The Hearts Series

by L.H. Cosway

  I should go outside and wait for them to arrive. That would be the logical thing to do. But I’m not feeling very logical, it seems, because I step right past the kicked-in door. I still have the rape alarm, pepper spray, and Swiss army knife in my handbag. I dig out the pepper spray, which, might I add, is not exactly legal in this country. And when I say “not exactly legal,” I mean illegal. I had to order it online, deciding that breaking the law was a necessary evil in order to protect myself. There’s that phrase again. Perhaps Jay and I are more alike than I thought.

  It’s quiet when I first step inside, but then I hear the voices, loud and desperate. They’re coming from the terrace balcony. Moving through the apartment slowly, I make my way to the door that leads outside, but stop just on the threshold, hiding myself behind the doorframe.

  If my heart was racing before, now it’s catapulting into the stratosphere.

  Jay is standing just by the railing that surrounds the terrace, and before him is a crazed-looking Brian Scott, a gun held out in front of him aimed directly at Jay.

  “Why did you do it, huh? Why?!” Brian demands.

  The professional way in which he’s holding his weapon leads me to believe this is not the first time he’s threatened someone at gunpoint. However, there’s a crazed air about him that is far from professional. I have no doubt he’s mad enough right now to use the gun.

  “Put that fucking thing down and I’ll tell you,” says Jay, his voice sharp, yet way too calm for the current situation. He looks at Brian, who isn’t putting the gun down, cocks an eyebrow, and goes to sit on a deck chair. “No? All right, then, you keep on pointing it at me if it makes your dick feel bigger.”

  “You’ve destroyed my business, my career, my life! I will use this. I swear I will,” Brian yells.

  Jay looks at him like he’s a hysterical housewife who just had her clean carpets trodden all over with mucky shoes. “I don’t doubt you, Brian. A man left with nothing has nothing left to lose, right?” he says, and there’s a vicious tone to his words.

  Jay pulls a cigarette from behind one ear and a match from behind the other. Striking the match off the side of his boot, he brings it to the end of his cigarette and lights up. He exhales a long puff of smoke as he stares at Brian. When he does this, his eyes are different; his face is transformed into something hard and inscrutable. Undiluted hatred seeps from his pores, all directed at the man standing before him.

  I’ve never seen him look like this before. A chameleon that can become someone else with nothing but a change in its facial muscles springs to mind. He looks dangerous. For the first time, I feel like I’m catching a glimpse of the tortured, pained soul that’s been hidden beneath the surface. And it is just as real as the witty charmer I’ve come to know.

  “I suppose I should start off with the simple part,” says Jay. “Fields was my mother’s maiden name. Do you wanna hazard a guess at what my birth name was?”

  “I don’t have time for guessing games,” Brian spits.

  Jay exhales another puff of smoke and flicks off the ash. “No, I don’t suppose you do. My birth name was McCabe. Jason McCabe, ring a bell?”

  Brian’s eyes widen, and his hold on the gun falters for a second before he rights himself.

  “You’re lying.”

  “Nope. You wanted to buy my parents’ house back in the day. Dad was being a prick about it, so you decided you’d start up an affair with my mother, then use it as blackmail to get her to push Dad to sell the house. You didn’t bank on what an evil shit my dad could be, and when he started making demands, you got angry. You wanted to do something that would force my family out of that house, and that’s when your little girlfriend, Una, began whispering in your ear.

  “I like to think of her as your own personal Lady Macbeth, but with a much lower IQ. Una was jealous of the time you’d spent with my mother. In fact, she despised my mother for taking your attentions away from her. She wanted her out of the picture, so she convinced you that setting fire to our house would be a good idea. That the fire department would arrive in time to save our lives, but that once the house was destroyed, my parents would sell the land to you in a heartbeat. So, like men who let their cocks lead them the world over, you did as Una suggested. Only the fire department didn’t get there in time, did it, Brian?”

  Jay stands now and takes a step toward him, his passion growing by the second.

