by James, Ella
I don’t know where we are when Barrett starts struggling and moaning.
“Gwen…?” His voice is so raspy, I can barely make out my name, but I recognize the tone. He’s called for me so many times before, how could I not?
“Right here.” I squeeze his hand. It’s cold and damp in mine.
His head presses back against the top of the stretcher, and his face twists. Then, before I know what happened, someone shoves me. “Back up!”
I hit the ambulance’s wall with a hard bump. Oh my God, are those paddles?
“Stand clear!”
This weird, high-pitched noise whines. The two paramedics are messing with his chest and face. The woman starts counting, pressing on his chest; the man is at his mouth and looking down.
His face looks strange. His skin is gray, his eyes are rolling.
“What’s wrong?”
I can only watch as Barrett’s body twitches. His hand, curled up by his chest, unfurls and curls again as his back arches.
“Barrett!”
The paddles aren’t really paddles—more like soft stickers. The first time they shock him, I’m staring at his face. Please…please…please…
When no one moves or speaks, I start to sob, get up, and try to go up by his head. The man holds out his arm to keep me away.
“I love you!”
I can tell it worked that time because the EMTs spring into motion once again. I can’t even hear their words. Can only stare at Barrett’s face, his bleeding throat.
Oh God, please…
I beg someone to let me hold his hand.
“Okay, but if I tell you move, you have to move back.”
His face and body are so still. I kiss his fingers.
“It’s okay, baby. Gwen is here. I’m here. I love you. I don’t care what happened in the past. It doesn’t matter to me.”
This goes on for hours. Or minutes, maybe. I don’t know. Someone tells me to move back. The ambulance stops. The paramedics jump out, rushing off, and someone helps me down. I guess the driver.
He directs me somewhere. I don’t know. I’m numb. I just want Barrett, but they took him back.
“I’m his wife!”
The woman at the counter looks at me like she doesn’t even care, and more tears come, and then the dark-haired guy is there, the one called Dove. He takes me to some chairs and tables somewhere.
“I just went back there. He’s stable, Gwenna.”
I don’t know. The horror of it. And it’s horror. Nothing less. Dove hugs me and I start sobbing. His shirt smells like butterscotch.
The other one is here, too: Bluebell. Michael, he tells me. I remember something about his dad being in the military, something about a threat, but not specifics.
“I’m going to talk to them again,” Dove says at one point.
I look up at Michael and my stomach bottoms out.
“You’re… Fuck!”
I jump up, running through the hall until I find a door and toss it open, getting sick inside the metal sink of one of the rooms. When I wipe my face, I find Michael in the door and cry again.
Because it’s true. It’s all true…
Michael is the guy who wanted me to share a beer bowl with him that night.
That night.
Really happened.
I don’t want it to have been real—but it is.
Barrett hit me that night. My Bear.
I sit on a rolling chair in the empty room and put my head in my hands.
“You okay?” I hear Michael murmur.
I shake my head. I use my feet to scoot my chair over to the examination table, then I put my arms on the paper-covered table and I lean against it as my mind gallops ahead of me.
My heart starts racing.
Barrett hit me.
Nic came at me with a gun.
I shot Nic.
A sob leaks out.
I shot Nic! I shot Jamie’s boyfriend! Will I get arrested?
Where is Barrett?
I want Barrett!
Someone rubs my back as I cry, hunched over the table. The hand stops. I hear someone come in and look up to see Dove. His lips are pressed together and his arms are crossed.
As his eyes move over mine and Michael’s, he uncrosses his arms. “Talked to someone. Brothers. Wife,” he waves at me, “we have a right to updates. Bear’s in surgery. They cauterized the artery right after he got here, so the bleeding’s stopped. He’s getting blood. The surgery they’re doing isn’t major. Mostly on his trachea, they told me. And they think he’s stable now.”
I see him hold Michael’s eyes, and even though Dove’s aren’t soft or emotional, I can feel that he is checking his friend over, making sure he’s okay. Michael nods, and Dove’s gaze shifts to my face.
