One Life to Lose

by Kris Ripper

  “Cameron!”

  My heart stopped, stuttered, restarted.

  “Cam! Wait up!”

  No. I was dreaming. I was imagining this. I would turn around and they wouldn’t be there. They couldn’t be there. It was too ridiculous, the timing too convenient. (Though it would have been a hell of a lot more convenient if they’d showed up when I was still marginally warm.)

  No.

  Except.

  “Cam! Cam, wait up!”

  I waited. I held my breath. I turned around.

  They were jogging. Not just walking briskly—actually jogging toward me. But it was them. No amount of blinking made them dissolve.

  “Oh my god, what’re you doing?” Keith slammed into me and held me up all at once. “I thought you were going to keep walking!”

  “I thought you were a dream.”

  “What? No way. We are so not a dream. We’re for real, look.” He kissed me, to prove his realness.

  I leaned my head into his neck and started crying.

  “Damn it,” I heard Josh say. “I knew it. I knew I should have made him come home with us. Damn it.”

  “Well, he’s here now.” Keith rubbed my back. “Come on, Cam. Come upstairs. It’s okay, you can keep crying, but let’s get you a little bit warmer.”

  I didn’t want to look at them, and I resented the lights of the building, the stairs, the hallway I’d recently left.

  I fell to my knees the second we were inside and said, “Please don’t make me go back there tonight. Please. I can’t.” Then I was sobbing too hard to speak, and Keith was hugging me and Josh’s hand was in my hair and absolutely nothing else had any meaning in the world but the two of them holding me in place, making me real.

  When I could breathe again, Keith pulled me up and pushed me onto the sofa, then climbed on top to sit in my lap, straddling me, eyes all over my body like he was searching for everything I hid.

  “What is wrong with you? Why didn’t you call me?”

  “Keith, let Cam have a minute before he tells us what’s up.” Josh turned away, muttering, “I fucking knew it.”

  He came back with steaming mugs of almond milk hot cocoa. Keith shifted to the side so he was sitting more stably, but his legs were still over mine, almost as if he expected me to run away.

  “We were at Josh’s mom and dad’s house for Christmas Eve dinner,” Keith said. “That way we get out of Christmas Day.”

  “Though we usually end up over there later anyway, but we aren’t obligated to be there for the gifts in the morning.”

  “Yeah.” Keith nudged me. “If we’d known you were here, we could have come and gotten you. When’s the last time you ate?”

  The idea of facing people made me want to dive into my cocoa.

  “Or we could have left earlier,” Josh added. “Cam. Talk to us.”

  It should have been easy, the relief of confession, a pouring out of sins and secrets until I felt cleansed in their wake, a catharsis of words and shared burdens.

  It was nothing like that. I didn’t want to tell them too much. I thought I could simply apologize and that would be enough. But everything I said seemed only to be the tip of something else, and finally I was forced to explain all of it, what I’d said to the detective, how I’d revealed more than I wanted to reveal, how scared I was for them, how sorry I was that I’d gotten them caught up in it, how much I’d missed them, longed for them. After a silence that should have marked the end of my confession, I told them more. About hiding in the bathroom that first night, knowing that if I left it, Joey would be there and he’d kill me. About how my house felt haunted by him, that every sound was him coming for me, every shadow was him lying in wait.

  It was difficult. I’d always imagined that once you started talking the words would just flow, a broken dam letting all the water through, but perhaps my dam was too thick, too wide. I merely sprang leaks, here and there, and through each crack I had to force the words until the pressure was finally off.

  I told them about the nightmare where they were begging me for their lives, and Josh wrapped his arms around me so I could cry into his shoulder.

  “But we were here the whole time,” Keith said softly, sounding sad and grieved.

  Josh’s hand smoothed up and down my back. “Cam’s not used to thinking like that, babe. But it’s okay. We’ll teach him.”

