The Dark Light of Day (15 page)

“Are you going to make them love me, Jake?” I pulled my knees
up to my chest. “You say you want to help me, but how can you
when
you keep so much from me? You won’t even tell me why this
‘business’ of yours is such a secret.”

“You want to know what I do? Do you really want to know?
Because once I tell you, I can’t just take it back.” Jake rounded the bed and crouched on the floor in front of me. “I’m fucking afraid that I’m going to look at your perfect face and you’ll see me for the first time as the monster I am. I haven’t told you because I can’t stand to think of you looking at me like that. I don’t want you to judge me for what I’ve done…for what I do.”

He did reach out then, trying to brush a strand of hair out of my eyes.

I jerked my head away. “
Don’t fucking touch me!
”

I leapt up and bolted for the door, but Jake’s massive frame cut me off. He grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me into him, wrapping his arms around my back, locking his fingers together. My
arms were pinned to my sides. My swollen cheek was pressed
against his hard chest. I tried to knee him. I kicked and struggled. I even bit
at his chest in hopes of forcing him to release me. The heat of his
touch felt like I was lying against the surface of the sun.

“Let me go,” I cried out, “it burns. It fucking
burns!
” The tears prickled at the edges of my eyes. I couldn’t let them come because once they did, I didn’t know if I’d be able to make them stop.

“No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t burn. It’s just me and you here. It
doesn’t really hurt, I promise. It’s all in your head, baby.” He kissed the top of my head, but he might as well have lit a fucking match and held it to my scalp.

“
Let me fucking go!
” I wailed.

The intense fiery pain spread down into my feet until I could no longer stand from the torture. My legs gave out from under me, but Jake held me firm against him, keeping me from falling to the floor. I continued to fight and buck in his grip with everything I had left. The sobs I’d kept in for so long burst out from deep within me. Hot tears raced down my face and pooled in the line separating my top and bottom lip. I tasted the salt with each ragged intake of breath. Jake ignored my cries and tightened his grip on me.

“I kill people, Bee,” he whispered. For a moment, I wondered if he'd really said it, or if it was in my imagination.

I continued to fight him until the fighting was only in my head, and my body gave out and went limp against him. Jake backed us up until his legs were against the dresser drawers. He slid down to the floor, pulling me into his lap as my head fell against his chest.

“I kill people for money, mostly bad people. But, I work for bad
people, too—Mafia types, big corporations.” He was quiet and
matter-
of-fact. “To be honest, I don’t check which direction my targets’
moral compasses point before taking them out. They could be anyone.”

There were too many emotions I didn’t want to feel, all of them
assaulting me at the same time. I didn’t know which feeling was
which.
The burning in my body had started to die down to a simmer, but
my sobbing was so fierce I couldn't find the power to rein it in. I wanted to know so much more. I wanted to ask him a million questions, but I couldn’t find a place within me calm enough to form the words.

“I enjoy it,” he continued. “I know that sounds sick, but you
know what’s worse than being a sick son of a bitch?” I didn't even try to answer. My skin and bones had melted into his body, and I was a mute lump of flesh piled on his lap. “Knowing you’re a sick son of a bitch.” He laughed softly into my hair, relaxed his grip on me and started mindlessly tracing circles on my back with his fingertips. “I know that how I feel inside isn’t always right. But, right or wrong, I can’t change it. I’m not going to make apologies for it either. I refuse
to pretend to be someone I’m not. I allow myself to feel all of the
things
that I am, the things that make me me, even if they’re not what ordinary people would deem right or good. I’ve learned to feed off of those emotions instead of letting them hold me down by condemning
myself for the way I am.”

Something inside me started to change during Jake’s confession.
He had embraced me by force like Nan had, wrangling me into emotional
and physical submission. I knew he hadn’t done it to hurt me. He’d done it to wake me up, to make me feel, even though it had been against my will. Anger, rage, sadness, hopelessness—so many emotions I
hadn’t processed for years, if I ever had at all, came crashing
together at once within me, all of them occupying the same space inside. After Jake’s confession, it felt like all those feelings began moving around, searching for their proper places in my body, and in my life. I could still feel their presence, but they weren’t trying to pull me under the surface anymore.

I didn’t feel suffocated by them any longer.

Jake talked to me quietly until our exhaustion started to take
over.
When I could see his eyelids getting heavy, he stood and lifted me onto the bed, setting me under the covers. Just when I thought he was about to leave and go to his regular spot on the couch, he surprised me by sliding under the covers behind me, still fully
clothed. He dragged me
into his chest and wrapped his arms around me. “I didn’t want to tell you this way, Bee. I had another way in mind. I swear I was going to try and ease into it. It obviously didn’t work out that way.”
Jake sighed. “You know too much already, but there is so much more you need to
know.” He pulled me closer, pressing his lips to my forehead. The
burn
was gone, and for the first time in my life I felt what a kiss was like: warm softness against my newly cooled skin. “There’s somewhere I want to take you tomorrow. I want to show you something,” he
whispered.

It was the last thing he said to me before surrendering to sleep. Shortly after he drifted off, I gave into my own exhaustion.

I fell asleep that night in the arms of a killer.

I’d never slept better.

IF RIDING ON JAKE’S BIKE
without touching him had been the thrill of a lifetime, then riding on his bike with my arms wrapped around him under his leather jacket was fucking extraordinary.

The bright light of day faded into a hazy dusk. The once-
enjoyable breeze became frigid as Jake wove his bike down the unfamiliar back roads. They were uneven and most of the time unpaved. There was hardly a stop sign or street light to guide our way as we drove, seemingly headed nowhere.

The last road we turned down was more of a path than a road, just dirt and weeds, barely wide enough for one car. Both sides of it were overgrown with palmettos and weeds. Some of the branches were so long they looked as if they were reaching out to connect with the foliage on the other side.

