“What’s happening?” I cried out. “Why are you doing this to Miguel?”
Javier looked to Alex. “Take her to our room, please.”
Alex turned and grabbed my arms. I tried to shake him off but his grip tightened.
“Let me go! Get off of me!”
“Now!” Javier yelled at him, his eyes not even meeting mine.
Alex began to push me down the hall. I fought against him, not wanting to be put away, to be shut out. If he was going to bring this into our house, if he was going get me involved, then I was going to see all of it.
“He’s like your brother, Javier!” I screamed, trying to twist out of Alex’s hands. “You can’t hurt him.”
I didn’t understand how this could be happening. Miguel was one of the good guys. He was friendly and personable and I liked him. I liked him. He and Javier had been through so much together, and now he was nothing more to him than a pig about to be slaughtered. And what for?
I was facing the bedroom, unable to see behind me when I heard a smack, palm against skin, and Javier roared, “He is no brother of mine! No friend of mine would betray me, would betray the family! He turned his back, he spurned me, and he deserves…nothing but death!?” His voice growled over the last words, more monster than anything. “I should keep you suffering for this, cut off all your toes and feed them to you. But I am not an animal. I am not like you, my dear Miguel.”
Alex had almost shoved me in the room when I was able to turn around and get one last glimpse. Javier was bending over Miguel, his eyes fastened on his, so close, so menacing. I knew those eyes would be the last thing Miguel would see and I didn’t wish it on anyone. He whispered a few things in Spanish to him, deadly but poetic, then I was shoved in the room.
I flung myself at the door, trying to open it, but Alex was on the other side, holding it shut. It was too late. With my ear pressed against it the door, I heard the swipe of a blade, liquid splattering amidst a gurgling sound. Then nothing.
I collapsed to a ball on the floor, shaking from fear, from the horror. I didn’t have to see it to know what happened. To know that Miguel was sitting out there, slumped in his chair, a curtain of blood beneath his chin. I could see it in my mind, clear as day. And I could see Javier’s face. Cold and impersonal. Another job completed.
I tried crying but the tears wouldn’t come. I was hit with clarity instead. I couldn’t stay here. It wasn’t safe. I didn’t know who that man was out there, but he wasn’t my Javier. And I didn’t trust him.
I got up and slipped on a sweatshirt that hung behind the door. I could feel that Alex was still on the other side guarding it. This was good. He was occupied and the others would be cleaning up the mess, or perhaps Javier was calling in his clean-up team because he couldn’t stand to get his hands dirty; he couldn’t stand it if the blood he spilled got on him.
I grabbed my purse and slipped on a pair of running shoes, and as silently as possible, opened the bedroom window and climbed out into the night sky. I landed softly on the porch and crept down the stairs to the garage, glad that the waves were louder now and drowning out the sound of my escape.
I opened the door of my truck and quickly checked in the back for a small duffel bag I kept on the floor. I had always told Javier it was a change of clothes for my job. And sometimes it was. But its real purpose was to provide me with a getaway, a clean start and a new life. Gus had insisted I have one and I was glad I listened. It contained another set of fake IDs, extra license plates, a bunch of cash, and, yes, a change of clothes.
I took in a deep breath, my brain unable to let go of the panic and the fear. I was probably making a stupid move, emotions controlling my actions. But there was a dead man in my house, and at the moment, that’s all I needed to run.
Knowing the others would hear me right away, I started the car and quickly reversed out of the garage like a bat out of hell. I spun the car around once I hit the road and then popped it in drive. I pressed down on the gas pedal like my life depended on it—and it might have.
I drove and drove and drove until I crossed the state line into Florida. My cell phone was left in the house, which was just as well. I had erased every text message I ever shared with Gus, so there was no trail if he examined it—and he would—leaving only texts from him and Julie. But Gus, I needed to talk to him, more now than ever. It had been eight months since we last spoke and I knew ‘I told you so’ wouldn’t cut it.
But told me so about what? That I fell in love with the wrong man? That some people aren’t worthy of love at all? Who was anyone to decide that? I loved Javier, despite the fact that I was running. I couldn’t ignore it, it just made things harder.
The sun was rising as I checked into a motel outside of Defuniak Springs. I collapsed onto the bed and fell promptly asleep; even visions of Miguel’s blood weren’t enough to keep me conscious.
When I finally woke only a few hours later, I was tangled in the stiff motel sheets, the fan whirring slowly above my head. I rolled over on my back and watched it as the blade looped around. What had I done? I had panicked and run. I had left everything behind without even thinking it through.
Could I go back to him? Would he even take me? I was beginning to sound like a mental patient, sick in the head. It’s funny what love can do to a person. It strips them of everything, even their instincts. It creates a new reality for you to adhere to, a new world where you break the rules just to keep the love intact.
