She grabbed for the knife, but Vito was faster. He caught her wrist with one hand and slammed the other into her side, once, and then again.
She couldn’t pull free. She made a fist and went for his bloody nose instead.
Vito swore, cupping both hands around his face. The knife skittered across the pavement.
Beatrice dove for it and snatched it up. She scrambled to her feet as Julian threw Muscles off him. The bigger man stumbled, smacking his head on a wall and going down hard. Julian leaped on Vito before he could get up, hitting him over and over.
“Julian,” Beatrice said, her voice much, much softer than she anticipated. They should leave. This was their chance to run. Before Scrappy dragged Muscles to his feet and the fighting started all over again. She drew in a breath to shout for Julian to stop so they could get away.
But she felt strange and off-balance. Time seemed to slow to a crawl.
Maybe it was the shock setting in. Maybe that’s why she felt like everything around her was unraveling.
She wasn’t in pain. Not really.
The knife must have missed her, somehow.
If she’d been stabbed, she should be able to feel it.
She just couldn’t explain why the blade in her hand was slick with blood now, when it hadn’t been before.
Rain pounded against her head and shoulders. Icy rivulets ran down her face and the tips of her fingers and fell to the ground, where they joined thicker, red drops that bloomed like ink in the puddle at her feet.
The knife fell from her hand. But the blood continued its lazy spread across the pavement. It seemed to be dripping from the edge of her coat.
With abstract curiosity, she touched her side. It was warm and wet, but not with rain. Her fingertips came away stained crimson.
Oh, God.
Pain tore into her side, knocking her back into the alley wall. She needed to focus. She needed to get Julian and get out of there. But her legs wouldn’t listen to her. She was transfixed by the blood on her fingers.
Her knees gave out, and she sank to the ground.
She was dimly aware of things happening around her. Shoes slapping wet pavement. A shout.
She should pay attention. She had to help Julian.
But the pain made it hard even to breathe. It took all her concentration just to stay conscious.
“Bee?” Julian’s voice broke through the wash of meaningless sound. He dropped to his knees in front of her and gripped her shoulders, panic in his eyes.
The people behind him were wrong. Muscles and Scrappy had been swapped out for a middle-aged man with glasses and a young woman with pink hair.
“Talk to me, Bee,” Julian said, his voice cracking. Blood cut a line down his face from the nasty gash under his eye. “What happened?”
Disoriented, she reached out to touch his cheek. “You’re hurt.”
Suddenly angry, he pushed her hand away. Something about her coat, near her waist, drew his attention. His frown deepened. With a rough movement, he jerked her coat open.
The color drained from his face. He touched her side, below the point where the pain was concentrated. “Shit.”
Beatrice followed his gaze, feeling even more disoriented and disconnected from reality. It was like something out of a bad slasher flick. Her sweater and the inside of her coat were soaked red around two small tears in the fabric.
It was absurd. They were just tiny little holes. They shouldn’t hurt this much.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Julian growled, pressing his palm over the wounds.
She bit back a sob as the pain exploded at the pressure. The fraying threads still tying her to reality snapped. She grabbed a fistful of Julian’s sleeve to stop the world from spinning, and darkness swallowed her whole.
Twenty-Two
A phone was ringing, far, far off. Beyond the heavy silence. Beyond the thick, black fog holding her still.
It felt like she’d been kicked in the ribs by a vindictive horse. Who had then pulled out half her internal organs, twirled them around like spaghetti, and put them back in upside down.
She had the sense of being tucked into bed—blankets weighing her legs down, a pillow under her head. Which was odd, because she didn’t remember going home. She remembered being at school, and leaving her last class . . .
Except she’d gotten out of class early, and she was worried about Julian, so she—
A flood of disjointed images crashed over her. Julian pushed up against the wall. Her hand slamming into Vito’s face. Blood at her feet. Julian’s eyes when he pushed her coat aside.
What the hell were you thinking?
Something shifted on the bed beside her. A warm hand covered her own. When she flexed her fingers, they closed around a thumb.
Another susurrus against the bedclothes. A second hand joined the first, clasping her hand. “Bee?”
She knew that voice, even rough and cracked as it was now. She liked that voice.
Beatrice fought her way through the sluggish haze and forced her eyes open.
Beside her, Julian exhaled, as though he’d been holding his breath. “Thank God,” he muttered, bending over her hand like a man seeking benediction. He looked disheveled—exhausted—but he was here. He was whole. That was good.
She became aware of a pressure on her other finger—a monitor of some kind. She was in a hospital room, divided in two by a curtain. A narrow tube disappeared into her arm under a piece of medical tape. The clothes she’d been wearing had been replaced by a thin hospital gown. Gauze scratched her skin where it wrapped around her middle.
It took her a moment to work out what happened. She sort of remembered being in an ambulance. The motion of the vehicle. The sound of a siren. A sharp prick on the inside of her elbow. Hands curled tightly around one of her own.
She remembered people talking in clipped, professional tones. Fluorescent lights streaking past. Being told she was going to be put under for surgery.
