step into a bullet’s path for me that does it. I’m about to rush into his embrace when a shot pierces the air and sends the cluster of spectators into a frenzy. They scatter like a pack of hunted quail, flying apart and taking cover behind their cars. I barely notice, because I’m concentrating on Jake’s body, which goes stiff with shock. I scream his name, but he stops me with a palm in the air.

“I’m okay. I’m not shot.”

Jake holds up his other hand and slowly turns to face Dean, giving me a clear view of him, pointing the smoking barrel into the brand-new blue sky.

“Jesus Christ,” Lexi says on a sigh.

A warning shot. My knees wobble with relief.

“You have no idea,” Dean slurs, right as Jake steps between us again, “no goddamn idea, what my life has been like since that murdering sonovabitch took Ella Mae. I lost my job, my family, my life. All because of Ray Andrews. He was supposed to go away for life. He deserved the motherfucking needle.”

In the corner of my vision, I catch a shape coming up the hill to my left.

“And then you people—” I wish I could see Dean, so I knew which people, and where he’s pointing his gun “—start blabbering about me and Ella Mae all over town, and suddenly everybody’s calling me a liar and wrecking my house. I’m not a liar, dammit! I saw Ray Andr—”

A blur I briefly recognize as Bo shoots from behind a bush and tackles Dean. Lexi is lightning fast, too, shoving me out of the way, and I slide across the lawn, a tangle of grass and leaves and limbs. I come to a sudden stop at a tree, slamming into the trunk with my shoulder hard enough that I wonder if I’m the one who was hit.

Because sometime in the space between Bo tackling Dean and Lexi pushing me halfway across the yard, Dean pinched off another shot.

And then I see Bo holding Dean at gunpoint and Lexi rushing forward to a body, lying motionless on the driveway. I crawl over and push her out of the way, barely noticing the sound of sirens growing closer through the valley, the crowd of concerned faces watching down all around us, the way my tears soak with blood into a growing puddle on Jake’s flannel shirt.

How many times have I watched someone die in the field? Too many to count. Maybe I have been overexposed by all the disasters I’ve seen, made less sensitive to all the suffering around me, because that moment of last breath has never scared me. To be the last face someone sees in this lifetime is a beautiful thing. A precious, priceless gift.

Now, though, I’m afraid of death. Terrified. I know this when Jake won’t open his eyes, not when I press a hand over his wound, dangerously close to where his heart is, spurting blood, too much blood into my palm, squeezing sticky and warm between my fingers. Not when I hold his limp hand in the ambulance, careening and wailing through the hills to Hawkins County Memorial, and beg him to hold on, just a little longer. Not when I cry into his chest and tell him I love him, right before they whisk him away from me and into the emergency room.

Now I see there is nothing beautiful about death. Death is not precious or priceless. For the person close to the dying soul—a parent, a lover, a child—death is not a gift but a thief.