by Amity Cross
I remembered coming home that night, heartbroken that I’d been stood up by Harry. I’d opened the front door, wallowing in my misfortune when I saw blood on the floor. My gaze traveled down the hall toward Melanie’s room, following the trail of red.
A crash followed my arrival, the sound of broken glass tinkling through the house. Melanie was home. She’d been here all night, jealous I was going out with Harry. She’d stayed in to sulk, planning to watch as many episodes of Sex and the City as she could, accompanied by a pile of buttered popcorn.
I didn’t think in that moment. I wasn’t in control at all. I ran toward the sound, knowing she was in trouble. I crashed into the doorjamb, jarring my arm, and that was when I found her.
I remembered the smell, the sight, and the overwhelming nausea that threatened to drown me the moment I stepped into her bedroom.
She was lying in her bed, covered in blood, pieces of flesh hanging from her body. It was all I could do not to turn and retch.
The only thing that stopped me were her eyes. They were alert and staring at me. She was still alive.
“Meg…” she moaned, her breath bubbling in her chest. “Help…”
“No, no, no, no, no…” I muttered, completely confused. What did I do? What did I do?
I fumbled for my phone, my hands shaking so bad I could hardly grasp it. Finally, I pulled it out and called Triple Zero. I pleaded with them to send the police, an ambulance, the army. Anybody. I pleaded with them to hurry, then I dropped my phone and fell to my knees beside her.
“It hurts,” she moaned. “Meg, please…”
“I…” Tears streamed down my face at the sight of my beautiful sister. The light and life of our family.
“Meagan, please.”
My mouth flapped uselessly as I realized what she was asking me to do.
“I can’t,” I cried, smoothing her bloodstained hair away from her face. “I can’t, Mel. I’m not strong like you.”
“Please, Meg,” she pleaded again. “It hurts so much. I just want it to stop.” She coughed, blood trickling from her mouth.
My gaze darted around the room, and it settled on a knife that’d fallen to the floor. Picking it up with shaking fingers, my skin stuck to the drying blood. It was the knife her murderer had used.
“I…” Mel gasped. “Not… Him…”
“You didn’t know him?” I asked, leaning against the bed, the knife clutched in my hand. “The man who…”
She blinked once. Just like the game we played as kids. Yes.
I looked at the knife, then back to her. She blinked once. Yes.
“Yes… Please… Meg. Make it stop,” she said once more, her voice fading to barely a whisper. “Love…you.”
That was the last thing I ever heard her say.
In that moment, I think she understood she was dying. That there was no saving her. I think she’d accepted it, and that was why she asked me to do what I did. She was in so much pain.
Wherever she was now, I hoped she was at peace.
26
Caleb
I wanted nothing more than to fling myself into the ocean that night and float away into darkness.
But something stopped me. I didn’t understand it, but there was something more. Something was left unsaid that would make sense of this whole mess.
There had to be an explanation.
The Juliette I knew wasn’t capable of such horror. I saw the fear in her eyes plain as day. It was genuine. There was no way anyone was that good of an actor. Not even a Hollywood superstar. No chance in hell.
After I’d left my parents house, I hadn’t realized I’d taken the folder with me. All the answers I wanted to know about her past were in there. The complete truth. I assumed it was the police report, having been procured through an elaborate web of bribes, threats, and subterfuge. That was my father. He could work for the Australian spy agency ASIO the way he was going.
Had she ever planned on confiding in me? Was our relationship merely a sick twisted game? Or was she completely real and honest all this time?
There was only one way to find out, and knowing what I’d find inside the folder made me feel sick.
That night, I sat in my car and saw the truth. I saw the face of her sister—so similar to hers, to Juliette’s—and it almost destroyed me.
Angling the rearview mirror in my car, I stared at my blackened skin, prodding it with my fingers.
Dad had clocked me on the cheek with all the strength he could muster, and the pressure had forced my eye to blacken around the bottom and my cheek to yellow with an impressive Carmichael-shaped bruise. He’d been one of the best boxer-punchers going around. Good defense, powerful jabs and counterattacks. It was no wonder he’d been able to clip me like he had.
Three days had passed since the night my entire world turned upside down. Three days of fucking agony.
I could barely face things at Beat, coaching, managing, having to go about my daily business, knowing what I did now. The terrible truth Juliette had been keeping hidden inside her all this time. The cause of her fear.
It didn’t help that everywhere I looked, I saw her ghost. Beat was infused with our story, our feelings… I couldn’t even go into the back room knowing it was the place where I’d finally been able to have her body. I’d fucked her there in the spare bed, indulged in her soft moans, pounded into her slick opening, and came inside her. I’d fallen for her in this place.
Being here was agony, and I wasn’t sure I would ever get over it.
It was Saturday.
Unable to keep things bottled up a moment longer, I drove across town to the only place I knew I could go.
Pulse Fitness shat all over Beat. In size, facilities, and scope, but it still didn’t hold a candle to the long-standing reputation Beat had built up over the last twenty years. Every time I came here, it was the new versus the old. Mixed martial arts ruled here, and as a boxer, I felt like an interloper.
