by Rae, Nikita
That is all I needed. I grab hold of the door handle and pull, not struggling to open it this time. “You were right. This was a bad idea, Luke. Next time, just call.”
******
As of Tuesday, the killer’s wife, Amanda Breslin, is known to have relocated to New York City, leading many to ask the question—did she know what her husband was up to? Close friends of the Breslin family intimated that Iris, the only child to come from the Breslin marriage, has entered a fugue state and does not respond to outside stimulus. Doctors have given statements declaring that this is not uncommon. Many of them have witnessed such reactions when victims of abuse are freed from their captors. The psychological trauma the child could have undergone is apparently significant.
The library is quiet. Students sit with headphones plugged into the music players, heads bent over their work, while I stare at the crumpled piece of newspaper I keep in my bag. The paper is so thin where I’ve folded and unfolded it repeatedly over the years that it has worn through entirely over some of the creases. The Wyoming press had a field day with my dad’s story, and at the time I was so wracked with grief that I hadn’t been able to defend him. Everyone took my silence, my inability to breathe without hurting, as a sign that he’d done something to me. He’d never done anything but love me. I trace my fingers lightly over the folded, yellowed newspaper and tuck it back in between the pages of my text book, wondering. Wondering when I’ll be able to move on. If it will ever happen at all.
Fly high, Icarus. Well that’s a joke. Right now I have no hope of even getting up off the ground. It doesn’t bear thinking about what my dad would say to all this. How I am behaving and letting everyone else get to me. How I’m treating people. And by people, I mean Luke. I shove my books angrily into my satchel just as I catch sight of Morgan bursting through the doors. Her hair has fallen out of a loose ponytail, and her short-sleeved t-shirt is crumpled and twisted around her body.
“No running!” the clerk calls, but Morgan’s not listening. She charges straight for me, a wild look in her eyes. I stand automatically, registering that she’s crying.
“What is it? What’s up?” I ask, grabbing hold of her shoulders as she slams into me. With her face buried into my jacket, I can’t make out what she’s saying. “Morgan?”
She leans back and sobs silently. “Tate. It’s Tate.” She breaks down into uncontrollable fits of tears and collapses into my arms again. I struggle to hold her up, but her body is deadweight. Through the hollow ache inside me, and that small voice in my head asking, is this really happening? Is this seriously happening? I know. I know that Tate is dead.
******
“Overdose?”
“Yeah.” Morgan swats tears from her cheeks, trying to keep it together. In the three days since the library, there haven’t been many times when she’s been able to accomplish that. We’ve been waiting for the coroner’s report for days, and eventually we read it in the newspapers, just like everyone else. Like we hadn’t been part of Tate’s life and didn’t deserve to know. Morgan swallows thickly. “The people in the neighboring buildings didn’t see his body on the roof, because…” her voice wobbles, “because of the snow. They probably wouldn’t have found him for weeks if the janitor hadn’t gone up there for a smoke. He spotted one of his shoes.”
I reach out and take her hand. It’s cold, but more worryingly she’s shaking. She just hasn’t stopped shaking. “Have Tate’s parents talked to you yet?”
She shakes her head. “They told the Dean to make me stop calling. They think I know how he got up there, but I don’t. I’d tell them if I did. I’ve told them everything I know. I blacked out. The last thing I remember is some guy shouting at Tate because he was throwing up in the bathtub, and then…nothing. I only took one pill. He,” she sobs, “he took three!”
“Shhh, it’s okay. I got you.” I pull Morgan to me. She’s barely left my apartment since we all found out, and I have no intentions of making her go. She is a wreck. “Tate’s parents have no idea what went on, the same as the rest of us. How they think you’re withholding information is a mystery. Don’t freak out, though. We’ll get it all sorted out this afternoon.”
This afternoon I’m Morgan’s ride at the police station, where she’s required for questioning. Her parents don’t know anything about Tate’s death. She doesn’t want them coming back to the city after they’ve only just left her in peace.
