One (25 page)

What did you expect?
I ask myself bitterly. I'm a criminal. A murderer. The red I see is
more than just Gonzales's blood; it's the life force of my spirit
draining out. For a while Pax had stopped it, but now as I look
around the room it's all I see. For the first time in a long time, I
cry myself to sleep.

The nightmares return.

* * *

"Hello,
Julianna," his voice echoes.

We're not in his
house. We're in the forest. He's holding the gun he used to shoot
Grandma. From the corner of my eyes, I see her. Her yellow shirt is
bright, a contrast to everything around us. She's on her knees,
clutching her stomach, blood seeping through the wound. Her mouth
opens to call my name, but blood spurts forth. The loud gurgling
sounds terrify me more than anything else.

My hands are
shaking. I hear a rattling sound and realize I'm holding a gun. A
familiar thought creeps in my head. It's him or me. It's always him
or me. I'm a survivor, I tell myself. A survivor. The gun jiggles
between my fingers. It's cold and unnatural looking between my small
hands.

"You belong
with us."

His smirk sparks my
anger like nothing else can. "I'm not what you are!" I yell
back.

I pull the trigger.

The blast is so
strong he falls to his knees, the shock evident on his face. He
clutches at his stomach just like Grandma. I blink, and suddenly
Grandma and Gonzales are next to each other. Together they face me,
bleeding from every crevice in their bodies. Every shade of red fills
my vision. I scream, but no sounds come out. I put my hands to my
face, trying to cover the image of their bleeding bodies.

I feel something wet
dripping from my face. It's thick and metallic smelling. I freeze.
Slowly, my hands leave my face. The forms of Grandma and Gonzales are
getting darker as everything else becomes lighter.

No…

I look down.

Blood. It's
everywhere. It's on my hands, seeping through my pores. I shift my
eyes downward to my chest, and blood is there, too, trickling out
like a steady stream. I fall to my knees.

I scream.

"Jules!"
Rough hands shake me. "Jules!"

I continue to scream,
struggling against the iron tight grip around my shoulders. "It's
on me! I can
smell
it on me. Get it off!" I shout. "Get
it
off
!" I use my nails to scratch at my skin. Blood.
Everywhere. It's
everywhere
.

"Jules!" Pax
sounds terrified. "What are you doing? Stop scratching
yourself!"

His strong hands force
my fingers away from my skin. He holds my hands hostage behind my
back as I choke on a sob, my legs thrashing. "It's everywhere,"
I cry. "Everywhere…"

"What?" he
whispers.

"Blood."

I burst into tears,
memories and images floating in my head like a mutation, growing with
strength the more I try to fight it. Pax has his arms around me,
cradling me like a baby, like I'm someone innocent he needs to
protect.

Doesn't he understand
I'm
the monster?

The thought brings more
hysteria I can't control and I start quivering again, breathing hard.

"It's okay,
Jules," he tells me in a soothing voice. "Don't you
remember? I've got you. I've always got you." I feel his hands
touch my face, and my hair. His softness makes me feel guilty because
I don't deserve it.

I can't tell how long
Pax holds me in his arms, I only know that it's not long enough. It
never will be. Eventually, I hear my stomach growl.

I don't want to break
the silence, but I do. We can't hide like this forever. Nothing is
forever. "What time is it?" I whisper, my voice hoarse with
my tears.

"Midnight."

Midnight.
Pax
took me here last night. That means I've been with him a day and a
night already. Instinctively, I clutch him tighter. I don't want to
go. I don't want him to leave me. But what choice do I have? He
deserves more than me. He deserves more than my past.

"Can you take me
home?" I whisper.

He stiffens. "If
you want me to," he finally answers.

I bite my lip until I
taste blood, but the pain isn't as excruciating as what I'm about to
say. "I'm so sorry, Pax," I begin softly, my heart breaking
all over again. "I'm sorry for the choices I made. I understand
why you don't want to be with me-"

"Wait," he
interrupts. "Stop. What did you say?"

