She couldn’t seem to believe it was gone. “Yes. I planted my explosive there.”
“You burned it up?” she repeated it. Rolling it over her tongue. “You burned up my cell?”
“I did. It’s gone.”
“It’s all gone,” she said finally as she slowly traced his lips with her finger. “It’s really all gone, Will? Someone paid. Someone actually got punished for hurting me?” Her voice cracked.
He kissed her hand. “Yes.”
She stared into his eyes and said softly, “Thank you.”
He took in a deep, shuddering breath and let it out slowly. “You’re welcome.”
She smiled eventually through, red-rimmed, watery eyes. His heart jumped up into his throat as he took in a similar breath. And only then, did he smile back.
Chapter Eighteen
A week later, they were in bed together. It was quiet and the room was dark. Sleep seemed like a waste of time since they had so much to do. So much coming. So much future to grab. It was like they were little kids waiting for Christmas morning. But they felt like Christmas morning would last for the rest of their lives. For the first time, nothing tinged their future. No going back to the Army after the honeymoon. No more leaving on tours or training. No more danger. No more risking death. Just the two of them. He held her close. He wasn’t sure he could get used to the happy, smiling Jessie he now held in his arms.
“There was a baby on the plane.”
She stirred, pushing her hair off her face. “Yeah? Not so unusual.”
“I talked to it.”
“It? They aren’t inanimate objects. But, okay. That was nice of you.”
“No, I mean I talked in a stupid voice to it. I smiled at it.”
“I’m sure it was appreciative. And by stupid voice, do you mean baby talk?”
“Yeah, you know, all cute-like. Like an asshole. But you’re not getting this. I never notice babies. Kids. Ever. I instigated the conversation. I talked to the mother about it. I was… interested.”
“Hmm, interested, huh? In the mom or the baby? Were you flirting with the mother?”
Jessie’s question brought his head off the pillow. “No!”
She giggled and set a hand on his chest, pushing him back. “I know. You never flirt with other women. My point was… so? So what if you talked to the mother?”
“I mean, I engaged her like I wanted to know about her kid. It was weird. And get this, she asked me if I had any kids. No one’s ever asked me that before.”
She stilled. “Well, you are getting old, Will, might happen more often now. You are in your thirties and almost ready for a walker.”
He rolled his eyes. “I mean, she wanted to know if I was a dad. Me? I mean, no one’s ever asked me that question before.”
She leaned over and touched his wedding ring. “You finally wear one of these, hon. Might hear other things being asked of you. Normal, married people have families.”
“That’s my point. What if… what if we’re normal, Jessie? What if even after all this, we are just finally normal?”
She stilled and seemed to sense his anxiety. “You mean, like other couples?”
“Yes!” She finally got it. “What if we are… ordinary?”
She bit her lip. “Okay, that would be a little surprising. But what if we are?”
He touched her cheek. “I didn’t hate the idea of the kid. I mean it was kind of, and I mean only kind of, cute.”
She leaned into him. “I don’t know, Will.”
“I know. I don’t really either. I just kind of liked feeling… average. Ordinary. You know, a married guy. A job. A family. I don’t know; it might be… okay.”
She glanced up at him. “I like the sound of that too.”
“You’ll miss Bella. And your sister. Are you sure you don’t just want to stay here?”
“I really want to get out of here. I love Lindsey and Bella, but this place… well, it’s like I can finally begin to breathe fully on the day we leave it.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I can see that.”
“I hate North Carolina, Will. I hate it. I know it’s silly to hate a place when it was the people… but I really want to leave here. It just wasn’t an option before, so I never dreamed of it actually happening, but now…”
“Now you can picture it. And you want to go back home?”
“Yes, crazy as it is, Ellensburg was the first and only place I’ve ever felt at home in.”
“Then butt-fuck-nowhere it is.”
She gasped. “Where did you come up with that?”
“Tony.”
“Tony? Tony Lindstrom?”
He nodded. “It was the weirdest damn thing. I finally went there and told him I was done with active duty, and said we’re moving, and he lost his damn temper at me. Called me a cop-out. A wuss. A washout. He told me to have fun playing house in butt-fuck-nowhere.”
She stilled. “Why? Why would he react like that?”
Will shrugged. “I wish I knew.”
“What did you say?”
“I said, fine then, I was going to enjoy butt-fuck-nowhere. And goodbye.”
She sat up. “You mean, he doesn’t want to be your friend over this?”
“Yes. I mean just that.”
“Is it me?”
Will shrugged. His jaw tightened. “I don’t care. If it is, fuck him.”
She shook her head. “Oh, Will, you do too care. You need to talk to him.”
He pulled her to his side. “I really don’t, Jessie. I’m tired of conflict. And unhappiness. Fuck him. If he can’t be happy for me, I guess I don’t need him, do I? I need you. And I finally get you. So fuck him.”
Her shoulders sagged against him. “I’m sorry I’ve always cost you so much. The Army. Soldiering. Tony. Normalcy. Regular sex. A regular relationship—”
“What the hell would I do with a regular relationship? Except toss it aside because I wouldn’t want it. Damn it, Jessie, I want you and I just don’t know when you’re finally going to believe me.”
