If I stayed, they would find me. They would pin another murder on me that I didn’t commit.
I couldn’t let that happen.
I lowered myself, pressing my lips to her forehead.
“I will be watching you, kitten,” I whispered.
Then I turned and moved along the rocks, climbing down.
“There’s a woman!” Someone shouted. “We need an ambulance!”
She would be okay.
She had to be.
Memories didn’t matter if her heart already belonged to me.
She would be okay.
I held on to those words as I made my way back to the road.
Twelve
THE CALLER
Present day, April 1993.
Idrag a chair across the room and pull it in front of the mirror. The scrape of metal is sharp enough to sting my ears, but she can’t hear anything. I sit and look up. There is no reflection of me, only her. She can’t see me.
I pull a cigarette from my pocket and light it. Smoke curls around me. This room has no windows, only a door hidden behind one of the hallway pictures, low enough that you have to crawl to get in. My grandfather built it in the seventies to hide his liquor, and to drink alone. My father always called him a lunatic.He said he saw ghosts in this house. Said he drank himself to death in here because he thought they couldn’t find him.
He used to lock me inside this same room. The same room she stands in now. I never knew he was watching me through this glass, watching me claw at that door, trying to crawl my way out. Maybe that’s why my nails never grow on my index fingers. I dug into the wood so deeply they just fell away.
He was a respected man. No one ever knew. And I was too afraid to tell my father. So, when I started pulling away from people as I got older, I became a problem. It always comes back to family. Always.
I take another drag, watching her, tracking every move. She steps closer to the mirror, lifting her red hair and tying it up with a rubber band she grabbed from the kitchen drawer. I wonder if she knows Margaret keeps those there, pulled from chicken legs. She calls them chicken ties.
Not very bright, kitten. Not very bright.
I lean closer as she does. She presses her palm to the glass to steady herself while she slips on herAll Stars.Then she bends closer. Her chest presses against the thin white top.
Fuck.
I feel my balls getting blue and my cock getting hard just thinking of her next to me. I want to press my mouth to the glass and lick it. I want to lick her out.
I draw in a breath, then another, letting it out slowly. My fingers tremble as I hold the cigarette.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
She’s been my obsession for a long time.
I used to see her like a little sister. Someone I had to protect. That’s what I told myself. But as we got older, that feeling grew into something else. Every time she got close, my pulse would trip over itself. My hands would go still. I kept my distance because I didn’t know how to behave myself. I would alwaysthrow in a dumb comment, a joke, anything to keep us safe in that space between friends.
It broke something in me when I found out she had a crush on me. All that time, she had no idea I felt it too. Maybe some people are meant to stay stuck like that. In the waiting. Until one of them finally says the words that have been building for years.
I never did.
And I won’t forgive myself for that.
