by Shandi Boyes
“Madd—” My second shout clogs in my throat when I spot him under the awning of the hotel, waiting on the valet.
“You’re dead,” I mouth to him when he swings his head my way.
He thinks he is safe since he’s standing next to our mother. He’s dead fucking wrong. I’m out the door in an instant, the crowd no match for my determination.
Just as I break through the group of partygoers separating us, Madden darts down a side alley. I’m not surprised he’s running. He’s a coward. All cowards run.
I’m nipping at his heels before he’s halfway down the piss-scented passageway, and even quicker than that, I toss him up against the brickwork. Once he’s landed onto the stained concrete with a thud, I punish his ribs with my shoes.
“You raped my girlfriend, you fucking piece of shit!” Three good kicks have him coughing up blood and gains us an audience. I don’t pay them any attention. There’s no one in this alley but me and the piece of trash I’m about to exterminate. “Bet she wasn’t your first victim, either, was she?”
With him gargling more than talking, I drag him to his feet before pinning him to the brickwork by his throat. My already dangerous heart rate skyrockets when he has the nerve to spit the blood in his mouth into my face. “Just because a bitch feels guilty after straying, doesn’t mean she was raped.”
Madden’s lungs rattle when I yank him forward before throwing him back. The crack his head makes with the brickwork is lyrical gold to my ears, but his wheezy breaths steal every sense of normality I have. “She despised everything about you.”
“Until she realized you couldn’t give her what she wanted.”
Thump, crack, motherfucking bang. I steal his words by breaking his ribs. “You wore my cologne. You shaved your beard.” My grip on his throat tightens as I snarl through clenched teeth, “Why the fuck would you do any of those things if she wanted to be with you? You wouldn’t have. That’s why I know you raped her. You raped her like you did Annie and Gemma, and God knows how many other women. You’re a fucking rapist!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, what the fuck, BJ,” Madden stutters in panic when I remove my revolver from its harness to pinch the barrel with his temple. “You need to step the fuck back and remember blood always comes before water.”
“You’re not my family.”
My eyes bounce between his as the world fades to nothing. I don’t feel the begging eyes of my mother or hear her frantic gasps. It’s just him and me. The lawbreaker and the vigilante. The rapist and the protector. Two men on the verge of death, but only one will go straight to hell. My journey will be slower, more painful, only occurring once I’ve fixed all the mistakes I’ve made.
Madden’s will be now.
“You’re a dead man.”
I unclick the safety of my gun before inching back the trigger. Nothing is on my mind, not a single fucking thing. Liam was right. Sometimes the world doesn’t need another hero.
They need a monster.
“Save a spot for our father in hell. I’m sure he’ll be joining you there shortly because the men who hide rapists are just as evil as the ones committing the heinous acts.”
My gun is cocked, the safety is off, but before I can send Madden to hell for his sins, I’m crash-tackled from the side. With Grayson putting all his weight behind his hit, we skid across the sidewalk before landing on the asphalt with a thud. Our impact with the rigid material shreds my pants, but it has nothing on the fury it bombards me with.
“Get the fuck off me!” I scream at Grayson, fighting to get out of his clutch.
He holds on tight, not relinquishing his grip in the slightest. “We’ll get him, Brandon, but not like this. Not in front of your mother.”
I continue to fight him, needing to end Madden’s life before the pain tearing me in two ends mine. “He raped her, Grayson. He fucking raped her!”
His voice is lower than mine, more controlled. “I know, punk, I know. We’ll get him. I promise you, he’ll pay for what he’s done. Just not like this. Not here. I won’t have you locked up because of him. Melody needs you.”
“He raped her.” This confirmation doesn’t come out as stern as my first since it’s choked by a sob. “He fucking raped her. My Melody. He hurt my Melody.”
As Grayson pins me to the ground as effectively as two plain-clothed officers do Madden to place cuffs on him, I break.
Not a little.
Not subtly.
I break wholly and without constraint.