She remembered someone telling her they’d had to remove one of her kidneys. Asking her if it was all right if people came in to see her.
But they were like the memories of a dream. The details slid away before she could examine them. Faces were blurred. Conversations indistinct. Pain or medication had kept her mostly out of it for . . . she didn’t know how long. The light coming through the thin curtains was yellowish—artificial—but she had no clue how late it was. Or even what day it was.
She tried to speak, but her mouth was made of cotton balls. All that came out was a soft croak. She swallowed with some difficulty and tried again. “It’s okay,” she rasped, squeezing Julian’s thumb. “I never liked that kidney anyway.”
Julian rocked back in his chair, one hand pushing his hair back, the other still holding hers. He looked like she’d accused him of stabbing her himself.
Now didn’t appear to be a great time for gallows humor.
“Hey,” she said, pulling gently on his hand. The lingering effects of whatever she was on was making it hard to do anything with much gusto. “It’s not your fault.”
Julian shook his head. Still gripping her hand, he produced a cup of water from the bedside table and helped her take a few sips. “Your—Your family is on their way. They should be here any minute.”
Oh, God. Her family. If they thought things were bad enough to come all the way down here, they were bound to be operating at Bauer Panic Level 11. No way was she going to be able to calm them down in her current state. “Well . . . shit.”
Julian lifted an eyebrow. “Beatrice Bauer, did you just swear?”
“The drugs made me do it,” she said, her voice still hoarse. She closed her eyes again. It was tiring to keep them open all the time. “Very bad, drugs are. First they make you swear. Then you’re cooking meth and dismembering hapless construction workers behind the local diner.”
“That’s . . . quite an escalation,” Julian said, his tone flat.
Something was wrong. Usually that woul
d have startled a laugh out of him.
She turned her head, and the room seemed to flip briefly before it settled and she could get a better look at Julian.
There were stitches over the gash on his cheek. It looked like one part of his jaw had been attacked by a cheese grater, though the cuts seemed to be scabbing over. Dark splotches stained his coat. Blood. Some of it hers, probably. Her heart dropped when she noticed the wrap around his left hand.
“What—”
Julian drew back sharply, shoving both fists in his hoodie pockets. “Just a sprain.”
Her stomach lurched, aggravating the distant pain in her side. He was shutting her out again, and she couldn’t think clearly enough to figure out why.
“Julian?” she asked, her empty fingers curling around the bedclothes.
He swallowed, eyes fixed on a point on the floor. “That hard work theory . . . It doesn’t work.”
Beatrice blinked. Her grip on the real world was so questionable, she thought she’d grayed out for a few seconds and missed a topic shift. “What are you—”
“You’re always talking about how if you just work hard enough, and you have a good enough plan, everything will turn out okay. But it doesn’t work like that. Not when you’re waiting for all your shitty mistakes to catch you up and screw everything over again.”
Maybe she was dreaming. That might explain why this conversation made no sense. She reached for him, pushing past the heaviness in her limbs. “Julian . . .”
He scraped his chair back, his mouth twisting. “Don’t—Just—” He let out a sharp breath. “I don’t get it.”
Beatrice withdrew her hand, curling it protectively around her ribs. “Get what?”
“What do I have to do to get you to wise up?” Julian demanded, meeting her gaze with eyes as hard as flint. “Actually murder someone in front of you? Would that do it? Or would you just find another excuse to explain it away?”
She couldn’t get enough air in her lungs. “I don’t—I don’t understand.”
“You could’ve died. You had no business jumping in the middle like that.”
A little spark of defensive anger caught in her chest. “What was I supposed to do? Stand by and watch you get murdered?”
“It was my fight,” Julian snapped, his voice too loud in the small room.
“He had a knife, Julian.”
“No shit, Beatrice! Why do you think I told you he could’ve killed you back in the library?”
Beatrice’s face warmed. She was willing to admit that throwing herself into the fray wasn’t her smartest-ever move, but she didn’t think she deserved getting yelled at like an idiotic child. “Stop it,” she whispered.
“Did it ever even occur to you why a guy like Vito would want to kill me?”
“Stop.”
He leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, so their eyes were level. “I got involved with his gang after I dropped out of high school. I ran drugs for him. For about nine months. And then I flipped on him to the FBI so they wouldn’t prosecute me.”
Beatrice shook her head. “No,” she said, trying to sound firm. But her voice was torn at the edges, fraying and unraveling with every word. “No. You’re not a criminal.”
“Unbelievable,” Julian said, throwing his hands up. “No matter what I say, you just go on thinking I fit somewhere inside your wholesome little organized life. Well, newsflash, sweetheart: Some of us have lives that are so chaotic and riddled with stupid mistakes that no amount of bullshit planning could pull us out of it. Stop being so goddamn naïve, Beatrice.”
“I was only trying to help,” she said in a small voice.
“Who asked you?” Julian shot back.
She bit her lip, fixing her eyes on the ceiling so she wouldn’t cry. All she could think was it’s not fair. She thought Julian was different. He didn’t seem to mind that she was a little strange. He laughed at her jokes. He listened to her like everything she said was important. He understood her, in a way most people didn’t.