Morgan slumps down on my bed, her spine curved as she hugs herself tightly. “They’re going to ask me where we got the drugs from,” she whispers.
“Of course they will. You have to tell them, Morgan. It’s important. This guy could be out there selling the same stuff to other students. People need to know.”
Morgan’s eyes, a watery grey from her constant crying, focus on me. It’s perhaps the first time since the news that she’s looked at me and really seen me.
“You don’t understand, Avery.”
“I would if you told me,” I say quietly. No matter how many times I’ve asked, she point-blank refuses to give up the name of the dealer. Today is no exception.
“I can’t. I’m sorry…I…it’s someone you know.”
Someone I know. It’s someone I know? My mind races a million miles an hour. And it keeps racing, lightning speeds compared to the twenty mile an hour traffic we find ourselves in as we crawl across the city later. When we finally reach our destination, we enter the building together but Morgan is immediately whisked away. I’m abandoned to my own company in the thankfully empty waiting room, until a buzzing sound disturbs the silence and Noah emerges from inside the station. Our eyes meet and my stomach falls through the floor.
It’s someone you know.
Surely not Noah? “What are you doing here?” I ask, my voice a sub zero level of cold. Noah winces. He approaches me slowly, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He gestures to the chair beside me and I’m too confused and concerned over everything and everyone to object. He slumps down into the chair, sighing heavily.
“I had to give a statement about when I last saw Tate,” he says quietly.
“Right.” It’s someone you know. Somehow the possibility that Noah could be the one responsible for Tate’s death and for Morgan’s time in hospital hurts way more than the secrets he kept from me. It’s all I can think about—is this all his fault? Memories of Noah meeting Tate and Morgan in the library that day, them swapping a huge amount of money for some textbooks, come flooding back to me. Oh, Lord, no. Dealers do that, don’t they? Put their stashes inside books or CD cases or whatever they have handy to disguise them. I glance at Noah cautiously out of the corner of my eye, only to find him staring at me.
“Avery, I really would like to talk to you, please? If that’s okay?” He reaches out to touch my knee. I go stiff, which he reacts to instantly. He doesn’t withdraw his hand, though. “Listen, I’m really sorry about what happened in your place. And in the hallway, too. I get a little hot headed sometimes, but I would never hurt you. There’s no reason to freak out.”
“Well, I am freaking out,” I tell him. I swallow down my panic and turn fully to face him, wanting to look him in the eye when I ask him. “This isn’t just about that. I have something I need to know. That day…when we met Tate and Morgan in the library?”
Noah goes totally still. “Yeah…”
“Well, those books. Were they just books, or—”
“Avery?”
Oh. Dear. God. No.
I jump at the voice behind me, beyond startled. Perfect freaking timing. Luke Reid in all his shining uniformed glory. He’s everywhere. “What are you doing here, Luke? This isn’t your station.”
Luke’s eyes narrow as he takes in Noah’s hand where it’s still sitting on my knee. He pulls himself up to his full height, forcing a grim smile. “Prisoner transfer. Why are you here?”
“It turns out our friend Tate died the same night Morgan got sick. She’s in there giving a statement right now.”
Luke p
eels his eyes off Noah to look at me. “Shit, I’m sorry. The guy on the roof, right?”
“Yeah.”
He nods once, clenching his fists by his sides. “I’m guessing you’re Noah?” he says. Noah grinds his teeth, his eyes sharp as knives.
“Yeah, I am. I saw you at O’Flanagan’s a while back. Didn’t know you were a cop.” Noah shoots me a disgruntled look, like I kept Luke’s day job a secret from him or something.
“Hmm.” Luke places his hand on his nightstick and I can see a whole barrage of violence passing behind his eyes. This really isn’t good. Thankfully the nightstick stays in its holster. Luke’s face is thunderous when he turns to me again. “You need to come see me later. I have some more news about your dad. I tried calling.”
He has tried calling, but frankly I’ve been avoiding his ass. “I can’t, I have to take care of—”
“Just come.”
