She swallowed. “When did you...”
“Buy it?” He shrugged. “A couple days ago.”
The same time he’d bought the condoms? “Why?”
“I was interested in you.”
“In me? Or in Hostage Girl?”
“That’s pretty insulting,” Jack said quietly. “To both of us.”
She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be.”
Silence. Onshore, a chorus of birds tuned up for the day, their calls sharp and sweet against the whisper of the water.
“Look, I get it,” Jack said slowly. “You’re on tour, you get hit on by guys trying to tap a celebrity. That’s not me.”
“I know. I said I’m sorry.” She opened her eyes, looking at him directly. She had to make this right. And the only way she knew to do that was to tell the truth. “This isn’t about you. I’m trying to tell you something about me.”
“Go on.”
Her courage faltered. Her throat felt like she’d swallowed broken glass.Not everybody wants to relive your fifteen minutes of fame over and over...
“Don’t you have to get to work?”
“I will. Tell me about you.”
She’d spent six months trying to write a book, talking about what happened, but never about herself. Never about how it made her feel.My Life After Crisis.
“It isn’t only guys who hit on you,” she said, forcing the words out her shredded throat. “It’s everybody. Like, people would see me on TV or they’d read part of an article online, and they’d think they knew me. Like they had the facts to judge. The right to comment. To me personally, sometimes, but online, too. God, they’ll say anything online.” The words, once started, trickled through her crumbling defenses like water through a dam. “Twitter’s the worst. And yeah, okay, there were guys who got off on the whole hostage thing in a really creepy way, who thought I got Ben to give himself up because I was giving him blow jobs out of sight of the security cameras. But it wasn’t like that with him and me. It was never like that.”
“What was it like?”
“It’s in the book.”
“I’ll read the book later. I’m talking to you now.”
He was so calm. So unmoving. Like she could pour herself out in drabs and spurts and wild torrential bursts, all her guilt and grief and regret, and he’d never flinch.
“He had a brother.” The words spilled out, widening the crack in her chest. “Joel. It wasn’t supposed to be Ben who did the job that day. Their uncle George planned it. He wanted to take Ben’s brother Joel, because Joel was still a juvie, and he figured the DA would go easier on Joel if he got caught.”
“So what happened?” Jack prompted, smooth as a priest in a confessional.
“Ben found out. He told their uncle he’d take Joel’s place, that it was him or nobody. They needed the money, their mom has diabetes, he figured he was the responsible one. The interviewers, they kept saying I was so brave, and the comments, they made it out like I manipulated him, but I didn’t. It’s just... I kept thinking about my brother, Noah, and how we were alike, really, Ben and me. We were both so scared. He was just trying to take care of his family. And now he’s in jail, his mom’s still sick, his family’s still broke, and I have all this money from my book deal. It’s not fair.”
“You’re not the same. You didn’t try to support your family by holding up a bank and taking people hostage.”
“You do what you can, what you know how to do. Ben didn’t have my options. He didn’t know any better.”
“Don’t kid yourself. He knew and he chose to do the wrong thing. Just like you chose to do the right one. I was a sniper. SWAT and Afghanistan. I don’t take out a target, maybe he kills twenty other people. Sometimes you have to make the tough call.”
Oh, he was good. Like a detective extracting a confession, he offered just enough of himself to keep the conversation going without ever truly laying himself open. Without ever making any promises.
“The situations aren’t the same. You don’t understand.”
“Try me.”
His words set up echoes in her flesh. This was an intimacy more seductive, more dangerous, than sex. All the vulnerable places in her body clenched.
