I woke up with a headache so persistent I had to rush to vomit up everything I hadn’t eaten. I heaved into the toilet. Fuck.
I looked around the bathroom. I wasn’t yet in jail, so that was a good sign. I was alive, so that was another. I swished mouthwash, spit it into the sink, and watched the green liquid swirl around the drain as I ran the faucet.
Sleep was disorienting as hell, but my body wanted more of it. Unfortunately, the withdrawal symptoms wouldn't allow for such peace. I stood upright and looked at myself in the mirror. My chin was smooth.
When the hell did I shave?
Glimpses of memories filtered to the front of my mind. I remembered her shaving me. Her. Vanessa.
“Hello?” I called out.
There was no response. I ran to the bedroom, moved the metal register aside, and grabbed the gun and my knife. I left her phone and keys, again covering the dark cavern with the register. I raced into the living room, expecting her to have left. To have run off to find help. To get me put away where I belonged.
I found her curled up on the couch, drawn into herself as she slept. I looked at her right arm. It was bruised as shit. Bruises that mirrored the print of my hand. Fuck. What'd I do to her?
“Hey . . .” I whispered as I reached for her.
She leapt out of her skin, recoiling from my touch. “Fuck,” she groaned as she wiped the sleep from her eyes. “You're awake.”
“How long was I asleep?”
She looked at the clock on the wall. “Like . . . twelve hours.”
I felt like I needed more. Twelve hours of sleep to counter the ninety-six hours and some change of being awake didn't seem like enough. My body felt heavy. My mind felt dead. As if it needed drugs to live.
I grazed her arm where the purple-and-pink bruise contrasted with her skin. “What'd I do?”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “You were in full-blown hysterics. I told you that you needed to sleep. Instead, you sat up, freaked out about the police, and made me shave your damn beard off.”
“Did I hit you?”
She fumbled over her words, as if she was confused by my concern. “N-no . . . you just got really pushy.”
“I'm sorry,” I told her. I was sorry. I had no intention of hurting her. Memories flooded me. Several scenes of wanting to be selfish with her body. A shiver wrangled my spine. As much as I would take her in half a heartbeat, with a sobering mind, I had no interest in forcing her. Actually, my sobering mind made me feel really guilty for even being there at all.
Memories of the murders hit me across the face. I didn't remember the moments before the murders, but I remembered the immediate aftermath.
The blood.
The silence.
My lack of panic.
My finger rode along my palm, reminding me of the blood I left at the scene of the crime.
I had no choice but to be in this house. I commandeered this home for my own safety, and she was just collateral damage. I rubbed my chin. I hadn’t had a smooth face since before the divorce.
“Now that you aren’t tweaking, care to tell me your name?” she asked.
I didn’t withhold my name because I was tweaking. I withheld that information because I was a wanted man. She knew I committed the murders, so she didn’t need the name to tie me to them.
“I’m not telling you my name,” I snapped.
“Fuck off, then,” she bit back as she turned away from me.
I leaned over, grabbed her chin, and craned her neck, forcing her to look at me. She flashed hazel eyes at me that made my heart skip a beat, which I didn’t even think was possible at that point in my life. At my lowest of lows.
“Don’t talk to me like that, little girl.”
She tensed her jaw, and her eyes hardened. “I’m not a little girl,” she said. “I have a job. A career. An education.” She scoffed. “And I help people instead of killing them.”
Fuck. Her.
I once had a career. I was a researcher for the state. I had a master’s degree. Hell, I used to help people too. I was once more than the man holding a rough grasp around that girl’s chin. My hand left her face and made contact with the couch behind her head. She flinched. I wasn’t going to hit her, especially when she was being . . . well, truthful.
I stood and dragged her off the couch, but she planted her heels, refusing to let me take her another step. “Fuck you.” I snarled my words at her, hurling them with venom. She didn’t deserve it, but she was the embodiment of everything my ex-wife thought of me. She also thought I was an utter failure. I might as well have been a murderer back then because to her, I axed our marriage.
There was nothing on Vanessa’s face that made me think she wanted what I was going to do. But I couldn’t stop the desire to do it. It wasn’t the devil on my shoulder. No. It was the devil inside me.
I leaned in and kissed her, hard and heavy. I ran my hands up the soft skin of her neck and wrapped them around it. She was against my body, leaning in enough to encourage me to go further.
She let me inside her mouth, and my tongue explored hers. She tasted like she hated me, but I didn’t care. Her hands pushed against my chest, as if she finally felt the weight of what was happening. I didn’t want to pull away, even as her hands pushed against me. Her lips tightened. She wanted me off her mouth.