  “You orchestrated all of this because that fire killed your family?” Brian responds, and takes a step back, the wind gone out of his sails.

  “Yes, but wait, there’s more,” says Jay. “You got our house, but there was another one you needed to buy up in order for your building project to go ahead. The family who lived in this neighbouring house were just as adamant not to sell, because they loved their home too much to move somewhere else. You were no stranger to threatening people to get what you wanted, so you had your men break into the house one night with the intention of putting the frighteners on them. One of your men took things a little too far, though, and shot the wife. Do you know whose wife that was, Brian?”

  “This was all a long time ago,” Brian mutters, sweat breaking out on his forehead.

  “I didn’t think you’d remember, which only proves you deserve everything I’ve done to you. I know we’re not the only ones who’ve suffered because of the things you’ve done. You’ve fucked up so many lives that you can’t even keep count anymore. It made you rich, I’ll give you that. But you know what they say, Brian, behind every great wealth is a great crime, and your crimes are insurmountable. Still no idea whose wife it was?”

  Brian lifts the gun higher. “Fuck you. I don’t care. I don’t bloody care. You’ve completely fucked me.”

  Jay stubs out his smoke and gets up from his seat. What he says next makes me feel like fainting. “It was Hugh Brandon’s wife. The same man who represented me in court. The one who brought down your entire newspaper, everything you’ve built by being a selfish, evil degenerate. It’s all quite poetic, isn’t it?”

  I turn around and sink to the floor as the puzzle pieces fit themselves together in my head. When I was little, my neighbours’ house burned down, and Jay was that boy, the one I used to play with and take care of. Una Harris and Brian Scott were the reason that house burned down. They were the reason my family was torn apart by my mother’s death.

  The reason why Jay did this.

  He did this for us. For my family and for his. Tears fill my eyes, grief and gratitude melding into one.

  Brian’s voice is calmer now, but not in a good way. I try to pull myself together enough to pay attention to what’s happening. Slowly, I stand back up, scanning Jay’s apartment for anything that resembles a weapon. I still have the pepper spray clutched in my hand, but I’m not sure if it will help. What if Brian pulls the trigger as a reflex when I spray him?

  Unfortunately, if what he says next is anything to go by, he’s going to pull it anyway.

  “Thanks for clearing that up for me, Jason. Now I can do what I came here to do,” says Brian in a dead, monotone voice.

  “You gonna shoot me? Go ahead,” says Jay, and that’s when his eyes move to mine. He knew I was here all along! He makes some sort of subtle nodding gesture to the spray I’m holding, but I don’t know what it means. Does he want me to use it? Not use it?

  I only have seconds to decide, and right before Brian pulls the trigger, I dive out onto the balcony, aiming right for his eyes. Brian wails when the spray hits him, and the gun goes off. Jay jumps right over the edge of the balcony, and I gasp in shock. I think the bullet still hit him. Brian lets the gun drop as he clutches his face, and I grab it.

  Sweat is pouring out of me and my heart is racing, my chest heaving. I have never held a gun before in my life, but I point it at Brian just as several uniformed men burst into the apartment. They take the gun from me, and I let them, shock kicking in. They handcuff me, but I don’t have words to explain to them what happened. I’m staring at the ra
iling Jay just jumped over, but then I notice a pair of hands holding onto the edge.

  Relief floods me as he pulls himself back up onto balcony.

  He didn’t jump. He’d been holding onto the bar. There’s blood on his shirt from where the bullet grazed him. I focus on that as he talks angrily to the officers, instructing them to take the handcuffs off me right away. He goes on to tell them that the gun belonged to Brian and I was only defending myself. Once I’m uncuffed, Jay walks me over to his couch and sits me down, rubbing soothingly at my shoulders and staring at me with soulful, expectant eyes. I hear him telling the officers that there’s a security camera out on the terrace, and they’ll be able to see everything that happened in the footage.

  Time passes.

