by S. L. Scott
“Why do you want to know all the stuff that doesn’t matter now?”
“Because it matters to me.”
“Fine.” She splashes me. “If you get to ask questions and I have to answer, same goes for you. I’ll make you a deal. We take turns and when one doesn’t answer, the game is over. How’s that?”
She may be good at avoiding those grenades of questions I drop around her sometimes, but I’m the king of keeping secrets. So this proposition gives me pause.
For us to be together, she needs to know about the life I’ve been leading. As much as I hate admitting the bad stuff, there were good things to come out of it. What if this is my chance to redeem myself? What if she thinks I’m a monster? What if she loves me more because I survived when I didn’t know if I would at times? What if she can’t forgive my past? What if she hates me? What if . . . letting her in will free my soul from these sins I’ve carried with me?
I swallow my pride. “Okay,” I whisper. “Deal.”
She swims closer but stops ten or so feet away. “When my dad died, Cole moved us straight into my parents’ bedroom. I didn’t want to sleep in there. I was still grieving, and it felt disrespectful. It hurt to be in that room at all, much less take over it.”
“Why he’d do that?”
Smiling gently, she reminds me, “My turn, remember?” I swim a foot or two closer to her. “Where have you been the last three years?”
Easy. “Alaska for a brief stint on a fishing boat. The money was great, but the work was hard.”
“You never minded hard work from what I remember.”
She’s tricky. It’s not a question, but a statement I feel the need to answer. “It wasn’t the work I wanted to do. Also, it sucked being on that boat for weeks at a time. Limited booze. Horrible sleeping conditions. Fish every meal.” The left side of my mouth quirks up. No women. “After that I was up and down the West Coast and then cross-country to New England. I’ve traveled all over between jobs and sometimes for the job.”
Rolling her eyes, she retreats a few feet, which makes me laugh. She says, “To answer your earlier question, I’m not sure. I have theories that Cole wanted to control me and when he didn’t feel he had enough power over me, he’d hurt me. At first it was emotional, then it escalated.” Wading closer, she asks, “What did you do, or do now, for work and for money?”
Diving forward, I swim until I reach her legs. Her scream can be heard underwater it’s so loud. Pulling her under, I kiss her before we pop back up for air together. “Ah.” She sounds so satisfied, my cock awakens despite the cool water.
“C’mere.” Her limbs wrap around me, and I swim back to the dock.
“You still have to answer, Jason.”
“I will, but it may take a while.”
While she climbs up the ladder, I watch that fine ass move with ease and chase after her. One of our towels is on the splintering wood, and we sit on the edge with our legs dangling over. I’m not going to make her ask again, but it’s hard to start this conversation from a place of truth when I’m so used to hiding the details. I exhale and say, “I wasn’t a hitman.”
“What? Good God,” she exclaims. “I didn’t expect that. What the hell do you mean you weren’t a hitman? And if that’s what you weren’t, what were you?”
I don’t think I’ve ever seen her eyes both wide with curiosity and narrowed in shock, but that’s what I’m seeing, and I feel an explanation rushing to ease the lines digging into her forehead. “I was a hired gun, a soldier, maybe a mercenary is more accurate, but not for the military. Private citizens who needed help righting wrongs.” Daring to peek over at her, her mouth hangs open. “Are we still playing the game?”
“Jason . . .”
That’s all she says and turns away from me to stare ahead at the lake.
It’s a lot to process, and I’m willing to give her time to do so, but damn am I squirming in my skin. My heart’s racing and I’m sweating, even though I’m still wet from swimming.
Sitting here is torture of a different kind than any form I’ve endured. She finally speaks, but it’s not what I want to hear. “When you say hitman, did you kill people?”
“I said I wasn’t a hitman.”
The playfulness of the game is gone like I knew it would be. One way or the other our pasts were going to dampen our time together. I just hope it’s temporary.
“I need you to be serious with me, Jason. Have you killed someone?”
“Yes.”
On her feet, she’s pacing the dock. “You’ve killed someone? Oh my God. You’ve killed someone.”
“It’s my turn,” I say as she mumbles and rants. I need to bring back some of the lightness from before.
She stops, too far for me to grab her ankles and beg for mercy. “Jason.”
“Delilah.”
“This isn’t funny. You’ve murdered somebody or you killed them?”
“Is there a difference?”
Her hands go to her head and she starts pacing again. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.” When she stops again, she says, “There’s a difference. Killing someone accidentally is very different than murdering somebody.”
“What if they murdered your friend, or someone you loved? Hurt them. Tried to kill them. Is it okay then?”
“It’s never okay.”
I put my back to her. This will be the end of what I hoped was a beginning. The sun is high in the sky, morning turning to midday. I can feel the heat on my skin, the burning, but I don’t move. Sunburn I can handle. Her disappointment in me, her disgust isn’t something I can live with.
Closing my eyes, I remember how Connor Johnson slept beside his wife. I remember the weight of the metal and the wood grain of the gun handle. It’s slower in my memories, like a lot of things. Except Delilah. All my time with her has always been too short, gone by too fast.
