Kill For You

by Michele Mills

  Trevor stood up. Blood dripped off his face and onto his hand. “Fuck you all,” he spat, then turned and strode away.

  Rebel stood in the RV, not speaking and trying not to cry while her heart throbbed with an actual physical pain, like a knife wound. Her hand was over her wounded heart, rubbing against her chest. Her bags were packed. Tiana, Krissy and Kati were loading their car. She’d said goodbye to everyone she wanted to say goodbye to. She was trying not to think about a certain person, just waiting for Justin to get his stuff together.

  “You’re going with them? Are you sure? You could stay, you know, until you’re one hundred percent,” Christian said to Justin. He was there with them, watching as Justin looked through the RV one last time. Justin strode around the cramped interior, his movements jerky, his brow furrowed. He picked items up and shoved them in bags, not looking very closely at what he was taking.

  “Someone’s got to watch over those women,” Justin answered. “They’re wild and reckless. I can’t let them leave without back-up, especially now that Rebel’s going with them. I wanted to stay, but now that they’re leaving, I am too. I have to go with them. Someone has to be there to cover their asses when they get into trouble, because they will get into trouble.”

  Rebel rolled her eyes, kinda pissed off at what he was saying. “We’re big girls, we can handle ourselves.”

  Christian nodded at Justin, agreeing. “I understand. It’s the right thing to do. It’ll make all of us feel better knowing you went with them.”

  Rebel blew out a disgusted breath.

  A car horn honked from outside. “Justin, move your ass!” a female voice yelled. “We’re outta here.”

  “There’s my cue,” Justin groused. “Let’s go,” he said to Rebel. Then he looked back at Christian. “I’ll be back in a couple of days to come and pick up the RV.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell the others.” Christian opened the door for them.

  Rebel saw Krissy in the driver’s seat of the convertible the women had arrived in four days ago.

  “What’s taking so long?” Krissy yelled. “You don’t need anything. Leave it all behind. We’ll pick up new stuff on the way. Come on, hurry the hell up.”

  The two women in the backseat joined in the chorus of grousing. Rebel offered a tremulous, apologetic smile.

  “Shit,” Justin grumbled from behind.

  “Good luck with that,” Christian offered. “They’re going to be a handful.”

  “Tell me about it,” Justin muttered. He put out his hand. “Hey, thanks for the help, man. I appreciate it. If it wasn’t for you…”

  Christian took the offered hand, shook it briskly and let go. “I did what needed to be done. You would’ve done the same.”

  Justin nodded. “Maybe you could come visit us later and—”

  The horn honked again. There were whistles and catcalls. Justin shook his head. “Maybe you could come and visit us in Carmel when we get settled again. Adam gave me a new frequency for the radio we can use to keep in touch.”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  Justin nodded and brushed past Christian as he moved to the car. Rebel followed.

  “Hey, girl,” Krissy said. “You come and sit in the front seat next to me. You earned it today.”

  Rebel nodded and got in the front seat, because, you know what, she had.

  Justin squeezed his large frame into the backseat between Kati and Tiana. The moment his door shut, the car pealed off and they were gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Dude, not sure how you could’ve fucked that up more,” Adam said.

  Trevor looked away and took another sip of his bourbon. A few hours had passed since “the incident,” and he’d had time to calm down, stop seeing red, and review his every action and what he’d said, and yeah… He’d fucked up so bad, it was possible it was the biggest fuckup in the history of fuckups.

  Hence the bourbon.

  “I should’ve told her the truth,” he admitted.

  “Yuh think? Jesus, man, she ended up finding out about you in front of everyone. I heard it was painful for everyone to watch. You put her out there, left her swinging.”

  Trevor’s stomach clenched and bile rose in his throat. He had. He so fucking had. He should’ve told Rebel he’d been in prison. He shouldn’t have lied to her about his past. She still might’ve left him when she’d found out about the drug dealing, but at least he wouldn’t have been outed in front of everyone like a damn soap opera. Justin would have woken up, with Trevor already in there, having told her the truth in his own time, his own way, able to explain to her his history. Still, not that she’d have forgiven him considering what happened to her brother, but she sure as hell wouldn’t have run off and left him in the dust like a bat out of hell.

