by Lucy Ivey
Her eyes told that truth.
His gave nothing away.
Even when asked, he’d made it seem she meant nothing to him.
He’d lied to me about their relationship.
She must have meant something to him for him to be at her house mourning with her parents.
Why did he lie about it?
Was he hiding something else from me?
Did his brother know the truth?
Joe.
He was a liar, too.
Deceitful. Cruel. Unremorseful.
He enjoyed hurting people.
He got off on it.
Fuck! I’m a liar, too.
I’d been lying to Justin about Joe. I’d been lying to Gray. I’d been lying to myself about him. After seeing how angry he got at me earlier, I wondered what he was capable of doing.
As my stomach began to tighten again, I heard him walking up the stairs, his footsteps stopping in front of my door.
Would he try to get inside my room?
How would I be able to fight him off?
I wouldn’t. He was too strong.
His strength, like his darkness, was hidden beneath his beauty.
Both there—just beyond my closed door—waiting for him to reveal them to me.
I saw him now for who he was.
His seductiveness was as intentional as his deception.
He used them both against me.
Maybe against others.
I stared at the broken light under the door and waited for the knock or the twisting of the handle as I held my breath.
Neither came.
I heard his door close, and the sound of blaring music filled the air between the walls of his room and mine.
I pulled my legs up to my chest and rocked myself slowly back and forth.
Closing my eyes, I begged for him to leave my thoughts.
It was useless.
I fell asleep to the visions of his flawless, beautiful dangerous face continuing to fill my head.
When I woke, I sat up slowly and looked at the clock on my nightstand. Over an hour had passed. An eerie silence surrounded me, and the darkness of who I felt Joe to be suddenly filled the air again.
I needed to find out if he was still in his room or in the house. I slowly walked toward the door, and without warning the familiar soft tapping on the other side interrupted my curious thoughts. Justin. I breathed a sigh of relief and opened the door.
Joe’s towering frame locked into position standing only a few feet away from me.
“Karley, we need to talk—”
“I don’t want to talk to you, Joe,” I said nervously, trying to shut my bedroom door, but he quickly held his hand out and forced the door away from me.
“Karley, just let me talk to you for a minute.”
“No!” I yelled. “Get out of my room!”
“Karley, stop being stupid and listen to me!”
I was using the entire weight of my body against the hold of his hand, but my effort seemed useless.
“Get out!” I screamed before I managed to slam the door.
“Fuck!” His scream roared through the air. Silence. Panic beginning to fill my body. When he spoke again, he was calm.
“It’s time you know the truth.”
My voice was shaking to the rhythm of my trembling body.
“I already know the truth, Joe!”
“Trust me … you have no idea.”
Trust him? Was he being serious?
“Go away, Joe. Please!” I begged.
He stepped back from the door, and silence continued to fill the air. Without warning, his fist hit the door with a loud bang.
“Open the fucking door!”
“Joe, please go away!” I cried now standing in the middle of my room expecting the worst, thinking of how angry I had made him earlier. If he got inside, I couldn’t get away from him.
He could easily break down the door if he wanted. I frantically began to look around my room for my phone.
Where was it?
After a few minutes, I heard the echo of a slamming door downstairs.
He was gone.
I was alone.
I wasn’t safe. I didn’t want to be here alone in my room not knowing where he went or when he would be back. I prayed Justin got home first.
I ran downstairs to the kitchen and tried calling Justin’s phone several times, then decided to call Bill’s office. Neither of them answered. I took the phone with me as I ran back up the stairs toward my room.
Justin’s door was shut but the light was on.
It hadn’t been before.
Was he home?
No. He would have heard my argument with Joe and saved me from his brother.
I ran across the hallway and opened the door. I turned off his light, shut the door, and sat on his bed in the dark. Leaning my head back against his pillow, I prayed he would be home soon to protect me.
The front door opened and someone came inside. It was after midnight, hours after Joe had left the house. Waiting patiently, I listened to the calm, steady footsteps walking around in the kitchen and then up the stairs.
I pulled my knees up to my chest waiting to see if the footsteps would stop at the first bedroom or continue to this one.
They stopped in front of my room before continuing. Holding my breath, I watched the doorknob turning and the door open. The light came on and Justin looked shocked to see me in his bed.
“What are you doing?” he asked holding his chest. “You scared me.”
I ran over to him and wrapped my arms around his neck.
Hurry! Tell him what happened!
I couldn’t talk.
“Hey,” he whispered pulling my head out from the safety of his coat. There was a familiar scent on him I recognized but couldn’t place. It comforted me. “What’s wrong?”
“Where have you been?” I sobbed.
“I’ve been at the resort … working.” He looked at me innocently. “I told Joe to tell you I wouldn’t be home until late. Didn’t he tell you?”
Fighting back tears, I shook my head.
“Why didn’t you call me yourself?” I said.
“My phone died.”
“Why didn’t you use your dad’s office phone?”