23
Melody
I shake my head when Julian jingles a decanter of whiskey from the bar in the living room of our suite my way. I’m still mad at him. He had no right to tell Brandon what he did, no right at all. He wasn’t the one who was raped, so he doesn’t get to choose who I share my secret with.
Furthermore, even in the midst of a terrifying panic attack, I couldn’t miss the horrifying way he blurted out my news. Could you imagine how Brandon felt finding out his brother raped his girlfriend in his childhood home from the man she’s planning to marry? That’s a fucked-up set of circumstances. One I’d give anything to rewind and change.
I had only just gotten out of the shower when the receptionist from the hotel called to say Julian’s wallet had been found in the bar downstairs. Julian offered to collect it when he overheard our call, but since the shower hadn’t helped to unravel the massive knot in my stomach from my confrontation with Brandon, I thought a couple of minutes of fresh air would do me some good.
I also wanted to keep Julian away from alcohol since our room smelled like a distillery.
Part of me wants to say if I had known the outcome of my quick visit to the lobby, I would have asked Fetu to go down. The other half knows that’s a lie. For years, I was convinced it was Joey who had raped me. I saw his shoes. I felt the smoothness of his chin. I was certain it was him.
I would still be convinced if Madden isn’t as disgusting as he is abhorrent.
His comment was the weakest, most underhanded rile, but it flicked on the lightbulb in my head in an instant. He told Connor not to feel bad about my rejection because “Deaf girls aren’t as vocal in bed as people make them out to be.” I could have brushed off his comment as being a generalization of hearing-impaired females if he hadn’t added, “Once I flipped her over and pinned her arms behind her back, she stopped fighting and moaning. Worst fuck I’ve ever had.”
When my eyes rocketed to his, his face gave him away in less than a nanosecond. He wasn’t just shocked I had heard what he said, he was panicked, aware Brandon wouldn’t care that they share the same blood. No one is off-limits when it comes to protecting me.
My first response was anger. I was mad as hell to be standing across from the man who had raped me. Madden should count his lucky stars the closest weapon I had was his table.
Remorse only overtook my anger when my eyes collided with Mrs. McGee’s as Brandon dragged me out of the bar. She wasn’t upset I was making a spectacle of myself in front of important dignitaries I’m certain to cross at some stage in my career. She looked heartbroken like she knew my secret. But even worse than that was the guilt on her face. I don’t know why she’d feel guilt. She hadn’t done anything wrong. I was the one painting her deceased son as a rapist.
I’m drawn from my thoughts when the buzzer of the Presidential suite shudders my heart out of my chest. When my eyes stray to Julian, too nervous as to who could be visiting, he places down the whiskey decanter. “I’ll get it.”
My breathing stops, my eyes refuse to blink, and my heart doesn’t beat when I follow Julian’s solemn trek to the door. The low hang of his shoulders reveals the words I screamed at him when he thwarted my wish to follow Brandon’s hasty retreat hurt him, but in all honesty, I won’t apologize for them. I don’t recall what I said, much less have had the time to decipher if they were honest or not. I’ve been too busy wearing a hole in the rug, pacing.
My heart falls from my ribcage when Julian swings open the door t
o display Brandon standing on the other side. Excluding some droplets of blood on the collar of his dress shirt, he appears relatively uninjured. It’s the broken, lost boy I see in his eyes causing my stuttering response. He looks as defeated as I did when I peered at my reflection for the first time after my assault.
He’s hurting—badly.
My heart breaks for him when he signs, “I am so sorry—”
“Don’t,” I sign back, stopping his unnecessary apology as quickly as I push off my feet.
“I failed, Melody. I did exactly what your father said I would do.”
I push down his hands so he can’t sign another stupid word before I throw my arms around his neck. His raging pulse vibrates my lips when I press them against the shell of his ear. “You didn’t fail. I didn’t fail. Madden did. This isn’t our fault, BJ. We’re not to blame for anything that happened.”
He’s set to argue, but I don’t give him a chance. After inching back, I pull him into the entryway, kick the door closed, guide him to the couch, then crawl onto his lap. While comforting him how I should have after Joey’s death, I tell him I’m sorry for how badly he’s hurting and that I wasn’t there for him when I should have been.