“Gwenna, do you want to be here? One of us can take you home.”
I don’t even realize I’ve stood up until I notice how close my face is to Dove’s. “You aren’t taking me home!” My voice shakes. “You can’t make me leave. I’ve never even seen you.”
“Whoa, now—”
“I don’t know you, but I know Barrett. Maybe everything is all messed up with us. I know—” my voice breaks. “I know he might have…” I shake my head as tears fall down my cheeks. “I still want him to be okay, though. And alive.” I give a fragile little laugh, devoid of humor.
“I’m not leaving till I know he’s okay and he doesn’t want me here. I’m not going to force my presence on him—”
I hear someone chuckle and look back at Michael.
His brows wiggle. “Force.” He’s looking smirky.
“Yes, I said I wouldn’t—”
Dove’s hand closes on my arm. I look from Michael to him. “Sit down, Gwenna. You’re shaking and I’m worried that you’re going to fall. Barrett would kill both of us.”
I end up on the exam table, my feet dangling off, feeling sick and leaking tears, looking out at Bear’s two good friends.
“Sorry.” I cup my face in my hands so I don’t embarrass myself further. “You can leave me in here and just give me updates. I’ll come out,” I sob, “in just a little bit—” my body quivers on another sob— “to hear…if…he’s okay.”
I can feel Dove stepping closer, his hand touch down on my back. He pulls me up against him and I can’t help it— I let him, and I cry into his flannel shirt. Bear’s friends. If they were at his house, they know him; they love him. They’re the ones he wanted with him, not me.
“It’s a shame how this went down,” I hear one of them say.
“You’re a good person, Gwenna.” That’s Dove. I can tell because he’s right beside me. “Staying here. You couldn’t force your presence on him in a million years. He’ll wake up and I know he’d love to see you. He went over there for you. He feels so sorry for what happened.”
“It’s okay. I’m okay. I’ll get over it. I understand—his feelings… All the guilt.” I lift my face and look from Dove to Michael. “I know why he came to Gatlinburg and bought the house. He got in…too far. Just like I did.”
Michael steps closer, his eyes warm on mine. “How do you feel about him, Gwenna? Do you hate him?”
I laugh. “Hate him! Barrett?” I smile sadly, wiping stray tears from my cheeks. “I still love him. I get that he—”
“He loves you.” Michael’s eyes are heavy on my face. “Barrett loves you, Gwenna, and he feels like shit. He didn’t mean to get in with you like he did. It was a group secret, and one he wasn’t supposed to ever tell. He didn’t want to tell you. He thought he could make it up to you. Make you love him and make your life good, so maybe that wouldn’t matter. Could be in the past. Do you understand that what he told you put…” He shakes his head. “He told you because he loves you. He was worried, and he knew that it would make you hate him, but he also knew he needed to protect you.”
I’m crying again. “I don’t get it.” I look from Dove to Michael, suddenly afraid. “Should I be worried. Like…”
; “It’s settled, Gwenna. Bear turned himself in, in Colorado. It’s all settled.”
My pulse races. “He hasn’t called me.”
Dove steps in front of me. “Gwenna. Do you remember that night? The night in Breckenridge, when you and Bear—” I’m nodding, so he pauses; when I don’t speak, he goes on. “He told you it was him, and you were very upset. Sliced your fingernails into his neck—” Dove points to his own throat— “cut up his face. He got in the snow and laid there so you could go at him, he let you punch him, got his nose all busted up, black eye right here…” Dove gestures to his own eye. “When we found him, he had called your friend Jamie and waited with you while she got there. I guess you passed out. We found Barrett walking through the woods. He didn’t know what day it was, what time it was. He was in shock.”
“He thought that we were there to kill him,” Michael puts forth.
Dove’s eyes hold mine. “That’s what he wanted.”
His words slice at my soul. My poor Bear. I try to imagine myself beating him up, but I can’t remember. My chest aches. “Why are you telling me this?”
