by Elena Lawson
Devin
My hands began to shake as I read the words over again. My fingers curled in, my stubby nails like talons as I tore the note to shreds, letting the anger chase away all the other ugly thoughts.
You know I’d never hurt you…
What a joke.
My fingers absently went up to trace the line of tender flesh along my collar. It was almost healed. It barely hurt to touch now, but that didn’t erase the memory of how I’d gotten it. What he did.
Little tremors raced up my spine and I took another sip of warm coffee to subdue the rise of anxious energy. The first flash came, and I winced.
An image of Devin in the dark of the basement at his Dad’s house. In the middle of the night.
I’d been asleep. Peacefully dreaming while he was going through my phone.
I had no idea what awaited me when I awoke to the sound of his heavy breathing. Barely able to see save for the strange greenish glow of my cell phone like a halo framing his head.
“Devin, what are you doing? Come back to sleep,” I’d murmured, my voice breathy with a yawn.
I pulled myself out of the flashback, and a small whimper made my bottom lip quiver. I wiped the note confetti from the desk into the recycling bin, some of the pieces scattering to the floor in my haste.
We only dated for three months, but I thought I’d loved him. He was handsome, in a devil may care sort of way. With a shock of dark hair and arresting green eyes. He was tall and lean. He thought my love for books and anime was silly and childish, but we both loved hockey and shared the same taste in music.
I couldn’t even listen to those songs anymore. Preferring deafening silence to a single note of any song we once sang together.
It was only three months. So then why did this hurt so much?
I could still picture him. The new boy at Forest Grove high last year. He was all anyone could talk about for a while. In a town as small as ours, any newcomers were regarded with a sort of scrutinizing awe. How did they come to live in a place like this? What brought them here? Where were they from? The rumor mill churned out its own theories, but I knew somehow that none of them were correct.
When I began to notice him watching me as I curiously watched him, I couldn’t believe that someone like me had caught his eye. Outgoing and handsome as he was, what could he possible want with a quiet girl like me?
He was a mystery I wanted to unravel.
Why couldn’t I have seen the that way lay beneath the surface wasn’t the treasure I’d been seeking, but a broken soul that relished inflicting pain on others?
As I bowed my head, another flash came, and I gripped the edge of the counter to steady myself—to try to chase away the bad memories. But in the last week since it’d happened, I couldn’t seem to stop reliving it.
“Why are you texting with Quinn? Is something going on between you two?” he’d asked, the question rousing me from sleep only enough to give him a playful shove and murmur for him to stop being ridiculous.
Quinn was in my elective culinary class. We had been assigned to do a project together on Moroccan cuisine. We were texting about that. And I didn’t think it would be too hard to see that if Devin was actually reading the messages.
“Go back to sleep,” I’d urged, completely unprepared for what would happen next.
Devin grabbed my wrist painfully hard and yanked me to sitting, making my head spin as my eyes tried to open and adjust to the lack of light. Heart pounding and blood suddenly pumping.
“What are you—”
“Tell me,” Devin had hissed, his face illuminated in the cell phone light. My eyes strained from the green-tinted brightness. “Tell me the truth.”
I yanked my arm free of his grasp, rubbing out the ache in my joint. “What the hell, Dev?” I’d snapped. “That hurt.”
I was still trying to figure out what was happening, my sleep addled brain needing a minute to catch up, when the first blow knocked any sense from my mind, making the rational part of me retreat somewhere deep within. Huddled with her knees to her chest, trying and failing to understand what she’d done wrong. Why she hadn’t seen this coming?
Who this man was. Because it wasn’t her Devin.
It couldn’t be.
I came out of the memory and ran for the front of the shop, flinging the door open to the stairway that led down into the storage area. The jingle of bells alerted me there was a customer entering the shop, but I didn’t stop. I stumbled down the last three steps and barely made it, limping, into the bathroom before my stomach heaved and its meager contents were swallowed up by the toilet.
I dry heaved until there was absolutely nothing left.
Until my sides were splitting and my head pounding.
“Hello?” A voice echoed from upstairs.
Shit. I needed to get myself together. I couldn’t puke every time I thought about what happened. I’d already lost almost ten pounds since last week. I couldn’t afford to start losing muscle, too.
I needed to get over it. Rising, I rinsed out my mouth in the sink and lifted my chin. Set my jaw. It wasn’t that he hurt me. I could handle the pain. A good body check on the ice did more damage than what he did to me. It was the fact that I trusted him. That I loved him.
…that I thought he loved me back…
That was what made me sick.
The memory of gentle caresses and warm embraces—of tender kisses stolen beneath the bleachers was at war with the new violent imagery that had taken up my brain space where the softer things used to be. I couldn’t reconcile one with the other. It was impossible. It was like Devin Wright was two completely different people. The mischievous, but kind guy I’d fallen for…and the animal who ripped my heart out.
I hauled ass up the stairs and pasted on a more pleasant expression than the one I was wearing. “Sorry about that,” I said, rounding the corner without a trace of the weaker girl I’d left to desiccate at the bottom of the stairs.