  I shook my head. “You can’t. It’s—it’s dangerous. You should stay away from me. I brought back your Project Runway DVDs, and you—you shouldn’t—you can never go back to my apartment, because I don’t want him to kill you too—” I knew these were the kinds of things I shouldn’t say out loud, but in the moment I couldn’t stop myself. I was far more concerned for their safety than I was for my sanity.

  “Cameron.” Josh kissed my forehead, my cheeks. “He’s gone. He’s locked up. Listen to me.” He kissed my lips. “He’s not coming back. He killed six people.”

  I wanted to believe him, but I could hear the doubt in my voice. And the fear. “What if they can’t prove that, though?”

  “They’ll prove it. They’ll hold him for what he did to us, and they’ll make their case for what he did to everyone else.” He kissed me again. “I knew I should have pushed it when you said you didn’t want to come with us. Damn it. Every instinct in my body was telling me to push it, but I didn’t want to like—you know. I didn’t want to force you, even though I knew you needed me to. Goddamn it.”

  “Every instinct in my body was telling me that Joey was in the bedroom and I had to get you out of there so he couldn’t hurt you.”

  “Aw, Cam—” He kissed my forehead again and held me to him.

  “But—” Keith’s voice came from the darkness on the other side of my eyelids. “If you thought he was there, then what’d you think he was going to do to you once we left?” He paused. “Oh my god. You fucking idiot! I’m going to kill you myself, you jerk, how could you think that way?”

  Then Keith was pressed up against my back, and I thought I’d emptied all my secrets out, that I was free of them, that sharing them would magically make everything all right.

  Except it wasn’t quite all of them. Not yet.

  “I needed you to be safe. I needed to protect you. Because all of it was my fault. And because—because I love you, both of you, even if—if for you it’s something else, that’s what it is for me, so I knew I had to keep you safe. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “You”—Keith thumped a fist down on my back—“are”—thump—“so”—thump—“irritating. Nothing was your fault. Are you talking about all that crap he said when he was telling us how he’d kill us? Because seriously, Cam, your bullshit detectors need realignment if you really took all that as truth.”

  Josh’s hands framed my face, but I refused to look at him. “We love you too, Cam.”

  “As I’ve, like, actually said,” Keith mumbled.

  I shook my head. “It’s not the same. And it shouldn’t be. You have each other. But I— For me it’s different. It’s something else. And I—I keep thinking that I’d do anything to keep you safe, even if it means—even if I can’t—”

  “You won’t come over, and you won’t let us stay with you.” Josh kissed me lightly. “Because Joey might be lying in wait, about to kill you. Oh man, Cam, you had a shitty week.”

  “Can we get back to this thing where you think we don’t love you? Because fuck you, we can love whoever we want.”

  “I think we should demonstrate.” Another kiss. “But Keith’s right. Did you think we thought of you like a teammate, that we’re fond of you but ultimately you’re interchangeable? Because you aren’t.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “All right. We are addressing this and everything else in the bedroom.”

  “I shouldn’t stay—”

  “Oh, yeah. You’re staying. Don’t bother trying to get out of it, because after all this I think I’ve decided to trust my instincts more when it comes to you, and my in
stincts say you need this, Cameron. Don’t you?”

  “What?”

  He tilted my head so I couldn’t avoid his eyes. “You know what.”

  “Help,” I whispered. “Please help.”

  “We have you. We won’t let anyone hurt you. Unless you want them to. Come on.”

  They took me into their bedroom and only turned on Keith’s glittering fairy lights. More than enough light to see both of them. More than enough light for them to see me.

  Keith’s fingers began at the buttons of my waistcoat while Josh hung up my coat, my jacket. Josh took it off my shoulders, and Keith went to work on my shirt.

  They’d seen me before, but this time I felt so much more exposed, standing there, bare from the waist up. Keith went to his knees and I shuffled away, uncertain.

  “Get your ass back here.” He smiled, eyes twinkling. “Come on, handsome. Let me at you.”

  “I told them you had a temper. I didn’t mean to. They said Josh had a temper like he might—”

  “Oh, I know what they said. And if you were talking to the same guy I was talking to, news that I have a temper would not have been a shock to him.”

