NINETEEN

CASEN

I’ve fucking had enough. There is only so much a man can take before he snaps, and I am just a breath away from losing it. My life has been upended the past few months – I am done losing everything. One best friend is dead. Another one might as well be dead to me. I’ve lost my girlfriend, and I could be on the brink of losing my job. How can so much happen in such a short amount of time? I’m not sure how much more I can take but I’m not going to stand by and watch as my life falls apart thread by thread.

Fuck that.

My condo is quiet when I enter. The past few weeks it has been buzzing with Embyr’s energy and spirit. Her music, her attempts at cooking and her sweet body underneath mine. Without her here, and thinking she won’t be any longer, makes it feel empty. My life is empty without her.

One of her sweatshirts is draped over a kitchen chair and I lift it up, hoping like hell I won’t have to return it to her. She needs to see reason, see that we love one another and come back to me. I didn’t do all my soul searching just to have it mean absolutely nothing. We didn’t fight for “us” just to have it all taken away.

Putting myself in her shoes I understand where she is coming from. I can’t imagine trying to turn my life around just to have something you thought was in the past thrown back into your face. At your job no less. I know she’s hurt and devastated, and it’s going to take a long time, if ever, to come to terms with it. I only wish I could eradicate the video with just a push of the delete button. What infuriates me to the point of murder is that Reece sent that not to hurt Embyr but to hurt me. She was collateral damage for his years of pent up frustration. He is a hateful, devious man, and I guess I never really saw the signs until now. The constant passive aggressive comments he would make. The looks he would give. How I never really felt like I could truly trust him despite having to during our job. Yes, we went through our schooling and training together but through all the times we spent with one another, I never fully trusted him. Maybe it stemmed from the bet back in high school or maybe it was my intuition. Either way, the more I think about it the more I want to finish what I started at the fire station. I want to wrap my hands around his neck and squeeze so tight until he gets the magnitude of what he has done. He’s essentially fucked with all our jobs. Embyr said she is going back on Monday, but what does that mean for her? What will she be walking into? I want to protect her from all of that ridicule. All of her coworkers have potentially seen her half naked at sixteen.

The image of them opening up their emails, from her boyfriend’s account, with a video like that cuts me to the core. Even worse, I can imagine the betrayal Embyr felt when she thought I was the one who sent it. It doesn’t matter if I didn’t. She left me anyway. I wasn’t kidding when I said I wasn’t giving up. I won’t. I will have her in my arms again. In my bed again. In my future. I need her there because I feel like I can’t breathe without her. My lungs won’t fill to capacity unless I know she’s mine.

I’ll make her mine.

I spend the day doing something I never do…cleaning my condo but leaving anything Embyr has left here where it was. I don’t want to change anything because I know she will see reason. I’m just giving her some time. I’ve calmed down a little bit but I know I’m going to have to do something about Reece. Talk to some friends at the precinct and see if Embyr can press charges seeing as she was a minor in that tape. I hate that video. The mental image sometimes consumes me. I wanted to be her first. I wanted her to be mine. It didn’t happen that way, and I may sound like a pussy but I also long to be her last.

A ping from my cell phone alerts me to an incoming text. My heart beat quickens, hoping that it’s Embyr asking me to come back. It’s not, and the past few hours of calming myself down is all for nothing as I what I read instantly boils my blood.

Reece: You fucking asshole! Trinity just called and broke up with me because you and your girlfriend have a big fucking mouth.

Me: Fuck off.

Reece: I hope you and that slut are happy together.

I’m done. The last thin piece of thread holding my sanity together snaps. I grab my keys and head out the door.

I’m not a violent man. I’ve never really been a violent man, but right now all I can see is red the entire way over to Reece’s place. I risk the chance of him not being home, but I’m sure if Captain sent him to the hospital than he is probably there.

I reach his place in record time and buzz his apartment. He moved in here around the same time Ian and I both got our own places and he’s never invited me over. I hit the button to call his apartment again but still nothing. A tenant walks out, and I take the opportunity to grab the door before it shuts. I waste no time climbing the three flights of stairs and find 3B. I knock and after hearing nothing I put my ear to the door.