I can't look at him so
I stare at his chest instead. Why is this so hard? Why does love hurt
so much? "I'm a criminal. I've done horrible things. I've-"

"You did what you
thought was right," he interrupts me again. This time his voice
is hoarse as if he's angry. Or sad. Maybe both. His arms tighten
around me. "You're very brave, Jules."

Brave? Wanting to kill
someone is brave? Sneaking into private property in the middle of the
night is
brave
? I shake my head, opening my mouth to correct
him.

"Stop," he
admonishes gently before I can speak. "I see your thoughts on
your face. Just… stop. Please." So I shut my mouth. I let him
hold me. I let him rock me until I'm so drowsy I almost sleep.

"I think we need
to tell my uncle."

At first I think I
imagine it. "W-what?" I ask tentatively in the quiet. "Did
you say something?"

"My uncle." I
hear him swallow. "My uncle is a police captain for his precinct
here. He's got a lot of connections with the FBI. If Gonzales is a
drug lord and shipping things across the country, then it becomes a
national issue and no longer a local one. He could help us."

I shake my head. "Pax,
no, I can't. You can't.
We
can't. I'm a horrible person. I'm-"

"I killed my
parents."

Whatever I expected Pax
to say, it definitely wasn't
that
. The shock is enough to push
away my painful thoughts. I focus on him. Pax brushes a strand of
hair from my forehead. His eyes are sad.

"My therapist
tells me not to say that, but it's the truth. I don't like to lie to
myself." He takes a deep breath. I watch his gaze get brighter,
and I know he isn't seeing me anymore. He's seeing his memories. "It
happened two years ago. I was out with Cade and the guys celebrating
the end of spring semester. I drank a couple beers, took a shot or
two. I felt fine. I've taken more than that in the past and been
okay. I got a call from my dad that their car wasn't working. They
asked if I could come jump start it."

Pax's hands are
clutching at my shoulders. "I left my friends and drove to meet
them. It was dark, stormy. I saw them on the side of the road and
pulled over. I tried to jump start their car but it didn't work. We
figured it was probably the engine. I decided to take them home."

I absorb what he tells
me, scared I know how this will end.

"Not a lot of
people know this, but my parents were fighting a lot. Since I've been
living on campus I didn’t get to see them much but when I did, they
were constantly arguing. People like to remember them as being a
beautiful, loving couple, but it isn't true- not during the end
anyway."

I kiss his cheek, my
heart jumping erratically.

"That night they
were doing what I'd come to expect them to do- fight. They were
snapping back and forth about our dog, I think. Something about how
one of them had given him something and now he was sick, something
small like that. It started blowing out of proportion with them
yelling and cussing at each other. Usually I'm a pretty patient, calm
person but the alcohol combined with how upset I was made me more
angry than usual. I turned back to snap at them, telling them I was
tired of it. Just tired of it. I told them to grow up and act like
adults." His voice wavers for just a moment, but I know. I
know
what happened next.

"It was only ten
seconds, maybe even less. I turned back to the front and that's when
I saw it: the bright lights from a truck. I couldn't stop in time. He
was already in front of us. Instead, I swerved. The cops told us the
car did about five flips before we finally landed upside down. A girl
saw us and stopped to call 911. I was unconscious when we landed. I
remember being in a lot of pain. It felt like my legs were burning,
but I couldn't move them. I couldn't move any part of my body. I
couldn't even talk. It was hard to breathe, but the girl who called
the cops came over. She held my hand, talked to me and kept me going
until the paramedics arrived."

Pax's hands are so
tight around me that I feel breathless. "The cops said the truck
driver was driving drunk. They told me it wasn't my fault. It was the
drunk driver's fault, they said. But the truth is if I hadn't turned
around to yell at my parents I would have seen him. I could have
saved us. But I didn't do that. I let my emotions get the best of me
and my parents paid the price for it." His voice breaks. "They
died instantly, Jules. They didn't suffer. But the last words they
heard from their only child was 'grow up'."