  I remain in my place, trying to figure out how the skinny, uncared-for young boy I used to play with as a child could be the same man I’ve come to know. How did I not recognise him? I know he doesn’t look anything like he used to, but I like to think there would be something in his eyes that would make me remember.

  Something in his mischievous smile.

  Because when I think of that smile, I suddenly realise that it’s the very same smile he often gave me when we played as kids. The tears spring forth again, my heart pounding.

  He hadn’t been in my life for long, but I’d cared for him so much. Had always looked back on him as one of the most important childhood friends I’d ever had, both him and his brother. His poor little brother who’s dead and gone, all because of Brian and Una.

  The moment I’d first laid eyes on him that day at the office, I’d felt a connection. I never fathomed it could be because I’d known him all along. And he’d known me.

  Now I understand everything. I understand why Jay did all this. I understand his need for retribution. But why didn’t he tell me from the very beginning? Why keep it a secret all these months?

  Before I know it, the apartment has been cleared, Jay has jimmy-rigged the door until the repair man comes in the morning, and we’re alone. Silently, he comes and wipes my tears away with his fingertips.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I whisper, moving my eyes to meet his. I want to stare at him for hours, just soak up the contours of his face. For a brief minute in time, I’d thought he was dead out there on that balcony. A moment of silence elapses. He stares at me until I look at him again, then starts to speak.

  “Because I wanted you to see me, the real me. I didn’t want you to remember a beat-up, skinny, sad little kid with a dead family when you looked at me.”

  “I liked that kid. And I like the man, too. It wouldn’t have made a difference.”

  Jay runs a hand through his hair and gets up from his seat. He walks across the room before coming back to sit with me again. He takes my hands firmly into his and looks deep into my eyes, too deep, almost.

  “If I told you who I was, then I’d have to tell you my entire plan. You never would have gone for it. You have too much honour, and I didn’t want to involve you in any of the shady things I had to do to make the trial happen. That’s why I’ve kept you at a distance, too. I didn’t want what was between us to be built on secrets, secrets I couldn’t tell you. You’d have told your dad, and then he never would have agreed to represent me in court. And I needed him to do it. I needed him to be the one to take down Brian and Una, because they were the ones who ruined his family, destroyed his life. I did a lot of research on your dad, you know, before I ever came back here. He graduated top in his class, won some very high-profile cases before your mom passed. Then it all went to shit. His confidence plummeted. I wanted to give him back something of what he’d lost.”

  I stare at him, mouth open, heart clenching. He did that for my dad. I never thought anyone really cared about us but each other. But that wasn’t true. There was a boy who grew into a man who cared enough to fight for us. And now I feel like crying again.

  “Hush, don’t cry, darlin’,” says Jay, the tears in my eyes upsetting him.

  He brings my hand up to rest on one side of his chest where the six of hearts tattoo is drawn. He’s still topless after the paramedics came and bandaged up the wound where the bullet grazed him.

  He takes my finger and places it on one of the hearts. “This one is you, Matilda.” He moves it to the next one. “This one is me.” And the next. “This one is my brother. This one is my mom. This one is your dad, and this one is your mom. Six hearts, remember? Six people I care about most. I did this for all of us.”

  He moves my hand again, bringing it to the other side of his chest, where the cubist design is drawn. He traces my finger over it in the shape of an “M,” and I suddenly see that the tattoo is an illusion, and hidden within the illusion is the first letter of my name.

  “This one is you, too, the most important one,” he murmurs, and I gasp.

  “You got this for me?” I whisper, hardly able to believe it.

  “I did, Matilda. I might tell you that you’re mine, but you need to understand that it goes both ways. I belong to you, too.”

  My heart hammers. I can’t think of a thing to say.

  He brings his hand to my neck, to my scar, and starts to rub. “Those letters I gave you? They’re only half of them. The rest have far more details about Una and Brian. I found them one day in my uncle’s study when I was searching for money to run away with. I took them with me when I ran, and after I read them, a black pit started to grow inside me. I knew I had to do something to fix what happened to my mom and my brother, to punish the people who did it to them. They had been my whole world. I didn’t give a fuck about my dad. He could burn in hell for all I cared. The anger festered inside me for years. Then I started doing magic professionally and got back on my feet. I began looking into Brian and Una, seeing where they were now, and I knew I had to take them down. They were on top, and from what I could tell, they’d ruined a lot of people to get there.