Dropping a few coins into the parking meter, I walked toward the gym, wondering if I was doing the right thing. I needed to confide in someone. I needed someone to help me see the next step. Should I go after Juliette, or should I just let her go?
Ren would know. Ren always knew.
Glancing through the windows, I saw Lori was at the front desk—the desk that was usually unmanned—tidying up an assortment of flyers and merchandise. She was a sight for sore eyes, what with her arms full of tattoos and her black and blue hair. She looked tough as fuck, but on the inside, I knew she was sweet as hell.
When I came in, she smiled.
“Hey, Caleb,” she said cheerfully, but when she saw the black eye I was sporting, her expression faded. “I hope you didn’t get that shiner in a brawl.” She waggled her finger.
I bet she was used to seeing guys rock up to this place with cuts and bruises, especially since word on the street was that her boyfriend partook in a very underground style of fighting.
“It’s nothing,” I said, shrugging it off. “Is Ren around?”
“Uh, yeah.” She nodded toward the gym. “She’s floating about.”
“Thanks. Take care.”
Leaving her behind, I went out onto the main gym floor, my gaze raking over the state-of-the-art equipment, searching for Ren’s familiar head of brown hair. The place was pumping, though I expected it on a Saturday. Pulse was mainly a fighter gym, but they catered for all kinds of fitness goals. They were that well rounded they even had yoga and spin classes. I suppose it brought in the cash and fluffed up their bottom line.
Ren spied me before I spied her.
“Caleb,” she said, coming up behind me. “What are you doing here?”
Turning, I was glad to see her smiling face. Despite our first meeting and my subsequent attempts at seducing her, she now saw me as one of her mates.
“What happened to your face?” she exclaimed before I had a chance to say hello. “Are you fighting again? Seriously?”
I shook my head, dislodgi
ng her hand. “It wasn’t that kind of fight.”
“Shit, I don’t like the look of you, Caleb,” she said, studying me closely. “What’s the matter?”
“I didn’t know who else to talk to,” I began, my gaze flicking to Ash, who was watching us from across the gym.
Ren followed my gaze and flipped her husband the bird before turning back to me. “Don’t worry about that oaf,” she said. “Let’s go upstairs, and you can tell Auntie Ren all about it, okay?”
I nodded and allowed her to lead me across the gym floor. To the side was a set of stairs that led up to the office, and beyond was an apartment where she lived with her husband, Ash. That was how ingrained into the fitness industry they were.
She led me into the living room and closed the door behind me, gesturing for me to sit on the couch. “Can I get you a drink?”
“Nope.” I flopped down on the couch, suddenly feeling exhausted. It was like my energy just evaporated, and that was unusual for a guy like me.
“Now,” she said, sitting beside me. “Tell me what’s going on. You look like shit warmed up, Carmichael.”
“Juliette…” I began, the images from the police report flashing into my mind.
Her name wasn’t Juliette. It was, but it wasn’t.
Ren frowned. “What about her?”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. How could I explain it to her? The truth was terrible…a fucking, literal nightmare.
“Start from the beginning,” she murmured. “Take your time.”
It took a few false starts, but I told her everything. From the dinner with my parents to Juliette’s sudden change, then her dumping me, the confrontation with my father, and the contents of the folder. What she’d done to her sister on her request. The terrible secret that had turned her into a shell of who she once was.
Ren was silent for a long time before she raised her hand and ran her fingers over the bruise on my cheek.
“I don’t know what to say,” she murmured, dropping her hand and staring out the window at the Melbourne skyline. “That’s…heavy.”
“To think she’s been carrying it around for six years, not telling a soul.”
“It must’ve taken a fuckload of strength to be able to do something like that,” she went on. “No wonder she was so frightened of the world.”
“I don’t even know what I should be feeling about it,” I muttered, not knowing if I should throw something, hit someone, or forgo my manly pride and cry.
“They never caught the guy?” Ren asked.
I shook my head. “No.”
“I don’t know how it feels, but I can understand her motives. Don’t you remember what that family went through back then?”
I glanced at her with a frown.
“It was all over the news,” she explained. “Torn apart and sensationalized. They were harassed pretty bad from what I remember. No wonder she wanted to change her name and start fresh. If they found out what really happened, it would—”
“Fuck.” I ran my hand over my face, realizing the threat Dad must’ve rammed down Juliette’s throat. He was going to expose her secret to the press. What did she say the other night? There were others she needed to protect.
“What’s wrong?” Ren was peering at me, her brow furrowed.
“He didn’t say…” I murmured. “He didn’t…”
“Who didn’t say what?”
“My dad was blackmailing her…” It was worse than I’d imagined.
“What the fuck?” Ren exclaimed. “I knew your dad was an asshole but blackmailing Juliette? Holy…”
“What do I do?” I asked, my fingers digging into her shoulders. I practically shook her, trying to make sense out of everything. “What do I do?”
Ren curled her fingers around my wrists. “Do you love her?”
I stared at her, knowing her question was simple as fuck, but I didn’t know how to answer.