King can’t do it. I’m glad. He has a chance to recover from the dirty deeds he’s done. I need to help him keep his hands clean from the crimes he’s so determined to commit. That was one of the promises I made my boss.
Johnson is worse than his partner who already took two bullets. He’s the mastermind, and he won’t stop until he reaps his vengeful reward.
The bullet flies from my gun straight into his head. Not much sound but enough to wake his sleeping wife. We’re out the window and running before she’s aware of what’s really happening.
. . . I’m not sure when she sat down, but her body presses to my back, her words softly spoken, “When I said I love you, I meant it. I love you, Jason. I won’t stop because you’re honest with me. I’ll only stop if you’re bad for me.”
“I’m bad for you, babe. So bad you don’t even know.” And I hate how true those words are.
The wind blows and the song of the birds is carried with it. I’m not sure what to say. “I hate that I’ve done it, but I can’t take it back, and I wouldn’t if I could.”
“Why? How can you not regret taking a life?”
“Because he took many lives, and he tried to take the life of someone I cared about, someone who deserved better than to be shot on the side of the road and left for dead.”
She rests her head against me and sighs. I try to end the debate she’s having inside. “I’m charred inside, burned from the hell I’ve been living. It’s probably best you know now. Save yourself, Delilah. No good can come from being with me.”
“But—”
“No.” I stand up, moving out of her heat, her love, her misunderstanding of what needed to be done versus what we would all wish we could have done if the world was a better place. Staring at the farmland surrounding me, it’s easy to believe only good exists. Even when we struggle to pay bills or crops don’t produce, this place, this land, it’s magical—like time stands still here—and I’m not judged as harshly as I am out there. “I can’t turn back time, and I can’t take back the sins I’ve committed.”
“You can be redeemed. You just have to believe—”
“Jason?” She stands, her little pink bikini so damn distracting to the conversation we’re having.
Grabbing my alma mater snapback, I pull it on and lower the bill. “What?”
“I meant what I said. I love you.”
“I know you do, but love isn’t going to be enough this time.” And it’s those words I now hate the most. The truth. She doesn’t need the shit that is my life in her world.
She doesn’t need me.
She’s brave and bold, stepping right up to me with no fear of consequences. She knows I could never hurt her even if I’ve hurt others. “It wasn’t last time, but here we are.”
“We didn’t survive last time, honeysuckle. What makes you think this time will be different?”
“Because we are. We’ve seen what life is like without each other. It’s not pretty. We only get blue skies when we’re together.”
“I don’t understand what you want from me.”
“That’s just it, Jason. It sounds like everyone has wanted something from you. They’ve trained you to believe that no one can be trusted. Whoever they are did quite the job on you, and for what? Their benefit or yours?”
“It’s not like that.”
“Then tell me what it’s like because it’s our memories that bind us, but it’s who we are now that will carry us forward. And I want that, Jason. I want to move forward. With you.” She slips a little dress over her head. It’s ill-fitting, but she still looks so gorgeous. The gravity of this conversation strikes my heart. I see the depth of concern for my soul residing in her eyes. No one has ever loved me the way she has. I can’t lose her. Not again.
Stepping closer, I take her hand. She doesn’t pull back, which gives me the strength I need. “I will tell you anything you want to know. I just don’t want to lose you in the process. So tell me, what can I say that will keep you here, and by here, I mean in my arms at night and waking up to you in the morning. I want to talk about our day in the evenings and swim in the lake in the middle of the day. I want you. I want this life with you. I want whatever life you want, Delilah. I just want you. Any part of you that you’re willing to give me I’ll take like a greedy thief in the night.”
“I’m trying to understand what would turn the man I used to know into somebody who could harm someone, instead of saving him.”
“Save him?” I walk to the end of the dock and spin the hat around. When I turn around, she’s on the other end, and once again I feel the distance between us. “You’re not understanding. This is not a man you can save by taking him to church or introducing him to the Bible. This was a monster that would hurt you if it hurt me. He killed an innocent kid just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. A kid who came to help out his friend. He was shot without a chance to plead for his life. Killed only to hurt other people.”
This is the most I’ve talked in forever and it’s taking a toll. My patience is gone. I shouldn’t have to justify what I’ve done to her, but I will because it’s her. “I needed money. I came off the ships in Alaska and was robbed, gun to my head, robbed by one of the other crewmembers. I thought I was going to die. We didn’t get along on the boat. He called me too good-looking to be working a real man’s job. Taunted me the whole time. First night off the boat, we walked to the closest brothel. We got drunk. So fucking drunk. I left when the guys started going to the back with the girls. I made it outside to the alley before I was hit from behind and knocked to my knees. Ten thousand stolen right from my jacket pocket with the barrel of a gun to my head.”
“Oh, Jason,” she says.
I see the sympathy in her expression, but I don’t want her sympathy. I want her. “They said, ‘Say a prayer, pretty boy.’ But what I thought were the last words I’d ever hear didn’t bother me. Neither did the money. I didn’t care about the money right then. All I could think of was how I would never get to see you again and tell you how much I loved you.”
