Smother (31 page)

“Say . . . that . . . again.” Her words were a rough rasp of sound as she fought to stay upright.

“Brad Kratochwill is dead.”

She stumbled back, relief dragging her down to the floor. That name filled her with disgust at the same time elation swept through her that it was not Leo’s name he had spoken. The wood dug into her knees, letting her know she was grounded and not still falling, even though she felt like she was.

And then, she let the words sink in.

Reese hung her head, held it within trembling palms, and took ragged breaths of air. Her pulse wildly thrummed, her heart beat too powerfully, and nausea climbed up her throat instead of abating. Too many emotions hit her all at once and there wasn’t enough time to sift through them.

“You killed him.” Her throat was raw, her words bit off. What did she feel? What should she feel? Sickened, relieved—what?

“No.”

She dropped her hands and looked up. The careful blankness of his features could hide guilt or show innocence. She would never know either way. She was glad of that. She didn’t want to know this world. She supposed she should be grateful to him then, for separating it from her at an early age.

But then, his actions brought his world to her as well. Through Leo. Another momentous detail she could not regret. There was so much to blame and thank for, and she scattered them all away like sheets of paper in a tumultuous wind. It didn’t matter anymore.

“He’d been on a drinking binge for days. His heart couldn’t take it. He was found in a bar bathroom a few hours from where he lived. Drank himself to death.”

It wasn’t a coincidence. She narrowed her eyes on him, searched for a hint of the truth, and then realized it was a ridiculous quest. He was responsible, whether by his hand or his directive. He stepped into her home, instantly sullied it with his misdeeds, and offered a hand to help her to her feet. She refused it and slowly stood.

“Thank you for telling me,” she told him stiffly, eyes on the doorway she wanted him to go through.

Brad Kratochwill was dead. The monster finally slept. Reese took a breath, felt it loosen something in her chest as another part of it tightened.

Minutes ticked by on the living room clock, a sound that usually calmed her, but right now each tiny pulse aggravated her sanity. When he didn’t move or respond, she finally looked at him. His face was open in a way she didn’t think she’d ever witness. Emotion burned in his dark eyes before they turned back to their cold brown.

“I know you don’t think so,” he began slowly. “But you’re a strong, Reese. Give yourself some credit.”

Where once optimism was, a stony death now rested in its place. Sometimes it was good to have hope, and sometimes one had to accept it was futile. There was no future for them, not even really a past. Her next words told him so. They were firm, and final.

“I don’t want anything from you, and that includes encouragement or praise. Please don’t come back. I don’t want to see you again.”

He inclined his head and retreated into the winter air like a close call with death, tamped down once, but someday, without a doubt, to return. There he stood, a void where a life should be.

“You won’t,” was the promise.

But she wondered, just because she didn’t see him, did that mean he wouldn’t see her?

“I wanted you to know that you don’t have to be afraid anymore. Of any of them. They’re all gone now.”

She didn’t respond, lips pressed into a straight line. She didn’t want to know what he had done, not to any of them—or what he would do to others.

He started to turn away and she had to say the words. Reese wasn’t sure if it was to commiserate with him or punish him. “It’s her birthday.”

Her father paused.

“Morgan. She would be twenty-one today. I considered drinking a bottle of scotch to celebrate, or maybe to honor her memory, but instead I painted the bathroom.”

She wasn’t sure what she expected from him. She studied his features for distress, an uncaring element, something, anything—something to tell her he didn’t care or something to tell her he did. Reese didn’t get either.

In the end, she got words.

“Have the life you deserve, not the one you think you do.” He reached out, took the doorknob in his hand, and shut the door, closing the cold out and taking his world away.

As soon as the door closed, Reese raced for her winter jacket and boots. She couldn’t compute what happened, not yet. She needed Leo, and then she’d let the truths in. She needed to see him, convince herself he was okay. Tell herself they really were gone—her adoptive father and her real. She wanted them both out of her life, whether by presence or memories.

Reese ran through snow and wind, cold air slapping at her face to punish her for going out in such abysmal weather. Lungs on fire, heartbeat a jackhammer against her ribcage, she burned a trail up and down sidewalks and streets. It was a blur of misgivings, fearful certainties, acceptance, and the unachievable goal of forgetting.

