Not Quite Clear (A Lowcountry Mystery)

by Lyla Payne

  “Jesus Christ, man. I was just talking to her.”

  “And I’ll deal with her later. Unless you want to be dealt with further right now, I suggest you get your ass out of this apartment and don’t look back.”

  The threat twisted my stomach as I hurried into the kitchen, Jeyne on my heels. The whole thing had happened so fast it slowed my body’s movements, and my hands started to shake as I held Tritt’s shirt under a stream of hot water. My heart pounded so loudly in my ears that it drowned out the party. Sweat coated my forehead and underarms. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth as I breathed through my nose, trying not to throw up.

  Jeyne stared at me from across the counter, eyebrows knit together. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Why do you put up with that crap from him, Dinah?” Her tone was one I’d never heard from her in regards to me—concerned.

  There were many answers to that question, starting with the fact that I didn’t enjoy getting my ass kicked and ending with the time he’d slit my cat’s throat senior year of college after the last time I’d gotten up the nerve to dump him. He’d promised he’d get ahold of my younger sister the next time, and he’d meant every word.

  “That’s my business, Jeynie. Don’t try to act like we’re friends.”

  “Maybe it’s not about you, Dinah. Maybe it’s that I don’t like the idea of sleeping in the same apartment as a fucking psychopath. Why don’t you call the cops?”

  I snorted. Did she really think I’d never tried? Half the local cops had moonlighted for Tritt’s father’s company at some point, and the other half bought meth from Tritt on the weekends. I’d gone to them once only to have one of them go to the Johnsons behind my back.

  I’d held out some hope that something would change after college, that maybe he’d get bored beating up a schoolteacher on the weekends. But so far he hadn’t. And after the cat and the betrayal by the cops, I wasn’t taking any chances. Tritt was fucking batshit crazy. If I turned him in, he’d make sure I paid, and besides, it was my word against his. He could be as convincing as a choirboy bathing in holy water when he wanted to be.

  “Just mind your own business and Tritt won’t bother you, mouse.” My heartbeat slowed to almost normal, but my hands still trembled as I wet a towel and shut off the faucet, ignoring the way she pressed her lips into a thin line. “Look at the bright side—now you’ll know how to get blood and vomit out of carpet.”

  She didn’t follow me as I returned the living room, using the towel to clean the blood spatter off Tritt’s cheek and hand. Lindy, Jesse, and the poor, battered guy had disappeared—not that I blamed them—and Jeyne made her way toward the exit, too. The inevitable conversation with Lindy at our next yoga class coated my belly with dread. She was technically my best friend, but we weren’t that close—I didn’t have real friends because they asked questions they weren’t prepared to hear the answers to—but she was as close as anyone had gotten in years.

  Tritt trapped my hands against his chest and yanked me to him, then bent to press a hard kiss to my mouth. His tongue forced its way past my lips, the invasion ending with a rough bite to my lower lip.

  I tasted blood as he pressed his forehead against mine, insanity glittering in his blue eyes. “If you ever embarrass me in public again, you’re going to regret it. I have a mind to take you in the other room right now, maybe remind you who you belong to.” He pinched my wrists together with one hand, using the other to grope my boob, as though I didn’t understand the threat. When I didn’t respond to the pain, his lips pulled back into an ugly smile. “I guess I’m going to have to dial it up a notch. I do believe you’re starting to enjoy our little games, you fucking slut.”

  He turned me loose. My entire body shook with my hands now, and there was no way to hide it from him. The room wavered, shimmered on the edges, partially from the Long Islands but mostly from the fear that raced through my veins like a drug. An overdose of adrenaline pumped inside me, begging me to run, to hide, to kick him in the balls, but my brain insisted none of that would work.

  One of Tritt’s friends, a girl he’d known since high school, wandered up and asked what had happened to his shirt, clearly flirting. His attention wandered from me, and I took the opportunity to mumble something about the bathroom and make an escape.