She runs into my arms. Her body is wrapped around mine. Her tears run down my bare chest and I embrace her fully, never wanting to let her go. “I love you. I love you so much.” When she looks up at me, she asks, “Why didn’t you come back for me?”
“Because the next day, I called my mom and found out you were getting married before I could catch a flight. I was too fucking hurt. Too angry. Too disappointed. I’d lost you, Delilah. You were no longer mine. And my heart broke that day.”
“You should have called me.” I certainly hadn’t seen the point. She was marrying another man, for fuck’s sake.
“I didn’t want to bring you anymore pain, especially on your wedding day.”
“So much has changed and yet so much is still the same, but I see you. I see how you hide inside your thoughts. I see how you watch, how you tick the boxes everywhere we go. I see how you put on an act that you’re the same guy we used to know. I see you, Jason Koster. The real you. That’s the man I love. Your secrets don’t scare me, but the reality of what they are, do. I can’t turn my love on and off for you. There’s always a steady stream when it comes to us, but I need time to understand, to learn more about the life you left behind. It doesn’t have to be today, but promise you’ll never lie to me, and you won’t keep your secrets barreled up inside.”
“I’ll make that promise if it means I get you.”
“I’m not a prize. I never was. But I like who I am these days, and I like you too much to not give you the benefit of the doubt.”
My body relaxes, knowing this isn’t it. Maybe we can get past this.
Maybe.
“I want to hear more, but maybe we can finish this over lunch. I’m starved, and I never expected to hear what you were doing.”
“If it makes you feel better, it wasn’t all bad. I was a stuntman in Hollywood on two films. I was a bodyguard for a visiting dignitary in San Francisco for a couple weeks, which is how I met the woman who became my boss for almost two years.”
Her mouth is hanging open again. I lift her chin to close her mouth, but she asks, “Is that all?”
Despite the sarcasm of her question, I go on, “Oh, and I worked at a mini-mart for a few months in a small town in the mountains.”
Rubbing her temples, she asks, “Anything else I need to know right now?”
“I was shot once.”
“What? Good Lord. Are you okay?”
I wrap my arm around her shoulders, and we start walking. “I’m better now.”
18
Delilah
Sitting in the kitchen while eating lunch, we’ve not suffered from a lack of conversation. “Is that scar on your leg from when you were shot?”
“Yes.” He bends down and rubs over the spot. “It’s just a graze, now a new story to tell.”
“It’s still pink. You were shot recently?”
I can see how uncomfortable he is answering questions about what he’s been doing from how he is shifting in the chair, but I’m compelled to know everything about him. He is not the driven and carefree boy from my youth. He’s now a man who seems to have struggled and fought with many demons. And most probably alone. As much as I hate the thought that he is capable of killing someone, I’ve learned that sometimes things in life are not as black and white as we’ve grown up to believe. How many times had I wished Cole dead after he took out his justified anger on me?
After exhaling and sitting back, he says, “A couple months.”
My throat tightens and I grip the sides of my chair. “You came back because you were almost killed.” I’m not asking, but I can see I’ve stumbled onto the truth.
He nods. “Even though this is only a graze, there were times I didn’t think I would live to see daylight. Near-death experiences make you grateful for another opportunity to make things right in your life.”
; I relate too well to this. “Your turn.”
“Tell me about the tattoo. You didn’t have that when we were together. What made you get it when we weren’t?”
It’s a fair question. I was just hoping for more time before addressing it. After the heaviness outside this morning, I’m just going to be straightforward and rip the Band-Aid off this sore subject. “Cole had been pressuring me to get his name tattooed on me.”
Jason growls under his breath. “He was pressuring you?”
“It all makes sense to me now, but back then I didn’t understand how he was twisting things to make me his.”
“You used the word prize earlier. You were a prize to him. He used to tell me how lucky I was to have you, but he didn’t mean having a girlfriend. He meant you specifically.”
“He wasted no time, Jason. One moment I only saw him when out with all of you, and the next he was over every night offering a shoulder to cry on. That’s when the stories started about you and other girls, although he’d already whispered such things before we broke up. He told me story after story about how much he had loved me for so many years, and how he was so disgusted that you, his best friend and my boyfriend, would cheat on me. That no woman of his would ever know such betrayal. That he would look after me, because there weren’t any other men around here who would look at me twice after being with you. Once we married, it ended up being true, but it was because I was with him, not you. He was an enemy in disguise.” I’ve never spoken these words out loud. I feel like such a fool.
Pushing my plate away, I add, “One night he came home drunk, although that wasn’t unusual. But the guys had been teasing him that he got your sloppy seconds.” Just saying that phrase makes me feel cheap. “We had a huge argument. That was the first time he ever slapped me. He had been rough before, but it had never gone that far.”
“Hitting a woman doesn’t make him a man or more powerful. It makes him a coward.”
Reaching over, I take the plate from his hands, his knuckles white from his hard grip. Our eyes meet, and I move back over to cover his hands with mine. “I’m here. I’m okay.”