  “You should have heard Keith going off. I thought for a minute he was going to be the one arrested for assault.”

  Keith stood, taking my hands, tugging me toward the bed. “I do have a temper. It’s okay. They found— I don’t know, Josh, did we decide for sure if that other detective was kinky?”

  “Do you think she was a detective? She was definitely kinky. She closed the curtain and looked at Keith’s back and when they came back out she looked at me like she wanted to say ‘Good job.’”

  “But what she actually said was, ‘Green, you’ve clearly never whipped anyone. No way someone pulls a job like this off angry.’ So he apologized for the personal nature the investigation had taken and wrapped it up.”

  “When was that?”

  “Sunday. Afternoon? No, later. We’d eaten dinner.”

  “Yeah, right before they let us leave. She didn’t look thrilled to be there, either,” Josh added.

  “I wonder if you get that all the time if you’re into BDSM and you’re a cop. Like being a doctor: ‘Hey, take a look at this guy’s back and tell me if it’s the good hurt or the bad hurt.’” Keith pushed me gently backward. “The good hurt, always the good hurt. You want to feel it, Cam? You curious?” He climbed over me, holding me down.

  I was scared all of a sudden. It was too much like grappling with Joey, like the moment I’d known I was losing control, that he’d get away and—

  “Whoa, it’s okay.” Keith shifted, rolling me to the side, pressing himself against my back. “Hey, it’s okay, Cam. You’re okay.”

  “No, you’re not.” Josh had undressed, completely, and knelt beside the bed, all long muscles and smooth skin. “You are not okay. It only happened a week ago. You aren’t okay yet. Cameron.” His thumb peeled down my lower lip, and it was strange that something so unrevealing could make me feel splayed open, as if the inside of my lip, my gums, were somehow a window into my everything.

  Josh’s thumb rubbed back and forth, holding me open. “I want to take everything away from you right now. I want you naked on your knees with your hands behind your back. I want to bind your thighs so you can’t get up.”

  I trembled, but he held fast.

  “I don’t want to blindfold you or gag you or take away your hearing, Cam. But if we don’t make you hold still, I get this feeling like you’ll never let us show you how we feel because you’re always running away from it. Let us show you.”

  Keith kissed the back of my neck. “Let us in. And then believe us.”

  “But we don’t have to do any of that.” Pressure, keeping me open, not letting me speak. “We can hold you here between us without any other reason than we like having you here. And you don’t get to tell us we don’t, Cam. You understand me?”

  I nodded, his thumb still holding my lip.

  “So what do you want?”

  He took his hand away, and I immediately missed the awkward sensation of restraint. “I want to stop being afraid all the time. Can you give me that?”

  “We can damn sure try. What about the rest of it?”

  I searched Josh’s eyes. He’d meant every word. “I don’t think I’m as brave as Keith is.”

  “If you mean you can’t take the shit he takes, join the club. I’d be weeping like a little baby if he ever doled out to me what I dole out to him. But that’s not what we’re talking about, Cam, and I think by now you get that.”

  Keith’s breath warmed my neck. “It isn’t the same for everyone, you know.”

  I did. They’d shown me that. And all the spaces in between.

  “I might lose it if you—if you put my hands behind my back. If you make it so I can’t move. Not that— I mean, he only had me down for a second, and I know worse things are happening every minute to people all over the world, I shouldn’t even be complaining—”

  Keith’s hand stole over my mouth. “Shh. Listen to me. It’s not about how bad it was on some objective scale where you only get to complain if someone tore your fingernails out and killed your cat in front of you and busted your kneecaps and kicked you in the balls. A totally normal-looking guy followed us into your apartment, knocked out Josh because he figured you and I didn’t pose much of a threat, terrorized us with a gun, and talked a whole bunch of shit. And it took us two tries to bring him down, Cam, okay?” I could feel how fast he was breathing. “It took two tries and the entire time it was happening I just wanted someone to save us. I wanted Josh to wake up, or the police to come, or fucking Superman, I didn’t care. I wanted someone to save us from dying, because I knew, I knew, he was going to kill us.”

