by Sam Mariano
“I know, but you hate him so much, and I’m your wife—no one should ever touch me. I thought I could stop him in time, I thought you’d come through the door. I hoped for that so hard, but I just couldn’t. He was too strong, and before he—I couldn’t fight him at full strength, I was only able to catch him off guard because he was… he was inside me, and now you’re never going to want to touch me again.”
Pressing his hand more firmly against the back of my head as I lose my shit and cling to him, he murmurs reassuring nonsense and strokes my back.
I hold on to him for a long time, even after I’m calm again. It feels so nice when he holds me and rubs my back like this, and even though I know it’s not true, it feels like everything is okay.
Finally, I pull back.
I brace myself and look into Brant’s face, prepared for some small measure of the coldness he lobbed at me after he caught me in the barn with Theo, but I don’t see anything like that. Instead, there’s something closer to guilt in his eyes.
Reaching forward and cupping my cheek in his hand, Brant says, “I’m so sorry.”
Frowning, I press on his hand with mine and lean into his touch. “For what?”
“For not being able to stop this from happening to you.”
Fresh tears well up in my tired eyes. I don’t want him to feel guilty. I don’t even want him to know, and I desperately wish he didn’t. “I just don’t want it to hurt us,” I say simply. “When I was in the bathroom, I got so sick thinking about it. All I could think was ‘Brant’s not going to want me anymore,’ and I couldn’t bear that.”
“That is never going to happen,” he says fiercely, pulling me back into his chest. “Nothing could ever make me stop wanting you, Alyssa, least of all this fucking sleazebag.”
I sigh and wrap my arms around him, resting my face against his chest. “You promise?”
In response, he pulls back just enough to look me in the eye, and then he leans down and kisses me. It’s a gentle kiss, not at all demanding, maybe even a touch remorseful. I love every kiss he’s ever given me except for this one.
A surge of rebellion shoots through me and I reach up to wrap an arm around his neck and get a better hold on him, then I pull him into the kiss I want—hungry and desperate and maybe a little sick. I need to pull him inside my body, need him to touch me and kiss me like he wants me.
I don’t realize what I’m doing until I start pulling at the button on his jeans.
“Alyssa?” he questions, looking down at me.
“If you want me, show me,” I demand.
His eyebrows rise in surprise. He glances past me at the corpse in the pool of blood just a few feet away. “Right here? Right now?”
I nod my head, looking up at him. I know it’s a little sordid and filthy and maybe more fucked up than he was prepared for, but I need to know he still wants me. I need more than his words; I need him to prove it.
He must be able to see that, because without another moment of hesitation, his powerful arm locks around my waist and he hauls me up against him. He walks me backward until my butt comes up against the edge of his workshop counter, then he stops and looks down at me.
I love the way he looks at me, the softness in his beautiful brown eyes, the loving way he skims my sides with his knuckles. He grabs one of my legs and lifts it, wedging himself between them. I lock my leg around his hip and tilt my head to give him better access as he kisses my neck.
My eyes are closed, my senses delightfully wrapped up in what’s happening right here, but as his hand cups my breast, my eyes drift open, and then I scream.
Brant jumps back, turning around quickly to look where I’m looking.
“What the fuck,” he murmurs in wonder as he sees exactly what I just saw.
Theo is reaching forward, trying to crawl off the green tarp.
“I thought you said he was dead!” I shriek, trying to back myself up against the counter.
“Oh, thank fuck.” There’s bloodlust in his voice like I’ve never heard before, and when he turns around, there’s an almost terrifying light in his eyes. “You might want to go over there,” he tells me, gesturing across the shop while he reaches past me and grabs a tool and a pair of gloves off the wall. “Better yet, go in the house.”
I watch him pull one of the gloves on. “I’m not going anywhere. What are you going to do?”
It’s a dumb question, and he doesn’t take the time to answer it. He appears almost gleeful as he stalks over to Theo, who isn’t dead but is in truly terrible shape. As he tries to drag his useless body off the mat, he leaves a new smear of blood across the floor.
