Chapter Two
Jackson
Who the hell was that?
I frowned and squinted as something caught my eye outside. I was driving past Craig Rubio’s place, and I’d just spotted something at one of his back windows. The flash of movement had been brief and blurry as the figure ducked away, but I’d seen enough to know there’d been a woman standing there, looking at my house. Whoever it was looked petite but had some damn nice curves, and I frowned as I wondered who it might’ve been. It couldn’t be his daughter Lily—last time I saw her, she’d been a skinny little barely-pubescent beanpole, from what I recalled, and surely it hadn’t been that long since then. So was Craig finally seeing another woman? Had he finally managed to move on since his wife Karen disappeared?
Fucking Karen.
Just thinking her name made me feel nauseated. I wasn’t one to describe people as cunts, usually, but she was definitely an exception. She was a fucking cunt of the highest order, and there was a good reason behind the fact that Craig and I had fallen out of touch. After all, it wasn’t every day your girlfriend got shot to death by your best friend’s crazy wife. Everyone knew she did it, too. Slam dunk case, the cops called it. Her prints were all over the gun and her own daughter had heard two women screaming at my house from her bedroom window at their house, as she’d told the police when they questioned her, and one of those women definitely had her mother’s voice. The fact that she fled afterwards and cleared out her bank accounts cemented her guilt.
She did it. That fucking monster.
I knew Craig had to be horrified and deeply ashamed at what his wife did, and that was why he hadn’t been able to meet my eyes whenever we saw each other afterwards. I understood. I really did. We’d been such good friends for so many years, and we’d always been there to support each other. But this….this wasn’t something a friendship recovered from. Not in any way I could see, anyway.
I was glad he was moving on, though, if that was indeed his new partner I’d seen standing by his back window. He was a decent man, and he deserved to find happiness again. I couldn’t hold anything against him; the events of six years ago weren’t his fault. It was just fucking impossible to picture myself speaking to him after losing Jenna in such an awful way. I wouldn’t know what to say, and I knew he wouldn’t either.
And Christ, speaking of Jenna….
“Shit...”
I jammed on the brakes and reversed into someone else’s driveway to turn around, and then I headed back the way I’d originally come. When I reached my house again, I put the car in park and dashed inside to double check that the coffee maker was off. It’d never been my habit to do so in the past, but it had become like that since Jenna passed all those years ago—it’d been her habit to always double or triple-check everything like that. I guess I’d subconsciously begun to do it after her death as a strange means of coping with the traumatic way she was lost.
I wasn’t that I was still pining after her. I still missed some aspects of her on occasion, and she certainly hadn’t deserved in any way to have her life stolen in such a manner, but I wasn’t sitting around every night drinking myself into a stupor over my lost eternal love, or anything like that. Truth be told, things hadn’t been great between us for over a year or so before her death, and we’d been on the verge of splitting, so the main emotion I felt back then—and still felt every day—was tremendous guilt. Not love. That ship had sailed a long time before her passing. But I had still cared for her deeply, I knew I did, and like I said, just because things weren’t great between us didn’t mean I would ever be okay with what happened to her.
There was also the fact that it was my fault. All my fucking fault. I’d never forgive myself for letting it happen.
In the weeks leading up to the murder, she’d become paranoid. Told me she felt unsafe, and that she felt like someone was coming after her. Targeting her. And what did I do? I fucking laughed it off. Instead of listening to her concerns, I simply chuckled and told her she was watching too many crime shows on Netflix. After all, who the hell would come after her? Sure, she could be a snide, judgmental bitch on occasion (that was one of the many reasons things weren’t so great between us back then) but she’d never done anything that warranted her having some sort of crazed stalker, let alone a murderer. Plus, we also lived in one of the safest areas on the outskirts of the city. Murders didn’t happen here. Hell, people could even keep their doors unlocked here. Nothing bad ever happened….until it did. At the thought, I tightened my grip on the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white.
I should’ve listened.
I should’ve cared more.
I should’ve protected her. Saved her.
Most of all, I should’ve damn well seen it coming and done something to stop it in its tracks. Back then, Craig and I had both known his wife was losing it, ever since the incident when she’d lost her shit at Jenna in a local restaurant and accused her of a non-existent affair. Craig apologized for her behavior, and we’d tried to mend our friendship afterwards, and we thought things would be okay. Neither of us knew that while we were busy at work at his company that day, Karen would finally snap and lose it once and for all. But why? Why had we been so blind? As I said, we both knew she was losing it, but we’d brushed it off as her simply needing a therapist for her jealousy issues. We hadn’t considered that she was far more deeply disturbed than that.
A lump formed in my throat as the guilt rushed back in. I wasn’t sure if it would ever go away. It was no wonder I hadn’t dated anyone since. Like I said, it wasn’t that I wasn’t over Jenna—it was that I couldn’t let this happen again. Couldn’t let myself fail to protect another woman who was my responsibility. I wouldn’t allow myself to fuck up that badly ever again; to fuck up so drastically at doing the one thing a real man was supposed to.
