Almost Innocent (4 page)

Declan leaned into me, his shoulder pushing mine slightly. He tipped his head down, close to my ear. “You really trust me, Gabs?”

I pulled away slightly and glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. “You know I do. More than anyone else I know.”

“If you trust me so much, why won’t you tell me what in the hell is going on?” He tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear. “Let me help you.”

Before I could answer, the door behind us flew open, and my boyfriend growled down the stairs, “Where the fuck have you been?”

I backed away from the garage, trying to force away the memory. I didn’t realize I was shaking until I was back at my car, pulling the door open and ducking inside as if I could hide from the truth. I hadn’t thought about that day in years, and I refused to start now.

Unfortunately, not all of the time I spent in Dec’s garage was positive. I swallowed hard, glancing around the yard. I couldn’t stay there and wait. I wanted to see Declan, but the only thing I was going to find was Dustin.

T
he one thing
I’d heard repeatedly over the last ten years was that taking someone’s life ate at you. They claimed if you didn’t talk about what you’d done, face the reality, that eventually you’d lose your mind. Recognition, admitting to everyone, including yourself, what you’d done was the first step to surviving.

Bullshit. Guilt was the only thing that ate at you, the only thing that would make you lose your mind. I had guilt, just like everyone else, but mine wasn’t over what I’d done. It was over what I hadn’t.

I’d met three types of men while in prison.

The first were truly sorry for what they’d done. Some couldn’t sleep through the night, their victims’ faces appearing in their nightmares, and they’d wake the entire block with their screams. Others needed medication to fall asleep so they could stop reliving the horror. Some abused themselves, trying to find penance. They were the men who couldn’t get the blood off their hands no matter how hard they scrubbed. They all swore they’d never kill again.

They were better men than me.

Then there were the “others”—the ones without souls, the ones the majority of inmates, and half the guards, feared. They were the butchers who killed not for revenge or in a fit of passion, but because they enjoyed it. The psychopaths who lacked a conscience and had no problem telling you, in great detail, about their crimes as though they were the greatest achievements the world had ever known. Those were the people no one tried to save, because really, what the fuck was the point?

I was better than them. I had no qualms about telling them that, and I did it often.

Last, there were the men like me. Career criminals, they called us. Some of us were small time—doing a bid simply because they were too stupid not to get caught. Others though were the real deal, from hit men who couldn’t begin to remember how many lives they’d claimed to the men who had hired others to do their dirty work. Then there was me, the man everyone knew had killed before, but until I copped to it, there was no evidence. We weren’t proud of our crimes, but we weren’t ashamed of them either. It was simply our life.

I’d told the counselors what they wanted to hear. That I was sorry I’d pulled the trigger that night, that I wished I could take it back, that if I could do things differently, I would. It wasn’t all lies. If I could take that night back, do things differently, I would. I would definitely change things. I was only sorry the prick had lived as long as he did.

You were supposed to leave prison rehabilitated. I’d met with hundreds of people over the last decade who tried to hammer in the fact when one person harms another, when one human steals another human’s life, he should feel remorse. There should be guilt.

Yet there I was, guilt free as I drove home. It wasn’t personal; it was business. The fucker knew he was going to die the minute he stole my money, or he wouldn’t have run. And he certainly wouldn’t have run straight to a group of drug-dealing thugs trying to play grown-up and acting as if they were a gang to be reckoned with. Morons—all of them.

There would be backlash. Mark had been on his phone almost the whole trip back, handling shit from his end. Some pissed off friend, parent, or brother would think about coming at me, avenging their lost loved one.

Let them. I didn’t have family, I didn’t have a woman, and most of all, I didn’t have fear. The biggest, baddest motherfucker could show up at my door, and I wouldn’t be afraid. There was nothing a few dozen bullets couldn’t stop.

I didn’t run shit like my dad had. Or my granddad before him. I didn’t hide behind a desk and order my men to kill in my name. And I sure as shit didn’t run away when life got real.

That wasn’t my style. I made the big decisions, I schmoozed the sellers, I coordinated the runs, I hired drivers, and I did everything else that was expected of me. But when someone fucked me over, I was the one going after them. My face was the last one they ever saw.

That was how this family was going to do things from now on.

