One Perfect Love

by Jessie Evans

  -Shakespeare

  Once, when I was a little boy, so young I probably shouldn’t be able to remember anything about this particular incident, I wet my pants while my mother and I were at a rare play date at our closest neighbors’ house. I don’t remember what the other little boy and I were playing, only that it was fascinating and I didn’t want to stop playing it, and so I kept putting off going to the bathroom until it was too late.

  My mother was horribly embarrassed. She apologized a hundred times, all while dragging me, in my soggy pants, out the door. We arrived home in a few minutes, but instead of sending for my nanny to give me a bath the way she normally would, my mother took me around the house to the garden and sat me down in one of the wrought iron chairs near her rose bushes. She told me I was going to sit in that chair for a time out until my pants were dry, extra time in my wet britches being my punishment for having an accident in public.

  Even though I wasn’t even four years old, I remember that it was the “in public” part that seemed to bother my mother the most. She felt that I’d made a fool of her in front of her friend. I’d put a crack in the Alexander family image, and she was angry and ashamed and willing to make a three-year-old sit in his urine-soaked clothes for over an hour to teach me a lesson about what was expected of me when I was in front of other people.

  I know that’s why she and father did what they did last summer.

  Why they hired a private detective to follow me when I started acting out of character, going against my many years of Alexander training. I was too old to sit in a chair, but they weren’t willing to risk leaving me to my own devices. They were afraid their terminally ill, unstable son might do something to embarrass them, and they wanted to be prepared to run damage control.

  They never imagined the PI would bring back footage of me, and my new girlfriend, breaking into the houses of Dad’s former clients and stealing things. They blamed Caitlin, of course. Mom said she was trash, Dad said she was a criminal like her grandfather, who was relatively famous around Giffney for petty theft. I insisted that I was the one who had seduced Caitlin into breaking the rules, but they wouldn’t believe me. They were going to take the footage of Caitlin to the police, unless I agreed to the surgery.

  I made them swear they would destroy it. I swore I would come back from the grave, and haunt them if they broke the promise. Then I got on the fucking plane to Michigan. I couldn’t see any other choice that wouldn’t result in Caitlin and me both ending up in jail. While that wouldn’t have meant much to a man with a brain tumor, Caitlin had her whole life in front of her. I only had a few weeks, at best.

  The memories all came back to me in a heady rush, while I was walking away from Harry’s diner with a gun pressed against my side. I remembered everything about that last day in Giffney, right down to the way I’d cried as the plane took off, even though my father was sitting next to me.

  I wasn’t in any shape to fight for Caitlin then, but I am now, and I have given myself permission to do whatever I have to do to get out of this kitchen alive. I’m going to bide my time, get my hands on the gun the younger brother keeps shifting from hand to hand, and make sure neither one of these Neanderthals can follow me when I leave this house.

  I’ll try to let them live if I can, but if I can’t…

  Isaac said he isn’t planning to kill me, as long as I cooperate, but I saw his finger whiten on the trigger when I reached for the door handle a little too quickly when we pulled up in his brother’s driveway. He’s looking for an excuse. I’m not sure even he’s aware of it, but I see the blood lust in his eyes.

  He hates me for winning the heart of the girl he says he’s loved since he was a child, but what he feels for Caitlin isn’t love. He would destroy every beautiful, fierce, passionate thing about her. Caitlin isn’t a woman you fence in; she’s a woman you set free, and run like hell to keep up with her.

  But Isaac doesn’t understand. He’s insisting on “protecting” Caitlin from the big bad rich boy who led her down the garden path. The same way my parents have insisted on moving heaven and earth to protect me from the “trash,” who they believe tempted me into a life of crime. What none of them realize is that there is no one to blame. There is just Caitlin and me, two people who made some brave choices, and some bad choices, and fell in love along the way. Neither of us is perfect or blameless, but sometimes two imperfect people can make one perfect love.

  Since Caitlin walked back into my life, I don’t hate myself anymore. I’m not the man my parents want me to be, or the type of guy who will ever be embraced by people who see the world in black and white. But for people who see the shades of gray, and who understand that there is comfort to be found in the shadows, I have something to give.

