Hush

by Anne Malcom

  She grew to ignore the interview, to let it fade into the dark recesses of her mind, and she found herself enthralled by the fact that he was investigating her murder.

  He was a good detective. And she knew there was a chance she left something behind, even if the chances were slim. She had thought it over and over a thousand times, but beyond the impulsive nature of the killing, she had done it cleanly.

  Which was why she started to breathe easier after the first week. Because he was a good detective. And if the scene had any kind of evidence, he would’ve found it already. He would’ve brought it to her, cuffed her, and took her to her new cell.

  Of course, she remained vigilant, half expected to find Maddox at her door once more, this time with his gun drawn and handcuffs ready. She wouldn’t see the inside of any cell though, not this time. She’d make him shoot her.

  But he never came.

  There was an outpouring of grief and anger over the doctor’s killing. Gang-related, most people deduced, though they couldn’t put a finger on the penis in the mouth aspect of it all. Investigators found records of all his strip club visits, his prostitution arrest in ’84, and the media found out soon after. It was the easiest way to explain an—on the surface—senseless killing. Blame the “thugs,” the marginalized, those who people crossed the street to avoid. Maybe the good doctor owed the wrong people money? Speculation was wild.

  Orion was sorry that supposed “thugs” were blamed by the media. That news stations reported police suspecting a “person of color.” It made her physically ill if she was being honest with herself. But that’s what this world did. It laid crimes at the feet of the innocent, due to racial bias, classism, the fucking old boys’ club. The rich, white men never got caught.

  She found it hard to eat her lasagna. She wished the news would move on already. Stop replaying the scenes over and over and over again, just to build their own narrative. She took a chug of her wine, trying to erase the thought of the TV before she left the house, the news she couldn’t turn off.

  “Soooo . . . Eric?” Technically, Orion should’ve cut ties with April the second her knife had plunged into the doctor’s flesh, but she wasn’t perfect. It turned out she needed her friend.

  “What about Eric?” April repeated, swallowing her wine with a struggle.

  Orion sipped her own. It helped with her anxiety. It wasn’t totally gone, of course. She would never rid herself of the panic that settled in her bones whenever she went anywhere public, especially since she was still recognizable. Luckily, Shelby was getting more and more comfortable being the poster child for all this shit.

  “Nothing’s going on with Eric,” April lied.

  Orion raised a brow.

  Maria approached the table. “More wine, belle ragazze?”

  Orion glanced up at the woman. She was smiling, always smiling. It didn’t seem to bother her that Orion never smiled back. “Definitely more wine,” she said. They’d already finished one bottle.

  Maria grinned in approval. “Va bene.” She reached to grab the empty plates. “And some tiramisu, no? You’re both too skinny.”

  Of course she didn’t wait for either of them to answer.

  “More wine?” April said. “Who’s going to drive us home?”

  Orion shrugged. “You could call Eric.” She didn’t know where the lightness in her voice had come from. She’d managed to call it up more often, ever since she murdered the doctor. It was as if she’d split herself cleanly in two. The broken, ugly killer who didn’t feel much but the thirst for revenge, and the woman who drank wine and teased her friend about a man as if she had no cares in the world.

  April’s cheeks reddened. Orion had not seen her blush in all the time she’d known her, and that included when she was a fourteen-year-old girl.

  “I think he’s a hot piece of ass, you know that.” April drained her wine.

  “I also know that April Novak does not blush over boys or men. And she always goes after what she wants,” Orion countered. “So, what’s stopping you?”

  “You know what’s stopping me, Orion,” April said quietly.

  “Oh, puh-lease. You’ve made a career out of pissing off your brother,” Orion said.

  April’s eyes narrowed. “Exactly. And what do you think he and Eric would think if I ever tried anything? That it was just another move by the predictable April.”

  This surprised Orion because she had half-thought that this was April being predictable, doing things to piss off Maddox. But she saw it now. She was in love with this guy, but didn’t trust herself enough.

  “Okay, so instead you’re just going to make yourself miserable pining over him and sleeping with assholes?” Orion asked.

  April’s eyes flared. “You’d know a thing or two about making yourself miserable, wouldn’t you?”

  Orion saw the regret as soon as the words came out of April’s mouth. It didn’t hit her at all. If anything, it impressed her. She wanted people to insult her, because then they wouldn’t be acting so fucking scared to break her.

  Maria interrupted what would’ve been April’s apology.

  Neither of them spoke as she set down the food.

  “I didn’t mean it,” April said quietly once the woman left.

  “Yes, you did,” Orion replied through a mouthful of her tiramisu. Her table manners left a lot to be desired. The trailer park would always show through.

  April opened her mouth to protest and then shut it again. Orion watched her think. “Okay, I did,” she relented.

  Orion almost smiled at her.

  “I was being a bitch.”

  “Yes, you were,” Orion agreed. “But so was I.”

  “We’re just a couple of bitches then,” April said, lifting her glass.

  “I’ll toast to that.”

  April called Eric about halfway through the second bottle of wine. She wasn’t drunk. Teenage binge drinking and young adult casual drinking gave her a tolerance that most forty-year-old soldiers didn’t have.