  I shut and locked the door, flicking on the light and staring at myself in the mirror. Except for the too-pale state of my face and the cornered-animal fear in my eyes, I looked like I had my shit together. My blond hair still fell past my shoulders in a perfect curl. The dark shadow on my lids had turned my green eyes dusky, as intended. Even my lip gloss was still shiny. It disconcerted me that my inside and outside could be such a dichotomy. How could I stay that way, in two pieces all the time?

  Tears filled my eyes, but I blinked them away. Fuck Tritt Wadsworth Johnson III and the train he rode in on. He could—and would—kick the shit out of me later. Carefully, too, so there wouldn’t be any marks. He’d learned that trick before high school graduation. But he would not fucking make me cry.

  I splashed a little water on my face and then fixed my makeup. I knew I had to do something. If things continued this way, the rest of my life would be a wasteland.

  The problem was, and had always been, that I had no idea how to change the trajectory.

  2.

  Jeyne

  Despite the fact that I spent a good portion of every day wanting to yank Dinah’s perfect blond curls out of her perfect blond head, the scene at the apartment rattled me. She was a spoiled little rich girl who had made my life a living hell ever since we’d moved in together last fall, but I didn’t want her to get hurt. That boyfriend of hers was the definition of bad news, and after growing up with the men my mother paraded in and out of my life, I considered myself an expert on the matter.

  Tritt usually made himself pretty scarce when we were in the apartment at the same time. Both Dinah and I went out of our way to ensure that happened as little as possible to begin with, and for that, I was grateful. As bad as it sounded, their messed-up relationship wasn’t my problem. I’d left home and all that behind. Eighteen years of worrying about the woman I shared a house with was more than enough, at least for me. I wasn’t about to spend any more of tonight in an apartment doing the same thing.

  But man, that guy could make me shiver in the middle of summer. Not the kind of warm electricity I felt around Nathan, either. Not even close.

  I slid into the booth closest to the outlet at the Village Inn, the one I’d come to think of as ours since we’d met the first day of our residency. The seconds before he looked up gave me a chance to drink in the slight curl in his blond hair, the broad, muscled shoulders filling out his thin, green scrubs, and the strong fingers grasping an old-school number-two pencil.

  The picture heated me from head to toe.

  Nathan finished scrawling some notes and then smiled my direction, his pale blue eyes sparkling and happy. “Hey. Glad you called. I was having trouble staying awake at home.”

  Steam rose from the cheap ceramic mug in front of him, the smell of coffee like a drug that perked me up. I filled the empty mug he’d gotten for me from the pot at the end of the table, still trying to shake the lingering feeling of ick from the apartment drama in order to focus on the task at hand. Nathan hardly talked about his home life, and I’d never been to his house. I guessed his roommate situation was no more ideal than mine was, but neither of us spent much time at our respective apartments. Or had any money that didn’t go straight to mountains of student loans.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, as perceptive as ever.

  The concern on his handsome face tickled my heart, replacing my lingering unease with comfort. His rugged, solid, six-foot frame had a way of making me feel safe, even though he’d never given me anything but a side hug. My daydreams were filled with something more, but having him as a friend during this crazy first year of being a doctor was better than nothing. I’d caug
ht more than one appreciative stare over the past several months, even though I always, always looked exhausted, but Nathan had never made a move. As my roommate had so kindly pointed out earlier tonight.

  “Just Dinah.”

  “What did she do this time?”

  I pulled my laptop and a pile of neat notes out of my bag, setting them on the table. “Nothing. Well, I mean, she threw another party even though I told her about the surgery tomorrow, but that’s normal. Her boyfriend showed up and attacked some poor guy for daring to speak to her.”

  “Are you serious?” His hand snaked out and covered mine, big and warm.

  My eyes jerked up to his. Sparks shot up my arm and through my blood until they shocked my heart into a gallop. It was stupid to be so affected by a simple touch. Focus, Jeyne.

  I pulled my hand away and swallowed. “Yeah. He’s a piece of work. Some rich asshole from her hometown, super jealous and protective.”