I can’t tell if he believes me or not, his emotions are a little hard for me to read, but I don’t give up. I’ll stay in his arms until either the sun breaks through the curtains or my words break through the wall Brandon has erected between us.
My father always said the only time you fail is when you stop trying.
I stopped trying years ago.
That needs to end, and it will end with Brandon.
As my eyes slowly flutter open, I discover the reason the softness of cashmere is gracing my skin. Someone laid a blanket over Brandon and me. It must have occurred sometime after three this morning because the last time I glanced at my watch, it was only a few minutes away.
I won’t lie. The six or so hours before exhaustion overcame me were some of the toughest in my life. I couldn’t free Brandon from the torment eating him alive without hurting him. It was a cruel and twisted time, but it was also healing.
Not just for Brandon but me as well.
Although I cried more than I talked, it took the same amount of words for Brandon to comfort me. The sound of his heart thudding against my ear. The warmth of his hand running down my back. Even the way his five o’clock shadow tickled the tip of my nose when fatigue slowly overtook me was oddly soothing.
For the first time in years, I’m waking up minus the tired headache I usually have. I’m shocked I got any sleep. Brandon and I are still in the weird, pretzel-like cuddle we fell asleep in. It’s not the most comfortable position to rest in, however, a soul doesn’t need pristine conditions to heal. It just needs love.
That’s probably why I’m minus a thumping skull.
My soul finally feels whole again.
Brandon lets out a grumble when I untangle myself from him, but mercifully, he remains asleep. He didn’t get as many hours as me. The dark shadows under his eyes are proof of this, not to mention I heard him murmur my name when I startled myself a little after four this morning.
After a stretch to loosen my tight muscles, I cover Brandon with the blanket draped over us before making my way to the kitchen at the back of the living room. Julian usually has a coffee waiting for me on the bedside table any time I wake, so today I’m not just missing the groggy smile he normally delivers it with, I’m in desperate need of a sharp shot of caffeine.
My sluggish steps slow even more when I notice a suitcase sitting neatly outside the master suite doors. It’s Julian’s suitcase, and mine aren’t stacked next to them like they generally are.
“Julian…” I murmur before pushing open the partially open door of his suite. The healing my heart did overnight is shoved back a step when his eyes float up from his hands to me. He’s dressed in a powerhouse-ready suit, and he’s clean-shaven, but his usually alluring gaze is lost and broken. “Are you going somewhere?”
The daftness of my question can be easily excused. He’s like Brandon. He only shaves when required.
A lump lodges in my throat when I realize what Julian was eyeballing when I entered. He has our matching wedding bands out of their boxes. He brought them with us so he could have them engraved by a jeweler down the street from our hotel. With everything that happened yesterday, we’ve yet to get them done.
After placing the rings onto a handwritten letter, Julian stands to his feet. He sways slightly like he’s still drunk, even though I’m confident he isn’t. His eyes are too alert to belong to a drunken man. “I’m going home.”
“Okay,” I push out, confused as to why he’s ending our trip early. We still have another two nights booked and paid for. “Give me a few minutes to get my things in order, then I’ll request for Fetu to bring the car around.”
I stop heading for the walk-in closet when he murmurs, “I’m not returning to New York. I’m going home. Back to California.”
“Oh… why?” My daftness is justified. Excluding last night, we’ve had an almost perfect relationship. “If it was what I said last night—”
“It wasn’t anything you said.” As he struggles not to respond to the tears welling in my eyes, he rakes his fingers through his ginger locks. He hates when I cry. “Do you remember when we watched The Notebook?”
Salty blobs almost fall from my eyes when I nod. “Much to your dislike.” That was the movie we watched when we went to the cinema as friends for the first time.