“Karley, what’s going on?” he asked still holding my head in his hands.
I shook my head back and forth quickly again. He brought my lips up to his and kissed me before pulling me back into his arms.
“Is Joe here?” I asked.
“No.”
“Where do you think he is?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think he is at Gray’s?”
She was upset with him. He would want to make sure she didn’t say anything to Justin about our conversation she overheard in the truck earlier. It wouldn’t take much for him to convince her to trust him again. He was good at lying and keeping secrets.
His irises darkened and there was darkness in his tone. “No. He’s done with her now.”
Done with her now? What did that mean? Was she ok?
“Karley, is everything all right?”
I needed to call Gray. I didn’t care if she was mad at me. I needed to make sure she was safe.
“Karley?”
“I need to call Gray.”
“Why?”
I needed to tell her not to let Joe near her. I needed to tell Justin about how Joe was the one who was killing the girls. He wouldn’t believe me, but I thought Gray might.
“Do you have your phone?”
“Yeah, but I’m sure she’s fine.”
“I need to call her.” He handed me the phone in frustration and I looked up her number. When she didn’t answer, I left a message asking her to call me on Justin’s phone.
Before I handed the phone back to him, I looked at the battery, remembering him telling me he hadn’t called me because it died. The battery was at eighty-two percent.
“Do you feel bett
er now?”
“Yes,” I lied, wondering why he had lied to me.
He stepped in closer to me and wrapped his arms around my waist. A familiar floral scent surrounded us.
“I thought you’d be happy we have the house to ourselves.”
“I’m glad he’s not here,” I whispered. He set his hands firmly on my cheeks and raised my eyes to meet his stare.
“Because we’ll be here alone or because something happened between the two of you?”
Through quivering lips I lied again, “Because we’re alone.”
He loosened his grip on the sides of my face. If he didn’t believe me, I couldn’t tell.
“I’m happy I’ve got you alone, too,” he whispered as he ran his hands slowly down the front of my shirt. “Now I can finally do anything I want to you and no one will interrupt us.”
I felt safe with him knowing he wouldn’t let anything happen to me.
He would protect me.
Something about our time together felt different than any of the other times before. The closeness between us was gone. It may have been the endless fearful thoughts of Joe racing through my head or the distance Justin had in his eyes when he looked at me.
Whatever it was, after being with him, sleep didn’t come for me.
I declined his offer to join him in the shower but listened to the heavy spraying water as I wrapped myself in his sheet and began picking up the pieces of our clothing all over the place.
I picked up his shirt from the arm of the chair and let the sheet fall to the floor as I pulled it over my head and across my body. The familiar scent from last night when he pulled me into his arms filled my nose again.
This time, I recognized the soft scent as jasmine.
I pulled the neck of the shirt up to my nose, making sure I truly recognized the scent covering it.
Gray’s perfume would linger on after hugs she and I shared but the scent was strong last night, too strong for just a hug. Even this morning—hours later—it was still on the white T-shirt that was barely covering my hips.
Is that where he was last night before coming home? He wasn’t at the office when I called him. He’d lied about his phone being dead. But if they had been together, wouldn’t she have answered when I called her from his phone thinking it was him? Unless… Maybe Joe had gone over to her house last night after Justin left her.
My thoughts began to race as I looked around his room. I needed to sit.
I slowly sat on the edge of his unmade bed—the bed we had shared a couple of hours ago and thought about him with Gray.
I stared down at the shirt again before crossing my arms around my waist and bending forward. I didn’t want my thoughts to be true. I should have told him about his brother—about us—before someone else did, which I was sure Gray had or Joe would. Soon.
I struggled to hold back the tears and fought for a breath as I closed my eyes. I put fists against my temples to erase the images of the smiles Gray would give to Justin—the same smiles Sarah gave him … the same ones we all gave to him. The ones we all gave to Joe too.
I pressed my fists against my stomach to relieve the pain I was feeling but it didn’t work. I had to rock myself slowly for a couple of seconds before I opened my eyes and eased myself back into a sitting position. Drying the tears from my eyes with the back of my hand, my vision became more focused and I noticed a shiny pink phone under the nightstand.
Weak in the knees, I walked over and knelt down beside it.
It was mine. The last time I remembered having it was a few days ago. I hadn’t been in Justin’s room since then, so I wasn’t sure how it could it have gotten here.
I pressed the button and a series of missed texts and calls lit up the screen.
I wiped away more tears before noticing a small metal box pushed a little farther back under the nightstand. Pulling it out slowly, I had second thoughts about opening it. I turned toward Justin’s bathroom. The water was still running and his voice was humming a muffled song.
I slid the lid open slowly.
The items inside were in no particular order—scattered as if someone shuffled through it often. On top there were a few pictures of Joe and Justin with their mother and newspaper clippings about her death. In one of the pictures, she had on a macaroni necklace one of the boys had obviously made for her when he was very young. Under the picture was the necklace. Holding it in my quivering hands, I saw that the broken pieces of macaroni still barely held on to the thick string. It made me sad thinking about everything both of them had been through, but confusion still filled my thoughts as to what everything inside the box meant.
