A Love So Deadly (16 page)

But Caitlin wasn’t there. Her father met me at the door to their sagging ranch house, leaning against the doorframe with his thick arms crossed over his stomach, making it clear I wasn’t welcome inside. He said he hadn’t seen Caitlin since last summer, shortly before he received a call from his oldest son, Danny, saying that the rest of the kids needed help because Caitlin had run away. I asked where his other children were, and Chuck said he’d taken them Florida to live with his younger sister. None of them wanted to stay in Giffney, not after being abandoned by yet another person who had promised to be there for them.

He wasn’t friendly, but he wasn’t unfriendly, either, and I had no reason to believe he was lying. From what I remember, Chuck and I hated each other. If he had known where Caitlin was, I’m sure he would have enjoyed shoving the information in my face. He legitimately seemed to think his daughter had tired of the drudgery of raising four kids and run off, the way her mother and sister had before her.

But I remember the way Caitlin looked at those kids. I remember thinking she’d be an amazing mother and that maybe—if things had been different—she and I might have had a child together, a life together. But things weren’t different, and for some reason she vanished, and I don’t know why, and it kills me a little more every day.

I have to know what happened, I have to find the missing pieces before I lose what’s left of my mind.

“That’s good enough,” I say to the blonde on the bed as her breath grows harsh and uneven, stopping her seemingly moments before her busy fingers bring her over the edge.

“But I—”

“Turn over,” I order as I join her on the bed. I roll on a condom as I move, deciding I don’t want to get my tongue between her legs, after all. I can smell that she wouldn’t taste like peaches dipped in the ocean. She wouldn’t taste like Caitlin, and I can’t stand to have another woman’s taste in my mouth.

“Turn over,” I repeat when the woman takes a second too long. “I want your ass in the air.”

The blonde nods and scrambles to do my bidding, and I hate it.

I hate the way her pink claws dig into the pillow in front of her as she lifts her ass and spreads her legs. I hate the happy whimper she makes as I grip her hips and drive, hard and fast, into her slick channel. I hate the way she bounces her ass back against my cock as we establish an urgent rhythm and pound toward the edge together.

I hate her, not because she deserves to be hated, but because she isn’t Caitlin. Caitlin, who handed over the reins to her pleasure with a steady hand, and wasn’t afraid to call me an asshole even as she parted her lips and sucked me off exactly the way I told her to. Caitlin, who submitted the way she did everything else, with pride, honesty, and so much heart you could feel her passion pulsing in the air with every breath she took.

Now, I close my eyes and hold my breath, not wanting to see or smell this stranger. This is simply a means to an end, a way to reach out and touch the razor sharp edges of my lost memories, even though it hurts.

Because it hurts.

I want to hurt. I want to feel alive again.

I want to feel the way I felt when I was with her.

I fuck harder, faster, focusing on the pressure building low in my body, the way my muscles heat and my spine vibrates with the orgasm that is so close, so close. Fuck…I’m so close. I clench my jaw and pump faster, until skin slaps against skin and I’m hurtling toward the edge so quickly I couldn’t stop if I tried.

My orgasm hits like running into a brick wall. Stars explode behind my closed eyes. There is a flash of orange light and then I see a room with a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. I see a stained mattress in the corner, and taste fury on my tongue. I’m so enraged it feels like the ligaments stretched over my clenched fists are going to snap free of the bone. I smell burning rubber and sulfur and a hundred foul things. I am so filled with hate I’m almost blind with it, and when the memory comes I catch only flashes—my hands wrapped around someone’s neck, a mouth parted in a silent scream, eyes bulging with terror, and then a wave of pain so intense even the memory of it makes me wince.

The memory world goes black as I am blinded by the pain, but I can feel the way the person I’m straddling struggles as they fight for life. I feel slim ribs contract as I clench a body between my thighs, determined to crush the person beneath me to pieces.