The twinkling pink lights shone like a beacon to the place she longed to be the most, and repelled her as well. This would change her again, and Reese didn’t know in what way. She fell against the door and reached around to fling it open, gasping for air. She stumbled to a stop inside the tattoo shop, weak with reprieve at the sight of him. Her legs shook, her arms were heavy.

The monster was dead. Her eyes stung, but with joy, not sorrow. What did that make her?

Leo stared at her from where he sat at the desk. He looked like he was waiting for her, stoic and resigned. And she knew, before she even spoke, that he was not surprised to see her.

“What happened?” Leo got up and moved for her, lines of weariness painted onto his face with heavy, dark brushstrokes. He was tired of it, like her. And yet, the past still held them within its clutches. How did they get away from it?

“My father came to see me.” She sounded faraway, her voice floating on a cloud above her instead of being inside her.

His footsteps halted. “Reese,” he began, his voice a warning, maybe a plea.

“You know.”

Leo stared at her, the truth shining back at her from gray eyes.

“He’s dead,” she said through numb lips. She nodded, lost in a dark, dark place. “Of course you know.”

Reese wanted Leo to pull her out of the dark. She didn’t like it there. She didn’t want to be there, or ever return to it. The dark was the bad, the dark was the past.

“You told me no. I asked you and you told me no.” She didn’t understand. She wanted to understand. Reese needed Leo to explain to her what this meant.

“You asked me if I killed him.” His expression was blank, the Leo she didn’t know back in place.

“No, I . . .” Reese trailed off as she searched her memories.

“My—my mom’s husband. Did you . . . He’s missing. Do you know why? Do you know what happened to him? Were you involved in it? Did you . . . is he dead? Did you kill him?”

“You only answered the last question.” She placed a hand to her mouth, then immediately dropped it. “I should have known. You’re smart, Leo, I’ll give you that.”

She shook her head, betrayal clenching her insides, relief skating along the edges of it, and indifference trying to blow it all away. “I didn’t want to know this.”

“I know.” Leo’s face was apologetic.

“My mom called me, said he was missing. He must have been missing a while.”

“He was. Went on drinking binge, barhopped around the state. His body was found in a dingy bar bathroom hours from where they lived.” Same words, different voice. Same lie, different liar. His voice was an echo of her father’s.

That wasn’t how it happened, even if that’s exactly how it happened. There were details she would never know. No one would. Leo was like her dad, hiding certain things, telling others without saying the actual words. And yet, she’d already made her choice. She accepted all of Leo, but that didn’t mean she could deal with certain aspects of his life with her father. Richard Ward was her past. She didn’t want to know her past anymore. That part of Leo’s life was purposely closed off to her. It needed to stay that way.

“How do you know all that?”

They were all a perfect blend of monsters and men, every single one of them.

She swallowed. “Never mind. I don’t want to know anymore.”

“You won’t.” He hung back, keeping himself from her even as he stood beside her. He’d retreated, put the walls back up.

“Don’t do that,” Reese said in a sharp voice. “Don’t pull away.” She grabbed his shoulders, the muscles hard and wide, and she held him. He wasn’t to blame, and she told him that. He wasn’t the monster—maybe the monster wasn’t even her father—and she told him that as well.

“I don’t want to be something you fear or wonder about. I can’t. I can’t be that to you. I have to be something good.” Leo quietly spoke, his breath warm against the side of her neck.

There was the change. She felt it in her heart. It eased, brightened. A part of the darkness fell away into the light, never to return. It wasn’t the bad taking over, like she feared. It was the bad lessening, even now, and maybe because of now.

“You will always be the good, Leo,” she told him, tightening her hold on him. “I always wanted my father to save me. I guess he did, indirectly. He gave me you, even if it was unintentional.” Reese touched her forehead to his. “My father said he left because he was trying to save me and my sister from him.”

She looked up at Leo with the outline of a sad smile on her lips. “I believe him now.”

He touched her cheek. “I promise you it’s over.”

“Yes. I think it finally is.” Reese would make it so.