He turns and stabs a code into the keypad by the door that leads into the station proper and disappears without looking back once. Usually I’d ignore a demand like that, but he hardly seemed happy about the prospect of my company. Whatever he needs to tell me probably has something to do with the feds’ investigation.
“I gotta go, Avery. I don’t think I can stomach any more crap today,” Noah says, looking positively green. Whether as a result of meeting Luke properly, or my line of questioning before Luke even showed up, Noah has shut down. He’s gone before I get the chance to reply.
I wait another awkward hour, tensing when the door buzzes open, hoping and praying in equal measure that is and isn’t Luke each time. Finally the door opens and it’s Morgan that walks through. She cries the whole way home, refusing to tell me anything besides the fact that she admitted to who provided the pills.
“WHAT MAKES you think you can just tell me what to do?” The door isn’t even open before I start speaking. At least I am speaking, not shouting. Luke stands in his doorway with a towel wrapped around his waist, dripping wet. I’m silently congratulating myself on the fact that I’m not staring at his ridiculously toned body when he grabs my hand and yanks me into his apartment.
“Shut up,” he snaps.
“What the—”
“Stop talking!” He slams the door and storms through his apartment towards his bedroom, the muscles in his back tense. “I’m sick to death of this. Come with me.”
“…hell?” I finish. Stunned, I follow after him, pausing in the doorway to his bedroom. I look away as he drops the towel and angrily kicks his way into a pair of jeans. He pulls a t-shirt over his head next and pads barefoot over to me. I’ve never seen him so wound up before. He takes a firm hold of my wrist and pulls me into the room, sitting me down on the end of his bed.
“Jake, what the hell?”
“Wait here.” He storms out of the room, and then returns a minute later with a stool from his breakfast bar in one hand and my Super Eight camera attached to a tripod in the other. Wait, my Super Eight camera?
“What the hell are you doing with that?”
“I borrowed it.”
“From my apartment?”
“Yeah, from your apartment.” He places the camera, attached to the tripod directly in front of me and then turns it on. Once he’s done that, he sets the bar stool down a couple of feet in front of me and sits on it. “Let’s do this,” he tells me.
“Do what? What the hell, Luke? You broke into my place?”
“I’ve done a lot worse. Now come on,” he grinds out.
“Come on, what, Luke? What’s this supposed to be!”
Luke grasps his hands together in his lap, apparently trying to stop himself from snapping. He presses his lips together in a white line and stares away from me, out of his bedroom window. “Your college assignment. You have to hand it in tomorrow, right?”
“What?” How on earth does he know about that? And then it hits me: Brandon. He didn’t mean I should ask my mom to do the interview with me. He meant Luke. And he told him all about it. Seriously? “Oh, we are so not doing this, Luke. You’re the last person I want to interview about what happened back then.”
Luke’s shoulders slump but his face remains hard. He’s still not looking at me, still staring out of the window, the cold wintery light casting his face into a contrast of light and dark. “Why not?”
“Because you won’t be honest and that’s the whole point of the exercise.”
He finally turns and meets my gaze. “If you think you’re fucking bulletproof, Avery, I’ll tell you every single gory detail of what happened that day.”
“It’s not just that, though! It’s not…it’s not that you didn’t tell me my father’s dying words until years later. It’s everything. It’s why he was mentoring you. It’s why you were so fucking close to him, and all the other secrets that you won’t fucking tell me!”
I hate myself. I hate that I’m crying and screaming and swearing and I can’t get my words out properly. Luke tucks his hands underneath his thighs, literally sitting on them. If I didn’t know him better I’d think he was being a cold son of a bitch, refusing to look at me and glaring at the floor. But I do know him better. I know that if he doesn’t sit on his hands, if he doesn’t keep his eyes off me melting down, then he will be standing over me, trying to comfort me in two seconds flat. That makes my crying worse. I let my head fall forward, my hair obscuring my view of him, and that’s when he starts to talk.