“I almost do.” She smiled weakly.
“I almost mean it then.” He grinned.
****
Eventually, Will told Jessie about the second phase of his plans. She dropped the burger she just lifted to take a bite of. It flipped on her plate and fell open. “You’re kidding me, I hope?”
Will bit into the fry dipped in ketchup. They were out to dinner. He hoped the public atmosphere would keep her temper down. Not so. “No. Here it all is. Everything I have on them. Everything that could embarrass them. Each and every one of them.” He pushed the envelope with pictures, names and dates towards her.
She stared at it as if it were a snake about to lift its head and bite her. “Why?” she nearly yelled in distress. “Why would you do that?”
“I got to thinking. Mexico fucks were getting a little taste of justice, why shouldn’t Fuck-face’s friends get punished too? They did no less to you. The thing is: I promised you I was done. So I thought… well, there it all is. We can do whatever you want with these. Throw them away. Read them and throw them away. Read them and bribe the old pricks for money. Read them and give them to each of their local media…”
A small smile strained her lips. “You’ve put a lot of thought into this.”
He shrugged. “Yes. I had it all gathered. I swear I wasn’t hiding it or keeping it from you. I just wanted to get something on all of them and I didn’t know if that were possible. Turns out, as I suspected, I could. For them to do what they did to you, they had to have other terrible shit in their personal histories.”
“And I get to decide what to do with these?”
He nodded and took her hand in his across the table. “Yes, if you are really done. That’s fine, baby. I just… wanted you to have the option. The power. To feel what it’s like to finally hold a little power over all of them. For them to be your victim.”
She stared at the envelope. Finally, she slowly inched a finger nearer and touche
d it as if it would reveal its secrets to her. She raised her eyes to him. “I’ll think about it.”
“It’s yours. All of it. I’ll do whatever you want. Or not.”
****
Jessie stared at the information compiled by Will. It left a pit in her stomach to even read the names of her father’s “friends.” She was transported instantly to the little girl, staring up at her father in confusion when he told her to go into the bedroom and wait. Wait for what? Little did she understand until she was physically under Senator Johnstone exactly what her father expected from her. She remembered the shock of the first time and how it almost immobilized her. She became a frigid, frozen statue as the old, bony man wrapped his speckled, liver-spotted hands around her bicep. She remembered the precise moment when she understood what her father wanted her to do. The gleam in the old fuck’s eyes was perverted, even excited. He told her to strip down to her panties. He liked them young. She simply obeyed. She didn’t run or scream or say no. She remembered feeling so numb and in disbelief that her father could set up such an arrangement. What was so wrong with her? Why would her father want to whore her out? What kind of whore was she? She must have been, or her father would not have told her to do it.
So she cooperated, and it kept happening. She let it go on for almost four years. No one knew. She and the general rarely actually spoke about it. But whenever he told her to have sex with his friends, she did. She did not consider it rape because she never really said no. She never fought or resisted. Not like she did in Mexico. At least down there, she refused to go along with it. Here at home, however, she accepted it, and more or less gave it her stamp of approval.
Now, to suddenly have dirt on the men who besmirched her was compelling. Upsetting. Strange. She remembered the foul, musty breath of the old bastard. The first information was on former Senator Johnstone. He was seventy-three years old now with two grown children in their forties and six grandchildren. He had a wife of forty years. Jessie knew her and had to tolerate multiple dinners seated next to her. All the while, the nasty senator looked for any opportunity to pin her, touch her, and even pushed his hand up her skirt right at the dining room table.
She shut her eyes. Was it worth it? Reliving the same things over again, trying to make some kind of peace with it after so many years? For so long, she tried to move past all of it. But… where one victim existed, didn’t it always follow there had to be more?
Will’s private investigator collected pictures of the old man with a way too young girl. A prostitute? Someone like Jessie? Who knew? There it was. She turned the picture away.
It went from there to tax evasion for the second one. Then gambling and prostitutes for the third and fourth; and a love child for the fifth. There was enough on each man to publicly cause them severe humiliation. As well as other things. Will was right; they’d never know it had anything to do with her. Not as satisfying as confronting them, or traditional justice, but it was something, and so much more than she ever dreamed she’d get.
All the men knew her father, and they all gave him something in exchange for her. Sixteen. She was only sixteen the first time it happened. Though not a virgin, she certainly didn’t want to have sex with the then sixty-year-old man. It was disgusting. It stole her innocence, destroying whatever teenage dreams she had. It changed the entire course of her life. None of it could have happened if those men were outraged that her father would do such a thing and adamantly refused. Or better yet, if they reported the general for abusing his underage daughter.
But not one of them did.
They snatched away her innocence and youth. She started acting out almost immediately, and got into so much trouble, she was eventually kicked out of school. Everyone blamed her and thought she had no reason to behave so poorly. No one ever again thought anything nice of her.
Except Will Hendricks.
She stared at the information, her power over men whom she was at the mercy of before. She knew she wasn’t to blame for it all but only after years of counseling did she learn to believe that. But as a teenager; she thought she was to blame. She thought she was gross and disgusting and bad.
