by Riley Moreno
“Are you better off without me?” he asked. “I feel like… I think maybe…”
His eyes seemed resigned to the idea of leaving her. A small part of her understood that. Because maybe he couldn’t want her anymore after seeing what it was to her to be ruined with his own eyes. Absorbing the shame, Julie hung her head and sighed.
“I’m not,” she said. “It’s all wrong without you. I… I wish that we had just run instead of coming back here. Instead of… instead of waiting…”
Tears streamed down her cheeks, and Julie let him hold her as she clutched the paper gown surrounding his neck and moaned lightly.
“Forgive me,” Julie said.
“There’s nothing to---”
“But she should have stayed dead.”
As much as it hurt to think of Kim in an unmarked grave where no one could ever set a single flower on the stone, Kim staying gone would have spared her friend’s mother. No skin off her nose that Troxel and McCord no longer drew breath. But Ethan was hurt. And she… she had been…
“It hurt more this time,” she confessed.
Ethan tried to kiss her cheek when Julie shifted away from him and lay uneasily at his side.
“Because… I mean…”
She forced her eyes back to his and took a deep breath.
“I never knew what it was before the boys and the cabin,” she continued. “Maybe… maybe it was supposed to hurt. And I was just a blind fool.”
He stayed still at her side, and Julie turned her eyes to the fluorescent light fluttering in the ceiling. She spied a single fly trying to break free of the glass and take flight. But every flicker of the bug’s wings only made the light buzz, and Julie closed her eyes.
“Maybe it should be like that,” she said. “Like an unending trap. My… my mother’s stuck. At least Kim knew what to do with it.”
She rolled to her side and started to cry into her hands. Trying to pity Kim, Julie thighs still burned, and her limbs trembled. Was it better to trust no one and plan revenge? She had Troxel and McCord in her sights long before Kim clawed her way out of her figurative grave.
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“If I had only killed them myself,” she said. “If… she hadn’t come back to find me happy, then this… this…”
Julie offered no resistance as Ethan turned her to her back and barely touched her cheeks.
“Stop,” he whispered. “It does no good.”
“What doesn’t?” she asked.
“Hating yourself for getting through it. I… I lived with it for far too long.”
Awash in guilt at the thought that she had tried to turn his pain against him, Julie started to pull away from the bed when Ethan suddenly held her fast.
“And you helped me,” he said.
“Because you got to save me.”
“No. Because you let me live with you.”
Julie rested as she remembered what it was to just pass through the rooms of his apartment. To share a meal and linger under his sheets, lightly touching him as he smiled into her eyes.
“And that’s… that’ what it’s supposed to be like?”
“I think so, Juliet.”
She started to turn away again when Ethan clasped her waist and kissed her hair.
“And I never wanted to see you hurt again,” he said. “Never think that I need that.”
Remembering his blood soaked sobs as he tried to push towards her side, Julie sighed as she nodded and reached behind her back for his hand.
“I believe it now,” she said. “I… I saw you tonight.”
He turned her face to his and stopped short of kissing her lips.
“It’s over now,” he said. “And I’ll be up and around in no time.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
Ethan curled his hand around her fingers and kissed her nails.
“I’ll get you another ring,” he promised. “One that will---”
“Are you still so sure?”
He stared back and smiled softly.
“This doesn’t have to change everything. My heart breaks for Kim. But…”
Ethan kissed her brow and palmed her cheek.
“But you’re still here. And I… I want to help you forget.”
Julie liked the sound of that, and she was almost ready to kiss him again when her body tensed and she shook her head.
“I can’t,” she sobbed. “It’s too soon.”
“Juliet?”
His voice was soft as he held her loosely, and Julie fought the tears forming in her eyes and met his gaze.
“So many nights when I could do nothing but hold you. That was always enough. And it… it doesn’t have to change.”
As she shook her head, Ethan stilled the twirl of her head, and his kiss was tender as wrapped his arms around her shoulders and forced a smile.
“Please don’t ever run away from me again.”
Julie brought her hand to the beating of his heart, and sighed at the feel of her own pulse in rhythm with his. Feeling as if she would fall without him, Julie clasped him close even as she kept her lips at bay.
“But if I… if I can’t be a real wife….”
“I don’t know that that even means, Juliet. I just need you.”
They lay looking into each other’s eyes, and Julie felt her body melt when she looked to his lips again, wanting something more than his kiss.
“Say it again,” she whispered.
Ethan cradled her closer.
“I need---”
“No. Say my name.”
He blushed, his eyes staying on hers as he touched her cheek and released a deep breath.
“Juliet. My Juliet.”
“I like that.”
His hold was sure and sweet as he kissed her head and took her deeper into his arms. She could stay like this for years. Maybe forever. Every hurt fell away under the swirl of his arms, and Julie lingered against his chest when searched for his eyes and touched his face.
“What if I can never?” she asked. “Would you still want---?”
“Only you, Juliet. Always you.”