Their eyes meet for a moment. This time, Michael speaks. “Gwenna, we understand your feelings. How betrayed you must feel. Angry. No one has been in your position here but you. And we respect that. We just wanted you to understand that Barrett loves you. More than his own life. He wants you to be happy. He wants healing for you.”
I shake my head. Without Barrett, I can never heal. “It doesn’t make sense…” but it doesn’t have to. It’s my heart. “You don’t get it.” I put my head in my hands again. “No one gets it! I can’t be happy without Barrett! He’s my happy. Even if he did do something awful.” I lift my face and look at both of them, his friends who helped him. “I don’t care, okay! I know him, I love Barrett, I forgive him. There’s no other option. I’m a human being and not some robot. I was shocked and upset.” I start sobbing. “It wore off in like a day and then I realized that he didn’t— I know he doesn’t want to be with me.”
Dove’s arms are around me again, squeezing me against his chest a little hard. “Gwenna.” His hands grip my shoulders. I look up into his brown eyes. “Barrett would do anything to be with you. He would have killed Niccolo in a heartbeat if you hadn’t shot him.”
My mind hums. I get a heavy breath. “I killed him. I killed Jamie’s boyfriend.” I can feel hysterics gather in my chest, a heavy wall of weight that needs to be let out. “Is Bear going to be okay? Am I going to get arrested?”
“Gwenna… Calm down.” Dove’s hand rubs a circle on my back. “If you can calm down, there’s some things we want to tell you.”
Fear pierces my heart. “What kind of things?”
The two men look at each other, and then at me.
* * *
Niccolo
It was never really my fault. Were it not for Dad’s addiction to loose pussy, I would never have been on that road at that time. Who expects a person walking by the road’s side dressed in black?
I was going faster than I should have been. You could say that. But I had snow tires. Again, I didn’t know there would be anybody walking on the shoulder. I didn’t see her face until it hit the windshield. From that moment forward, I knew my victim: Gwenna White, my new conquest’s best friend. Gwenna White, the guest of Larry Madison and family. She was even in his jacket.
She was carrying a plant: a gardenia. It hit the hood of the car, the edge of the plastic pot leaving a tiny dent I never could get out.
When I left her there, she seemed unconscious but alive. I couldn’t call the police. For starters, I didn’t have cell phone service. Since I had to leave the scene to go get help, why would I tattle on myself? And ruin my career? And ruin my reputation? Why? Because that would undo what had happened?
I got to my brother John as fast as I could. I told him I’d seen a hit and run, and so I called it in—anonymously, of course. With our dad’s reputation, why leave names? John understood.
Not long after that, something strange happened: John got a call on the same secret agent phone I used to call about Gwenna. He got a call from Barrett Drake. John rushed off, and only later did I find out why.
Months later, we stayed up over gin and tonic. John asked me about Gwenna—what had I heard about the girl’s recovery—and I almost passed out. He didn’t know. Thank fuck, he didn’t know my secret. I was still with Jamie. He was curious, he said.
I told him the girl was living. Didn’t die.
John told me about Barrett. How he couldn’t eat or sleep, was all thrown off and felt so fucking terrible. Boo-hoo. But it worked out. Because John decided he’d tell Barrett that his victim had lived.
See, that’s the beauty of it.
That one night, two hit-and-runs.
Mine, and Barrett’s.
His victim: some nameless woman with dementia, living in a shack in the forest. She wasn’t found for weeks due to the snow-packed ground and when she was, no obituary. Just a little news brief.
How would Barrett know Gwen wasn’t his victim? He’d been so drunk, John didn’t think he remembered the correct road name. They’d left a dead victim, but who’s to say the dead never come back? That John hadn’t simply been wrong? In fact, the stories in the papers later said she’d done just that: died and returned. A murder with no dead.
Lucky.
So lucky.
John cared so much for his friend, he helped his own brother. Only one of his accomplices, General Broomfield’s son, Michael, known in ACE as Bluebell, questioned the location of the wreck when John told all of them the victim had survived. But Bluebell—Michael—had been drunk as well. They’d all been drinking. And who questioned John—their honest, valiant Breck?