Jake was quiet, but determined. I had no idea where we were
going, but it really didn’t matter. All I knew was that he had
something to show me, and if it was located at the end of the world, I would gladly follow.

Jake brought the bike to a stop and punched down the kickstand with his foot. "We have to walk from here,” he said. “The ground is too soft for the bike.”

We walked hand in hand in silence for about ten minutes, down the path that continued to narrow until there was no longer room for us to walk side by side. Jake let me pass him and rested his hand on the small of my back, guiding me forward.

I smelled the orange blossoms before I saw them. We reached a small clearing surrounded by the fragrant citrus trees arranged in a
circle. Purple flowers covered the ground below. Rays from the
coming sunset traveled through the branches and lit up the clearing. The only sound was the breeze rustling the leaves, sending a wafting of sweet scent into the air.

“It’s beautiful here.” I said, admiring how the tops of the trees created a small canopy. When I turned to face Jake, he wasn’t there with me. He was on the other end of the clearing, kneeling at the
bottom of the largest tree. I approached him slowly and put my hand on his shoulder. Without turning, he took my hand in his and squeezed.
“Why are these trees in a circle?” It seemed a little unnatural for
them to not be in the shape of an actual orange grove.

When he started to speak, his voice became strained. “I think one
of the locals may have wanted to grow and sell oranges and
probably didn’t have the land to plant the trees, so he just came out here and did it where he thought no one would ever find them. I can’t really think of any other reason myself. I came across them when I used to ride four wheelers out here with Mason.” Jake turned to face me. “I wanted to choose a beautiful place for her.”

“Who?”

With his hands in his pockets, Jake dropped to his knees and pulled me into the same position in front of him. He cupped my face in his hands, touched his forehead to mine and took a deep breath. “I don’t know what you think of me now, but I know after what I told you yesterday you might not even want to look at me anymore. I wouldn’t blame you if you decided to hate me for what I am. I just need you to hear all of it, and if you want to run away as fast and as far as you can once you know everything, then that’s something I’ll just have to deal with.”

“I’m here.” I placed my hands over his. “I’m here.” I don’t know
what I was trying to tell him. I didn’t know if that meant that I was
there to listen, or that what he was going to tell me didn’t matter.
Honestly, I didn’t know if it would or not.

He looked into my eyes, then started his story.

“This is where I buried my first body.”

He watched me intently as he waited for me to react to what
he’d just said. I was waiting for the shock to settle before saying anything back. Questions sprang up everywhere.

He killed someone here, in Coral Pines?

Who could it have been?

Does it even matter to me?

I already knew what he did. Would the details make a
difference? “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” What I didn’t tell him was that my understanding of what he did scared me. What was wrong with me that I was so willing to accept someone in my life who admitted to killing people on a regular basis?

“Yes, I do.” Jake sat down under the tree and pulled me into his
arms like I was a small child. “You need to know all of it, Bee.” He rested his chin on my head. “I was fifteen, and Sabrina was sixteen. We weren’t in love. We weren’t even dating. We just fooled around
after parties sometimes. I was a stupid kid obsessed with girls. She wasn’t even the only girl I was messing with at the time.”

He took a deep breath and looked up to the sky. The moon was already showing through the trees, though the sun hadn’t fully set. They were sharing the sky.

“She got pregnant, told me it was mine. I believed her because I was her first, and I’d known her most of my life. She wasn’t a liar. We didn’t know what to do. We were just kids. She said she wanted
to keep it. I kept telling her that it would ruin her life, but being a
stupid
prick, I was more concerned that it would ruin
my
life. Sabrina
finally
made up her mind and told me she wasn’t getting rid of it. I
panicked.
Even though I knew better, I told her it probably wasn’t mine
anyway and that I didn’t want anything to do with her.”

“I didn’t talk to her for months after that. I saw her at school, wearing baggy sweatshirts to hide her stomach. I’m pretty sure she
was keeping it from her dad because I know he would’ve been
banging down my door and beating in my head if he’d known. I was such an asshole to her, and I regret that every day of my life.”

I could feel his tears pooling on the top of my head as he silently cried into my hair.

“One night, Sabrina knocked on my window. She was freaking out. The baby was coming, and she didn’t know what to do. She was only seven months along. I told her I was calling an ambulance, and that she needed to go to the hospital. She refused. She didn’t want anyone to know. She made me promise I wouldn’t take her there, no matter what. Her face was so pale already and all she wanted was my help. So, I helped her.”

“We went out back to my dad’s shed, and I put down a blanket.
It was hours of her screaming and wailing. I held her hand all the way through. It was almost light out by then, and there was still no baby. I told her I was done. I was taking her to a hospital. She
screamed at me, told me the least I could do for getting her into this and being an asshole all those months was to listen to what she wanted.”

Jake wiped at his eye with his sleeve.

“So, I did as she asked and stayed put.” He shivered now, both his words and his body. “When the baby finally came, it was a girl. She was so small, and I could practically see through her skin. She was so quiet…so still. I knew she’d probably been dead long before she came out. I think it was just Sabrina’s body finally giving it up.”

“I wrapped the baby up in a grease towel and handed it to her. Sabrina was so pale, and there was blood everywhere. I panicked. I told her she needed help and now, but when I got up, she grabbed
me by the shirt. She said, ‘Jake, when I die, don’t let them find me. I don’t want them to know.’ Then, her eyes rolled back in her head
and the baby’s body fell from her grip onto the floor. I was alone, fifteen, and incredibly stupid. I had done her wrong in every possible way. I used her, ignored her, and when she needed me most, I left her to suffer alone. The least I could do for her was honor her wishes.”

“You buried Sabrina here?”