  She wasn’t drunk, but definitely had loosened inhibitions. Loose enough to call the man she was not so secretly in love with to give them a ride home. Of course he answered, and of course he turned up at the restaurant with an easy smile and a kick-ass leather jacket.

  “You came to Maria’s without me, called me here to pick you up, and the kitchen is closed? You couldn’t have called me thirty minutes earlier?” he asked with faux anger.

  April smiled. No, she beamed at the man. “Oh, as if you’d let carbs and fats inside that body, that temple of yours.”

  He smiled—no, he beamed back. “Normally, that is true. But not with Maria.”

  April rolled her eyes and then handed over a wrapped package she’d been hiding behind her back. “I’m not that selfish.”

  Their fingers brushed as she handed the bag to him. If someone tried to describe the moment to Orion, she would’ve rolled her eyes. Because something passed between them with that simple touch. Something that even Orion, in her cold and empty heart, could feel. It was as if the two of them had just realized they were the only people left in the world.

  She felt like a voyeur, like she was peeking in on a moment that was pure and right, and making it ugly and tarnished.

  Luckily, as moments do, it ended.

  Things worked under the guise of normal after that. Eric spoke to Orion, was polite, friendly, and warm. They all got into the car, spoke about light things. But there was an undertone. Even someone ignorant in matters of love and romance—someone stunted, crippled for life in those matters—could see it. Taste it in the fucking air. It was all she could do not to vomit all over Eric’s nice leather seats.

  She was thankful when he let her out first. This was hopefully tactical. Hopefully, he’d make a move on April, though she was sure it was going to be the other way around.

  Eric was the kind of guy that walked Orion up to her door. He would not be convinced otherwise. He was also the kind of man to order April to lock the d
oors while she waited for him to come back. She was the kind of woman to argue.

  They didn’t talk much on the way up. Some casual conversation, but Orion didn’t do small talk and Eric didn’t seem to mind.

  She was aware that she was spending time with the other half of the homicide squad investigating the murder she’d committed.

  “Don’t fuck it up,” she said as they arrived at her door.

  He raised his brow in surprise.

  “April,” she clarified. “I’m not good with feelings. I don’t have them like other people do. That’s not how I am anymore. But I see what April is. What you are. I see what happens in the bowels of fucking hell, or life as I know it. You’ve seen it too. Grab onto that kind, crazy, little bitch. Don’t fuck around. Don’t make excuses. Just hold on to the one thing that might give you a semblance of happiness. Until it all falls apart at least.”

  Orion was surprised at her own words. For interjecting herself further into April’s life. The life of cops. Was it the wine, or was it this other half of her, freed from the monster, finally finding her voice?

  Eric looked sufficiently stunned too, but to his credit did not try to deny what he felt for April. “I won’t fuck it up,” he said. “Or, at least, I’ll try my best not to.”

  Orion nodded, uncomfortable. She met his hazel eyes. “If you break her heart, I’ll kill you.” She hadn’t planned on saying that either. She sure as shit hadn’t planned on being so damn serious about it, but April meant something to her, for better or for worse.

  Something moved in the back of Eric’s eyes. Something that noted the emptiness in her voice. The killer there. “Duly noted.”

  She nodded, then opened the door and closed it without goodbyes.

  She waited until it had been long enough for Eric to walk down to the car, maybe have an argument with April for not locking it, then leave.

  Then she waited a little longer. Then she slipped out the door.

  Something had become clear tonight.

  She did not know about love, and she never really would. Same with romance. But something as primal as sex, she needed to take it back. She needed to be able to do it on her own terms before she continued on her path.

  Orion drove to the bar.

  Whether it was a good idea or not, it didn’t matter. She felt in control enough that she wouldn’t crash the car into some family of churchgoers. And she wasn’t exactly worried about being arrested for a DUI, considering she’d killed a man and got away with it.

  The bar wasn’t far.

  She had intended on continuing to avoid most hard liquors. She needed a clear head for things to come. But what she had planned tonight did not require a clear head. It required a mixture of bravery and stupidity, which conveniently was the side effect of a twenty-dollar cocktail.

  She looked good. These days, she always did. Orion had become sort of addicted to clothes and online shopping. April was a bad influence. The small second bedroom in her apartment now served as her closet.

  She had an affinity for heels and wore them everywhere. The ones she had on tonight were blood-red, six inches high, and designed by Manolo Blahnik.

  She had on a silk, bias-cut skirt that brushed her knees and a loose-fitting sheer shirt that showed the lace of her bra underneath. Orion looked sexy. She didn’t feel it, and she never would. But she was playing a part.

  “What’s a girl like you doing drinking alone this late at night?” a voice asked.

  Orion rolled her eyes. She had never, not once, been to a bar on her own with the sole purpose of picking up a guy. Then again, she’d never had the opportunity to do such things. But even she knew that was a line.

  The owner of the voice and the cliché line was older than her, but not by much. He wore a pink T-shirt and chinos, ugly sneakers that she knew cost three hundred dollars. A haircut she suspected came with the same price tag. She wouldn’t have looked like money when she was younger, but she’d learned quickly the hipsters of today wore clothes similar to her cheap Walmart crap and somehow paid ten times as much for it.