The devil in me roared to keep going.
I stopped, drawing away from her. She pulled back her hand and slapped me. Slapped the ever-loving holy hell out of me. It rattled me where the pain in my head still ripped through my brain.
“You’re a killer,” she said. She put her hand to her mouth as if she could wipe me from her lips.
“I’m sorry about your arm,” I said as I tried to calm my breaths. I left her in the kitchen. I had nothing more to say. There was no rebuttal.
I was a killer.
I took pain relievers with a mouthful of faucet water and leaned against the counter as a pang of hunger squeezed my gut. I couldn’t remember my last meal, but based on the contents of my vomit, it had been too long. The crackers I nibbled were not enough sustenance.
Vanessa came into the kitchen and leaned against the doorway. She looked at the bottle of ibuprofen on the counter. “Did you eat with those?”
“No,” I said with a shrug.
She went to the fridge and poured a glass of milk, handing it to me so forcefully that it dribbled over the rim. “Drink. You’ll get an ulcer if you don’t.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“That’s even worse than calling me a little girl,” she said with a curl of her lip. “I’m not a little girl, but I’m certainly no ma’am either.”
There was a knock on the door, and both of our heads swiveled to the front of the house. I slunk along the wall and peered out the window. I wasn’t imagining the cops that time. There were no flashing lights or sirens blaring, but they were there. For sure. I reached for the gun tucked into my waistband.
“Go,” she commanded.
Where? Where the fuck was I supposed to go?
“Don’t say anything stupid, Vanessa, because I’m not going to prison.” I gestured toward the pistol at the curve of my back. I crept around the corner, obscured by the wall separating the living room from the long hallway leading toward the rustic bedrooms. I could hear everything. Vanessa’s soft footfalls. The twist of the lock, then the doorknob.
“Morning,” she greeted the officer.
“Good morning,” two voices said in unison. Not just an officer. Officers. I imagined them peering in, looking around the quaint house tucked into the middle of fucking nowhere. “Sorry to bother you, ma’am, but have you seen anyone or heard anything strange within the last few days?”
I smirked when he called her ma’am, because I knew it irritated her. I imagined the tick of her jaw when he said it.
“Gosh, you know, I work a lot. I don’t know that I would have been home enough to see or hear anything,” she said with a laugh.
“Are you okay?” a deep voice asked. I wondered if she was playing me, giving them messages without words. A tilt of her head my way, a nervous blink, anything that would give me up. If she did, their deaths would be on her hands, and I’d let her live so she could feel the weight of that guilt.
Don’t be stupid, little girl.
“Do I not look okay?” she asked. “Back-to-back shifts will do that.”
I peered over the wall. She was brushing her hair down, and she’d thrown a sweater on to cover her bruise.
Good girl.
“Nurse?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“No, we saw the decal on the back of your car. My wife works in the NICU,” the deep voice said.
“Bless her. I don’t know that I could do that job. Well, if that’s all, I’ll take a card if you’d like. In case I see anything.”
There was a long pause. He was assessing her, reading her body language. I couldn’t imagine it was all that great. She did just have a homicidal man’s tongue in her mouth.
“Do you mind if we come in to look around? Just to make sure you’re safe.”
I expected her to welcome them in, let them find me organically. I pulled out the gun, switching the safety off as I let it fall to my side. I’d shoot my way out of there if I had to.
“I really don’t think that’s necessary. I just settled down to get some sleep, and I’m seriously on the verge of crashing. Ask your wife how she feels after doubles.” Her voice drew up in annoyance at the end.
“She’s miserable, I can tell you that.” The officer laughed.
“If you leave a card, I promise to call if I see anything,” Vanessa said.
“Here’s my card. Call me if you notice anything out of the ordinary.”
“Absolutely. Thank you, officers.”
The door slammed, and I peered out from my hiding place. She was breathless with her back against the wall. She shrugged off her sweater, fanning herself to try to calm down. Her eyes widened when she saw the gun in my hand. I flipped the safety on and tucked it behind me again. I walked over to her, putting my hands out until they rested on either side of her head. She chewed on her bottom lip.
“Why’d you protect me?” I asked.
Her lips tightened and her eyebrows furrowed. “I protected myself. I’m harboring a fucking killer.”
“You did so good,” I praised. I leaned in and kissed her forehead.
She squirmed against my touch. “Don’t,” she said as she pushed my arm away and walked off.
I kind of liked getting her going, the way her cheeks flushed red and her eyes took on a darker shade of green.
I had no idea why she lied for me, but I was fucking glad she did.