Brightest As We Fall

by Cleo Peitsche

  Jason ran a hand through his hair and watched her pull clothes from the dryer and heap them into a wire laundry cart.

  What the hell had just happened? One second, he’d been in a murderous rage.

  And then he’d seen DeeAnn.

  If he hadn’t glanced toward the building, he’d have driven right past…

  But he never would have driven past. The laundromat was lit up, a glowing lantern in a desert of creeping night. And DeeAnn had been standing in front, looking small and lost and alone but also brighter than everything else.

  Even as he was pulling into the parking lot, Jason hadn’t known what he was going to do. His anger had lain over him in a thick, suffocating blanket.

  It was the look in DeeAnn’s eyes that had undone him. The moment she recognized him, her fear had turned into worry combined with joy.

  When was the last time anyone had been happy to see him? He was a thug, an enforcer. People feared him. Not DeeAnn, though. She treated him with a warranted respect, but she wasn’t terrified of him.

  He wondered if she realized how rare that was.

  So, yeah, her genuine reaction had loosened something in him. And then the overwhelming rush of relief that she hadn’t taken off with the money had dissolved the last of Jason’s self-control, and he’d kissed her…

  He glanced at the station wagon, then walked into the laundromat. DeeAnn stood at a tall white table. She was meticulously folding a T-shirt she’d bought at the outlet mall.

  “Do you want a clean shirt?” she asked. “I don’t know how I missed the one you’re wearing.”

  Jason shook his head. “Where are the car keys?” He needed a lot more sleep, and he planned to take the money back with him.

  “Oh, it’s unlocked,” she said, shaking out a pair of Jason’s jeans.

  “Unlocked? What… Why…” Words failed him.

  She looked at him, horror dawning in her eyes. “I didn’t take… They’re under the bed,” she said, practically whispering the last even though the laundromat was empty.

  Jason turned, ran for the car. A few heartbeats later, he was speeding down the road.

  Jason expected to find the room’s front door busted in, the room trashed.

  But it wasn’t.

  Then he became convinced that the manager had let himself in, had snooped around and discovered the bags that Jason hadn’t thought to look for in his panic.

  He crouched but didn’t see anything under the bed until he dropped to his hands and knees.

  Two duffel bags, stowed out of sight by a short person. Good thing, because he’d left the curtains open.

  Jason straightened, scrunching his eyes and running a sweaty hand through his hair.

  “Fuck,” he muttered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” The stress of the last ten minutes had probably shortened his life by a decade.

  He returned the manager’s car and insisted on paying only fifty bucks for having borrowed it for so short a time, and he made a big show of counting the five thousand to verify that it was all there—it was better if the shifty-eyed manager didn’t suspect Jason’s true financial situation—all while keeping an eye on his door.

  Back in the room, Jason threw their belongings into the two small suitcases they’d bought and zipped them shut.

  They would need to run as soon as DeeAnn returned. Jason didn’t trust anyone, and that went double for people running seedy motels. The manager almost certainly had friends in low places. Friends who would happily break Jason’s nose for an easy five grand. And of course, Jason had a lot more money than that on the line.

  Now Jason was wide awake. The panic—the entire situation—had ensured that he wouldn’t be able to close his eyes again in this place.

  He felt around under the bed. The moment his fingers made contact with the sturdy nylon, he smiled. Then he pulled out the duffels and inventoried the contents.

  Just in case DeeAnn was indeed pulling a fast one on him.

  Of course, she wasn’t.

  Jason’s instincts about her were right. And if he’d trusted his instincts in the first place, he could have avoided all this trouble.

  And DeeAnn’s instincts about him?

  She thought he was a criminal, thought it was in his DNA. He hadn’t stolen the manager’s car, because renting it was easier. If the same situation had unrolled at three in the morning while everyone was asleep, Jason wouldn’t have hesitated to help himself. And if he had entertained second thoughts, they wouldn’t have centered around the well-being of the victim.