  Other than that, he wasn’t terrible to look at. A beard that was groomed within an inch of its life. Nice eyes. Good bone structure.

  Orion hated everything about him, including how close he was standing to her. But she held fast. If she could watch a man die, surely she could do this.

  She didn’t smile. She didn’t have that in her.

  “Hi, I’m Brad,” he said when she didn’t respond, not seeming at all fazed by her silence. “You are an absolute smoke show, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  She gritted her teeth.

  She downed the last of her drink and pushed off the sticky bar. Standing, she said, “Hi, Brad. I, in fact, do mind, and my name is simple. You ready for it?” She smirked, cupping a hand to her mouth. “It’s ‘fuck off, I’m leaving,’” she said, and walked toward the door.

  Orion wasn’t entirely sure why she didn’t drive home after the bar—she could’ve used the sleep, after all. She also wasn’t sure why she continued on toward Maddox’s house.

  She knew where he lived because she’d dropped April off a couple of times but had never gone in. April had stopped trying to convince her.

  April had also texted her to let her know she was in the middle of eating the most bomb ass mac and cheese on the planet that Eric had cooked for her—probably trying to sober her up. So, Orion was safe on that front.

  They lived in a nice townhouse in a good part of town. That didn’t surprise her. Their parents probably paid for it.

  Maddox opened the door not long after she knocked. He was still awake, T-shirt slightly wrinkled. Hair rumpled, eyes bloodshot.

  “Orion, what the—?”

  “I need you to have sex with me,” she blurted. Not the most graceful of propositions, but she hoped it would work.

  He blinked, moved slightly back as if she’d shoved him. She used that as traction to get inside the house, her heels clicking on the wood floor.

  She saw a lot of April in the decorating, a mix of dark masculine tones and warm feminine touches. The throw pillows on the sofa. The vintage rugs. The huge framed print that read “Smash the Patriarchy.”

  It wasn’t the stiff, upper-middle-class décor they had grown up with. Orion liked that. But she wasn’t here to read the interior décor. She was here for a purpose.

  Yes, if she wanted to kill men, she should be able to stomach having sex with them. With him, at least.

  Maddox closed the door and followed her into the living room.

  His face was guarded, body language taut. His eyes assessed her. They appreciated her outfit, of course. Orion was too well in tune at experiencing the male gaze to not recognize that. But that quickly dissipated as he looked for signs of drug use, inebriation, anything that would explain this drastic change in behavior.

  She couldn’t handle the inspection, cold and calculating as it was. She folded her arms across her chest. “Do you want me or not?”

  His eyes snapped up. “Maybe you should sit down. We can talk—”

  “I don’t want to talk,” Orion snapped. “I want to fuck. I want to fuck you. Either you do or you don’t.”

  She was aware this was not the kind of conversation a woman had to try and seduce a man. You were meant to speak softly, make graceful yet feline movements. That was not inside of her. She didn’t know soft or graceful.

  Maddox didn’t answer straight away. He folded his arms. A muscle in his jaw tensed.

  “I’m not going to have sex with you,” he said, face stormy. He was pissed.

  “Why not?” she shot back. “I’m too broken, too tarnished for you?” She uttered the words with force to cover up the shame and rejection that covered her skin.

  He flinched as if she’d struck him. “No, Orion. Not because you’re broken. And you sure as shit aren’t tarnished. I would like to kiss you again. Move slowly with you. I want you—I always have. I think I’ve made that fucking clear. But I’m not
going to have sex with you because you demand it. Because you’ve been drinking. I might not be able to read your mind, but I can see you’re doing this for some fucked-up, dark reason, and I’m not gonna be a part of it. I care too much about you for that.”

  His words were iron. They were law.

  It infuriated Orion on a level she knew didn’t make sense. He had every right to refuse her. But not fucking once over this past decade did she get the right to refuse a man she didn’t want to have sex with. In her cold, evil mind, she wanted to finally have the right to fuck who she wanted to.

  Even if she didn’t really want to have sex with Maddox. Not her whole self, at least.

  But that didn’t matter. That anger, that fury, was easier and more comfortable than the shame.

  “Dark reason.” She repeated Maddox’s words, then she stepped forward. His body stiffened further, braced for attack. “Everything I do, everything I say, everything I feel is dark, Maddox. You’re a cop. A good one, a smart one, at that. You know what I’ve been through, where I come from, doesn’t foster any fucking sunshine. I’m a midnight person. The time of night where there’s nothing but darkness. Where the people sleep, and the monsters roam. That’s all I know anymore.”

  She stepped forward again, speaking before he could protest. “I claw myself out of nightmares, only to find that reality is worse,” she whispered. “That I don’t have an escape, a respite, even in my dreams. This feeling follows me. My throat burns with the urge to scream, but my tongue knows there’s power in my silence. My legs ache to run, but my feet need roots. My brain craves a normal life, like one you might promise, but my heart, my dead soul, their thirst for blood and darkness is insatiable.” She moved farther forward. “So, you’re right. I want you for a dark reason. But that doesn’t change the fact that I want you.”