After a few breathless moments, my orgasm ebbs away, taking the dark memory with it. My eyes crack open, but I don’t see the girl catching her breath in front of me. I see the web of my own lashes and the blurred edges of my nose. I pull in a deep breath, grateful it’s over, but as I slide my spent cock from the blonde’s body, another image flashes through my mind. It is Caitlin’s face and she is as beautiful as ever, but crying like the world is ending. Her arms are wrapped tight around her narrow ribs, her face is blotchy and red, and when she turns her head to one side, I see that her neck is covered in bruises that bloom blue, black, and yellow against her pale skin.

I sit back on my heels, shaking all over, suddenly as weak as I was during those first marathon physical therapy sessions, when I was determined to bend my body to my will if I couldn’t bend my mind. I don’t want to put together the pieces of what I saw, but I can’t stop my brain from chugging down the tracks toward the obvious conclusion.

Bruises on Caitlin’s throat; my hands wrapped around someone’s neck. Caitlin’s arms cradling her ribs; my thighs contracting, crushing the slim chest I have pinned beneath me. Caitlin gone, vanished without a trace, only a few nights before I suddenly changed my mind about the surgery and fled South Carolina with my parents.

I don’t remember what changed my mind about having the operation when I was so dead set against it, but it must have been something big. Something so big that having my brain carved full of holes and rolling the dice on being a vegetable for the rest of my life seemed like a decent idea. Something I had to run from because I couldn’t stand to stay and face what I’d done.

God… Could I…

Could I have hurt her? Maybe even…

“No.” The word hurts as it claws its way free of my throat. I don’t want to believe I’m capable of hurting someone I loved as much as I loved Caitlin, but I’ve remembered enough to know I wasn’t a nice guy last summer.

Hell, I’m not a nice guy now. I’ve been fucking my way through the single women in Giffney like it’s my job. I lie to my parents, and I’m certain they’re lying to me, even though hacking into their email hasn’t revealed that they are anything but devoted to my happiness. I am arrogant, blunt to the point of rudeness, bitter, jaded—basically an asshole, who doesn’t deserve the amazing luck I’ve had.

But there’s a big difference between being an asshole, and a murderer.

“Are you okay?”

I look up to find the blonde has turned to face me. Her hand rests lightly on my bare thigh and her blue eyes are filled with concern.

“I’m fine.” I snap the condom off and toss it in the wastebasket by the bed, wanting to stand up and get the hell out of here, but my knees are still too unsteady.

“It’s hot in here, isn’t it? Do you want to take a shower while I make us some margaritas?” the blonde asks in a hopeful voice that makes me hate her more than I did before. “Something frozen always helps cool me down.”

I don’t say a word. I look into her face, into those eyes so eager to please a man who’s treated her like dirt beneath his shoe from the moment I told her she was taking me home when she got off work, and I am filled with loathing. I loathe her, and I loathe myself, and together it is the worst feeling. It is a dark, hopeless, terrible feeling, but it isn’t enough to make me want to put my hands around her throat.

I don’t to hurt her, not even a little bit, and the knowledge helps me pull my shit together.

“No, thank you,” I say in a gentler tone than any I’ve used with her so far. “I have to go. I’m…not myself.”
Whoever that is
. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Her eyes squint with concern, drawing my attention to the mascara smudged beneath her lashes. Even with her makeup running down her face and her curls frizzing, she’s a beautiful woman. Kind, too. She deserves better than a one-night stand with a man who couldn’t give less of a shit about her.

“Is there anything I can do?” she asks. “To make you feel better?”

I shake my head as I stand and begin pulling on my clothes with swift, jerky motions.

“You don’t have to run off.” She crosses her arms and tucks her tanned legs beneath her. “I’m not scared of a little dark stuff.”

“How about a lot of dark stuff,” I mumble, the words out before I decide to speak them.

She cocks her head, studying me, her clear eyes big and wide, but not as innocent looking as they were before. “I don’t know. Depends. I had a husband who used to rough me up. I’m not into that.”