29
Morales left the hospital as her phone buzzed against her thigh. Trying to ignore the sound, she felt the call go to voicemail and climbed the steps to a bus. She paid her fare quickly and fixed her eyes on the head on the man sitting before her. All broad shoulders in a muscle shirt, Morales still felt for her gun and felt sure that she could take him down with a single shot if he so much as looked at her the wrong way. The scuzzy asshole in the woods had done far worse than that, and Morales put the man down like the dog that he was. She could do it again. All she needed was the chance and the cause, and she could put them all down and never look back. Feeling as if she was back in the forest, seeing Julie raped and ravaged at her feet, Morales started to reach for her gun when Leo’s call rang against her legs, and she dared to glance at his text even as her finger stayed curled around the trigger.
Where the fuck are you? I’m hearing all kinds of shit? What did you do, Connie?
Nothing now. Nothing yet. Clicking her phone into silence, a quick glance revealed the man before her to be everything that Greg Heller wasn’t as a little girl with fine blonde hair slipped up from his seat and cuddled close to the man’s shoulder. The bug-eyed guy kissed the girl’s cheek, and she thanked whatever god might be looking down for the fact that there were still some good men in the world that watched out for their kids and held them close with the hope that not even one bad thing would ever cross their paths. She held onto that as she watched the man leave his seat and take the girl’s hand in hers. Seeing the child trailing behind her father, Morales considered clicking her phone back to attention and setting Leo straight, maybe even promising that she would come back to his side with the entire story to t
ell when the girl caught her gaze.
And suddenly, the red hair was replaced by matted brown locks that cried and begged for mercy as she was ravaged all over again and feared that there would never be a way out. That was Julie, and a fast blink turned the hair crimson. And that was Kim. Even as the girl went blonde again and happily skipped behind her father, Morales couldn’t shake the memory of all that they had endured, and she kept her gun ready for anyone that might appear and bring her intentions to a total halt. That did not come to pass, and Morales left the bus at the last stop and hailed a cab.
“Are you okay, Miss?” he driver asked from behind worried eyes. Another kind of father? Someone else that Julie didn’t have to fear? Good thing. She needed that or something to hang on to, to tell herself that she was making the right move. Pave the way for the better men. Let her just be with Ethan and not have to cry if she could stand him holding her again.
“I am just fine.”
“Hey there, Connie.”
Morales slapped her badge on the desk and winked at Willie Harris as she whistled lightly and motioned for him to follow her into the corner. Seeming to remember what it was like to not have a rabbi and Morales still daring to take a meal with him, Willie followed her lead and followed her into the shadows. As soon they were concealed, Morales took Willie’s hand in hers and strained close to his ear.
“I need a favor,” Morales said.
“Sure thing!” Willie chirped. “So do we knock him out cold or---”
“You rape him. And then you kill him.”
Willie startled where he stood, and Morales saw, felt him ready to laugh it off and take her arm in the hope of a drink. Drink sounded good right about now, and she was tempted to take him up on his unspoken offer when Willie shook his head.
“Can’t do that, Connie,” he said.
“I want to watch. Make it happen.”
Slipping him a few bucks, she watched Willie’s face brighten as he counted the currency, and as soon as he seemed satisfied that the price was right, he pocketed the bills and slapped her shoulder.
“Always the badass,” he quipped.
“When I have to be,” she said. “So are you going to make this happen for me, or what?”
“Think that’s something that can be arranged.”
Morales waited in a cold gray room as Willie got all of his ducks in a row. If she had the choice, she would lead the charge and smoke him with her own gun. But that wouldn’t play; she had to remember that and keep her eyes on the prize.
“Connie?”
Willie beckoned her forward, and Morales sighed as she stood. Brushing her palms against her tattered jeans, she followed her friend into the bowels of hell. Just the sight of a woman, the smallest part of her flesh exposed. caused the men to assail her with series of crude whistles and taunts. Morales let every insult bounce off her back and kept moving through the gauntlet. If Julie could take it and come out on the other end with her senses intact… if Kim couldn’t…
I’m doing this for them.
From behind a sheet of two-way glass, Morales saw three guards drag Greg Heller into the room and toss his weakened body to the floor. Time behind bars had done him a world of hurt. His hair was already starting to fall out, and a pallor crossed his face as he fell to his back and splayed his palms to his eyes.
“I’m sorry!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “I… I just want to go home.”
So he was scared, longing to break from reality, maybe even turn the back the clock. Far too late for Kim on that front, and Julie’s road to recovery was back to square one, literally back to the second when she had first fled the woods in a battered panic. But she still had Ethan.
And Morales was determined to see that the last of her night terrors was finally put to a proper rest.
“What are…? No! No you can’t!”
As the guards started to depart, three fellow inmates, all larger than Greg Heller with blank eyes and snarling teeth advanced with a rage writ large across their faces and their hands balled into fists intent on nothing but destruction. Morales felt Willie at her back, his cold whisper trailing into her ear.
“We know how the big boys feel about this kind of trash,” Willie hissed.
“Might be the only common ground that I have with these scum.”