I was guilt free, but I was still exhausted. It had been a long fucking day, all the way around. By the time I dropped Mark at his house and pulled onto my road, all I wanted to do was grab a beer, order a pizza, and crash on my couch. I didn’t want to see another person, with the exception of the pizza delivery guy, for at least twelve hours.

A pinprick of dread worked its way down my spine when my headlights reflected off the back of a car parked in front of my house. The sight of the woman sitting on my front steps, elbows perched on her knees, replaced one type of anxiety with another. She lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the bright beams aimed at her.

As I turned off the engine, she stood and took a couple of steps toward me as if she didn’t know what to do. My brain was eerily blank, my body uncharacteristically relaxed, as I slammed my door and headed for her. It was like finding her at my house, waiting for me, wasn’t a surprise. At one point in my life, her being there was expected, so it made sense.

“I wrote a book,” she announced just as I was about to ask what in the hell she was doing there. Then she shrugged and glanced away, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Well, I started to write a book.”

I stared at her for a second, my mouth hanging open slightly. Fucking Gabby. I chuckled. I never knew what to expect. “Congratulations. You always told me you would.”

She shook her head, biting the corner of her lip. “You don’t understand.”

I crossed my arms and looked at her, taking her all in. In the few hours since I’d seen her, she’d picked the majority of the polish off her nails, and her shoes were smeared with dirt. Something was wrong.

I stepped around her, pushed open the front door, and held it for her. “Then explain it to me.”

She glanced over my shoulder, narrowing her eyes as she looked down the dark hall. Twisting her lips, she sighed and shook her head again. “I can’t go in there.”

The fear in her voice made me want to kick my own ass. Of course she couldn’t. I was an idiot. Reaching inside, I flipped the switch, bathing the entryway in bright light. “He’s not here, Gabs.”

She swallowed loud enough for me to hear, taking a step away from me.

She wasn’t supposed to be here—this was my space. I didn’t want to hear about her, talk about her, or read about her, and I sure as hell didn’t want to stand in my house, trying to coax her in like the wild kitten you want to bring in out of the cold. I needed to make her leave and hope to Christ she wouldn’t come back.

But I couldn’t do it. She had big enough balls to come here and talk to me, so the least I could do was man up and listen to whatever she had to say. I reached out a hand without thinking. “It’s just you and me, Little G. I’ve had one helluva day. Come inside, grab a beer, and say whatever it is you need to say. My brother can’t hurt you any more unless you let him.”

I saw the moment it happened. One second there was undeniable fear in her eyes, and the next it was gone, her face set in a determination that told the world to back off because she was going to do whatever the fuck she wanted to do, whenever the fuck she wanted to do it. I’d seen that face before. She pulled her shoulders back, as if readying herself for battle, and slid past me, but I wasn’t watching the woman walk down the hall. I saw the girl I’d once loved.

The doorbell rang, echoing down the main hall, and I was surprised I could hear it over the music my brother’s friends had blasting out of the speakers they’d set up in the dining room. I paused mid-step, glancing back down the stairs, when the bell chimed again and waited to see if my idiot brother or one of his cronies was going to answer it. I thought about ignoring it and following my plan to lock myself in my room until the shit-show was over, but then common sense won out.

Who rings the doorbell when there’s a party raging? The police, that’s who. Probably the only reason they weren’t breaking down the door and arresting half the underage assholes was because they owed my father a favor or two. But that meant they’d be calling Dad.

Fuck. He’d be livid. When my parents had told us they were going away for their anniversary, they’d laid out the ground rules and threatened us within an inch of our lives if we broke them. “No parties. No drinking. No drugs. No parties. No girls. No fights. And especially no parties!” my father had yelled, annoyed that he was leaving Dustin and me on our own.

Originally, our father had called my sister, Fiona, back from college for the weekend. She was seven years older than me, three and a half years older than Dustin, and my parents considered her, at twenty-two, a mature and responsible caregiver. Ha! I wasn’t sure how much I agreed with that, but there definitely wouldn’t have been any rager if she’d been there.

I wished she’d been able to come home.

Boston University wasn’t that far away, and she’d sworn to our parents that if there was an emergency, she’d be here in a matter of hours. School came first though. She had play practice and a paper due in one of her senior classes, and she couldn’t get out of either.