  “Then I remembered your family, how spending my evenings at your house were some of the happiest times of my life. So I got curious and looked you guys up. What I discovered was a newspaper article about the break-in, detailing how your mom was shot, and you and your dad beaten and injured. I pictured you as this little nine-year-old girl being attacked by a grown man, and it made me so angry I could kill someone. I investigated further and saw that your house had been sold to Brian’s company, and I knew he was behind the break-in. So then my plan grew. I wasn’t just getting revenge for myself anymore — I was getting it for you and your dad, too.”

  He’s still rubbing my scar. “Dad knows, doesn’t he? That’s what you both were arguing about the other night.”

  Jay sighs. “Yeah. I had to tell him. It had gotten to the point where half the evidence I had wasn’t making sense to him anymore, so he had to know.”

  “You should have told me.”

  “You know I couldn’t. This needed to run smoothly. I couldn’t risk it.”

  I pull away from him. “That’s bullshit. I wouldn’t have told anyone. I would have kept your secret.”

  He ignores my anger and instead continues talking.

  “The first time I saw you since you were a kid was about two years ago, on the street outside your dad’s offices. You were carrying a bunch of takeaway coffees, struggling to keep a hold of all of them. God, you were so fucking beautiful. I wanted to go and help you, introduce myself, but I had to wait. I watched you a lot after that, finding reasons in my head to go and check up on you. You never saw me, not until the day I came for my appointment. I found my feelings for you growing. In the beginning, I thought I cared for you like a sister, but then I saw you as a woman, and I was done for. You were beautiful…and I was drowning.”

  “You…you followed me without my knowledge?”

  He clears his throat. “I’m not saying it was a logical or good thing to do. But I had to see you, even if it was from afar. I became addicted. And then I really knew I couldn’t tell you about my plan until it was all over. I couldn’t take the chance. I n
eeded you to fall in love with me, because I was already so deeply in love with you.”

  My heart stops, just literally stops beating. “What?” I whisper.

  “I was in love with you,” Jay repeats. “I am in love with you. I think I’ve loved you since I was a kid.”

  Staring into his eyes, I see the sincerity of his words.

  Epic love.

  All of a sudden, it comes to me. The epic love I’ve always wanted was with me all along, and it’s nothing like what I imagined. It’s better, because it’s real. It’s not perfect or pretty. It’s full of mistakes and sacrifices, and sometimes even ugliness. All of a sudden, I know that none of the bad things Jay has done in the past matter. My feelings for him are what matter, and there’s nothing on this earth that could change them. Words fail me again, and I’m shaking.

  Jay rambles on, “If I told you who I was and what I was doing straight off the bat, you might not have wanted anything to do with me. So, I became your housemate. I became your friend. We got to know each other. And even though you won’t admit it to yourself, I know you love me, darlin’. I can see it right there in those gorgeous baby blues.”

  He takes my face in his hands now, his thumbs stroking just under the line of my jaw, his voice hushed. I tremble.

  “After my family died in that fire, I came to stay at your house. You probably don’t remember this, but I was crying into my pillow. You came into the room, crawled into bed beside me, and held me the entire night. I’ll never forget it. We were just kids, but I think you stole a piece of my heart that very night.”

  Tears start to fall down my cheeks, but he wipes them away. “I do remember. I could hear you crying. I thought you were having a nightmare, so I went inside to check on you.”

  “I never have nightmares when you’re with me, Matilda,” he says.

  “I….” My throat catches. “I have so many questions.”

  His eyes go sad, and for a second I feel like I’ve said the wrong thing. The sadness vanishes quickly, though, and he tugs me farther onto the couch to sit on his lap.