I couldn’t figure it out on my own. Love made me weak and it made me scared. The motel room felt like a prison cell, not freedom. I leaned over and picked up the sticky rotary phone and dialed Gus’s number.
“Hello?” he answered, sounding cautious.
“Gus,” I whimpered.
“Ellie? Ellie, are you okay? Why are you calling from Florida?”
I sunk to the floor with the phone at my ear and started to cry.
“Ellie, please…talk to me. Are you hurt?”
I sniffed hard, wiping my nose with my sleeve. “Gus, I made a mistake.”
“That’s okay, it happens. What did you do?”
I sobbed. “I don’t know, I’ve made so many. I don’t know the right thing anymore.”
“Ellie, where are you?”
“Please stop calling me Ellie,” I said.
He paused. “Eden, I’m sorry. Where are you?”
“In a hotel in Florida. Defuniak Springs.”
“Why are you there?”
“I left Javier,” I cried out. “And I don’t think it was the right thing to do.”
“Okay, just calm down. You’re okay for now. Tell me why you left him.” His voice was soothing, like the kind of tone you’d take when doing hostage negotiations.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “He killed a man in our house a few hours ago.”
“Oh…I’m sorry.”
“It was a friend of his! He killed a friend of his, slit his throat, and I don’t know why.”
“Would it matter if you knew?”
“Yes!” I admitted. “It shouldn’t, but it would matter. I don’t get him, Gus. How he can be this way with me, so loving, so giving, and yet kill people.”
“But you knew this was a part of him.”
“I know I did!” I yelled in frustration, scrunching my forehead. “I know I did and it didn’t matter because I accepted him as he was. But now I don’t know if I took on too much. How can I keep loving him when I know what he does?”
“You can’t. You stop.”
“I can’t! That’s the problem. Don’t you see? I’m scared of him. I’m disgusted by the vile monster he becomes, this beast he lets out. But I still love him. I’d still do anything for him. I can’t just turn off my heart. I want to, I do, but I can’t. I love him with everything I have and I hate myself for it. Because it’s wrong to love him, I know. It’s so wrong.”
“What if he didn’t love you?” he asked quietly. “What would you do if he didn’t love you?”
“But he does. I know this. He does, Gus, He does love me. Passionately. Obsessively.”
“Ellie…”
“Eden!” I screamed into the phone. “Please call me Eden!”
“You are Ellie Watt. And he doesn’t love you. You got that? He loves the lie.”
His words choked me. The truth wrenched my lungs.
“No,” I stammered, “he loves me. He can see the me underneath, he knows me—”
“You are Ellie Watt!” Gus roared. “You are not Eden White. He loves Eden White, not you. Not you with your life and your parents and your scars that you got for very different reasons. He loves the lie you crafted, the person that you aren’t. What do you think he’d do to you if he discovered Ellie Watt? Would he love her? Or would he kill her?”
“Please…” I croaked out, not wanting him to go on. “I can’t…”
“Ellie, you got involved with a bad man and you are way in over your pretty head here. You did the right thing. You left. Now you have to keep moving. You hear me? You keep going. You stay low. You change your name again and try and head back here when you think the coast is clear.”
“I can’t…”
“You run away from him and you run now. He doesn’t love you. He wouldn’t if he found out who you were, if he found out that this was all a lie. You can’t live a life with him like this. I’m glad you gave up your revenge, sweetheart, but you did it for the wrong reasons. You can’t trade in that passion for another that would still get you killed. You listen to me and you run and you never look back. He will never love the real you.”
“Gus,” I whispered.
“What?”
“He has my cell phone. Never call it again. Never call me again.”
“What?”
“Goodbye, Gus.”
I hung the phone up on the cradle and sat back, legs splayed, my shirt wet where my tears had fallen. The heartache was waiting in the wings, waiting for me to coax it out of the darkness, for me to embrace it, to accept what Gus had said as truth. And when it came, it was going to devour me whole and I was so damn afraid of the person who’d come out on the other side. The person my heartache would spit out wouldn’t be Ellie Watt and she wouldn’t be Eden White. I didn’t know her name, but I knew she wouldn’t possess a heart.
I was fucking scared of her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I sat there for minutes on that motel room floor, leaning against the bed, breathing in and out, trying to slow my heart, trying to ignore the pain that threatened to crush it. To dwell on what Gus said was too easy. I was going to slip, and slip soon, and never get up. I didn’t want him to be right; he didn’t understand.
I slowly got to my feet, my knees shaking from my weight. I needed cold water on my face. I needed to put the fan on a faster speed. I needed to get some alcohol in my system, armor against the forthcoming battle for my heart and my head.
I was halfway across the room, my feet padding on the crunchy carpet when there was a loud pounding at the door. It jumped on its hinges and stopped.