  “Dude, I know this was your first real relationship, but damn, you could have done better. Now you’ve lost her. The women are pissed as hell. We’re all pissed. You drove her away!”

  Trevor slammed his fist on the table. “You think I don’t know that? I know she’s gone. Gone and not fucking coming back.”

  “And she’s pregnant,” Adam said quietly.

  Trevor gritted his teeth. “Here we go…”

  “When a woman tells you she’s pregnant, your response is not to push her away.”

  “Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black? I seem to remember you smashing a lamp against the wall and tearing the fuck out of Dodge when you found out Rachel was pregnant and you thought the child might not be yours. Rebel was raped, by two different assholes. She doesn’t even know who the father is and never will.”

  Trevor took a deep breath. He thought he’d finally found a woman for himself. Free and clear. He’d never had that before. Never. He’d either shared women or been partial to women who always seemed to be taken with other men. His first girlfriend who messed around with his best friend proved that. He was tired of it, bone tired. This new Trevor required a different type of woman. A woman who was his and his alone. He thought he’d found that. And now he’d found out the woman he loved was pregnant and she wasn’t carrying his own fucking child?

  Would he ever get a break?

  “This was the first woman who’d ever been mine. The first woman I’d loved. Do you hear me? Loved.” Trevor paused and downed another swig of bourbon, letting that shit burn right on down his throat. “I wasn’t sharing her with anyone,” he rasped. “You can look but you can’t touch. And I was all over the idea of fucking her and filling her with my seed and planting my kid there. Here’s what you don’t know.” He jabbed a finger at Adam. “I’d stopped using a condom. I wanted her pregnant with my kid, and I thought she did too. But she was already fucking pregnant and she hadn’t told me. Rebel had her secrets, too.”

  “If it makes you feel better, Justin looked surprised to hear that too. He didn’t know and he’d been living with her.”

  “Rachel knew.”

  “Rachel told me she’d guessed. Caught Rebel throwing up yesterday morning and put two and two together. Rebel swore her to secrecy. Rachel said she did her best to talk her into telling you the truth. She thinks Rebel was about to tell you, on her own, trust you with that before this happened. I bet she didn’t want you to find out her secret that way any more than you’d wanted her to find out yours.”

  Trevor swallowed another gulp of bourbon. “Yeah, well,” he gasped. “Too damn late for both of us, isn’t it?”

  Disgusted, he pulled out the box he’d been carrying in his pocket, the small ring box he’d picked up just yesterday with Adam on a scavenger mission to town, and threw it on the dresser. The box he’d planned to pull out once he got a moment alone with Rebel.

  That was all over with. All over.

  Justin tried to act like he was perfectly fine and fully recovered from his illness, but Rebel knew better. He ended up falling asleep in the backseat of Krissy’s car twenty minutes into their journey. This was hard to do considering he was sitting upright, squeezed between
both Tiana and Kati, who had given him the hump in the middle to sit on.

  The car had been quiet though as Krissy drove to the “girls’ lair,” as she liked to call it, a nice comfortable house they’d found in the countryside on the outskirts of a small town named Sanger. It was only about a forty-minute drive from the farm they’d left. The ranch-style house was one story with five bedrooms and was all cleared out and already stocked with provisions. Krissy, Kati and Tiana had already staked their rooms during the last week that they’d lived there before they’d made contact on the farm, so Rebel walked in quietly with Justin, who was only half awake, and claimed the last two available rooms in the back of the house.

  Later, they all sat in the kitchen while Kati and Tiana pulled together a quick meal of canned foods. Krissy, Tiana and Kati chatted while both she and Justin remained silent, essentially dead on their feet.