“Ugh, gross,” I mutter to myself. I’m going to have to buy so much bleach tomorrow.
“Help!” Theo cries uselessly.
I lean back against the counter then lift myself up and sit on it. I cross my legs and smooth down my nightie, then I call out, “No one around to help you, asshole.”
“Alyssa,” he tries, looking truly miserable. “Alyssa, help me.”
“Nope.” I shake my head. “Remember all those times I told you Brant was gonna kill you? Well, your time has come.”
Groaning as Brant nudges him in the side with his foot, Theo rolls over and looks at my husband towering above him.
“I am so glad you’re not dead,” Brant tells him, gripping whatever tool he grabbed in his ungloved hand like a knife. It is very sharp and stabby-looking.
Looking over at me one more time, Brant says, “Baby, I mean it. You should really go back in the house. I don’t want you to see what I’m about to do to him.”
“I think I want to see,” I tell him.
“Are you sure?”
I nod my head. “Positive. Do your thing. If it turns my stomach too much, I’ll leave.”
“Is she fucking serious?” Theo demands to no one.
Brant looks down at him and grins. “You have no idea how much I’m going to enjoy this.”
Since Brant has the stabby thing in hand, I expect him to go the direct route and simply stab Theo in the chest. Stop his heart, he’s dead, it’s over.
He doesn’t do that. Maybe he would have before I confessed what Theo did to me upstairs in our bed, but now he makes it personal. Rather than kill Theo quickly, he yanks his jeans down. I’m confused for a minute, then disgusted as Theo’s gross, flaccid penis flops on the floor.
Ugh, God, bleach isn’t even going to be good enough. We’re going to have to completely replace these floors.
Theo lets out a glass-shattering scream and I focus back on them just in time to see Brant repeatedly stabbing Theo in the dick. He’s not stabbing to hurt, either—he’s stabbing to sever. And he does. After Theo’s cries of pain devolve into pitiful, snotty sobs, I see Brant yank the severed member free. Theo lets out another pained sob as whatever flesh was still connecting it breaks free.
I grimace at the gross, bloody thing in Brant’s gloved hand, then I rear back as he squats down, pries Theo’s mouth open, and shoves it in.
Oh my.
I’ve seen quite enough. I hop down off the counter and make my way toward the door. Brant notices my movement and looks up at me, a flicker of concern in his eyes.
“Are you okay?”
“Yep,” I assure him. “You finish up in here, I’ll be right back. I’m just gonna go grab some baking soda.”
Brant frowns like I’m the crazy one. “Baking soda?”
I wave him off and step through the man door, pulling it shut behind me to give them some privacy.
Once I’m removed from the murder room where killing fools is relatively normal, a cool gust of wind hits me and sends a chill straight through me. I feel a little dizzy, now that I’m out here, but I suck it up and trek to the house.
I go to the laundry room first. I finished drying a load earlier, but I fell asleep before I could fold the clothes. Now I pull out some pants and a sweater and tug them on so I don’t freeze.
I also don’t want to go to our bedroom
, and I’m a little worried about it. Part of the reason is I know there’s blood up there, but another part is just because of what happened with Theo.
Maybe I’ll feel safe going in our room again when I go with Brant, but I’m not ready to go in there by myself.
Shaking off the somber thought, I head to the kitchen and pull open the cupboard where I keep the baking soda. I use it a lot for cleaning, so I have two bags equaling seven whole pounds of it.
That should suffice.
I tuck a bag under each arm and then make the trek back out to the workshop.
Thankfully, by the time I get there, Theo has been more adequately murdered. At least it seems that way judging by the way Brant is dragging his motionless body back to the tarp.
“Is he really dead this time?”
“Oh yeah,” Brant assures me, standing and stretching out his back. “He’s good and dead this time.”
I nod and walk over to the table, carefully stepping over a blood puddle. “Why wasn’t he dead the first time?”