“Your father had to do this for you and your sister,” he added.

“I don’t . . . I don’t want to see him again,. I want him to become what he used to be—someone I will never know.” She spoke with vehemence and fire.

“He won’t contact you again.”

“How do you know that?”

“I saw him.” He raised a swollen fist, the skin around the knuckles split and scabbed over. “I made sure of it.”

“Stop hitting people for me,” she whispered brokenly, hurting for his need to protect her from everyone. Something inside her had known as soon as she’d seen her father’s face who was responsible for the wounds marring it.

A faint light entered his eyes. “It wasn’t just for you. I owed him.”

“This is so messed up.”

“It is,” he agreed. “But it doesn’t have to be anymore.”

“How?” came from lips that never moved.

“We start over. Right now. You and me.” His eyes locked on hers, promising, hoping.

“I want that, but you make it sound so easy.”

“It is, if you let it.”

Reese wanted a life instead of an existence, and in some twisted fashion, it had been given to her. She wouldn’t waste time examining the details of why and how.

She nodded, looking at the only version of a champion she’d ever need. “Why don’t you ever smile?”

Leo moved away. “I do.”

“Not enough. Why?”

His eyebrows lowered as he looked at her and she sucked in a sharp breath. Any hint of emotion on his face was the equivalent of a downpour of it, and this was no different. Just that lowering of the eyebrows changed his features and it physically hurt in her chest to witness the grief she saw.

Instead of answering her, he pulled a blank sheet of paper from the sketchpad and began to draw. She moved closer and watched over his shoulder. His muted scent swirled around her, brought contentment with it. She could get lost in his presence. Face set in concentration, blank with it, he drew.

Clean, black strokes turned lines and curves into a picture. She noted the eyes, wide and long-lashed, a slender nose, and a small mouth. The eyes twinkled at her and there was a mischievous lift to the mouth. He added a cigarette to the corner of it. A hand formed, holding a liquor bottle. The last touch was a disarray of short, choppy hair. He drew a bubble and wrote inside it: Mess with me and I’ll cut you.

Reese snorted, laughter sneaking past her lips. “I take it that’s me? Who else, right?” She leaned forward and put her head beside his as they both gazed down. “I haven’t had a drink or a cigarette in a while.” The cravings were there, and probably always would be, at some level, but she was working at distracting herself from them.

“You still have that attitude.”

“My attitude is the best part of me.” His hair teased her cheek and she wanted to wrap her arms around him. “You didn’t answer me.”

“You smiled.”

“Yes.”

He shrugged, his shoulder bumping her chin. “Your smile is enough.”

She took a shaky breath, moving away. “Damn, Leo, when you actually talk, you make good with your words.”

He shied from her gaze. “Don’t know about that.”

“I know you don’t like to talk about it, but can I ask you something?” She paused. “What was it like? Living that way, knowing my father?”

“Simple,” Leo answered.

“That’s an odd way of phrasing it.”

“It’s true. I knew what was expected of me and I did it.”

“Didn’t it bother you?”

“They were all bad men, Reese,” he said quietly.

“Don’t make my father into a hero,” she whispered forcefully. “He isn’t. Never was, never will be. Not to me.”

“I’m not doing that.”

She swallowed, reined in the emotions that wanted to erupt. “Right. Sorry.”

“If you choose to hate him, you have to hate me too.”

“Choose,” she mused. “That’s an odd way of phrasing it.”

“Everything is a choice. You can look at the good, or you can look at the bad. If he’s bad, so am I.”

“No,” Reese quietly refused.

Leo shrugged, the action saying she couldn’t pick who were the monsters and who weren’t, especially for the same crimes.

Reese softly swore, knowing he was right. When she looked at him, she saw the faint outline of a smile on his lips. “It must be hard always being right.”

He shrugged and stood, leaving the room and returning with a hardcover book. “This is for you. I bought it a long time ago.”

“‘Finding Rainbows in Puddles,’” she read aloud, a frown pinching her eyebrows. “Is this a self-help book?” When he didn’t reply, Reese looked up in exasperation. “No thanks.” She tried to give it back, but he just looked at her.