Morales watched with baited breath, her own fists longing to smash through the glass and rain a series of blows down on Greg Heller’s suddenly bare candy ass. Pushed against the wall, the demon was brought to his knees as inmates lowered their orange threads, and Greg Heller struggled and screamed for mercy. There was none to be had and far less than was warranted. One after the other, the men took turns their slamming their vicious dicks into Heller’s gradually weakening ass, the man’s tears coming to a stop as his eyes looked to the glass, his moans reduced to pitiful whimpers. When the last man had taken finished and zipped up, Morales wished for one moment alone with him. Not to add to the violation; just the thought of touching him made her want to wretch. What she longed for most was the chance to ask him one simple question.
Do you understand how much you hurt them now?
She was about to throw caution to the wind, slip Willie a few more bucks for the privilege when the largest of the inmates beat her to the punch. Pulling a sharpened shiv from his sock, he brought the business end of the weapon crashing down between Greg Heller’s shoulder blades. The doomed man was able to emit one last cry of anguish as the blood started to leave his back. The other inmates rapped on the door and were granted exit as Julie Edwards’ stepfather expired with what she hoped was all the pain that he had engineered with one moment of greed and arrogance.
“Connie? You okay?” Willie asked.
“It’s not a bad day to see justice served.”
Leo kept texting as she made her way back into the city. Tempted to ignore him, desperate to head home and sink into a tub of scalding water and try to scrub the memories away, she sighed as she knew that she was only putting off the inevitable, and she snagged a subway to his apartment.
Just one quick look told her that it hadn’t take long for the word to reach his door, and Morales cocked her head as she pressed her hands to her hips.
“Speak plainly, Leo,” she said. “I’ve had some night let me tell--”
“Did you make this happen?” he demanded as he turned his computer screen towards her weary eyes. Viewing the classified email, Morales saw the fruits of her labor in purely clinical tones. Words like suspicious and untraceable flashed across the monitor, and Morales barely suppressed a satisfied smirk as Leo kept talking.
“Did you really contrive something this barbaric?”
Barbaric? Totally the right word. And she hoped that whatever hell the man was in, he was suffering the same fate over and over again. Let that be his eternity. No rest. No reprieve. Kim hadn’t known any peace; Juliet had to go through a fresh version of hell all over again. Better that the man should die like that.
“Yes,” she said, her voice steady as she fixed her eyes on his. “And I would do it again.”
“Do you know what happens if this ever gets traced back to you?” Leo asked, his voice full of worry.
“Probably all kinds of bad things,” she confessed. “Will you defend me if push comes to shove?”
Leo scoffed into the air and held his face in his hands.
“Will I… and what happens if I can’t save you? If you go down for this, it’s your whole career. It’s your life as you know it, Connie.”
Pushing past his fear, Morales took his hand and patted her fingers to his wrist.
“There’s no more life as we know it for Julie,” she started. “I… I only hope that she can move forward and hope for another way out.”
Leo stayed silent as she touched his cheek and peered into his eyes.
“I’d do it again,” she whispered. “And… and at the end of the day, you know that you’re okay with it.”
As he averted his gaze, Morales tried
to find his stare. Failing under the force of his fallen head, she tugged on his earlobe and smiled sadly.
“Can’t look at me now, can you?”
No hint of his eyes, and Morales started to turn away, still contented with her choice. She was nearly out the door when Leo seized her wrist and turned her back to his chest. She gasped at the feel of his face close enough to kiss, and when he ran his hands through her hair, she held her breath and just waited for his next word.
“Only because… only because you talked a better game and put it into action.”
Leo’s stare sparkled as their eyes met again, and Morales held her ground as he pushed his fingers to her cheek.
“Here’s how it goes down,” he started. “It was an accident. Happiest kind. Let that bitch of a mother of hers try to sell her story. Pretty sure there will be no pity.”
Morales nodded, and Leo pulled her close, and she slowly fell into his lap. Leo’s hands were soft against her back, and she murmured lightly when he touched her cheek and kissed her nose.
“And as much as it’ll grind at me, I’ll hold my tongue and never tell another living soul how you succeeded when the rest of us failed.”
Lifting her eyebrows, Morales narrowed her gaze.
“So am I to take it that a part of you approves?’ she asked.
Leo nodded and started to kiss her again when he sucked in a deep breath and moaned into her eyes.
“Of you, and of all of it,” Leo said. “Boss move, and off the record, you get all kinds of credit, Detective Morales.”
Smiling into his hand, Morales slowly met his lips. Savoring the feel of his kiss, she started to sink into his arms when he suddenly pushed back and stared into her eyes.
“Is she okay?” he asked.
“Julie?”
“I have to ask.”
“She… she had to go through hell twice too many times,” Morales said. “But I think… I think this might let he put it all to rest.”
Leo grunted his approval as he grabbed he face and smiled into her eyes.
“Then its props for Ethan Graff,” he said. “And I for one hope that she finally gets to be okay.”
Nodding into his neck, Morales wanted nothing more than for something good to come out of this.