Brant looks a little ashamed all of a sudden. “I have to confess, I told you a lie. Or, I thought I did.”
I lift an eyebrow in question.
“I thought you did kill him. When I got home, he was still slumped over on the bed. I had to drag him down here in the bed clothes, bonked his head a bunch of times.” He shrugs, at a loss. “I thought for sure the fucker was dead, but I didn’t want you to think you killed a man, so… I fudged the truth a bit.”
“Huh,” I murmur, ripping the seal and opening the first bag of baking soda. “Well, I didn’t want to add to your body count, but to be honest, I am a little relieved I didn’t kill him.”
Brant nods, looking down at him. “Yeah, so am I.” Flicking a glance at me as I open the second bag of baking soda, he asks me, “What the hell is that for?”
“I don’t know if it will work, but I had an idea. Baking soda absorbs smells, right? And dead bodies start to smell after not too long. So, before you bury him, I thought we could sprinkle all this baking soda over him. That way Scout doesn’t accidentally dig him up, because that would be… truly awful.”
Brant gives me a look like he thinks I’m nuts. “I don’t think that’ll work.”
“You know, for a man who just stabbed someone’s dick off, you sure are giving me a lot of ‘You’re crazy’ looks tonight.”
Not at all ashamed, he tells me, “Choked the son of a bitch with it, too.”
“Well, I think we should try the baking soda thing. Either way, it can’t hurt, right?”
“I guess not,” he allows. Looking down, he kicks Theo’s errant leg back on the tarp, then holds out a hand. “Give me a bag.”
Flashing him a smile, I hold out the first bag of baking soda. “See? And you said I couldn’t help.”
“This is not the sort of quality time I thought we would be spending together while we await the birth of our child,” Brant states, shaking his head.
“Maybe not, but, I mean… it’s definitely going to bond us. How many couples who have committed murders together do you know that didn’t make it?”
“Well, I don’t know any couples who have committed murders together,” he tells me as he starts to sprinkle baking soda over Theo’s face.
“I don’t either, but I bet the number of divorces among couples who have would be super low.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” he says, humoring me.
I wait while he finishes emptying the first bag, then I take his empty and give him the full one. “We should watch Bonny and Clyde.”
“We could do that. I’ve got enough cleanup from tonight to keep me busy for at least a week, but I suppose I’ll have to take a break sometime.”
“I really wish I could do more to help. It’s terrible that you have to do all this yourself. Scout loves to dig—do you think he’d do it on demand? I know he couldn’t once it started to get too deep, but maybe he could help you start the grave.”
“I don’t think it’d be wise to show Scout to dig in the spot where I’m going to bury a body,” Brant points out.
“Oh. That’s probably true. I guess you’re better at this than I am.”
“More experienced,” he says dryly.
“Not at hiding bodies,” I say, leaning my elbows on the table and watching the way his muscles flex as he works. “What if we just took him to the lake and tossed him in the water? We could tie cinderblocks around his ankles or something to weigh him down.”
Brant shakes his head. “Too risky. He’d wash up. I’m gonna make it look like he ran off on Bri, so if I go to all that trouble and then the asshole washes up on a shore somewhere, that’s gonna look a little weird.”
“It’s not that far off,” I tell him. “The asshole was planning to leave her.”
Brant stops shaking baking soda and looks back at me. “He say that?”
I straighten and nod my head. “He told me they got in a big fight and he stormed out, told her he was leaving. He said she probably didn’t believe him because he’s said it all before, but this time he meant it and he really was going to leave her.”
Rocking his head in consideration, Brant says, “That helps.”
I nod my agreement, but I’m still brainstorming better ideas to get rid of Theo’s body that don’t involve Brant having to dig his grave all alone. “Oh! What if we took a road trip down to the Florida Everglades and strapped hams to his body and threw him in a swamp? I saw that in a show or a movie once, I think. The gators ate him right up.”