  “Me too,” I whispered.

  “But no one did. It was you, and me, and we saved ourselves.”

  “He hurt you.”

  “Yeah, he did. And he hurt Josh. And he killed Philpott and all those other people. And he hurt you too, Cameron. He hurt you too.”

  “I didn’t even—I didn’t even get a cut. I barely got a bruise. I was fine.”

  Josh’s jaw tightened. “I got a really bad headache, but on the whole, that’s probably better than having a head full of memories. I wish I could have saved you both. I know that’s bullshit, but it’s true. I’m so pissed at myself for passing out when you needed me.”

  “You didn’t have a choice,” I said.

  “Right back at you.”

  “But now you do.” Keith tipped me so I was on my back, but this time he didn’t climb over me. “Now you have the choice. You can let him win, you can let all the shit he said to us rule you, or you can choose to do something else.”

  “I can’t sleep. I’ve been sleeping in the ticket booth because when I’m in the apartment I can’t stop thinking he’s going to kill me.”

  “Jesus! Why didn’t you call me?”

  Josh touched Keith’s arm, but looked straight at me. “Because he was trying to protect you, and he thought he had to keep you away in order to do that. Cam, that whole thing is over now. You get that next time you call us when you can’t sleep, and you come over here, and you do not go down and sleep in the theater. Right?”

  I closed my eyes. “I could say that I’ll do that, but in the middle of the night, when I know I’m making it up—I won’t disturb you. I know I won’t.”

  Josh growled. “You really seriously make me want to hurt Keith.”

  “Ha!” Keith laughed and tugged him in for a kiss over my body. “Any time, slugger. And it’s fine. We’ll just make Cam stay here until he can commit. Or maybe we spend some time over there. I really don’t know how you’ve been in your apartment alone, Cam. If I even think about it, I start to wig.”

  “I have an idea for that,” Josh said. “Are you up for rearranging? I think if we can change the feel of it, maybe it won’t be so triggering.”

  “I’ll try anything. I hate being scared all the time.”


  “We’ll work on that tomorrow. Tonight, we’re busy.” Josh lifted one of my hands above my head and held it there. “I won’t tie you. I’ll let you stay loose, but I’m gonna hold you just like this.”

  Keith drew my other arm up, and Josh pinned it.

  I made myself take slower breaths. I wasn’t panicking this time—at least, not yet—and I was grateful for my trousers. They didn’t hide much, but they certainly hid more than nudity would have.

  “Angel,” Josh said.

  “What do you want me to do? Or not do?”

  “I want you to do the things you haven’t done before. I think we held back because we didn’t want to scare Cam away, and he took it as we didn’t have strong feelings for him. So we gotta show him now.”

  “Yeah, good.” Keith leaned in to my neck and inhaled. “You always smell so good to me. Even when you’re, uh, a little ripe, FYI—”

  I tried to get my hands back, but Josh held tight.

  “Oh, hey—” Keith’s fingers stroked my throat. “Shh. I was joking. I mean, not that you aren’t ripe, but it doesn’t bother me.”

  “It bothers me,” I said. “I don’t like that you’re seeing me this way. I don’t let people see me this way.”

  “Well, that just makes me feel way more special now.” He sniffed again. “Cam, you’re amazing. That first night, you dropping your index cards and saying you had trouble with your teleprompter? Oh my god. So hot.”

  “It’s true. Keith wanted to jump you right then.”

  “And then you were so sweet. You’re always so sweet, but like you don’t even know it, like it’s something you just are, without trying.”

  His fingers seemed to be dragging along my skin, waking up my nerve endings. He kept talking, but I couldn’t track all of it because I was busy watching the way he touched me, Keith’s fingers an extension of his voice, both casual and also deliberate, always so far from accidental. He touched my nipples, grazing over them, and I jolted.