CHAPTER 13: BRETT
I stood in the hallway of my apartment building and wondered if I could do this.
“Kerry?” I said quietly.
“Yes?”
“Would it be okay, were we to wait until we get to your place? I can’t say some of this stuff out here.”
She opened those brown eyes. “Okay,” she said.
I sighed. “Thanks.”
We went down to the front door and paused.
“Will you let me go first?” I asked. “Then wait ten minutes and come and pick me up at the grocery store on the other end of the road? Please?”
“No,” she said. “Brett, I’m not letting you go anywhere on your own right now. That guy tried to kill you.”
I nodded. I felt sick. “But, Kerry?” I swallowed. “If he tried to kill me, I am absolutely not putting you in any danger. I won’t let them know that you know me, or I know you. I can’t. Please?”
She sighed. “I don’t want to agree with you,” she said softly. She paused. “You know what?”
“What?”
“Let’s run. We’re both athletic sorts. Let’s see how fast we can get to my car. Okay?”
I stared at her. “Kerry…no!”
She sighed. “We don’t know they’re still out there,” she said sensibly. “In fact, if they were, they would have seen the police and they would certainly have gone away by now. I think it’s probably safer out here now than it ever was.”
I laughed, though it wasn’t really funny, I supposed. “I guess.”
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Knowing it was a wild idea, but feeling it had a strange appeal, I let her open the door. I took a low, steadying breath. Looked into her eyes. They locked on mine.
“One, two, three…”
“Go!”
We exploded out together, letting the door slam behind us. I ran for the button and opened the gate and then we were running into the driveway toward where her car was still parked by the sidewalk, next to the big, spreading tree.
We collapsed into the seats, slammed the doors and sped off.
“Ow,” Kerry said. “My ankle.”
“Oh, no,” I said, through gritted teeth. My shoulder was burning. In spite of the seriousness of the situation, I had to see the funny side. Her ankle was aching, my shoulder was throbbing. We were safe and free and alive.
By the time we were at the traffic-light on the end of the road, we were laughing. I felt giddy with relief. It felt as if we had escaped.
We looked at each other.
“Thanks,” I said. I didn’t know what I would have done without her. She smiled at me shyly.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You did everything.”
She laughed.
When we arrived at her home, I was feeling nervous again. I had let myself get talked into a very bad idea. Two bad ideas.
The police shouldn’t be involved. I shouldn’t have come here now, risked leading them to her.
All the same, it was too late to do anything to change either of them. All I could do was hope.
“We’re making my roast butternut squash,” she said succinctly. “With sautéed onions as a side.”
“Okay,” I said cautiously.
I let her lead me into the kitchen and succinctly hand me a butternut squash. I hoped that she had forgotten what she asked me. I desperately didn’t feel that I could tell her. In fact, the thought of telling her made me more afraid than almost anything had in my life. I couldn’t do it.
“So,” she said when we’d chopped up all the vegetables and she was busy with the sauce. “You want to talk?”
“Not yet,” I admitted. She laughed.
“Okay. Well, I have an idea. How about we let that roast, let ourselves relax for a while and then you tell me after dinner. Good?”
“Great,” I breathed.
The relaxation proved more stimulating than she might have expected and we ended up in bed together. We hadn’t been there long before she jumped up and, laughing, ran to rescue our meal.
We ate and once I had something in my stomach, I had to admit I felt a little better. I leaned back with a sigh. The kitchen was dark, the soft light coming from a single, dim lamp in the background. I felt at peace. If I was ever going to tell my story to anyone, it would be to her, and now.
“Okay,” I sighed. “Remember I told you about when I was on the top of my game? How I felt like I would never be able to keep it at that pitch?”
“Yeah?” she nodded. “I felt that myself.”
“Really?” I frowned.
“Yeah,” she chuckled sadly. “I think I messed my ankle up trying to stay at the top of my game.”
“Oh.” I bit my lip. “Hell, but that’s bad.”
She frowned. “I guess.”
We sat silently for a while. I felt bad that I hadn’t waited to find out her story. It wasn’t, in some ways, that different to my own after all.
“So?” she frowned.
“Okay,” I said with a long, shaky sigh. “Well, when I was at the top and feeling like that, I met some guys. Bad guys. Well,” I chuckled. “Bad for me, anyway.”
I told her all of it. About the drugs, about the debt I ran up, about the threats.
I left nothing out.
When I finished, I looked at her. I couldn’t quite decide what expression was on her face. It was too intense for me to understand.
“Brett,” she said, very softly.
“Yes?”