  “That sounds like more than a healthy amount of jealous and protective.” He reached toward my hand again, curling his fingers around mine and forcing my eyes to his. The seriousness in them brought back all my earlier discomfort.

  “Is there a healthy amount?” I asked. I’d grown up watching my mother’s string of jealous, drunk, loser assholes. It was possible my own perception of normalcy needed some tweaking.

  “Sure. Most guys who are determined to keep a girl they’re crazy about have a natural instinct to protect their relationship. But it shouldn’t manifest as violence.”

  I tried a teasing smile, but the worry churning in my gut made it hard to accomplish. “You’ve never kicked some guy’s ass for hitting on your girl?”

  He didn’t smile back, instead pressing his lips into a thin line. “No. The bottom line is she’s only my girl if she wants to be, and if she doesn’t anymore, then how is lashing out going to help?”

  “You’re exceptionally mature.”

  “Seriously, Jeyne. Be careful. I’ve seen… I do not like the sound of what’s going on with Dinah.”

  “Okay, I will.” I took a sip of coffee and stared at my laptop, determined not to let my roommate and her antics negatively affect my career. Also on the list of things that I couldn’t let distract me? Too many curiosities about Nathan. Like what he’d “seen” that he clearly didn’t want to bring up. “Right now I just want to make sure I’ve got this stuff down before the surgery tomorrow.”

  “You know this stuff backward and forward, but okay. Let’s do it.”

  We studied for a couple of hours, then ordered a plate of French toast to share. When it arrived, we pushed our notes and laptops out of the way. The truth was that Nathan needed more help than I did when it came to this stuff and we both knew it, which was another reason he must’ve suspected my ulterior motives for spending time with him. What he hopefully didn’t suspect was that I liked watching the way his muscles stretched the sleeves of his scrubs when he set his bag on the floor and how his washboard abs came into view when he stretched his arms above his head.

  Nathan did not look like the other guys in our class of first-year residents—or the girls, for that matter. The rest of us were all pale and sickly and squinty-eyed after four years stuffed in college libraries followed by four years in medical school. He was fit and often tanned and just…different.

  The waitress, a skittish twentysomething named Kayleigh, set down the plate and asked us in her typical mumble if we needed anything else. She had dark hair that fell in tumbling waves past her shoulders, darting brown eyes, and an air about her that made me think she was running from the mob. I had the feeling that posing a question about it would send her careening through the back door, leaving behind nothing but a Kayleigh-shaped hole in the cheap metal.

  “I’m going to miss studying with you after this year’s up,” Nathan commented, drizzling blueberry syrup on three of the French toast triangles. He left the other three for me, and I doused them in regular maple. His eyes stayed on our food, carefully avoiding my gaze, which was not typical.

  After our first year, we got to choose a specialty, and I was the only resident who had been approved for cardio. Nathan had chosen general surgery. No one did that, but he claimed to want to be an expert at everything. And to always have a full schedule. The lack of focus didn’t fit with the rest of his personality.

  “You’re still sticking with general surgery, huh?”

  “That’s the plan. I like to stay busy, and besides, this way I’ll get to hone my bedside manner. I think it needs work.”

  “I seriously doubt that,” I replied around a mouthful of French toast. My cheeks heated until they felt like they might melt my teeth. If I could have disappeared into the table, I would have done it in a heartbeat because the way the words had come out sounded so suggestive.

  I was so endlessly hopeless when it came to men.

  He stayed still until I managed to cool my face. When I looked up, the conflicted expression in his eyes confused me. The blue was a bright muddle of emotions with one in particular taking the lead—frustration. I thought he might bring up the elephant of my unrequited crush that hung about whatever room we were in together, but he didn’t.

  “I was actually thinking about joining the military,” he replied once the moment passed. “They need field surgeons, and I could learn trauma tricks to bring back.”

  “You want to be a soldier?” I squinted at him and tipped my head, aiming for playfulness. My heart couldn’t decide whether to be disappointed or relieved that he’d changed the subject.