  Victim. The word was an unwelcome guest that lodged in Jason’s mind. He wouldn’t have destroyed the car after he was done with it. The owner would have been inconvenienced for only a short time.

  Already he could hear DeeAnn’s counterarguments: What if the victim lost their job because they couldn’t get to work for a couple of days? What if they were trying to get home to see their dying grandmother and didn’t make it in time?

  Admitting it made Jason uncomfortable, but DeeAnn was right.

  Not that he’d be sharing that with her.

  For the first time in his adult life, he had to confront the fact that he had a choice. He was standing at a crossroads. He could leave crime and violence behind. Changing careers had never seemed like an option before. His line of work was for life, or at least until you were old enough or wounded enough that retirement made sense. Besides, who walked away from six figures a year in cash to work a minimum wage job? Jason wasn’t even sure he could get hired most places. Maybe he could work as a bar bouncer, but if he was going to beat people up, he was better off working for AJ.

  Or for himself. That payday loan thing was pretty lucrative.

  Jason sat on the edge of the bed and leaned forward, knees on elbows, hands together and fingers interlaced. He supposed he looked like he was about to pray. He’d never been a religious man; there weren’t any gods who would look favorably on the things he’d done.

  The thievery. The intimidation. The beatings he’d dealt out, not because the recipients had deserved them, but because he was being paid to send a specific message.

  And, of course, the murders.

  He’d killed his first man at sixteen, a few days after being dumped by his high school girlfriend. He’d been walking back from a friend’s house, drunk as a skunk. The guy had come out of nowhere, mumbling, lurching. Why he’d thought Jason was an easy target, Jason would never understand. At that age, Jason was only half an inch shorter than his full height of six three, and while he’d filled out a lot more since, he’d discovered weights the year before and was lifting hard every other day. In the dark, he wouldn’t have looked like a sixteen-year-old kid. And he definitely hadn’t been looking for a fight.

  But Jason had never gotten a chance to talk the situation down.

  The man had punched him, the clumsy blow skimming across Jason’s jaw.

  Jason had punched back, and Jason hadn’t missed.

  He’d turned the unconscious man onto his side, putting him into the recovery position. That was something his friends sometimes joked about, knocking out someone’s lights, then rolling them onto their side so they didn’t suffocate or accidentally choke to death on their own vomit, thereby pulling down a manslaughter charge for whoever had hit them.

  In Jason’s case, it was moot. The man was already dead. One punch. He later learned that the guy was in poor health, but back then, he hadn’t known.

  He’d panicked.

  Sure, he was big and full of testosterone, and he wore invincibility like a second skin—feelings that had remained his de facto state until the shootout with the Jack Rebels. But at sixteen, he was still a kid.

  Until then, the worst he’d ever done was send a guy his age to the hospital for a couple of forehead stitches. Jason had been full of undirected anger, fueled by problems at home and hormones raging through his maturing body.

  But that night, he hadn’t been angry. Just sloppy drunk and full of self-pity. In a heartbeat, b
ad luck had him standing over a dead body.

  He remembered trying not to piss himself.

  Nothing had prepared him for the reality of taking a life. The numbness, the disassociation. The experience amplified the growing hollowness since Katie’s premature death, cauterizing the open wounds and creating scars that would never heal smooth. If he’d had Katie, that night might have been a turning point, a wake-up call. But his sister couldn’t help him.

  Later, Jason found out that most of his tough-talking friends hadn’t seen any real action.

  They couldn’t have warned him because they didn’t know.

  Freaking out, trying not to vomit, Jason had dragged the body behind a dumpster, then checked the guy’s pockets for identification. He’d seen enough cop shows and knew he’d want to follow the inevitable police investigation from afar.

  The dead man hadn’t carried ID, but Jason had turned out forty bucks and a plastic baggie stuffed full of pills. He’d taken half the money and almost all the pills.

  The police had never investigated, or if they had, they’d devoted almost no time to it. Jason now knew that the autopsy would have turned up evidence of chronic drug use.