I feel something wet
touch my head. "I go over what happened a million times in my
head, Jules. I wish I had done things different. Sometimes I even
wish I hadn't picked up their call, that someone else had gotten them
instead. If it was their fate to die that night at least the last
words they remember from me wouldn't be 'grow up'. It'd be something
better. Something truer…"

"Oh, Pax," I
whisper, hugging him just as tightly as he was hugging me. My heart
feels constricted like there's a vice clamping down on it. I feel his
pain. It hurts to see him like this, so much so that I feel myself
breaking even more inside.

A logical part of me
knew Pax wasn't perfect. No one is. I never imagined this though. I
never imagined there was this much heart ache, this much guilt inside
of him. Maybe the difference between him and me is I buried my
blackness inside; I let it poison me until I became less than what I
wanted to be. Pax uses his pain for something better. He didn't try
to run away from it the way I did.

For the thousandth
time, I think about what a good man Pax is. I kiss him on the mouth.
I want to take away his pain the way he does for me. I want to suck
up the darkness and bury it within me instead. Someone so pure
shouldn't suffer. I continue kissing him, climbing on top of him. I
want him to take whatever comfort my little body can provide. I want
him to take any good I have and add it to his own.

I clasp him tightly,
holding him as his body shakes. I whisper my love into his ears, and
on his skin. I whisper it into the air, hoping it will soak into his
pores, and bury itself in his heart.

I whisper my promise,
the same promise he'd said to me: "I got you."

I kiss him and the love
between us surges higher. It feels natural for him to kiss my body,
to take away all the ugliness with his mouth. I need him to do this
for me, to make me remember that my body is more than my past.

He needs something from
me, too. Forgiveness. The knowledge that two imperfect people can
build something together. For a long time, I wasn't sure that it's
possible, but for tonight I believe it. I want
him
to believe
it. So I touch him the way he touches me. I kiss his tears the way he
kisses mine. When he's hard and ready, I ride him. I want him to be
consumed by me. I want him to forget.

Red tries to intrude,
but I focus on Pax's green eyes. I focus on the soft glow inside
them. I focus on it until it's all I see. There's a rhythm between
our bodies, and with each minute that passes that rhythm gets louder,
more intense.

Then, when I can't take
it anymore, the green bursts. Like fireworks, everything explodes
inside me.

My legs feel shaky. I
can't control my body. I feel myself falling to the side, away from
Pax. I'm going to hit the floor. Before I do, he catches me, his hand
coming right over my chest. "I got you," he says with a
smile. He rolls me onto my back, away from the edge. I grin at him,
circling my arms over his neck.

"We got each
other."

"Yeah." He
touches my cheek. His fingers slip down to my chest, where my heart
is still beating hard. "I want you to know something," he
suddenly says. "I love you. Your past has helped shape you. It's
what gives such a depth to your eyes. It's what makes each smile you
give so special. We're going to work through this.
Together
,"
he emphasizes. "Do you trust me?"

After what he's just
given me, how can I not? "Yes."

He presses a kiss to my
mouth. "Now," he says in a teasing tone, "I seem to
remember something about a surprise…?" Just like that the
thick blanket of tension in the air lifts, disintegrating into
nothing. I hope it never comes back.

I gasp. "I can't
believe I forgot!"

"My love making
skills tend to make girls forget everything but me."

I ignore him. "I
have something for you." I make a move to get off the bed.

Pax groans, tightening
his grip. "I was hoping the surprise involved you naked and some
whipped cream."

I make a mental note of
that in my head, and then crawl away, laughing. "You'll like
this," I say, inching backwards. He lets me go, watching me move
away, probably because I'm making a show of it. I see his eyes on my
chest and I'm torn between blushing or arching so he can see more.
"Stay here."

I walk out, but find
myself very conscious of how my backside moves as I walk. I want to
wrap a towel over myself but I can't find one. "Where's your
laptop?" I call to him.

"On my desk. Why?"

"I'm getting it
and bringing it over." I do just that, opening his laptop and
turning it on before joining Pax in bed.

"My laptop's my
surprise? You shouldn't have."