Breck was a hero.
When he died and it came out that it was Barrett’s fault—the pussy couldn’t shoot some desert rat and so the operation that day went to shit, with John covering for Barrett—it made more sense to me. There, the type of man who drove intoxicated, hit a woman, ran.
Barrett—not me.
I told myself that it made sense, the way fate played things. Up until the time when Barrett tracked his victim down in Gatlinburg, it all made so much sense to me. And after that, the nervousness. The fear. The fury.
I tried hard to keep tabs on them. I tried to get Gwen to talk to me. I even used the fence-jump trick John taught me. I used his sed dart concoction. I failed, but things were still okay until she told Jamie about her dreaming. She remembered things about that night.
The team I’d hired to watch Gwenna and Barrett came in contact with another team of snoops: this one far superior, a team of ghosts. As it turns out, they had an agenda, too. They were working for General Broomfield, Michael’s father, who was trying to keep an ACE scandal at bay.
Those men told mine that they weren’t authorized to shoot and kill, but that’s what they thought their boss wanted. A tragic accident.
Something awful.
What’s worse than a veteran who’s lost his mind, who kills his girl and then himself?
Chapter Thirty-One
Gwenna
March 30, 2016
It’s something that I couldn’t think about. Not didn’t want to. Couldn’t. It wasn’t possible for me to think of Barrett as a murderer.
He was mine. I’d stamped my love on every inch of him. Even the damaged parts of him, I wanted. Needed. I was damaged too, living a pseudo-life, and loving Barrett made me real again. It made me me again.
How could I hate him? How was I to label something he’d done unforgivable?
Maybe in a moment I did. I attacked him in the snow. And in that moment, maybe the deepest part of me, the animal, wanted to take him out—the way he took me out. Wanted to get him back: life for a life. But conscious Gwen? Thinking, feeling Gwen? She could never, ever hate him. I just loved him. Kept on loving him. Because it’s all my heart could do.
Love doesn’t give choices. It’s like an avalanche. It just happens. Whe
n it does, all you can do is hope you’re strong enough to live through it.
Dove told me that Barrett tracked me down because he felt that we were linked. Like, karma. Somehow, ours became entangled.
What he did to me, he felt, was done to him in turn. My life was wrecked. I couldn’t sing. I couldn’t act. I couldn’t even pursue Taekwondo semi-professionally. So, no shred of my former life remained.
And same for Barrett. His life as an Operator: over after Syria. His best friend: gone.
He tracked me down as penance. It would be the ultimate atonement. He could confess everything, release his awful guilt. He’d planned to let me decide what should be done to him. If I wanted him to turn himself in, if I didn’t object to him doing so, then he would. He’d come completely clean, and maybe then, he’d feel clean too.
Except, he fell in love with me. And so it’s funny, how wrong I had it at first. He traded absolution, traded guiltless living, he traded a fresh start, to be with me. He wasn’t with me because he thought he had to be. Being near me put his life at risk, it risked his friends’ lives. But he did it until he was worried it would risk my life. And then he had to tell me. Had to let me go. That’s what he thought, Dove told me.
It’s a fucked-up story, this one. Hard to understand and even harder to accept.
There were two hit-and-runs that night. One mine, and one that of an elderly forest-dwelling woman. She died and stayed dead. Breck hid her body underneath snow, so the local paper didn’t report her death until a month and a half later.
I died and came back.
Another curve in the tracks: Breck telling Barrett, Dove, and Blue that the woman that he’d hidden was alive. Was me.
Breck thought this would make it easier for Bear to live with what had happened. He didn’t know that Bear and I had talked that night at the bar. That we’d connected. Bear had called me “snowflake,” given me his scarf. We smoked our cigarettes together, and I loved his handsome face, his pretty eyes. I remember just that one thing: smoking with him outside. In my memory, I even loved his sadness.