Julian smiles. It isn’t his full smile, but I’ll still take it. “At the end of the movie, you said something that didn’t resonate with me until last night. You said it wouldn’t have mattered who Allie ended up with because no matter what, Noah would always be her number one.” He licks his dry lips before continuing. “It didn’t make any sense to me. If Allie and Noah weren’t together, how could he possibly still be her number one.” His breathless chuckle is more pained than in glee. “Then, I saw you with Brandon, and I knew exactly what you meant. When you were panicked, I couldn’t settle you. Brandon could. When you run in fear, you run away from me as well. When Brandon ran, you wanted to run into the fire with him.”
Finally clueing in on where he’s taking our conversation, I say, “That doesn’t mean I don’t love you, Julian. I do. I love you.”
“I know,” he replies, his voice cracking. “And I love you too… but I’ll always be your number two.”
Tears topple down my cheeks when I shake my head, trying to deny a truth I’ve always known. “No, you won’t.”
“Yes, I will,” Julian immediately fires back. “When I placed a blanket over you and Brandon last night, I realized I deserve to have someone who’ll sleep sitting up to comfort me. I deserve to have someone who looks at me how you look at Brandon. I deserve to be someone’s number one, too.”
“You do,” I agree, nodding. “You deserve the world.”
I’m not lying. Julian is the perfect man. He just isn’t Brandon. Brandon was my first love, the man I loved before he was a man. I don’t see anyone ever being able to compete with that, but that doesn’t mean I also can’t feel guilt.
“I’m sorry, Julian. For the years wasted, for the pain. I never meant to hurt you.”
“No.” He bands his arms around me before pulling me in close to his fit body. “This isn’t on you, Mel. You never promised me anything you couldn’t give me.” He wipes away the tears streaming down my face before raising my chin to a position it doesn’t deserve to be in. “In all honesty, I just didn’t realize what I was missing out on until this weekend.” His smile shouldn’t be as comforting as it is, especially considering the circumstances, but for some strange reason, it is. “My campaign is probably a little long in the tooth, but I want to be selfish for just a moment.”
Aware his comment has nothing to do with his political dreams, I assure him, “Love isn’t selfish, Julian. Wanting to be loved unconditionally isn’t selfish.” I wipe under my nos
e with the sleeve of my shirt before squashing my ear to his chest. “It hurts thinking about you with anyone else, but the pain won’t be as bad if it gives you the happily ever after you deserve. I’m sorry that person couldn’t be me, Julian. I truly never meant to hurt you.”
He doesn’t reply. He doesn’t need to. The extra flutter his heart got during my apology tells me everything I need to know. He is also sorry things didn’t work out between us, but he’s optimistic our relationship was a necessary path we had to take to make us better people.
I wholeheartedly agree with him. I wouldn’t be the woman I am now if I had never met Julian. For that alone, I’ll forever adore him.
We stay huddled together in the middle of Julian’s room until the buzz of the Presidential suite doorbell rings through my ears. It adds an extra thump to Julian’s heart, whereas it floods my eyes with fresh tears.
“That will be Fetu. He’s driving me to the airport.” After pressing his lips to my temple, Julian moves to the bed to gather the last of his belongings. “This is for Brandon.” He folds the handwritten letter into quarters before handing it to me. “If he doesn’t follow this exactly, I’ll be back to kick his ass as I’m still kind of wishing I had done last night when he kissed you.”
“Julian—” He pushes his finger to my lips, stopping my apology before it’s close to being delivered.
Nothing but honesty rings in his tone when he says, “It felt like a million knives were being stabbed into my chest, but it was the sign I had been seeking the past nine months.” Salty blobs slip down my face when he cups my cheeks so he can press his lips to my forehead. “I’ll never regret us, Mel. You’ll always have a place in my story. It just won’t be the number one spot.” I nod, deserving the flip his comment hit my stomach with. “Stay in touch.”
“I will,” I reply, shadowing him to the foyer. Although I can’t see Brandon, I know he’s awake. I can feel his eyes on me. He’s keeping his distance because even a blind man would be able to see the tension bristling between Julian and me. It isn’t an uneasy feeling, more sentimental than anything. “Will you tell your mom I said hello?”