When I talked to her, Fi promised that she’d come up late tomorrow afternoon and stay until Monday, but that was the earliest she could get here. That gave Dusty tonight to do whatever the hell he wanted to do. Leaving me to clean up the fucking mess so we didn’t both get our asses beat.

As usual.

I rolled my eyes, turned back around, and raced down the stairs. I was the only sober one here. Maybe if I could talk to the police outside, I could convince them that we were just a group of loud, stupid kids. Or at least, get them to turn a blind eye to the flowing booze and the half-smoked joints everywhere.

When I pulled open the door, it wasn’t blue and badges that greeted me. Instead, it was the disappointed faces of four teenage girls.

“Declan,” Olivia Martin sneered.

“Livie,” I scoffed, knowing how much she hated the nickname. “What do you want?”

She gave me a look that told me she clearly thought I was a moron. “Where’s Dustin?”

Of course, she was crashing the party to try to hook up with my brother. That would explain why she had layers and layers of makeup caked onto her face.

“I’m not his keeper. He’s inside somewhere.”

She rolled her eyes and shoved past me, leaving her friends to follow. Liv lived two houses down, and we’d been friends once. Before I realized what a bitch she was and before she decided she was going to do whatever it took to be my brother’s girlfriend. I found it hilarious that he wouldn’t more than glance in her direction.

I knew the three girls who came in next, following their leader into my house, because I’d grown up with them all. I had at least one class with each of them. The two girls who stayed outside, as if they were debating leaving, caught my attention.

I almost didn’t see them standing in the shadows, whispering to each other, but as I moved to close the door, the chubby brunette put her hand out to stop me. I knew those girls too. Not as well as Livie and her merry band of bitches, but Watertown was a small city. I was surprised these two were here.

The blonde, Gabby, looked terrified as if she wanted to be anywhere but in front of my house. Ivy, the brunette, whispered to her friend, and the fear instantly disappeared from Gabby’s face, a determined look crossing it instead. She pushed her shoulders back, nodded at Ivy, and stepped inside, her arm brushing mine as she did. She glanced at me, gave me a small smile, and thanked me for holding the door open for her.

Watching the two of them walk toward the rest of the people who had invaded my house, I decided I was in the mood to join the party after all. I found Mark making out with some random chick, and I sent her on her way. My best friend shook his head at me but took the beer I offered.

Leaning back against the wall, he smirked. “Thought you decided to bail.”

“I did. Until I found something more interesting.” I nodded at the newcomers standing in a circle at the keg.

He snorted. “Liv?”

“No, you bastard.” I laughed back.

“Who let the kids in?” Dustin interrupted, throwing an arm over one of my shoulders and his other over Mark’s. “Someone want to tell them this is a party and not a fucking daycare?”

“Hey, Liv’s here to see you.”

“Of course she is.” He didn’t sound as annoyed as I thought he would. I wished he would just sleep with her then dump her, so at least she’d know what an asshole he was and she could move on. “Wait a sec”—he pulled my head toward his—“who is that?”

“Uh, Liv dressed like a stripper?” Mark answered, making me laugh.

“No, dipshit. The blonde.”

There were three blondes in their group, but only one that he wouldn’t know.

“Gabby Forte. She came at the beginning of the year,” Mark told him.

“How don’t I know her?” Dustin asked. “And why in the fuck is she with Liv?”

He had a point. Gabby and Ivy stuck out like sore thumbs from their group, although Gabby was the one who really didn’t fit in with the rest of them. Wearing tan corduroys, a pair of flip-flops, and a plain black tank top, she either hadn’t gotten the memo that it was fall in Maine, or she didn’t care. Her long bleached-blond hair was pulled back with one of those stupid clips my sister left lying all over the bathroom, and she didn’t have much, if any, makeup on. A polar opposite from Liv.

As if she knew we were staring at her, she glanced our way. When she caught us all gawking, she didn’t blush or glance away. She took her time studying each of us, and then as if finding nothing that interested her, she returned her attention to Ivy. A bold move for someone who had looked terrified to step inside a few minutes earlier.

“Huh.” My brother clicked his tongue. “Tell me about her.”

“Nothing much to tell,” I pulled away from him and took a sip of my beer, letting the bitter liquid attempt to wash away the annoyance that was creeping in. “She’s my age. I have a few AP classes with her, and she’s best friends with Ivy.”