been against my will. Anger, rage, sadness, hopelessness—so many emotions I hadn’t processed for years, if I ever had at all, came crashing together at once within me, all of them occupying the same space inside. After Jake’s confession, it felt like all those feelings began moving around, searching for their proper places in my body, and in my life. I could still feel their presence, but they weren’t trying to pull me under the surface anymore.
I didn’t feel suffocated by them any longer.
Jake talked to me quietly until our exhaustion started to take over. When I could see his eyelids getting heavy, he stood and lifted me onto the bed, setting me under the covers. Just when I thought he was about to leave and go to his regular spot on the couch, he surprised me by sliding under the covers behind me, still fully clothed. He dragged me into his chest and wrapped his arms around me. “I didn’t want to tell you this way, Bee. I had another way in mind. I swear I was going to try and ease into it. It obviously didn’t work out that way.” Jake sighed. “You know too much already, but there is so much more you need to know.” He pulled me closer, pressing his lips to my forehead. The burn was gone, and for the first time in my life I felt what a kiss was like: warm softness against my newly cooled skin. “There’s somewhere I want to take you tomorrow. I want to show you something,” he whispered.
It was the last thing he said to me before surrendering to sleep. Shortly after he drifted off, I gave into my own exhaustion.
I fell asleep that night in the arms of a killer.
I’d never slept better.
CHAPTER TWELVE
IF RIDING ON JAKE’S BIKE without touching him had been the thrill of a lifetime, then riding on his bike with my arms wrapped around him under his leather jacket was fucking extraordinary.
The bright light of day faded into a hazy dusk. The once-enjoyable breeze became frigid as Jake wove his bike down the unfamiliar back roads. They were uneven and most of the time unpaved. There was hardly a stop sign or street light to guide our way as we drove, seemingly headed nowhere.
The last road we turned down was more of a path than a road, just dirt and weeds, barely wide enough for one car. Both sides of it were overgrown with palmettos and weeds. Some of the branches were so long they looked as if they were reaching out to connect with the foliage on the other side.
Jake was quiet, but determined. I had no idea where we were going, but it really didn’t matter. All I knew was that he had something to show me, and if it was located at the end of the world, I would gladly follow.
Jake brought the bike to a stop and punched down the kickstand with his foot. "We have to walk from here,” he said. “The ground is too soft for the bike.”
We walked hand in hand in silence for about ten minutes, down the path that continued to narrow until there was no longer room for us to walk side by side. Jake let me pass him and rested his hand on the small of my back, guiding me forward.
I smelled the orange blossoms before I saw them. We reached a small clearing surrounded by the fragrant citrus trees arranged in a circle. Purple flowers covered the ground below. Rays from the coming sunset traveled through the branches and lit up the clearing. The only sound was the breeze rustling the leaves, sending a wafting of sweet scent into the air.
“It’s beautiful here.” I said, admiring how the tops of the trees created a small canopy. When I turned to face Jake, he wasn’t there with me. He was on the other end of the clearing, kneeling at the bottom of the largest tree. I approached him slowly and put my hand on his shoulder. Without turning, he took my hand in his and squeezed. “Why are these trees in a circle?” It seemed a little unnatural for them to not be in the shape of an actual orange grove.
When he started to speak, his voice became strained. “I think one of the locals may have wanted to grow and sell oranges and probably didn’t have the land to plant the trees, so he just came out here and did it where he thought no one would ever find them. I can’t really think of any other reason myself. I came across them when I used to ride four wheelers out here with Mason.” Jake turned to face me. “I wanted to choose a beautiful place for her.”
“Who?”
With his hands in his pockets, Jake dropped to his knees and pulled me into the same position in front of him. He cupped my face in his hands, touched his forehead to mine and took a deep breath. “I don’t know what you think of me now, but I know after what I told you yesterday you might not even want to look at me anymore. I wouldn’t blame you if you decided to hate me for what I am. I just need you to hear all of it, and if you want to run away as fast and as far as you can once you know everything, then that’s something I’ll just have to deal with.”
“I’m here.” I placed my hands over his. “I’m here.” I don’t know what I was trying to tell him. I didn’t know if that meant that I was there to listen, or that what he was going to tell me didn’t matter. Honestly, I didn’t know if it would or not.
He looked into my eyes, then started his story.
“This is where I buried my first body.”
He watched me intently as he waited for me to react to what he’d just said. I was waiting for the shock to settle before saying anything back. Questions sprang up everywhere.
He killed someone here, in Coral Pines?
Who could it have been?
Does it even matter to me?
I already knew what he did. Would the details make a difference? “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” What I didn’t tell him was that my understanding of what he did scared me. What was wrong with me that I was so willing to accept someone in my life who admitted to killing people on a regular basis?