“You mean to say you have been receiving death-threats from some offshoot of a dangerous Miami drug gang, and you didn’t tell me? What were you thinking?”
I felt the tone of that slam through me, breaking something in me like glass shatters when you drop it. I tensed.
“Kerry,” I started, “Please. Understand the…”
“Understand?” She laughed, a bitter tone to it. “How the hell am I supposed to understand anything when you don’t tell me, Brett? You lied!”
I bit my lip. Yes, I had lied. I might have thought I had a good reason to do so, but I had still lied and still betrayed her trust.
“Kerry,” I sighed. “Yes, I did lie. I know I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” Her voice was hard. “You are in danger. You put me in danger. And you don’t tell me. And you’re sorry? Would you be sorry if we got killed?”
I looked down. If she had wanted to hit me any harder where it really hurt most, she couldn’t have designed a more-effective way.
I ached inside. I trusted her too. And her judgment of me was more than I could face right them.
I looked at my hands.
“Kerry,” I sighed. “I was dumb. Forgive me?”
She didn’t say anything. I looked up at her but she turned away abruptly.
My sadness turned to a kind of blank anger, a feeling that was really hurt, all balled up and compressed inside. I pushed back my chair, scraping on the tiled floor of the kitchen. I stood up.
“Kerry, you’re right,” I said. “I did endanger you. And I’m not doing it anymore. I’m leaving.”
“No, you’re not,” she said firmly.
I sighed. “I can’t stay here, Kerry. Not like this. Not now. It would be wrong. I can’t do it.”
She looked up at me with a flat, blank stare. “Brett,” she said, “you can’t go back.”
I stayed where I was, in the doorway. I had no idea what to do. If I went back, there was a strong possibility that they would kill me. But how could I expect that Kerry would have me in her house, sleeping under her roof, when I had betrayed her so badly? Lied to her? Endangered her.
I couldn’t stay here and sleep in her sitting-room. It would be more than I could take to know she was in the next room, quite possibly naked, without me being able to get close enough to her.
“I have to go,” I said. I turned around and started unlocking the door.
“No!” she yelled. She jumped up from the couch, then stopped. “Brett…I don’t care what you did or what I think about you right now. That’s not a matter of life or death. This is. You can’t go back.”
I sighed. “What else can I do”?
“If you can’t stay here,” she said tightly, “and maybe you’re right about that, I don’t know,” she sighed, “then the best you can do is stay in a motel. I know—I don’t really need an extra expense either. But please? Okay?”
I sighed. I could afford a night somewhere else. And it seemed like a better option right now than staying here and having Kerry mad at me. I nodded.
“Fine,” I said.
“Good,” she said. She breathed out heavily. She didn’t sound like she thought it was good, not really. But she looked relieved. “Let me take you somewhere?”
“No,” I said tightly. “I’ll walk. They don’t know about this place. I don’t think they followed the car—if they were even there.”
She sighed. “There’s a place two blocks away. In Wallflower drive.”
“Fine,” I said again. I looked at the floor. My heart was aching. “Thanks, by the way.”
I looked up and she was looking past me, her eyes wide and expressionless.
“That’s fine,” she said. Her voice wept. “See you.”
I could barely make the words pass my lips. I nodded. “Bye.”
I would have stood there all evening except that she moved to stand, her teeth gritted shut as she put her weight on the ankle. I stepped forward to help.
“Go. Please, Brett?” she said.
I nodded. “Fine.”
I went.
Out in the street it was dark now, properly dark. I found the street-lamps and walked under their pale light. I wanted very badly to cry.
I walked to the corner and turned to where my phone told me to go. I was walking up Wallflower drive, looking for a nearby place, when I caught sight of it. The Wallflower Guesthouse. It didn’t look great but it was far from worth risking death over. I went in and made arrangements to stay there the night.
When I was up in the room, I tried to rest but I couldn’t. I was terrified about the gang coming back. Worried about the police and what they might find. And more than either of those, I couldn’t get her to leave my thoughts.
I couldn’t believe how I had messed up everything. Not only was I close to death with a drug gang if they ever found out that I had let the police know about them, but I had lied to someone who meant more to me than whether or not I was still alive.
It doesn’t really matter if I survive this, if I lose her.
That seemed excessive, even to me, but really it wasn’t. If I couldn’t hear from her and see her, if we were enemies now, I wouldn’t want to see the sun rise and my life would seem gray and flat and uninteresting. Not worth living.
I sat down on the bed and covered my face and tried to calm down. My mind kept on running through one worry after another, but I must eventually have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew there was a soft gray light falling through the curtains onto my face and it was morning.