It’s quiet. He may not be home but I’m also not going to sit in the hallway and wait for him. I grab my keys out of my pocket and spin them until I come across the one Reece gave to me in case of emergencies. It’s not breaking and entering if you have a key, right? The door creaks loudly as I open it and walk in.

It’s bare. There’s nothing on the walls and only very minimal furniture. I search for a lamp but find none so I flip on the dining room light above the table, which is old and scuffed up. The hairs on the back of my neck rise. All of a sudden I feel unsafe, but it doesn’t stop me from looking around. Ignoring my intuition not to, I walk toward the back bedroom to see if maybe he’s here or in the shower. It’s doubtful, seeing as I’d be able to hear a pin drop. All the curtains are shut and I’m not sure he’s dusted in quite a while. The door to the master bedroom is ajar so I push it open. His room is just as stripped of furniture as the rest of the house.

A mattress rests on the floor next to a box propped up to hold an alarm clock. I didn’t know Reece wasn’t doing so well. He was picking up extra shifts every chance he could. Reece isn’t in there so I walk halfway back down the hallway to another closed door. It’s the bathroom and just like all the other rooms, it contains the minimum amount needed to survive. A roll of toilet paper, shampoo, soap, and hand soap. An old yellow towel hangs over the shower curtain.

My hatred of him is now becoming pity. I don’t know what’s going on. If Reece needed money or anything I’m sure he could ask his parents and they would help.

Curiosity is now leading me the rest of the way back to the living room, and I stop at another closed door. This one is harder to open and I realize why. It’s locked but the door is so stripped that all I have to do is push my shoulder into it to get it unlatched. It flies open, crashing into the wall behind it.

My eyes widen. This room is much different than all the others. Underneath the window is a desk with three computer screens and one keyboard. Newspaper articles are littered over almost every single space on the wall to the right. There is a couch on the other wall with books and binders scattered all over it. I step closer, using as much caution as I can because let’s be honest, something fucked up is going on here. When I reach the computer and hit a button, a still image of the video with Ian and Embyr pop up. He’s on top of her, his pants down, and you can tell they are in the middle of sex. My lunch begins to rise into my throat but I will myself to keep it down. I turn each screen off manually and face the wall of articles. Most are about Ian and the night he got shot. Each local paper ran the story and he has all of them plus the follow ups to them.

“What the fuck is this?” I mutter to myself.

There aren’t just clippings from the papers here but also pictures. Mostly pictures of Embyr. Pictures of her in high school and some recent ones as well. Those are disturbing but not as much as the ones from what looks to be her at college. I pull down one of her with a guy walking down a sidewalk and see WESTERN CAROLINA UNIVERSITY sign in the background.

“Holy shit!” I yell, anger consumes me.

Why does he have all this? Are these old or ones from Ian that he might have found or has Reece known all along where Embyr was and what she was doing? There are more pictures. Some of her changing in her old bedroom in Arlington Heights.

“What are you doing here, Casen?” Reece asks from behind me. His voice sounding devious and when I turn to him, his face matches. A white bandage is over his nose. I’m pretty sure I broke it when I see the black circles under his eyes. He’s wearing a dark gray t-shirt and blue jeans. “I should call the cops on you.”

I rip down the picture of Embyr and show it to him. “What the fuck is this?”

The right side of his mouth comes up into a half smile. “That’s your girlfriend right before she took that guy home and fucked him senseless. I told you she was a slut.”

My fists crumble the picture, and I will myself not to launch myself at him. My questions come out in a flurry.

“Why do you have this? Were you stalking her? Did you have someone stalk her?”

He laughs, leaning his shoulder against the door. “I told you, Casen. You weren’t the only one infatuated with her. I knew the whole time. I knew what she was doing, and while I sat there in college watching you sulk over her, I knew exactly where she was. When you asked Ian to find her, I knew just where he would. She was so fucking close. Just right under Patrick Strickland.”