Besides, it wasn’t so bad being alone. It meant I had more time to spend on my job and my senate campaign. That in turn served to distract me from the past, stop the awful memories from pouring back in. And speaking of the campaign….shit, I needed to leave again. I had a meeting with a potential donor in half an hour, so I couldn’t afford to stand around checking the damn coffee machine a hundred times. My team needed that funding.
I stepped back outside and got in my car, and then I pulled out of my driveway for the second time in five minutes. As I cruised past Craig’s place, I glanced at his front porch, spotting something out of the corner of my eye. It was the same female figure I saw briefly in the window earlier, and with shock, I realized I’d been wrong.
It was Lily I saw in the window earlier.
I almost veered off the road as I took her in. She was in the process of stepping out of the house, ostensibly to go to a class, judging by the books and laptop she was carrying, and the clothes she was wearing looked like they were made for her and only her. Her plain white T-shirt hugged her breasts and waist to perfection, and her low-slung jeans hung off her hips, molding to her thighs like a second skin.
Jesus. She grew up. She really grew up.
Now that I thought about it, she actually must’ve been about eighteen or nineteen by now. The last time I saw her was a few years back, and time really flew by—I should know that, seeing as I was thirty-nine and still wondering where the hell my twenties and early thirties had gone. Also gone were the days of Lily Rubio being the innocent, adorable little girl who played in my pool in summer. She was a woman now.
And Christ, what a fucking fine young woman she was.
I watched her in the rearview mirror as I pulled past the house. She’d turned around now to unlock her car, and I felt my cock stiffen as I took in the curves of her ass in those jeans and her long black hair flowing down her back in a mass of shiny waves. An image of her bent over the hood of her car popped into my head, and I pictured myself roughly grabbing her hips and sliding inside her, fucking her senseless as she panted and strained against my cock.
She bent forward to drop her books on the passenger seat, and I almost had a conniption. Jesus fuck. She really knew how to fill out an outfit with that body. So slim yet curvy in all the right places, so sweet and tight.
I closed my eyes when I reached a stop sign, remembering her beautiful face; those delicate features and pretty dark eyes. She’d always been a cute kid, but damn, I had no idea she’d grown up to be so lovely. You’d think I might’ve noticed, given the proximity of our properties, but I’d taken pains to avoid seeing the Rubios for the last several years, and so I hadn’t seen her in what felt like an age. People always asked me how that was possible, and why I hadn’t simply packed up and moved away after what happened, but I had my ways and my reasons.
Firstly, it wasn’t hard to avoid people, even if they were neighbors. I had some neighbors who I’d never even met, for god’s sake, because they were obviously quite unsociable and liked to avoid people as much as I liked to avoid the Rubios. Plus in a semi-rural location like this, the houses were quite far apart, so it was easy to go unnoticed whenever you felt like it.
Anyway, I always left the house early and returned late, so it was unlikely I’d run into anyone outside, and even if I did so happen to pass Craig in the area, we usually just gave each other an awkward nod before moving on and continuing with our days. I’d seen him maybe three, four times over the last few years.
As for why I hadn’t left the area—well, there was one main reason for that. The house I lived in had been my home since I was twenty-five. It was my first house (the first one I owned, that is) and I’d spent years fixing it up and adding to it. It was the only place that ever truly felt like home to me, and even though something horrendous had occurred here six years ago, I refused to let myself give in and be driven out of my own home due to all the evils in the world. It wasn’t like everything didn’t already remind me of what happened, anyway, whether or not I was here. Maybe it was a little unhealthy that I stayed, but I honestly couldn’t bring myself to leave.
My mind flashed back to Lily again. I’d seen that she was a fully-grown woman now, but at the same time, there’d been such an innocent quality about her. Something…untouched. Something a dark part of me felt desperate to corrupt.
I wondered if she was a virgin. Wondered if she’d ever go near me.
I pushed the thoughts aside. It wasn’t right. She’d always been such a sweet kid, and she didn’t need a fucked up guy like me coming up with all sorts of twisted fantasies about her, let alone pursuing them in any way. Hell, even letting her see me would be a bad idea, so I needed to be more careful to leave earlier from now on, seeing as she obviously had early classes at whatever college she went to these days. She’d gone through so much at such a young age, what with her mother being a murdering bitch who abandoned her to hide from her crimes, and seeing my face would only remind her of that pain.
But having said that, now that I’d seen the innocent beauty she grew up to be, would I be able to hold out? How could I, knowing that such a perfect little thing lived within a stone’s throw? How could I forget that face, that body? She’d make such a perfect little fucktoy, and while I knew I needed to occupy my thoughts with something or someone else, I honestly wasn’t sure if I could.
But I had to.
One way or another, I had to force myself to stay the fuck away from Lily Rubio.