“Yes, I do.” Jake sat down under the tree and pulled me into his arms like I was a small child. “You need to know all of it, Bee.” He rested his chin on my head. “I was fifteen, and Sabrina was sixteen. We weren’t in love. We weren’t even dating. We just fooled around after parties sometimes. I was a stupid kid obsessed with girls. She wasn’t even the only girl I was messing with at the time.”
He took a deep breath and looked up to the sky. The moon was already showing through the trees, though the sun hadn’t fully set. They were sharing the sky.
“She got pregnant, told me it was mine. I believed her because I was her first, and I’d known her most of my life. She wasn’t a liar. We didn’t know what to do. We were just kids. She said she wanted to keep it. I kept telling her that it would ruin her life, but being a stupid prick, I was more concerned that it would ruin my life. Sabrina finally made up her mind and told me she wasn’t getting rid of it. I panicked. Even though I knew better, I told her it probably wasn’t mine anyway and that I didn’t want anything to do with her.”
“I didn’t talk to her for months after that. I saw her at school, wearing baggy sweatshirts to hide her stomach. I’m pretty sure she was keeping it from her dad because I know he would’ve been banging down my door and beating in my head if he’d known. I was such an asshole to her, and I regret that every day of my life.”
I could feel his tears pooling on the top of my head as he silently cried into my hair.
“One night, Sabrina knocked on my window. She was freaking out. The baby was coming, and she didn’t know what to do. She was only seven months along. I told her I was calling an ambulance, and that she needed to go to the hospital. She refused. She didn’t want anyone to know. She made me promise I wouldn’t take her there, no matter what. Her face was so pale already and all she wanted was my help. So, I helped her.”
“We went out back to my dad’s shed, and I put down a blanket. It was hours of her screaming and wailing. I held her hand all the way through. It was almost light out by then, and there was still no baby. I told her I was done. I was taking her to a hospital. She screamed at me, told me the least I could do for getting her into this and being an asshole all those months was to listen to what she wanted.”
Jake wiped at his eye with his sleeve.
“So, I did as
she asked and stayed put.” He shivered now, both his words and his body. “When the baby finally came, it was a girl. She was so small, and I could practically see through her skin. She was so quiet…so still. I knew she’d probably been dead long before she came out. I think it was just Sabrina’s body finally giving it up.”
“I wrapped the baby up in a grease towel and handed it to her. Sabrina was so pale, and there was blood everywhere. I panicked. I told her she needed help and now, but when I got up, she grabbed me by the shirt. She said, ‘Jake, when I die, don’t let them find me. I don’t want them to know.’ Then, her eyes rolled back in her head and the baby’s body fell from her grip onto the floor. I was alone, fifteen, and incredibly stupid. I had done her wrong in every possible way. I used her, ignored her, and when she needed me most, I left her to suffer alone. The least I could do for her was honor her wishes.”
“You buried Sabrina here?”
He nodded. “And the baby. I thought they would like it here. I didn’t want to just throw them in a swamp, or weight them down and drop them out in the Gulf, although I considered doing both.”
“Is Sabrina the S on your tattoo?” I asked.
“Yeah, she is.” Jake held me tighter and kissed my head.
“Who is the L then?” I traced the intertwining letters on his forearm with my fingers.
“Sabrina’s mama had died a few years before, from some sort of cancer. Her name was Laurelyn. While she was in labor, Sabrina told me if the baby turned out to be a girl, that’s what her name would be.”
“Wow.” It was all I could manage. The mystery of the SL tattoo had been solved and the truth behind it was more incredibly sad than I could have imagined.
“I should have gone for help, and I regret it every day that I didn’t,” he admitted. His usually strong voice was weak and mild.
“It was what she wanted Jake,” I said. “You were young. You did what you could.”
“No, I could have done more. I could have done so much more.”
“I think what you did was brave. Anyone could have just called an ambulance and gotten her to the hospital. What she asked of you was not what was expected. But it was what she wanted. I think it took a lot more strength for you to honor that.”
“I don’t know about strength. I was scared shitless.”
“What do people think happened to her?” I asked.
“They think she ran away. It was well-known that her dad was a really strict religious sort, and from her constant bruising I suspected he beat the shit out of her on a regular basis, but I was too much of a coward then to even do anything about it. Sabrina’s brother had run away when he was fifteen, so her dad assumed she either went to find him or followed his lead. Honestly, I don’t think he ever really looked too hard for her.”
“I know what that feels like.”
“Why do you say that?” Jake asked.
“Right after Nan died, if I’d just disappeared people may have wondered what happened to me, more for the sake of the gossip. But, no one would’ve looked for me.”
“If you ever disappear on me, I would track you to the ends of the Earth and back. I will always find you, Bee. Always.” He held me tighter.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I assured him. And it was in that moment that I meant it. I wasn’t going anywhere... though Jake would be. I had to remind myself again and again that our time together had an expiration date.