“If you truly love her, then you’ll do whatever it takes to work it out,” Ren went on. “You don’t fall in love and that’s it. You need to work on it. With a woman like Juliette, she needs more than a few nice words and a kiss on the cheek. Love is about more than finding someone pretty you want to fuck. Juliette… I think she needs someone to believe in her more than anything. She was faced with an impossible choice, Caleb.”
Did she allow her sister to suffer or take her already fading life to spare her pain? Those were her choices, and both came with suffering of her own. No matter what she did, Juliette would have blamed herself. She spared her sister agony and took it on herself.
Wasn’t that the ultimate form of love? It was a horrible thing she had to do, but it wasn’t done out of malice. Far from it.
I couldn’t hold onto my emotions anymore, and I felt a tear slide down my cheek.
Ren smiled sadly and brushed it away. “I think you have your answer.”
I left Pulse with one purpose in mind. Find Juliette.
That afternoon, I called, I texted, I left voice mail, and I went to her house, but she didn’t answer. I did the same on Sunday, hoping she would finally lose her temper under the constant barrage and answer me.
She never did.
I camped outside her block of flats like a fucked-up stalker, hoping to catch her on the way in or out.
But she never showed.
It was like she’d disappeared and had never been in my life at all. Not knowing where she was or how she was doing had me twisted up inside. I was beginning to think she’d run away or worse.
I slept in my car that night, and when I woke in the morning, my back was alive with pain. Downing some pills, I checked my phone. The battery was at fifteen percent, the screen blank. No notifications. She still hadn’t replied to the hundred messages I’d left.
I was running out of options.
The only place I hadn’t tried yet was her work. Considering everything else had come up blank, it was worth a shot. I was getting desperate.
Looking up the number for Slattery Press in the city, I called, hoping Juliette had just stayed with a friend or at a hotel and had turned up to work this morning. Her job meant everything to her. Working in publishing was her dream, and things would have to be really fucked up for her to skip out on it.
As the phone rang, my heart twisted. Things were fucked up.
“Slattery Press.” It was a male receptionist.
“Hi, I, um… I’m calling for Juliette Spicer?”
“One moment please.”
My heart calmed its frantic beating. Good, then maybe she was at work and hadn’t skipped town after all.
There was a click, and someone answered, but it wasn’t her.
“You’re calling for Juliette?” a woman asked abruptly.
“Yeah, is she there?”
“She’s sick,” the woman replied. “Hasn’t been in since last Wednesday.”
“Wednesday?” I echoed. Shit.
“Wait, who is this?”
“Caleb,” I replied. “I, uh—”
“Caleb, the boxer, Caleb?” she demanded.
I frowned. “Yeah?”
“This is Jade, her boss.” She huffed, the sound echoing down the line. “You listen to me. That girl is the best assistant I’ve ever had, and now she’s out sick for days with what I suspect is a broken heart. You’ve got a lot of nerve trying to call her here at her place of employment. We do serious business here, you know. Serious business. This isn’t Jersey fucking Shore.”
I blinked in bewilderment, not following her rant. It was epic, and I would normally have something asshole-ish to say right back, but I was really starting to become worried something had happened to Juliette. Something bad.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I demanded.
“The nerve! She would be right to dump your ass if that’s how you talk to people. Fucking fighters. You’re all the same. Macho assholes!”
“Hey, wait a moment,” I exclaimed. “She broke up with me, and I’m not a macho
asshole!”
“She broke up with you?” Jade asked, her voice shifting slightly toward a more amicable tone. “Seriously? Dude, I saw your picture…”
I shook my head, wondering how anyone handled this woman. She was rough as guts and obviously unaware of Juliette’s problems. She must really value her as an assistant if this was how she defended her honor. It was yet another thing that led me to believe Juliette was worth finding.
“Something’s wrong,” I said. “I can’t get hold of her.”
“She probably just doesn’t want to talk to you,” she replied. “She did cut you off.”
“Jade…it is Jade, right?”
“Uh huh.” She sounded bored, and it riled me up even more.
“There’s more to this story than you understand. Way more. Something is wrong. I’m worried. Really worried.”
“Are you serious? You sound serious.”
“Deadly serious. I don’t know how much I should say…”
“Tell me,” Jade demanded. “She’s a star, that girl. I always wondered if something else was going on with her, but she seemed happy enough, so I never pressed. Always early, always on the ball, but there was always this… I don’t know.”
I grimaced, rattling off the cliff notes version and leaving out the details. “Something bad happened to her a long time ago, something that changed who she was, and now it’s come back to bite her in the ass. I… I have to find her. Make sure she’s okay.”
Jade gasped. “Do you think she’d try to…” I didn’t even want to contemplate the end of that sentence.
“I don’t know. I really don’t know, but I’ve got to find her. Will you help?”
“Fuck yes,” Jade declared. “Where do we start?”
27
Juliette
I wasn’t sure what day it was.
After calling in sick to work, I’d curled up in bed and allowed my depression to drag me down. Burying under the covers seemed like a great way to hide from the world…and Melanie. I’d seen her in the mirror again, just like I had in the first year after her death. The therapist said it was my guilt manifesting, my mind playing tricks on me. She wasn’t really there even though she felt real to me.