But judging by their past crimes; she wasn’t gross, or disgusting, or bad. They were. Every one of them. Now she had the proof.
She waited three days before going to Will and setting the pile of information in front of him. “I would like you to mail these anonymously to all the local news stations where each of these men live. And do it all on the same day. Maybe they’ll be smart enough to connect them and what that means. Maybe not. I don’t care which ones, or how you do it. You choose. You let the news team decide whether to report the crimes they committed. We’ll have simply turned them over. But we’ll never be linked to it.”
Will stared at her. He finally stood up and took her in his arms. “You sure?”
“I’m glad you did this. I’m glad you didn’t hurt them, or make me do something that could send one of us to jail. I’m glad because each of them valued his reputation more than anything else. This is real justice because it separates them from that which they most esteem.”
“Are you sure you want to do that?”
She closed her eyes and finally smiled. “I want to and I have the ability to do it now. Yes.” She sagged into him. “I just truly never dreamed anyone would ever pay for it. And now? Now they all will?”
“Not all of them. There were some I couldn’t find in Mexico.”
She shook her head and a dry, ironic laugh escaped her lips. “Oh my God. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“No. I feared I’d send you back into a fetal ball in the corner.”
“Y-You… freed me. Will Hendricks, you freed me. You made me a survivor, and not another of their victims.”
“I’d kill them if you asked me to.”
She shifted and smiled up at him. “The scary part is, I know. I know you’d do that for me. Commit murder. I don’t want you to. I just want you to do this.”
She suddenly wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer to her face so she could kiss him. He grinned and twirled her. “You know what it kind of feels like?”
“What?” she asked, breathless at seeing his boyish smile, and the gleam of pride in his eyes for her. How many people were ever proud of Jessie?
“It feels like we won, Jessie. We beat everything and everyone who tried to destroy you, and indirectly, me. We weren’t suppose to have a real relationship beyond the hero-worship you felt for me after saving you. We weren’t supposed to survive the Army, or all the shit regarding it that made you feel bad. We weren’t supposed to get revenge or justice for the terrible things you suffered. But we did. We made it. Two years later, we’re better than when we started. You’re still here. We’re still here,” he slowly lifted her feet off the ground as he wrapped her tightly against him. He whispered into her ear, “We fucking did it, Jessie.”
She held her breath and shut her eyes, slowly exhaling and basking in his words. She loved hearing his approval, and his vows of love for her, while accepting her love for him. “No one will ever really know what we went through.”
His shoulders shrugged under her hands. “It doesn’t matter. We know. That’s all that matters. We know. And living in butt-fuck-nowhere with you is as much a miracle as beating terminal cancer. It is now, and will always be, the greatest thing I ever achieved in my life. What happened to you could have killed you. Or ruined and destroyed you and us because it was so fucking wrong.”
She leaned back and cupped his chin in her hands. “I finally believe you. Fully.”
He tilted his head. “About what?”
“That you really want me. That you think you’re somehow lucky to have me as your wife.”
His laugh was soft and dry. “Finally? I proved it?”
“You prove it every day. All the time. Killing and humiliating rapists. Rescuing me. Loving me. I found it hard to see how you could. I finally believe it now, because you showed me y
our love.”
“And we won,” Will said, holding her stare, his eyebrows raised.
She grinned and exhaled a deep breath as if expelling all the years of pain, humiliation, agony and ungodly awful feelings and betrayals. “And we fucking won.”
His proud smile was enough for her heart to finally acknowledge that he really thought he was lucky to have her. She knew she was lucky to have him. Maybe she had finally won. But it was because she did not let all those things prevent her from accepting Will’s love and devotion. She felt finally fully ready to give him hers.
“What now, soldier?”
He wagged his eyebrows. “After having sex with me? I was thinking, I don’t know, we could do whatever the fucking hell we want.”
Her heart nearly exploded. “I guess we could do that.”
“You guess?” he growled as he lifted her up and started walking down the hallway. “I’ll show you what ‘I guess is’…”
The silly giggle that escaped her throat was how she imagined a sixteen-year-old girl would respond when flirting with her first boyfriend or crush. She never had that before. Not even once. She experienced it finally at the age of twenty-five years old and with her husband.
Chapter Nineteen
~Year Three~
At last, they pulled into Ellensburg. Jessie and the animals were exhausted. It was a long trek across the entire country. She should have appreciated the sights, but she merely wanted to get here. And far away from North Carolina. They sold both of their vehicles with the intent of buying two new ones once they arrived. They drove the moving truck together, and had to stop a lot for the pets, so they weren’t the most fun few days. But finally they were home! Or what they would soon call home. For now, they would stay with the Clapsmiths, who didn’t mind their pets and had the space for Jessie’s dogs to run safely. They brought along the few furnishings they acquired because Jessie refused to give up the small household they already put together. When they pulled into the Clapsmiths’ driveway, the couple came out to hug and greet them, smiling their welcome. She remembered how nice they were to her when she lived there alone. They still revered Will, and were thrilled to have them staying there temporarily, but not as thrilled as Jessie was.
The Years Between (Sister Series, 1.5) Page 22