“The first thing you should know is that I’m in love with you, Avery. You know I am.”
He loves me.
The world stops turning. I stop breathing. Everything just…stops. I should look up at him, should meet his eye. Should take in the look that he’s wearing on his face, but I can’t. Because if it matches the tone of his voice right now, it will set my very soul on fire and there will be no saving me. Luke sits quietly while I struggle to try and remember how to breathe. He loves me? Oh my God. How do I survive this?
“The second thing you should know is this…” Luke’s chair creaks. “You were fourteen. You hadn’t spoken in five days. The doctors were getting worried and your mom wouldn’t even go into your bedroom to check on you. My partner and I came to the house to get a further statement from your mom, but I was feeling…I couldn’t even step foot through your front door. Chloe left me outside, said she’d handle it. I sat in your front garden, right there on the front lawn, alone and crying. It was pathetic. But then you…you came down and sat with me. I was so embarrassed.”
I don’t remember any of that. I stifle back a sob and shunt myself back on his bed, hugging my knees to my chest. Luke continues, unfazed that I’m paralysed and his words are hitting me with the force of a sledgehammer.
“You spoke. Your first words after five days were to me. You asked me why I was sad.” Luke looks up, straight at me, straight through the camera, straight into my soul. “And I told you why. I told you exactly why I was sad and why your dad dying was the worst thing that had ever happened to me.
I shake my head, my eyes blurring. “That didn’t happen. I don’t remember.”
“It did happen.”
“Then what did you tell me?”
Luke just shakes his head. “You were quiet for a long time, but after a while you collapsed into my arms and started sobbing. You kept saying the same thing over and over, ‘it hurts, it hurts, it hurts’. I couldn’t bear that, Avery. I swore to you that it would stop hurting one day, I promised you it would. I carried you into the house and put you to bed. After that, Chloe came to get me and we left. But I made you that promise, Ave, and I wanted to keep it. That’s why I kept coming back to see you all those years.”
“And that’s what this is now? You’re still trying to make it stop hurting?”
Luke’s eyes harden as he shakes his head again. “No, I told you. Everything changed when I came back to Break and saw you with that Justin guy. I wanted to kill him. You weren’t a kid anymore, you were a woman, and I was blindsided by how strongly I felt for you. How…”
he looks up at the ceiling, clenching his jaw, “how insanely jealous I was. I had to leave. I didn’t even speak to you that time. I just fucking left.”
He remains quiet for a moment, a moment where I search my memory, scour it trying to find a snippet of recollection, anything that correlates with what he’s telling me. But I can’t. There’s nothing.
“I was catatonic for eleven days after my father died, Luke. I couldn’t have spoken to you after five.” Luke doesn’t argue with me. He just looks at me, brown eyes wide, t-shirt a little damp over his chest where he didn’t dry his skin before putting it on. His shoulders are still slumped like he’s resigned himself to something awful. I can see how much pain he’s in. I can see how badly he needs me to believe him. And, for some reason, I do. “Why were you so angry with me at the station?” I whisper.
Luke sucks his bottom lip into his mouth. “You really don’t know, do you?” he says, running his hand through his hair. “I was mad at you because you just sat there like it was completely normal, and the whole time…the whole time…”
“The whole time what?”
He can’t do it anymore. He stands up, but he doesn’t come to me. He prowls across his bedroom, looking up at me from underneath his brow—a dark, predatory, wild look. “That guy’s hand was on your leg, Ave.”
“What? Luke, you can’t be serious! I’m not your property. I never said I was yours.”
“Well you’re going to. By the time you leave this apartment, you’re gonna have promised me that you’re mine, okay?”
I open my mouth and just stare at him. He’s totally lost it. “Look, I told you. There’s just too much history—”
“Tell me you haven’t been thinking about me,” he demands.
I let out an exasperated sigh. “Of course I’ve been thinking about you. You make it almost impossible not to. You call me, you turn up at my apartment, you kiss me in public, you tell me you don’t think my dad—”