  How could she speak when her very soul had been ripped from her body? When it turned out the love of her life was a murderer and a drug lord?

  She’d fallen in love with the villain in a bad movie. How was that possible?

  Her stomach twisted into knots so she ate very little, mainly picking at her food. Justin ate some, and she noted the sweat beading on his forehead despite the cool house that was climate controlled due to the generator producing enough electricity for the all-important air conditioner. There were solar panels covering all of the roof too.

  Rebel made her excuses and led Justin to his bedroom. The two of them had tiny rooms, both with twin beds. This was fine. A bed was all she needed. She pulled out Justin’s medicine kit, which Christian had thoughtfully stocked and quietly handed off to Rebel before they left. She wasn’t sure Justin even knew it existed. He was still coughing some, but not like before. She shook out two painkillers and his antibiotics, anti-cough meds, and made him take it all with some water, made sure he was in bed, comfortable, with his shoes off, and went to her own room and closed the door.

  She sat on the bed and looked around at the former child’s bedroom. The pink and purple décor. The dolls and Barbie clothes. And tears started to roll down her cheeks. Her shoulders shook. A sob tore through her chest. She lay down on the bed and tucked herself into a protective ball and cried and cried. She cried for herself, for all the dreams she had, for the betrayal she felt, and she cried for her baby, who, yet again, would not have a father.

  And also, she cried for the world that was gone and would never return.

  “What is wrong with me?” she whispered to herself. Why couldn’t she seem to find the right man? She’d been so on it when it came to her job, her career, but when it came to men, she was miserable. A total failure. Other people seemed to find that person who was right and then stay with them. Why couldn’t she do the same?

  Trevor had lied to her, tricked her. She cried harder and clutched her pillow as the torment racked her body.

  They stayed at the house in Sanger for three days. Rebel mainly slept. When she was awake she checked on Justin, who seemed to be mainly sleeping too. The other women kept them fed, asked her if she needed anything, helped Justin when necessary, but left her alone to her misery, which was exactly what she wanted. That’s exactly where she was, in misery, a hole so dark and black it was difficult to get out of bed. She’d been pushed right back to that place she’d been at right after the end, when she’d drifted around in shock at the devastation of the whole entire world.

  Finally, one morning she woke up to find Justin standing next to her bed, coffee cup in hand, smile on his face.

  “Hey,” she mumbled.

  “Wake up, sleepy head.”

  “Huh, this coming from the man who slept the last three days away.”

  “Recharging. Ready to go now.”

  She rolled over with her back to him. “Well, that’s you, not me. I could use a few more hours.”

  “Yeah, guess being pregnant would take a toll on a person.”

  She stiffened and rolled back to look at him, letting all her anguish show plainly on her face. “Oh, Justin, I’m so sorry you had to find out like that. I meant to tell you—”

  “That’s okay, no need to tell me. I’m sure I would’ve noticed by the time you went into labor. I’m observant like that.”

  “Justin.” She sat up. “Look, I found out only the day before we got in the RV and left for Casa de Fruta. It was so shocking, I was just trying to figure it out in my own head first before telling you, then you got sick. I didn’t have a chance to tell you before you jumped on Trevor. I was going to tell you. In fact, I was eager to tell you. I needed your advice.”

  She noticed the lines around the corners of his eyes and near his mouth softened. His grip on his coffee cup loosened. He sat down on the bed next to her. He looked clean-shaven, like he’d just stepped out of the shower. Meanwhile, she was a rumpled mess.

  “It wasn’t like I’d known the whole time we were traveling together and I didn’t tell you. I only found out recently and I freaked out because…because I knew this was a result of when I was raped and beaten in my own house.”

  “I knew you’d been through something horrible when I found you, but you’ve never wanted to talk about it.”

  She took a deep breath and decided now was as good a time as any to bare her soul. “Right at the end, when there were still a lot of people alive but everything was chaos, I opened the door and let them in because they were friends. Two guys I’d known for years who I’d worked with on various sets. They beat me and raped me, taking turns.”