  I helped Caitlin get a fair shot for the first time in her life, and she paid it forward in her life without me. We’ve helped people, and will continue to help people, and along the way we’re going to raise some kids together. We’re going to love them and listen to them and let them make mistakes—in public, and in private—and we will try to help them grow up the best we can.

  That future is all I want, all I will ever want, and no one is going to take it—or Caitlin—away from me.

  Moments after the thought flickers through my head, the younger brother, Ian—a seemingly perpetually irritated man dressed in threadbare jeans, a Mountain Dew tee shirt, with oily brown hair, and small, angry eyes that make him look like an uglier, near-sighted version of his older brother—comes storming into the kitchen, waving his gun.

  “You haven’t thought this shit through,” he says in a low rumble, his voice deeper than Isaac’s due to the pack a day habit that has helped make his house smell like a garlic-and-ash scented armpit.

  “I have,” Isaac says from the living room. “I’m telling you, this is going to be fine. They’d do anything for him. They bought Caitlin a house in Maui just to get her out of town, for God’s sake.”

  “You should get them to buy you a house,” Ian says, scowling around the kitchen, looking anywhere but directly at me.

  No matter how big and bad he is, when I walked inside, he took one look into my eyes, and hasn’t made eye contact since. He’s a fool, but he’s smarter than his brother. Isaac doesn’t have the sense to know when he’s caught a shark with his minnow net.

  “I don’t want a house.” Isaac sounds more exhausted than he did the last time he explained this. “I told you. I want them to give me all of the copies of that tape they say they have of Caitlin committing a crime. If they even have one. I wouldn’t put it past them to lie. They’re crazy.”

  “You’re the one who took their plane ticket to Maui,” Ian says. “Mom’s still pissed at you, by the way. Family comes first, and you left Dad a chef short when you ran off.”

  “Caitlin is my family, too.” Isaac comes to stand in the doorway, causing his fidgety brother to shift the gun from his left hand to his right, and move close enough to where I’m tied that I think I could get my teeth into his wrist before he has a chance to raise the weapon.

  Once he drops it, I’ll fall on top, and do my best to grab the gun with my bound hands and fire it. It doesn’t matter what I hit, as long as I don’t hit myself. The gunshot will be enough to ensure the police are called, and, I’m hoping, enough to convince Ian and Isaac that their plan is going south, and it’s best to cut and run while they still can.

  Or they could flip out, fight you for the gun, and shoot you.

  They could, but if I don’t get to Caitlin and get on that flight out tonight, the chances of us escaping aren’t looking good. Now that I’ve remembered what my parents used to blackmail me, I know Caitlin is in real danger. I doubt Aaron and Deborah will go straight to the police—they’ll try to blackmail Caitlin first—but if all else fails, I wouldn’t put it past my parents to involve the authorities.

  They want me back the way I was before the tumor diagnosis, or they don’t want me at all. I sincerely believe they’d rather see m
e rotting in jail than spending my newly-released trust fund on Caitlin Cooney and her family. They raised me to be the prince of this town, not to run off into the Croatian sunset with the daughter of the town drunk.

  They aren’t going to pull any punches, and neither can I. I need to get back to Caitlin. Tonight. And if risking a gunshot wound is the only way to do it, so be it.

  I’m tensing my leg muscles, preparing to launch myself from my chair and sink my teeth deep into Ian’s wrist, when a huge crash—like the contents of a recycling bin being dumped onto concrete—sounds from outside on the porch. Ian curses and strides across the room to join Isaac in the doorway, taking him, and his wrist, out of reach.

  “Fuck,” Ian says, shoving Isaac toward the front door. “Check outside. The only reason anyone would be poking around here is because of you.”

  Isaac looks like he’s going to protest, but in the end he just rolls his eyes. “Fine. But it was probably a cat or dog or something. I told you, no one followed me here.”