I went to the counter and began ringing in the man who was trying to hide the fact that he was purchasing an erotic novel by buying the newest John Grisham. I didn’t comment on his tastes. I never did. He would only say it was for his wife even though he wasn’t wearing a ring and then he wouldn’t come back in. I knew his type.
Instead, I told him to have a nice day and enjoy his books. To come back again soon.
I’d gotten through the bulk of the thick fall catalog for Simon and Schuster by the time the next customer came into the shop. I glanced up with a ready smile and a greeting on my tongue, but the words dissolved before I could speak them, and I was left with a sour taste coating my mouth.
Devin sauntered into the shop, dipping his head low so he didn’t hit the bells atop the doorframe. When his eyes met mine, something in my body died and came alive all at once. I wanted to run.
But I couldn’t move.
I wanted to punch the stupid demure smirk from his lips.
But then I wouldn’t be any better than he was.
I swallowed hard and flipped the catalog closed with a thud.
“Allie, just let me talk.” Devin stepped further into the store, approaching the counter with slow, measured steps as though I were the dangerous one. As if he was the one afraid.
How fucking ludicrous.
“No.”
“Allie,” his eyes darkened, and there was a note of warning in his voice.
Hastily I looked around, but as was usual for a weekday evening, there wasn’t anyone in the shop. And no one on the street outside, either.
I rose from the stool and grimaced from the pain in my ankle, pulse quickening. “I think you should leave. I have nothing to say to you. And I don’t want to hear any—”
“What happened?” Devin growled as he came around the counter to inspect my ankle. His green eyes suddenly bright and cutting. “What did you do?” He kneeled to inspect the bandages, reaching out to take hold of my calf.
I shrank back, backing into Jacqueline’s desk.
A metal stapler fell from the ledge and clattered to the hardwood, the loud noise sending a tremor racing up my back. “Y-you aren’t allowed back here, Dev. I could get fired.”
He backed up a step and looked down at me with a tilt to his head. Looking at his thick brows and shadowed eyes, that wide chin, and sharp nose, I wondered how I ever found his severe features to be anything less than menacing.
Devin Wright was handsome, yes. But it was there in his eyes—had been there all along and I just hadn’t seen it. He’d kept the ugly bits of himself concealed from me. From everyone.
Now that I’d seen it, I couldn’t unsee it.
Devin turned on me with an accusatory stare. “What’s going on with you, Allie?”
What’s going on with me?
He was the one who turned into a fucking monster. “Nothing,” I said, keeping the spite from my voice. When I’d tried to fight back last week, it’d only made it worse. When I told him to go to hell, he’d only hurt me more. This time I wasn’t going to give him any ammunition. “Nothing is wrong. I just hurt my ankle walking home from the bus.”
His jaw twitched and something hot and angry flashed behind his eyes. My hand went to my stomach, feeling the threat of vomiting all over again coming back.
“I really need to get back to work, Devin.”
“Work? Is your work more important than us? Christ, Allie!” His face soured and I felt around on the desk behind my back until my fingers wrapped tightly around a pen. “I just came here to talk to you and you’re acting like…like you don’t even care.”
He closed the last few steps between us and I flinched when he raised his hand.
Devin didn’t like that.
He glared down at me, gently brushing several strands of faded turquoise out of my face. My heart skipped a beat and I struggled to keep down the bile rising in the back of my throat. “I’m not going to hurt you,” Devin said with a scowl twisting his features. “How could you think I would hurt you?”
My mind raced. I couldn’t help the furrow from forming in my brow. But you already did hurt me…
What the fuck was he playing at?
“But you di—”
“That wasn’t me,” he interrupted, his eyes drawing down at the corners, some of the lines in his forehead smoothed. “You know it wasn’t.”
Wasn’t it?
I managed to squirm out of his grasp before he could lean his forehead against mine. I put two feet of space between us, my chest rising and falling faster than it had been a moment before.
He needed to leave.
I couldn’t deal with this right now. Not on top of everything else.
Devin had shown me his true colors. The truth of him—of who he was deep down inside—had looked me dead in the eye that night, and I believed what I saw.
He couldn’t take it back.
“Get out,” I said, ready to try to hurt him if that’s what it came to. Just because I was taught not to use violence as an answer, didn’t mean I wouldn’t protect myself. I was surprised last time. I shut down. I didn’t know what to do. I was in shock.
Not this time.
“If you don’t leave, I will call the police and I will tell them what you did to me.” My voice didn’t waver even once and I gave myself a mental pat on the back, squeezing the pen behind my back until I thought I might snap the damned thing right in half before I even had a chance to use it.
Devin’s eyes widened in fury, and under the fluorescent light above the counter, they almost seemed to glow. I shook my head and the illusion vanished. The bells on top of the door sounded just as Devin took a step toward me and my body tensed to strike him.
“Wright,” a familiar voice cautioned from just inside the doorway. “I believe you were asked to leave.”
Jared was wearing the same clothes he had been earlier, but he looked different. Angry. Even with Clay barking at him earlier he hadn’t seemed angry. His hands weren’t balled into fists like they were now. His nostrils weren’t flaring. There wasn’t a fire burning beneath his stare.