  “Hell no. Not forever, anyway.”

  “Hmm.” I took another couple of bites, finishing up my half of the late-night breakfast.

  “Do you have something against soldiers?”

  The question seemed to have bite to it, like an accusation. But that was silly. Nathan didn’t know the way I’d grown up. Couldn’t know that my father had been killed in action, an event that had ruined my childhood and colored the next decade of my life in one fell swoop.

  “No, of course not. It’s just…surprising, that’s all. I thought you’d go into peds with the way you seem to love working with kids.” He was good with them, too. But peds was depressing, at least to me.

  He gave me a thin smile and ignored the remark, eating the last of the French toast and shoving the plate toward the edge of the table. Kayleigh appeared and swiped it away, dropping off a fresh pitcher of coffee at the same time. The girl was nothing if not efficient.

  I didn’t understand the tension in the air but had an instinct to soothe it all the same. “Then again, the uniform would be good for picking up girls…”

  At least I’d managed not to hit on him directly this time, and the joke eased the visible tightness in his shoulders. His ensuing grin pushed my tingles lower. Nathan was handsome all the time, but it was blinding when he smiled. As though the sweetness and earnestness and goodness inside him was shining through his skin, just for a moment. Yet, a raw sexiness hummed around him, suggesting that perhaps he wasn’t into playing sweet and good in the bedroom. Not all the time, anyway.

  My heart was racing and my palms were sweating just thinking about him in a uniform, even if the thought of telling my mother I was dating an Army man made me want to hide.

  “That’s true.” He tugged my notes toward him, flipping back several pages. “Okay. I’m going to quiz you one more time, and then we’re going home to get some sleep.”

  If we went home together, sleep would not be a priority. Not if I had anything to say about it. My mind refused to vacate the gutter tonight, and by the guarded expression on Nathan’s face, my brain’s current location wasn’t such a secret.

  His cheeks turned pink and his lips parted, eyes locked on mine. In that moment, he looked about as lustful as I felt. Maybe it had been a while for him, too.

  Nathan cleared his throat. “So, um, here goes.”

  We focused on surgery techniques, case studies, and best practices for the next hour, my brain finally
cooperating. The routine, one we’d spent months perfecting, helped, but it was still after two a.m. when we packed our bags and paid Kayleigh, splitting the check. My eyelids drooped and my limbs felt heavy, signaling the need for sleep instead of the hanky-panky it had pined for earlier.

  Nathan walked me to my car and waited while I shoved my bag inside and flicked on the ignition. When I straightened up to say goodnight, he surprised me by leaning in and brushing warm lips across my cheek, lingering just long enough to make it more than friendly. My heart thudded, combining with the knifelike wind to bring me fully awake, and it took every ounce of control not to turn my mouth against his, slide my arms around his neck, and go for it.

  But I’d never been good at making the first move. Maybe jumping into bed with someone I had to see for hours on end for at least two more years wasn’t the best idea, anyway.

  The mounting frustration in his gaze eased toward acceptance. “Please be careful going home. And if that guy is there with Dinah, stay away from him. Lock your door if you can.”

  “I’m sure it’s not as bad as I’m making it sound.”

  His full lips pinched, whitening around the edges. “I have pretty good instincts about these things, Jeyne. And right now, they’re telling me it’s worse.”

  3.

  Dinah

  Much to my dismay, no one ended up staying after the party died down. The older we got, the more people were willing to pull the designated driver stick for the night, and even though that was obviously a good thing, tonight it was like they all conspired to leave me alone with my living nightmare.

  Even Jeyne hadn’t come home yet. Maybe I’d been wrong about Nathan after all.

  Tritt had gotten good and skunked, and that had given me the slightest hope that he would pass out…until he and his loser friends had taken some kind of speed in the bathroom. He’d been running on overdrive ever since. We’d cleaned up most of the mess—or I had, while he’d sat playing Mario Kart in front of the Wii I’d bought for the exercise games.