  He’s right. No one did, because I was driving while he held a gun on me, and I was paying close attention. We weren’t followed, and I honestly didn’t think there was a chance in hell anyone would find me here, at least not anytime soon.

  But I should have known better than to underestimate my girl.

  When Caitlin rushes through the hallway leading to the back of the house, and bashes Ian over the head with the base of a lamp while his back is turned, I can’t say I’m that surprised. I’m relieved, proud, and grateful that this is the woman I’m going to spend the rest of my life with, but not surprised.

  Ian crumples to the ground with a groan. A second later, his gun is in Caitlin’s hand. A moment after that, Isaac rushes back into the room, and Caitlin lifts the gun, aiming it at her ex-best-friend’s chest.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Caitlin

  “If thou must love me, let it be for nought

  Except for love’s sake only. Do not say,

  ‘I love her for her smile—her look—her way

  Of speaking gently.’”

  -Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  I hold the gun steady, shaking my head when Isaac takes a step toward me. “Don’t move, or I’ll shoot you. I swear to God I will.” I reach down, feeling around Ian’s neck until I find a pulse, and stand up as soon as I make sure he’s alive. I never expected to knock him out, but I guess I underestimated my own strength.

  Just like Isaac.

  “Caitlin, please,” Isaac says. “You don’t understand.” He lifts his big hands into the air—the same hands he used to slip beneath my tee shirt, when he knew that Gabe was alive, and the only man I wanted to be with—and takes another step.

  I slide the action and drop the barrel of the gun, shifting my aim from his chest to his crotch. “Or maybe I’ll shoot you there. Make the punishment fit the crime.”

  “You don’t mean that,” he says, but sweat breaks out on his upper lip, and he doesn’t take another step.

  “Try me,” I say, not taking my eyes off of him. “Are you all right, Gabe?”

  “Now that you’re here, beautiful, I’m perfect,” he says, sounding so pleased and proud of me it would make me smile, if I weren’t staring into the face of the person who has betrayed me more completely than any other.

  My mom and dad were supposed to be the people I could trust the most, but from day one, I knew that was a fairy tale that was never going to come true. Even Aoife came home fucked up often enough at the end that it wasn’t a complete shock when she ran off. But Isaac was always someone I could count on, the big, cuddly bear of a best friend who had my back, and never let me down. And he lied to me worse than any of them. Because he made me believe he was truly one of the good guys.

  “I’m going to untie Gabe,” I tell Isaac, venom in every word. “I think I’d enjoy causing you pain, right now, so stay right there, and don’t give me an excuse to shoot you.”

  I move slowly, keeping the gun trained on Isaac as I cross the room, using my peripheral vision to guide me closer to Gabe’s chair.

  “Please, let me explain,” Isaac begs, sweat beading on his brow to join the drops forming on his upper lip. “I know this looks bad, but I’m doing this for you. Gabe’s parents said they have surveillance videos of you committing a crime. They’re going to use it to put you in jail if—”

  “I know about the footage.” I reach Gabe’s side and rest a hand on his shoulder, just that brief touch enough to give me strength. He’s okay. He’s really okay. I’m not too late. “Gabe’s parents hired a private investigator to follow me and Gabe last summer.”

  Isaac’s eyes widen. “Then it’s true?” He shakes his head, grief twisting his features as I work on the knots binding Gabe’s arms with my free hand. “God, Caitlin, what has he done to you? Can’t you see how bad this relationship has been for you and the kids? Please, let me help. Leave him tied up. We can call his parents, ransom him for the video, and then get the hell out of here. We can start over and—”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Gabe says, in a silky voice. “I mean, talk about bad influences, I doubt you’ve kidnapped anyone at gun point before now. Seems to me this obsession with Caitlin has been bad for you, Isaac. Best for you to get some professional help, and let this dream go. Because, as I’m sure Caitlin will tell you, you’re never getting your sweaty paws on her again.”

  Isaac scowls, and his hands ball into fists. “Shut your mouth, you fucking piece of—”

  “Quiet, Isaac,” I say, in a sharp tone. “You too, Gabe.”