  Dragging the corpse to the dumpster and not cleaning out the wallet completely had proven to be a brilliant move. Paranoid junkie stumbles into big metal object, loses balance, and dies.

  Those pills had put two hundred bucks into Jason’s pocket. The embellished story of how he’d gotten them had made him feared.

  After that, Jason was hooked. Selling drugs was easy money. Jason had calculated that he was earning more per hour than his father the big-shot banker. Dealing was sometimes stressful, but that wasn’t the reason Jason had quit. He’d simply moved up in the world.

  So. Drug dealer. That needed to go on the list of his sins.

  He squeezed his hands into fists, knuckles cracking in the quiet room. There was no one to pray to. Never had been, never would be. Not for him. Any deity who could let a kid die of cancer wasn’t on Jason’s side. And if there was an afterlife, Jason was going to make it his personal mission to hunt down the demons responsible for the miserable last years of Katie’s short existence, and make them pay.

  A car stopped outside. Jason threw the door open.

  DeeAnn’s face was pale, and she’d left the car running.

  “Everything’s fine,” he told her.

  “I’m so sorry—”

  “But we’re leaving.”

  “Why? Did you get enough sleep?”

  Not even close. “I wouldn’t be suggesting we leave if I hadn’t.”

  DeeAnn nodded, her face serious. But she couldn’t fool him; he’d seen her furtive glance at the bed, and he read her true concern easily.

  She wanted more of this thing that had been heating up between them. The kiss in front of the laundromat had been gasoline dumped on the fire.

  He couldn’t blame her; he wanted more, too. But it couldn’t happen now.

  And maybe he needed to think through the negatives of sleeping with this woman.

  “In the future, leave notes when you go out.” Jason grabbed the duffel bags and suitcases.

  “Yeah, no problem. You could have called, you know.”

  “I don’t have your number.”

  DeeAnn pulled out her phone, but he shook his head. “Do that in the car.”

  It took mere seconds to load up. Jason left the motel keys on a pillow and the door unlocked.

  As they pulled out of the parking lot, he glanced into the rear-view mirror and saw the manager framed inside the office’s open door, fingers tucked into the pockets of his jeans.

  That man couldn’t hurt them. Jason planned to switch license plates within a day, and he knew that was excessive and unnecessary. The manager didn’t know about the millions, and no one would hunt him down for five grand. Jason wondered if he’d discovered his new career: paranoia.

  If so, he excelled at it. The look on DeeAnn’s face when he’d driven up to the laundromat was proof.

  He wished, for one wild, impulsive instant, that he could trade the money for his freedom. The moment passed. Freedom without money was only partial freedom.

  Jason drove, stopping only once for fuel and for fast food tacos. It was midnight before he checked into a mid-range hotel. He parked the car with the license plate facing a tidy brick wall that was draped in some kind of ivy.

  “Dibs on the shower,” DeeAnn said, pushing into their room.

  “You already took one today.”

  “And had to put on clothing covered in chemicals.” She disappeared into the bathroom with her bag of stuff, leaving Jason to puzzle out her reasoning. A fool’s errand if ever there was one.

  Using his burner phone, he searched the websites of the Rhodell Heights newspapers.

  No additional reports on the shootout. The news cycle back home had moved on to more interesting topics. A local politician caught soliciting sex from underage prostitutes. A multi-car pileup causing significant delays during rush hour. A school lunch scandal about low-quality ingredients entering the food supply chain.

  What kind of animal thought it was fun to poison kids? One that needed a bullet in the brain.

  “You look like you want to kill someone.” DeeAnn had emerged in a cloud of steam. She wore those ridiculous ice cream cone pajamas, her dry hair pulled up into a messy bun at the top of her head.

  Jason dragged his gaze back to her face and saw the tension in her eyes and mouth. “Did you find out anything?” she asked.

  “Nothing at all.” Jason tapped the power button. “No news is good news.”