Brant slides me that You’re crazy look again. “We’re not taking Theo’s corpse on a road trip. What if we get pulled over and someone notices the smell?”
I wrinkle up my nose. “Yeah, I guess that won’t work, either. Why don’t you have any friends who work at the local morgue or something? We could just incinerate him.”
“Again, I am not a serial killer,” Brant tells me as he hands me the now-empty baking soda bag. “If I were, that might be a valuable contact to have, but this is the first body I’ve had to dispose of. We’re going the traditional route—I’m burying the asshole somewhere in my woods, and that’s that.”
After a long, hot bath and a calming mug of tea, I settle in on the couch and try to relax a little bit. There’s been an awful lot of stress and upset tonight, and I know that’s not good for the baby.
I feel so bad that I’m so unable to help Brant, but I know he’s right. It’s not worth exposing Mackenzie to harm just to start mopping up some of this mess, though I’m sorely tempted to do so.
While I’m thinking about all that needs to be done, my eyes start to droop and the tired begins to sweep over me. I try to fight it, wishing I could at least stay awake out of solidarity, but before long, I lose the battle.
I’m jostled awake when the room is a little bit brighter, but the sun’s not quite up yet. I open my eyes to see Brant standing over me, and peace swallows me up like a big, comfy blanket.
“Good morning, handsome.”
Poor Brant hasn’t slept at all. His clothes are dirty and muddy and he looks so tired.
Sympathy swells up inside me and I push myself up into more of a sitting position on the couch. “Is it done?”
“Yeah, it’s done. I’m sorry I had to wake you, but the sun’s about up, and I didn’t want you to wake up and think something had happened because I wasn’t back yet. I’ve gotta take a shower and then run over to Bri’s for a bit, then I have to get rid of Theo’s car.”
That wakes me up a little more. “What do you mean, get rid of it? Where will you put it?”
“I’ve got some ideas, don’t worry about it. The less you know, the better. Anyway, as long as everything goes according to plan, no one will think he’s missing. They’ll just think he ran off and abandoned his family. It’s a shame for them,” he says, looking down and shaking his head regretfully before lifting his gaze to mine. “We’ll take care of them, though. Bri’s gonna take it hard, so you’ll probably have to st
ep in and watch the boys a little more while she gets it together.”
“Of course. Whatever she needs.”
“While I’m gone, I’d also like you to make a doctor’s appointment for yourself. We’ll go when I get back, just let me know what time it is so I can make sure I’m home.”
“I don’t really think I need—”
“You said he was rough with your stomach, and you were all upset on top of that. Not only that, I… I hate to bring this up, but I don’t know how safe Theo was. I know he’s been with at least one other woman since you, but God knows what he did that I don’t know about. In any case, we should probably have the doctors check you out just to make sure.”
My eyes widen. “You think I need to get tested?”
“Just to be safe,” he assures me. “I’m sure you’re fine, but better safe than sorry, right? We should also make sure he didn’t do any damage to you.”
I wrinkle my nose up, sinking back into the couch and tugging my blanket up closer to my neck. “That all sounds awful.”
“I know. I’m sorry you have to deal with this,” he says, giving my shoulder a supportive squeeze. Flicking a glance out the window, he says, “I gotta get going so I can get in and out before Bri wakes up. You’ll be all right here alone?”
I nod my head. “I’ll be all right.”
“Good.” His hand drifts toward my face and he gives me a tender caress before making his way upstairs to clean himself off.
30
Brant
I’m absolutely exhausted as I haul my ass up the sidewalk to my sister’s house and bend down to fish the spare key out of the little ceramic turtle on the front porch.
I desperately need some coffee or a nap, and I don’t have time for a nap. Since it’s feasible enough that Theo could’ve made himself a cup of coffee for the road, I go to the kitchen first and put on a pot. I know Bri buys to-go cups so they can take coffee with them to drink on the way to work, so I quietly go through the cupboards until I find them.