  “What?” Gabe asks, innocence personified. “I’m just trying to be helpful.”

  “You’re poking the bear, and you know it,” I say, fighting the urge to smile when Gabe laughs.

  “You’re sick,” Isaac says, glaring at Gabe with enough heat to melt his skin from his bones. “You’re the one who needs professional help. You’ve ruined her life!”

  “No one has ruined my life,” I say, abandoning the knots and standing with a frustrated sigh. “I’m not going to be able to get the ropes untied with the gun in my hand, and I’m not taking the gun off of you, Isaac. So I want you to cross the kitchen, slowly, kneel down, and untie Gabe. If you try to hurt him, or make any sudden moves, I will shoot you, please don’t make me prove that, okay?”

  “He doesn’t believe you’re capable,” Gabe says, turning his head to look at me for the first time. I feel his attention on my face, and know he’s truly worried. “Be careful.”

  “I will be,” I tell him. “I’ll shoot if I have to. I’m leaving here with you, Gabe, and nothing and no one is going to stop me.” I motion with the gun. “Let’s go, Isaac, nice and slow.”

  Isaac starts across the room, and I back away, maintaining a good six feet between us, so that if he lunges for the gun, I’ll have time to react. I keep the gun trained on his torso and my eyes on his face, sensing that—should he decide to try something—I’ll see it in his eyes, before I’ll see it in his body language.

  “Please, Caitlin,” he begs as he moves. “Please don’t do this. I love you so much. It feels like I’ve loved you my entire life.”

  “It isn’t love when it’s built on a lie, Isaac,” I say, my stomach clenching at the desperation in his voice. I would feel sorry for him, but the second he threatened Gabe, my pity went out the window. Now, I just want to get away from him. Forever.

  “Not everything was a lie,” he says. “We were happy together for a while. You know we were, you know we—”

  “I don’t know anything, except that the sight of you is making me sick.” I make my tone as heartless as I can, not wanting to give Isaac even a shred of hope that this bargaining is working. “Now stop talking, and get to work. I don’t want to hear another word from you until Gabe’s arms are free.”

  Isaac grimaces, but he doesn’t speak again. He shuffles around behind Gabe’s chair, hands trembling and more sweat rolling from his body. By the time he kneels down, his
face is covered in beads of perspiration. Sweat drips from his temples and chin, but his skin is pale and sallow, not flushed the way it is after a run.

  He looks awful, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think he’d been using drugs. He reminds me of Aoife, when she’d come home itching and sweating, dying for a fix after her boyfriend of the moment had run out of money or moved on to the next pretty girl with a bad habit. But Isaac is so straight he only rarely drinks on Saturday night. The fix he craves is something you can’t buy on a street corner, and he knows he’s never getting his hands on it again. And that’s the kind of thing that makes a junkie desperate.

  I know that. I’ve been around enough people with monkeys on their backs to know they’ll do crazy things to feed their addictions. I should have known Isaac wasn’t going to play nice, but when he turns and rushes me, using every bit of muscle in his long, powerful legs, I’m not prepared.

  I hesitate a beat too long.

  “Caitlin!” Gabe calls out my name in warning, but it’s too late, I’m already in the air, my back slamming into the wall behind me.

  I groan as the back of my head bounces off the plaster, but I hold tight to the gun and pull my elbow down toward my ribs, wedging the weapon in between me and Isaac as he pins me to the wall with his body.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he says, even as his hands tighten around my waist until it feels like his fingers are going to puncture my skin. “I don’t want to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt you.”

  “Then put me down, and don’t make me have to shoot you. My finger is still on the trigger,” I say through gritted teeth, hating the feel of his sweaty body flush against mine, and the sour smell of his breath hot on my face. The last of the affection I feel for Isaac is rapidly transforming into contempt, but I still don’t want to shoot him unless I have no other choice.

  “Put her down, Isaac,” Gabe says from the kitchen. “She’s half your size. If you want to fight, come untie me, and we can fight. Just you and me, out in the yard with our fists, until one of us drops.”