  “Rebel.”

  “Yeah, it was pretty awful. That’s also why when you found me I was such a mess. I was recovering from not only the end of the world, but from that betrayal. Can I tell you what bugs me most about this?”

  “What?”

  “I know this may sound weird, but it bugs me that I’ll never know who the father of my child is. Both of those guys were white and they looked similar. Same coloring, same build. Is that odd that that’s what I’m worried over? Not so much the labor or the fact that I’m bringing a child into this weirdness, but I’m tortured over the fact that I can never tell my child who their father is.” A sob unexpectedly bubbled up in her chest. “I just never expected to ever be in a position like this. I always thought if I had a child it would be my choice, and the father would be a man I loved, a man who was ready and eager to raise the baby with me.”

  Justin took her hand. “I’m here. I can be the father.”

  Tears ran down her cheeks. “You’re such a nice man,” she whispered. “I still wish you weren’t gay, you know.”

  He smiled. “And I wish you were gay. And a man.”

  She wiped her cheek. “I was kinda secretly wishing Trevor would’ve taken the role as father and you would’ve been the beloved uncle. But that didn’t exactly work out.”

  “Rebel, he’s—”

  “I know, I know,” she cut him off. “I know everything. Let’s not revisit my errors, okay? Not today.”

  He sighed. “Okay. I’m not leaving you. I’m here for you, like you were there for me while I was sick. You stayed with me every step of the way and made sure I got what I needed. Thank you for that, Rebel.”

  She turned and gave him a hug; his arms slid around her and hugged her back. “I’d do anything for you, you big lug. Don’t you know that?”

  “Same here,” he responded. “Anything, Rebel. Anything.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  After Rebel left, Trevor got drunk.

  This seemed to be the best way to deal with the situation.

  He took great gulps of alcohol straight from the bottle, enjoying the torturous burning sensation that seemed to peel off the inside of his throat.

  He deserved it. It was his punishment.

  He’d been a drug dealer, the same type of person that had caused the death of Rebel’s brother.

  He drank and drank, spiraling into a midnight of shame and embarrassment, a faraway place where no one knew him and he didn’t
even know his own name. Sometimes he’d hear speech and people would try to talk to him, try to take his alcohol away, or try to get him out of bed.

  Hell, no.

  He’d shout at them to leave him alone, slurring his words as he tried to speak and falling to the floor when he tried to punch someone in the jaw when they got too close. Eventually, he passed out, waking up an indeterminate amount of time later to blinding pain stabbing between his eyes and to the realization that his woman had dumped his ass.

  When he remembered this stark reality he immediately reached for a bottle to numb the pain, to drown out the cacophony of voices in his head berating his every decision, his very life—and found it empty. Pissed off, he kicked at the bottles scattered across the floor. They were all empty.

  Fuck. He needed to restock.

  Trevor shuffled off into the midday heat of the summer sun, reeking like a country bar at two a.m. He went to the tour bus where he kept his stash. Luckily, no one was around to bother him. He brought an armful of clear and amber bottles back to the apartment, lined them up on his dresser and continued to hole up in his bedroom.

  He curled on the bed and pulled the pillow Rebel had used into his arms and took a deep breath, comforted by her lingering scent. His chest constricted; his eyes stung. Tears welled in his eyes and ran down his cheeks. He rubbed them away vehemently.

  Trevor Mason did not cry.

  He fucking did not cry.

  He reached for a new bottle.

  He didn’t want to see anyone or talk to anyone. He didn’t even want to be around himself at the moment. If he could’ve left his own good-for-nothing worthless body behind, he would’ve done that, because what use was he?

  Only two things had made this new world bearable—the thought that he could do better, be better—and Rebel. Both of those things were lost to him now.

  Turned out he’d once been an asshole loser, so he’d always be an asshole loser, and Rebel, well—she’d found out about the real him, the real Trevor, and she got shot of him as fast as was humanly possible.