“I’m not into that, either,” I say, praying that it’s true.

“I know.” She smiles a shy smile that seems out of place considering we’ve already fucked. “You’re bossy, but harmless.”

I grunt, wishing I could agree with her, but I can’t. I’m not sure that I’m harmless, and I know I don’t deserve the kindness in her voice.

“I should go.” I turn and cross the room, throwing my parting words over my shoulder. “I’m not good company right now.”

“I don’t need good company,” she calls after me. “I just want someone who will fuck me like a house on fire and not tell me how to live my life.”

I pause at the door, the handle in my hand.

“I’m not looking for a boyfriend,” she continues. “I’ve had enough of those to last a lifetime. I just want to have some fun and…I had fun tonight. With you.”

“I don’t even remember your name,” I confess.

“It’s Kimmy,” she says, laughing. “I don’t mind people forgetting. It’s a stupid name.”

“Why do you say that?” I still don’t turn around, not sure I’m up for even a fuck-buddy level of commitment.

“It’s a bimbo name.” I hear the mattress squeak and when she speaks again her voice is closer. “I’m going to change it as soon as my mom dies. I would do it now, but I don’t want to hurt her feelings.”

I turn, unable to keep my eyes from tracking up and down her nude form, admiring her slim legs and large breasts with the dusky nipples. She’s gorgeous, but her eyes don’t look like the eyes of a girl who wants a no-strings-attached relationship. Kimmy is looking for love, whether she realizes it or not, and I’m definitely not in the market.

“You seem like a nice girl,” I say. “But I—”

“I’m four years older than you,” she says, giggling, her smile making her even prettier. “You can boss me around in bed, but you don’t get to call me a girl, college boy.”

My lips curve the slightest bit. It isn’t a smile, but it’s closer than I’ve come to one in a long time.

Suddenly, I don’t hate Kimmy, and I hate myself a tiny bit less.

“I thought you might have a nice smile.” She grins. “Come on, let’s have a drink and hang out. No pressure, just good times.”

“Why don’t we get out of here, instead,” I say, deciding there are worse ways to spend the rest of the evening, like going home and trying to sleep while Caitlin’s brutalized body flashes behind my closed eyes. “We could get burgers and beers?”

Her eyes light up. “Sounds perfect. Give me two minutes to freshen up.”

She disappears through a curtain of glass beads that leads into her closet and the bathroom on the other side. There’s no door on the john, and I can hear her peeing and running water to wash her hands, hear her humming as she fixes her makeup. The sounds are intimate sounds, and for a moment I feel less alone.

The realization makes me reach for the door again.

I deserve to feel alone, I deserve to suffer and ache until I find out the truth, until I know if I hurt the woman I loved, or if I’m reading the clues all wrong.

Please let me be reading them wrong. Please, if there is a God, let this be okay.

Let Caitlin still be alive.

“You ready?” Kimmy swishes back through the beads before I can make a break for the stairs. Her frizzy hair has been smoothed into slightly damp curls, and her smudged mascara replaced by black liner that makes her eyes look even bigger.

“Ready,” I say, forcing a smile as I open the door for her.

I don’t deserve a stress-free night, but I need one. I need to put the horrible images I saw tonight aside before they drive me crazy. I’ll add them to the rest of my clues, close the lid on the puzzle, and wait until I have enough pieces to form a complete picture.

Or you could quit before it’s too late, move on with your life before you learn something that will ruin your second chance.

The thought teases through my brain as Kimmy and I file down the three stories of stairs to the ground floor of her building, one of the oldest in historic downtown. A long time ago The Merrylark was a hotel, then a rooming house for men working in the textile plant, and now it houses apartments that are supposed to be funky and retro, but from what I’ve seen are simply cramped and poorly designed.

But the building is centrally located, right across the street from Harry’s twenty-four hour diner, two blocks from the old courthouse and central library, and just a block from The Neptune, a Greek restaurant that serves burgers and fries, as well as traditional Greek fair.