Devin never took his eyes off me. “Mind your fucking business, Stone,” he hissed at Jared. “This is between me and Allie.”
I tried to move a little further away, to get out from behind the counter and closer to Jared because somehow in that moment I was less afraid of a wolf-man than I was my eighteen-year-old ex-boyfriend.
How fucked is that?
Devin stopped me with a hand wrapped roughly around my upper arm. “Where do you think you’re going? I wasn’t done talk—”
Reflexively, I stabbed the pointy end of the pen into the flesh of his hand. Not enough to do much more than draw tiny droplet of blood, but enough to make him loosen his hold, and for me to scramble out of his grasp and fall to the floor.
Jared was there faster than humanly possible, and I had to remind myself that it was because he legit was not human. He was helping me to stand when Devin growled at both of us, stomping out from behind the counter. “She’s mine,” he roared at Jared, his voice taking on a tone that made my stomach drop to my toes.
His? Was he fucking kidding me?
I didn’t know if it was because I had Jared at my back, or if the words themselves had just gotten me that enraged, but I snapped. I pulled away from Jared only enough to get in Devin’s face. “I am not yours! I belong to no one.”
Devin stumbled back a step, his lips parting in wordless protest as he took me in like he was just seeing me for the first time. “Allie…”
“Get the fuck out of here. Don’t come back,” Jared added, moving to stand next to me.
Devin looked between Jared and I, a wrinkle in his brow. He looked like he might hit one of us. I could practically feel the fury rippling off of him in waves of heat, but he just made an angered sound in the back of his throat and turned his back to us.
He slammed the door to the shop behind him, making the glass pane in the door shake.
I slumped, suddenly unable to get my breath, and leaned heavily on the edge of the front counter. I breathed in deeply through my nose and pushed the air out through my mouth. My hands were shaking, and I desperately wanted them to stop. I wanted to shuck off this weaker Allie like a dead skin and be the stronger one I knew was there somewhere. But she’d been hiding for a long time, and I didn’t know how to get her back.
“Hey,” Jared said, brushing a hand over my back. I recoiled from his touch at first, but then settled, letting his stillness help to soothe my nerves. “Can I…” he trailed off awkwardly. “Can I get you some water or something?”
My throat was dry as a bone from breathing so hard, but I didn’t say that. I didn’t answer him at all. His touch was helping, and the truth was, I didn’t want him to move.
After I got my breath back and my stomach stopped trying to propel itself up my throat, I felt my muscles go, and my body sagged in relief. “No. I’m fine. I mean—I’ll get it myself.”
“It’s water, Allie. I know you can get it yourself, but it’s okay to need help sometimes.”
I pressed my lips together.
“Alright,” Jared breathed, removing his hand. “No water, then. When is your shift over?”
Spinning, I cocked my head at him.
Jared shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans and lifted his shoulders. “If it’s alright with you, I’d like to stay.”
What?
“Did you find a place to stay tonight?”
I gulped, looking away. I’d actually been thinking I would stay here. There was a couch in the back of the shop. And if I left before dawn, there was a good chance no one would see me. But even I knew that was a bad idea.
If someone did see me, it would be hard to make up an excuse to why I was leaving the bookshop at five AM when my shift didn’t start until 3:30 in the afternoon. I couldn’t afford to lose this job.
I shook my head.
Jared nodded. “Alright.”
“Alright?”
“Then you’ll come home wi
th me.”
I opened my mouth to protest.
“Please,” he said, an earnestness gleaming in his amber eyes when he lifted them to mine. My chest tightened. “I know you have more questions. I’ll answer them all—if you want.” He kicked at a spot on the floor and I noticed he was watching the front window with a keen eye, making sure Devin wasn’t waiting outside. “And maybe you could answer a few more of mine?”
I bit my lower lip, feeling awkward and hating it. My face hot and fingers numb from knotting them together. I didn’t know what to say.
“Just…let me help you. Please.”
“Why?” I asked, voicing the question I’d been afraid to ask before. “Why do you want to help me? You don’t even know me.”
The hint of a smile pulled up the corner of Jared’s stupidly perfect mouth, showing off a slight dimple on his left cheek. Damn.
“Because you’re a good person who doesn’t deserve all of the bad things that’ve happened to her,” he said, the tips of his ears staining pink.
My breath caught and I couldn’t look at him anymore. Could hardly breathe.
Because Jared was wrong.
I deserved it all.
6
“Don’t take that road,” I all but shouted as Jared made to round the bend onto Lofty Pines Drive.
The tires of his Jeep screeched as he righted the vehicle and continued straight. “Something against short cuts?” he asked, his voice pitched high from surprise.
I shook my head. “No. I just—I don’t go that way.”
Understanding settled in his eyes and I hated the pity I found in his stare. “Don’t look at me like that,” I told him.
“Sorry, I forgot the graveyard was dow—”
“It’s fine. Just drive, okay?”
If you looked hard enough into the trees out the passenger side window, you could see it; the graveyard where my mother and father were buried. I didn’t look, of course, I never did. I kept my eyes straight ahead as we passed, wringing my fingers in my lap.
I killed them.
Both of them.
But they weren’t the first lives I took. No. I took my first before I was even born.