I walked down the dock, my fists clenching at my sides and my heart feeling hard and empty. The water lapped at the posts holding the dock up, filling the air around me with the sounds of slapping and seagulls.
Once I made it on board, I walked across the top deck, heading to the exact spot I knew I would find him.
He was lounging next to the fire wearing a sweater since it was a cool day in Charleston. Winter would be coming soon, and the heat of the South was starting to wind down. He stared at the sky, and I knew his eyes were closed behind his shades.
He was relaxing.
Enjoying his life as if he had never done any wrong.
Well, I knew differently.
I knew he was a fucking monster disguised as a friend.
I stepped up next to his lounge chair, tapping the bottom of it with my shoe. He jerked, ripping his shades from his eyes and squinting up at me.
“Holy shit, man. You scared the fuck out of me.” He slid his shades back on and sat up. “What’s up, man? Where have you been?” he asked.
He was pretending nothing was wrong, but I knew the second I introduced Shannon, he knew who she was. You didn’t just forget a woman you raped. You couldn’t strike something like that from your mind, and if you could, you were colder than expected.
“It was you,” I said, feeling the burn of fury behind my eyes.
I wanted to pounce—rip him apart—show him what kind of pain he had inflicted.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“You know exactly what the fuck I’m talking about,” I snapped.
Again, he pulled his shades from his face, his eyes moving over my expression before he set them on the table at his side.
“Look, man, I don’t know what she told you, but I can assure you it was consensual.”
I sniffed. “You’re a piece of shit. You know it wasn’t consensual.”
He chuckled. “You can’t rape the willing, man. She was wet. She wanted it.”
My fists clenched at my sides as I struggled to control myself.
“You son of a bitch. You knew she wouldn’t press charges. You fucking knew it.”
He laughed. “You’re seriously worked up over this? Look, she chased me all through high school. I took her out. Showed her a good time. It was the least I could do, considering …” He held his hands out at his sides as if he was referring to her size and calling her large. “I had no idea you were into big girls, man, but props. She was an excellent fuck.”
I snapped, jumping on him like a wild animal.
I beat him in the face, throwing punches as if he hadn’t been my best friend for the past few years… as if he was a total stranger.
I had promised I wouldn’t kill him, but I hadn’t promised I wouldn’t beat the living shit out of him.
He didn’t fight back, but I only got a few hits in before the police were pulling me off him. They slung me to the side, and I sat up just in time to see Jonathan tossed onto his stomach on the deck as he got handcuffed from behind.
“Jonathan Reins, you’re under arrest for …”
The sound of the police officer’s voice faded away. Jonathan locked eyes with me, and I smirked, letting him know I was the one who had called and reported him.
Shannon was too afraid to press charges. She wanted no part of going to court and reliving her past, but I wasn’t okay with him walking the streets as a free man. If he wasn’t going to prison for hurting the woman I loved, he was at least going to serve time for selling guns, drugs, and everything else I could pin on him.
And as they pulled him to a standing position and began to walk him toward the dock, I smiled up at him from my spot and said the words I knew would haunt him the entire time he was behind bars.
“Keep your ass dry in prison, pretty boy. Remember, if it’s wet, you want it.”
TWENTY-TWO
SHANNON
I WAS MISERABLE WITHOUT HIM.
My heart was broken, and I hurt even worse knowing I hurt him. I was a crappy liar, which was why I refused to see him. I could lie through text message, but if he had asked me about my feelings in person, I know I would have never been able to look him in the eye and tell him the biggest lie I’d ever told.
I don’t feel the same.
It wasn’t true. I loved him so much it burned in my stomach … so much there was no longer any pleasure in it, and knowing he was left standing in the dark, clueless to what happened between us made me feel like the most terrible person in the world, but I couldn’t tell him the one person he trusted in the world was a terrible human being. It felt wrong.
So I ran, leaving him behind and breaking my own heart while breaking his.
A week passed, and I didn’t work. I didn’t sleep, and eating made my stomach nauseated. I had once heard heartache would make you physically ill. I thought it was bullshit, but the fact was I was sick with depression and finding it hard to get out of bed.
Devin and Lilly lied for me, but neither of them knew what was going on. I refused to tell anyone.
I didn’t visit Grammy as much as I should have because I was afraid I would run into him. I basically stopped living my life.
Lilly came in the door from work, tossing her purse onto the counter with a sigh. She had recently found out she was pregnant and was tired all the time. I felt bad that I was missing work and she was covering my hours, but I promised to return the following day.
With a baby on the way, Devin and Lilly were sure to find a place of their own soon. Without Lilly and Matthew, and with Grammy in the nursing home, there would be no one.
Thinking of that made me feel even lonelier.
“You have baby powder between your cleavage,” she said, pointing at my chest.
I looked down between my tits and using my finger I swiped up the white powder from my skin and sucked it from my finger. “It’s not baby powder, it’s powdered sugar.”
Lilly’s eye went wide, and her mouth popped open. “Wow, you’re on a whole other level over there, girl.”
I nodded, agreeing one hundred percent.
“Still not ready to discuss it?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Nope.”
I wasn’t trying to be rude to Lilly, but I couldn’t make anything I said sound nice. I had broken my filter and my give a damn on the same night.
An hour later, she and Devin left for the night, going to spend some time with his family. She had been doing that a lot, and I found myself alone much more than I wanted to be. I would park my car in a different part of the apartment’s parking lot in case anyone decided to pay me a visit, and I ignored the phone and the doorbell, which sucked big time when I needed to go out because I had to walk all the way across the apartment complex to get to my car.
So when I ran out of ice cream and decided I needed it for my night alone with Netflix, that was what I had to do. With a pair of pink pajama bottoms, a black pullover sweater, and a pair of flip-flops, I left my apartment. Reaching up, I tied my long hair into a somewhat decent bun and turned to lock the door. Once the door was locked, I turned and started toward my car. When I did, I ran into a familiar wall of heat.
His fingers wrapped around my arms, holding me up, and I froze.