THE AIR felt too damp and still for Northern California in August.

The night reeked of unease.

From the odd weather to the moon that stayed sheltered behind the evening’s clouds, it was as though the Universe was all too aware of what we’d done and felt uncomfortable bearing witness to it.

In the darkness, I stood and writhed at the feeling of my dirtied white tank top clinging to the skin of my back. My stale breath couldn’t seem to decide whether to heave slower, quicker, or —should fate allow me the reprieve — stop entirely.

I wrapped my arms as tightly as I could around my torso. I still believed I could find some elusive comfort beneath these watching stars.

“How much longer?” I asked Landon again while wiping some more tears from my face before he noticed. “The sun’s up soon.”

Landon, my then-high school sweetheart, looked up to me with his bright blue eyes and tensed brow with exasperation. Despite his expression, I knew in my heart that his patience with me would hold strong no matter how annoying I became tonight, or any other night really.

“Y—You shouldn’t be doing this,” I panted with an aggressive shake of my head. “Landon, you shouldn’t fucking be doing this.”

I lunged forward to try take the shovel from his grip but he stopped me.

“Lucy—”

“This could ruin everything for you. I shouldn’t have brought you into this. I shouldn’t’ve agreed to it! This was a mistake; A big fucking mistake. What have I done? What the fuck have I done? I’m worse than him now!”

I broke down beneath the weight of the moment I found myself in. My knees buckled, collapsing me into the dirt where I wished to stay forever; in this darkness, brooding on what I’d done, living out my punishment.

In my state of seemingly endless panic, my breath kept rapid. Every inhale of the muggy summer evening felt viscous, suffocating me of any reverie I once found in fresh air.

Kneeled in my deserving suffering, I could make out the beads of sweat building on Landon’s brow. He stood three-feet deep in a muddy hole he’d been digging for what I guessed was the better part of two hours. His hands were dirtied beneath the moonlight and the old shovel he was holding had worn through his leather gloves.

A harmless rustle from the bushes caused me to startle again. I turned left and right for any sign of the police or FBI or whomever else who were surely trying to find us by now. Tears stung raw in the back of my throat.

“Babe,” Landon’s soothing cadence entered my ears. “Lucy, it’s probably a bird. No one, no one is looking for us.”

He climbed from the hole, removed his gloves and rested his hands on either side of my sweaty face. After wiping my damp hair from my forehead, he made sure my eyes were locked on his.

“You’re safe now. You’re always safe while I exist. Do you trust me on that? No bad will come to us for this. Do you trust me?”

I nodded.

Me and Landon had been together three trialling but fulfilling years. In that time we’d shared, I’d happily given him all of me — My secrets, my fears, my problems and my heart; But most importantly, he had my trust — A part of myself I hadn’t offered to anyone else in my life, not even to my own family.

He cradled me into his arms and squeezed tightly. A kiss against my forehead rested my nerves for a moment and briefly distracted me from where I was. But then I made a mistake…

A mistake of tilting my head up to look some feet beyond Landon’s shoulder…

There was a body basking beneath the blue of the moon. Daryl Palermo, the man who gave me life laying unnervingly still on the ground. His once sun-kissed skin was pallor with the ghoulish glow of the dead.

My empty stomach wretched.

He ceased to exist, unable to inflict any more pain upon me or my mother— But why did that thought not make me feel better like it should? Landon felt my dry heaves and hid my face again. Even in death, that man had me retreating like some scared puppy into the safety of Landon’s arms. This time, he wouldn’t deal me merely a small cigarette burn on my arm for not recording his Raiders game. In death, his punishment was inescapable and unending; I made a choice and I would bear this moment forever.

The nook of Landon’s elbow rescued me from further anguish. He combed his fingers through my hair.

“I’ll finish this and we can move on, okay? Daryl won’t hurt you anymore.” He embraced me tighter until my back clicked and the sickly earthy stench of soil was replaced with his Old Spice deodorant. “He can’t hurt you anymore.”

I took a moment to breathe my boyfriend in so he could refill my strength. I wanted to feel some hope that things could return to normal again once the trauma had worn off…

Then my head shook of its own accord.

My heart knew the truth:

“I’m never forgetting this, Landon,” I confessed. “I’ll never forget this. I can’t do it like you do. I can’t blank out the bad stuff and just move on from here.”

My breath hastened again. The realization clogged my airways.

“We need him back,” I choked. “He can’t be gone yet. I’ll take his place. I’ll do it.” I turned my fury to the Gods. “Take me instead. I want him back!”

I lurched away from Landon with an overwhelming belief that I could somehow shake Daryl back to life.

“No, Lucy,” Landon cried and pulled me away. “Listen. Look at me. Look at me! You won’t carry this alone. I’ll be here for you. I am so sorry that I can’t take the pain away, but this is about becoming stronger. Becoming stronger without him to get in your way. You’re a fighter. This is what fighters do. We never asked for the circumstances we were given in life but we sure as hell can choose how we’re going to deal with them. You and I, we’ve always found answers to our problems. We always have.”

I thought back to the times we stood hand in hand, getting through the bullshit of our lives; Like when Landon was wrongfully accused of battery. Framed by a local gang-banger, he almost ended up in prison for five years. I took the fall, claiming self-defense and the cops bought it. Or there was a time when Landon couldn’t afford our school trip to Disneyland because his second foster mom drank the funds away. We worked our asses of mowing lawns in the neighborhood to pay for it. I remember to when my mom, high on her vices, had my neck tightly in her grip when she thought I’d raided her stash. Landon stood up to her by smashing her pipes and pouring her junkie filth down the sink… And he ended up taking a good left hook from Daryl for his trouble.

I didn’t want to think about Daryl right now… I didn’t want to think about all the ways he’d hurt us. I didn’t want to think about all the ways he’d hurt everyone.

“D’you hear me?”

“There might’ve been another way,” I said. “I should’ve found another way.”

Despite Landon’s optimism that everything would be okay with Daryl gone, I couldn’t accept it. I’d come to terms with the concept that Landon and I were cursed to live a life of suffering.

“No!” he snapped back and held me tightly by my shoulders. “There was no other way! You’re the one who went to Mac begging for help behind my back. Did you seriously think I wouldn’t get dragged into this? The things he did to you…The things he was going to do. That man would have ended you, and nobody would have blinked a damn eye. Not the school, not the cops. You were a prisoner with him, Luce. And when I said I’d kill to protect you, you knew I meant it.”

“I don’t blame you for any of it,” I responded numbly. “But I don’t want it. I fucked up. I fucked everything up!”

We stared at each other then I pulled Landon into me one last time to dig my bitten-raw fingernails into the muscles of his back. His warmth, even on that balmy night, was the nearest safe-haven I could find.

“Come with me… Please…”

“I can’t do that Lucy… You know that. I owe the debt to Mac, the club won’t let me patch out… If I go with you,we’re both going into the ground.”

“To hell with Mac, to hell with your fucking debt, and to hell with the goddamned club,” I cry, landing fits against Landon’s chest.

“I love you, Lucy… It’s not safe for you here. Get in the damn truck and don’t stop driving. Forget I ever fucking existed.”

“I can’t do that, Landon…”

“You have to.”