“I would kill for you, Bee. Happily.” He ran his fingers down my cheek. “I need you to know that.”
“I know.” Not only did I know, but as odd as it sounds, it flipped something on inside me. I suddenly had a deep and powerful need to be taken care of by someone who would do anything for me—even if that meant taking a life. It may have been there all along, but only now that I had someone who actually felt that way would I allow myself to feel it.
Sick, twisted Abby was in love with the sick, twisted, beautiful Jake.
Jake ran his fingers through the grass beside him and patted the ground.
“The first blood on my hands was theirs. Somehow I knew it wouldn’t be the last.” He took a deep breath. “Which reminds me of something else I need to tell you.”
“There’s more?” There had already been so much. “If you tell me more now, what will we talk about tomorrow?” I smiled. Jake laughed.
“Sort of. I have to leave next week.”
I knew he’d be leaving, after I’d heard him on the phone, but I hadn’t known when it would happen.
“Leaving?” The word still made my heart jump. It was too soon. He couldn’t leave yet. This was why I shouldn’t have let him break through my barriers. This was why I should have stayed numb at all times. I felt myself putting the walls back in place, brick by brick.
Stupid, stupid Abby.
“Not leaving leaving. I have to go do a job, I was going to back out, but they’ve already sent payment and cut communication, so saying ‘no’ at this point really isn’t an option, unless I want people looking for me.”
Apparently, I was just overreacting. Stupid Abby.
“How long will you be gone?”
“There is some tracking involved with this one. The guy isn’t exactly on the radar. Could be a couple weeks. Maybe a month.”
A month?
“Then, what?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean after you come back. How long until you leave again? You’ve told me Coral Pines isn’t permanent for you. I can’t help wondering when you actually do plan on leaving leaving.” I needed to prepare for when that time came. I needed to be numb Abby for it.
Somehow, I knew I was fucking kidding myself.
“Not too long,” Jake said. “This place doesn’t exactly have long-term appeal for me.”
“Where will you go?”
“It depends.” He leaned in and rested his cheek on mine. His breath tickled my ear when he spoke.
He wasn’t going to make this easy on me. The little hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention. “On what?”
“On where you want to go.” He kissed my neck, getting bolder with each one. Closer and closer his little kisses crept towards my mouth and the excitement over my very first real kiss grew in the pit of my stomach.
Wait.
Where I want to go?
“Me?” I asked.
He nodded. “I’ve been thinking that this is my last…gig, for lack of a better word. At least for a while. It’s not exactly a permanent job. After time, people find out who you are and what you do, and they come looking for you. The amount of payback and retaliation start to add up after a few years. So do the amount of people gunning for you.”
An orange fell from the tree next to us. One little bounce, and it gained enough momentum to roll right out of the little orange grove.
“I have money—from this gig, and the money I’ve saved from the others. It should last us a long time. I don’t generally stay in the same place for too long, but we could go somewhere and stay for as long as you want. You could take a photography class, or we could rent a place by a school and you can do the traditional college thing if you wanted to. I’ve got it covered. I just need you with me.”
My heart was stuck so far in my throat I didn’t know if I would be able to shake it back down into place.
“I don’t need an answer now. Think about it while I’m gone. Use my laptop to look up some places you might want to go. I don’t take electronics or phones with me when I ‘m working anyway. That’s how people fuck up. The computer is all yours.”
Jake yawned and stretched. After such a heavy conversation, his mood was surprisingly laid back and casual. He spoke of us leaving town together like he was talking about the afternoon rain. “My only requirement is that we have to be able to ride there by bike. We can go to Canada and Mexico, too... eventually. But it’ll take a while to get you a passport. Since you’re traveling with me, you’ll need a fake. Even though I’ll be technically retired,
I don’t like to take any chances.”
“You want me to go with you?” My attention was still at the beginning of what he’d just said. It was still sinking in.
Jake cocked an eyebrow at me. “You’re not a very good listener.”
That wasn’t true. I’d heard everything he said. It was more that I wasn’t a very good believer.
“Once I’m eighteen, you won’t be legally responsible for me anymore. You’re not obligated to take me with you.” He’d already done too much. He didn’t need me in his way any longer than he had signed up for.
Jake laughed. “I don’t give a shit what my legal obligations are, Abby. Do you think I wanted you to stay with me because I felt it was my civic duty or something? I wanted you to stay with me because the second I knew you needed that—the second it crossed my mind—I couldn’t think of you staying anywhere else.”
He wanted me with him.
It would have been so easy to say yes, so easy to jump on the back of his bike and leave everything behind. Then, what? What would happen when he realized I was incapable of a normal relationship, incapable of something so basic like sex? What would