It’s too much. Imagining Embyr with all those men. Seeing her with Ian on the tape, the guy in the picture, and now the vision of her and Patrick. It’s getting to me. She’s mine.

“So what, you were stalking her?” I glance at the wall again, everywhere I look there is a new picture of her.

He waves his hands around. “Stalking is such a strong word, Casen. I prefer admiring her from afar.”

“It’s stalking, asshole. When she doesn’t know it and when she sure as fuck doesn’t want you, it’s not admiring from afar.”

I hear the click before I actually see the gun pointed right at me. Reece pulled it out so fast that I had no time to respond. All I can do is raise my arms in surrender.

“Reece, man. What the fuck are you doing?”

He wipes his mouth with his shoulder. “You know Ian said the same fucking thing. I wasn’t STALKING her. That fucking tease wanted me to watch her. She left her curtains open every single night. She played hard to get, saying no to me and yes to Ian. But he RUINED it by fucking her. They had to be punished.”

My whole body is trembling with fear. “So what? You released the tape on purpose? Did Ian know you wanted her?”

He steps closer. The gun aimed straight at my chest. “He knew. He held that over my head for years, Casen. YEARS! Every chance he got he made sure I knew he popped her cherry. Even after he found out Embyr was Annie. I had already known, but he still fucking pushed me.” He waves the gun. “He still wanted to talk shit after he found out. Told me how sweet her pussy felt. He thought it was a joke, and it wasn’t. He learned that really fast.”

My stomach sinks. Ian found out a few days before he sent me the package. “Did you shoot Ian, Reece? Tell me you didn’t.”

His head drops for a moment but comes back up with resolve. “You would have too, Casen. He was saying the most disgusting things about your girlfriend. How at his birthday party he was thinking of all three of us banging Embyr at the same time. How, now that he knew she was Annie, we could live out our high school fantasies with her. He pushed me, and I pushed back. He won’t say that shit now.”

My arms are beginning to tire as I hold them up in surrender. “You’re fucking crazy,” I whisper.

He drops his arm to the side. “Crazy? I’m crazy? No, I’m just seeing things fucking clear now. Casen gets everything. The job, the girl, the nice condo. Every. Fucking. Thing.”

“I don’t understand, Reece.” I watch the gun at his side. “We make the same amount of money. What is going on here? Why do you have nothing in your house, even after all those extra shifts? If you needed money, I could help you.”

“No!” he screams. “No! That’s all I need is a handout from Casen Parker. I’m doing fine on my own. My parents need the money and I’m getting it to them. I just needed to work the shifts to help them through it.” He starts to cry, and I take the vulnerable opportunity to step closer to him and maybe grab the gun.

“None of this makes sense to me, Reece. Why tell me to forgive Embyr? You told me what she did was just as forgivable as what we did. You have Trinity. Do you still want Embyr?”

He hits his forehead a few times. “I don’t know! I don’t fucking know. I don’t want her anymore, but I’m sick of you getting everything. Ever since we were kids, you got it all. The looks, the charm. You were homecoming king and got a full ride to college. I was always compared to you by my parents. Always! I was never good enough. My mind is clouded. Nothing is clear to me anymore. I can’t think straight. All of this is tearing me up inside, and Trinity…she makes me feel like I’m worth it. For the first time in my life, I felt good enough for someone, and now that’s gone. She’s gone.”

“We can work this out,” I gently tell him, but I’m not sure that can happen. He killed Ian. He sent that video of Embyr, and from what I can tell, he’s lost his fucking mind completely.

He must not like my suggestion because he raises the gun. “No, you’re going to tell everyone. I can’t let you do that.”

“Reece, don’t do anything stupid.”

He laughs manically. “Like, what? This?”

I hear the bang.

I smell the gun powder.

I feel the pain.

I see nothing but black.

I thought I knew the depth of deceit. I had no. Fucking. Clue.