At least, that’s what she thought.
She had never asked for an explanation for that day in the library. She’d never pressed him for details about what he’d done with himself after he broke his hand. She hadn’t even bothered to validate Greyson’s accusation that he got in trouble with the FBI. There was a part of her that knew Julian couldn’t have had an easy life, but she had rejected any explanation that didn’t fit her image of him.
And why? Because he was cute and she liked the way he laughed? Because being in love with someone meant they couldn’t make any mistakes?
She felt tiny and stupid and lost. Whenever she reached out for him, he pushed her away. And it hurt worse every time. She couldn’t do it anymore. She couldn’t keep throwing herself at his walls until she was a broken, bloody mess.
He was right. She was naïve. Any sensible person would have stopped chasing after him a long time ago, instead of deluding themselves into thinking . . .
She huffed out a breath. She couldn’t make Julian love her. And it was long past time to give up trying.
She dug her fingernails into her palms. When she spoke, it was a thread of a whisper. “I think you should leave.”
A muscle jumped in his jaw. He blinked, the flint in his eyes seeming to crack.
Then, without a word, he stood, swiping his backpack off the floor as he went by.
He hesitated at the door, and for one moment, Beatrice thought—she hoped—he would turn and say something else. Something that would explain everything and give her an excuse to forget the whole argument. Anything at all. I didn’t really mean it. I was lying.
I don’t want to go.
But the moment slipped by in silence. Julian jerked the door open and left, leaving it to close behind him with a dull, terminal thud.
Twenty-Three
There was a lot more stuff in the apartment than Julian had realized. All his things used to fit into two storage bins, his backpack, and his dad’s old army bag. Now he was looking at having to throw a bunch of it away.
Some of it was easy. The furniture would stay. Most of it should have gone to a landfill long ago anyway. There wasn’t much point in packing the food, either. Half of it was leftovers, and it’d be easier to replace the rest of it than figure out how to take it with him.
It was all the other stuff that was presenting the problem. At some point in the last few weeks, he’d started settling in. Buying impractical extra crap that was too heavy or bulky or useless to haul around.
Hefting one of the loaded bins onto the table, he started rummaging through it for anything he could toss. It had still been dark this morning when he gave up trying to sleep. He hadn’t wanted to turn on a light, in case it woke Fabiana up, so he’d been clearing things off shelves without sorting through them.
A gray wash of early-morning sun filtered through the windows now, giving him enough light to figure out what could go. Old clothes. Assorted half-used office supplies. The last of his Bristol board. His sketchbook.
A slim stack of kids’ drawings made him pause, a soul-wrenching sense of guilt battering at the cold practicality he was trying to maintain. Most of his kids wanted to take their art home with them, but there were a few who loved giving them away. Julian looked through the pages slowly. The subject matter ranged from dragons and unicorns and monsters to pets and self-portraits and illustrated snippets from their lives. He shouldn’t keep them. He couldn’t go back there again. He’d put those kids in danger, taking the job when he knew Vito was still after him. If one of them had been around when he got jumped . . .
He shoved the guilt away as best he could, setting the drawings aside to deal with later, and thrust his hand back into the bin.
His fingers closed around canvas and he pulled out a heavy tote bag. Inside was a cracked pan of watercolors, a tin of colored pencils, a handful of markers, an assortment of paper, and a folder full of plans and notes in Beatrice’s clear, cheerful handwriting.
Julian’s heart clenched in his chest.
I was just trying to help.
He could still see her back in that alley—freckles stark against paper white skin, eyes fixated on her shaking, blood-smeared hand like it belonged to somebody else. The tremor in her voice when she said You’re hurt. Like some stupid scratch was more important than the fact she’d been fucking stabbed.
She should have been furious at him. She should have kicked him out of her hospital room the second she saw him. It was Julian’s fault she got hurt. Beatrice wouldn’t have come to meet him at the art center if he hadn’t gone to her apartment the night before. If he’d made her understand how Greyson worked when he got angry. If he’d told her how easy it would be for Greyson to find out where Julian worked, track Vito down and pass on the information. If he’d told her how she was in danger of getting caught in the crossfire.
If he’d been honest with her from the beginning.
Somehow, she didn’t seem upset at all. She just lay there, looking small and helpless, mumbling absurd jokes and insisting Julian wasn’t to blame.
It was infuriating. He hadn’t meant to start yelling at her, but he couldn’t take that goddamn sympathy anymore. All he wanted was for her to give him some of the blame he deserved.
But she didn’t. She didn’t even get angry. She shut down. Pulled away. Julian hadn’t been prepared for how much it hurt to know he’d finally found a way to let her down.
It shouldn’t bother him this much. Beatrice should have realized a long time ago that Julian was nothing but a hopeless screwup. Now he wouldn’t have to feel guilty for constantly fucking up her life. He wouldn’t have to wonder how the hell he was ever going to give her that little house—that stability she wanted—when life was always knocking him down. He wouldn’t have to worry about when he was going to lose her, like he’d already lost so many people.
Next Stop Love, #1 Page 20