  “Unless they’re keeping details quiet while they track us down. Toby wasn’t mentioned in any article I read.”

  Jason didn’t want to lie, but he didn’t want DeeAnn to worry, either. “Toby wasn’t badly injured, remember? He probably got away before the authorities showed up, and he wouldn’t go to the police. Not in a million years.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “No one knows where we are.” Jason bent over to plug his phone into the charger. All the articles mentioned four bodies, but Toby couldn’t have walked away. Jason took that to mean the Jack Rebels had arrived before the authorities. It made him wonder why they’d involved the police at all.

  Maybe firefighters and police had shown up before the bikers. Maybe the Jack Rebels hadn’t had a choice. In which case… Why was there no mention of Toby?

  It didn’t make sense.

  When Jason looked up, DeeAnn was practically standing on top of him. Her braless breasts didn’t stretch the fabric, because the pajamas were loose—probably marketed as comfortable—but up close, he could see the tantalizing contours of her full chest, including the outlines of her nipples.

  Just like that, he was hard.

  She cleared her throat nervously. “Are we going to talk about that kiss—”

  Jason didn’t let DeeAnn finish. He covered her mouth with his hand as he stood.

  She blinked up at him, her amber eyes dark brown in the room’s low lighting.

  Now what?

  Jason didn’t have an answer for that.

  Since leaving the motel, they’d listened to podcasts in the car and had argued about TV shows. As if arguing had ever put out the kind of fire that burned between them. As if seeing DeeAnn devolve into stuttering and then speechlessness in her passion to defend “Freaks and Geeks” could have turned him off. Even though he’d never seen the show and only had a vague idea of what it was about, he’d called it overrated and boring. To tease her.

  Then she’d accused him of only liking violent shows, so he’d told her his favorite was “The Wire,” which he also hadn’t seen, but he knew it was about gangs in Baltimore. AJ loved it, had told him many times to watch it, but Jason hadn’t bothered. His TV was never on. Between work, working out, and working some more, who had the time? Mostly, he was a workaholic. That wouldn’t square with DeeAnn, and even if she could reconcile the idea of a workaholic
criminal, it wouldn’t exactly impress her.

  And when had he started caring about what she thought?

  He didn’t have an answer for that, either.

  She was trying to talk—of course she was—but she hadn’t stepped away. He liked the feeling of her warm little body pressed against him, and he liked that she’d come to him tonight.

  He didn’t want there to be any doubt about that later, when she was wet and sweaty and trembling all over.

  Good man. You finally made your decision.

  Damn right he had.

  He smiled. It must have been scary because DeeAnn blinked, and now she was breathing faster.

  Chapter 25

  Holding Jason’s gaze feels like the bravest thing I’ve ever done.

  Why is he smiling like that?

  And, crap, I’m saying all this aloud. But it’s muffled because his palm is over my mouth.

  Jason lowers his hand, and I fall silent.

  In fact, the entire room is so damned quiet that I swear I can hear the electricity humming through the lamps.

  Then I realize… It’s my own heart, rushing the blood through my veins. Slowly, I lick my parched lips and suck them into my mouth, then realize how wantonly sexual that must look, and so I freeze, my eyes wide, my lips practically gone from my face, like I’m trying to hide them.

  Jason’s damned smile only grows wider. Tears prickle my eyes, and I take one small step backward.

  “What’s wrong with me?” I say, and there’s no background noise to keep the words from floating into the room.

  “You’re beautiful,” Jason says after a long moment. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

  I was talking about my mental state, but Jason’s compliment, and the way he says it, like he really thought about my question, makes every bit of my skin erupt into an intense, burning flush.

  “And you’re interesting.” He says this slowly, too, and his eyebrows are drawing together, like something’s bothering him.

  “Thanks,” I say hesitantly, not sure where he’s going with this. Three bits of flattery and then some constructive criticism, maybe? Some suggestions about my hair or clothes or makeup? God, I hope not. I think I’d die.