Under the pictures of his family were a few more pictures. These pictures were different. They had beautiful girls in them. All of them were very pretty with long brown hair and big flirtatious smiles at the photographer—Justin, I assumed.
I was careful not to get anything out of place as I continued looking through the box, lifting the edges of pictures up to look beneath them at the next. Slid in between some pictures were a couple of necklaces with different pendants hanging from them. There was an emerald turtle pendant on a silver chain, a diamond heart dangling from another. When I pulled out another necklace, a golden flower pendant dropped from its chain between my fingers.
At first I thought maybe they had belonged to his mother, but as I went back to one of the pictures I noticed one of the girls wearing the same necklace that I held in my hand. The golden petals of the flower stood out against her sun-kissed skin and dark hair.
I glanced quickly toward the bathroom. The box was like a magnet drawing me further into its contents as I kept looking over my shoulder to make sure he wasn’t standing behind me. Near the bottom of the box, I saw a picture I recognized.
It was the same picture I had seen a few nights ago on my laptop of the college students at the charity event to prevent domestic violence. The picture was folded in half, and my eyes focused on Lizzie at first but then quickly moved up to Joe’s face. I unfolded the picture at its crease and looked to the right side of Lizzie and saw the other students that had been cut out of the newspaper’s photograph. Standing directly beside Lizzie, with his arm around her shoulder, was Justin.
Confusion filled my thoughts. Justin had never mentioned he was also friends with her. He always referred to her as “Joe’s friend,” but it was obvious from the picture that the two of them were friends, too.
I brought the picture closer to my eyes and noticed a silver necklace around her neck. The necklace had a small diamond heart pendant hanging from it. It was the same necklace in the box next to me.
My heart pounded. My trembling fingers flipped through other pictures until finally, another familiar face caught my eyes. She and Justin were standing in front of the small hot-chocolate stand at the resort. The two of them looked so happy together in the selfie. Her with a bright gorgeous smile as he playfully kissed her cheek.
It was the same girl from the picture in Joe’s room. Maddie. Why would Justin be in a picture with her? Kissing her? My eyes scanned their happy faces for answers. There it was, dangling from her neck.
My hand went immediately up to my necklace and I gripped the diamond snowflake tightly between my fingers. It was the same one he had given me.
I couldn’t breathe.
I was wearing the same necklace. Her necklace. The necklace she was wearing in the picture I was holding. The one he must have given to her. Necklaces he had given to each of them at one time. Now they were dead and the necklaces were here in the box. His keepsakes of them.
I was wrong about everything.
I was wrong about him.
Chapter 21
His Thoughts
The first time it happened, it was an accident. I didn’t mean to hurt her. I loved her. And she loved me. Of course she did, she was my mother.
Watching the life leave her eyes, I knew she was confused. She didn’t understand why it was happening, but watching her die … was the m
ost amazing feeling I had ever experienced. The thrill it gave me was exhilarating.
I hadn’t realized how much I missed the rush until it happened again. She betrayed me. She lied to me about loving me, and when I saw her with someone else, all the feelings of love I had for her were gone. My brother could see in my eyes when I came home that night that something wasn’t right. When they found her body the next morning by the high school, he knew I was the one to blame.
But he loved me. And he knew I was scared. At least, that’s what I wanted him to believe. And once again, he protected me. He promised to keep my secret. He always kept his promises to me.
Each time, I waited as long as I could until the hunger became too painful, too insatiable, to ignore or fight it any longer.
Most of the girls were random. A girl on spring break too trusting of a handsome guy who bought her a drink at the bar, or a girl walking to her car toward the familiar face that flirted with her hours before in the store where she worked … that was now closing behind her. All trusting. All deserving of what they got.
It was easy finding them. One after the other. Catching her eye. Gaining her trust. Getting her alone. And then, hearing her cries. Listening to her begging. Watching the life leaving her eyes. It was beautiful every time.
They were all meaningless. Except her … Lizzie.
After Lizzie, I had to be more careful—to protect him, too … both of us were too closely connected to her.
With Maddie too. I told myself I wouldn’t hurt her. I loved her. But she loved him. My brother. And he loved her. I almost lost him after she died. I didn’t know if he would ever forgive me for what I had done. Eventually, he did. Things went back to the way they were between us.
Kailani wanted me. Meeting her in the coffee shop was fate. She wasn’t like any other girl. She was independent and fun and she loved me. Only me. I tried to leave her alone. I warned her I wasn’t good for her. But she showed up at the resort during her holiday break. I was so excited to see her in my snowboarding group that day. I hadn’t seen her in so long. I agreed to meet with her later. I couldn’t help myself. After months of wondering what her neck would feel like between my hands, I couldn’t help myself. He knew it was me. We haven’t talked about it. But he knows.