Chapter Eighteen – Abbey
I watched with horror as he staggered backwards, his eyes suddenly blank and devoid of feeling. His hands groped for his torso, pressed against the wound in his stomach, trying to stem the flow of blood coursing from him.
The sound of the gunshot filled my ears. I knew it wouldn’t be long until the neighbors called the cops, and I wanted to be out of here by the time they arrived. Right now, though, all I could do was stare at Franco as he crashed over the couch, collapsing to the ground, a smear of blood on the ground below him.
Dead. He was dead. He was finally dead.
I burst into tears the moment I saw him there. Not grief, no – relief. Relief that it was finally over. After being tormented for so long, he was finally dead, and there was nothing that could change that. He would never be able to hurt me or any other woman again. Whatever lies he had tried to spin to me, he didn’t stand a chance of convincing me anymore.
For a moment, I had almost believed him. Hell, maybe it was more that I had wanted to believe him, than anything else – it wasn’t like I would actually have ever been able to trust that he meant the words coming out of his mouth, not after everything he had done to me, but I had wanted to believe that there was a chance he would make things right.
But he’d had that chance before he’d so much as met me. If he had really intended to fix himself, he could have done it long before we had encountered one another. He had no interest in changing himself, no – he was just searching for a way to get out of the situation he was currently presented with. He would have said anything if it meant surviving, walking out of here to torment another woman.
Chuck wrapped his arms around me, letting the gun fall to the ground and holding me close.
”Hey, hey, it’s alright,” he told me, rocking me gently. ”It’s okay. You’re safe. It’s over now.”
I held on to him for dear life, clinging to him like he was the only thing keeping me pinned down to earth right now. It felt like everything I knew had been torn out from underneath me, all the horrors and hell that I had been through vanished in the moment the bullet had driven itself into Franco’s gut.
I had never seen a dead body before. I’d covered plenty of cases that had involved corpses, but being presented with one myself...it was something else entirely. I was trembling helplessly, my hands digging into Chuck’s sides, as though he alone could make this right.
He held me there for a long while, until I had gathered myself enough to take a breath. I wiped the tears from my eyes, and looked up at him.
”What happens now?” I asked him, and he cupped my chin in his hand.
”You and Cinnamon need to get out of here,” he replied. ”I’ll call up some of my guys to clean this place, get rid of Franco where nobody’s going to find him. You think anyone’s going to come looking for him?”
I shook my head.
”I don’t think so,” I replied. All of his family had cut him off a long time ago...he never told me why, but I bet it was because of what he put those girls through. I couldn’t imagine any of them would be feeling particularly devastated about his loss...
His loss. Fuck, even just thinking that made my head spin. It was over. It was well and truly over. And this, really, had been the only way it was ever going to end with him. I knew the cops would never have taken me seriously; they would have just brushed me off the moment I came to them with any of the shit he’d been putting me through. No, I’d had to take matters into my own hands, and I was glad, at last, that it was done.
I grabbed Cinnamon, put him into a cat carrier, and balanced him on my lap as Chuck took me back across the city to his compound. I was sure I would be hearing from my landlord soon enough about everything that had happened, but right now, it was hard to give much of a damn about that. I was just beyond relieved that Franco was dealt with. I had thought I would feel some kind of guilt if something like this had happened to him, but to my surprise, it didn’t hit me like that. After all he had done, after all he had tortured me with, I didn’t feel like I’d had any other choice.
Chuck led me inside, and I released Cinnamon in his little apartment. The cat instantly ran off to hide under the bed, clearly still spooked by what had happened earlier.
”You think he’s going to be okay?” I fretted, and Chuck pulled me down on to the bed beside him.
”You should be worried about yourself right now,” he replied. ”You’ve been through so much, Abbey...”
”I’m okay,” I replied, but, much to my chagrin, I felt tears dripping from my eyes. I guessed, with the shock of it all, it shouldn’t have been a surprise, but the emotion hadn’t really hit me full-force yet. Cinnamon, sensing my tears, emerged from under the bed and jumped up into my lap. I smiled as I reached down to pet him – when Franco had kicked him like that, I had been so worried that he might have been hurt, but he was still okay, thank God.
”You’re not,” he told me. ”And that’s alright. You’ve never seen someone...shot before, right?”
I shook my head.
”Never,” I admitted. ”I...I can’t stop wondering if it was the right choice...”
He planted a kiss against my temple.
”It was the right thing to do,” he promised me, his voice firm, leaving no room for argument or debate. ”Trust me. A guy like that, he’s never going to stop. He’s always going to come after you, or someone else, some other woman. And the cops won’t do shit about it. They never do. You have to take matters into your own hands, do what you have to do to end it.”
I stared at him for a moment. There it was again – him talking like he had experience with this, like he knew what he was talking about. I knew something had happened. And, after what I had just seen, after what I had just done, I felt as though I deserved to know the truth of it.
”Chuck,” I murmured to him softly. ”What...what went down with you?”
”What do you mean?” he asked, though he slid his eyes away from mine as he spoke.
”Whenever this stuff comes up,” I pointed out. ”You always talk as though...as though you’ve seen something like it before.”
He fell silent for a moment, and then let out a sigh. Dropping his chin to his chest, he began to speak – slow, halting, clearly struggling with saying it out loud.
”There was something,” he admitted. ”There was...someone. A long time ago.”
”Who?” I whispered to him, linking my fingers through his. I could tell just by looking how hard this was for him to put into words, and I needed him to know that he was safe with me – that I wasn’t going to throw this back in his face. I just wanted to understand him better. I wanted to know what he had been through that had left him with so much pain when it came to shit like this, that had driven him to help me when I had needed it most.
”My sister,” he admitted, finally. ”She...she was in a relationship with this guy. Liam. I guess he started off pretty good, but then he...turned on her.”
”Turned on her?”
”Started to get possessive, at first,” he explained, haltingly. ”Started out like that. And then...he was physical with her. And she kept making excuses for him, over and over again, kept telling me that I just didn’t get how hard this was for him, how much he struggled with all of this shit. It didn’t matter how many times I told her that she needed to get out, she would always protect him. And she would always go back to him...”
His voice cracked. I reached up to stroke his cheek, silently letting him know that I was here for him, whatever he wanted to share with me. It was clear, just from the look on his face, how hard it was for him to admit all of this – how hard it was for him to look back over this painful time in his life and come clean about the way everything had gone, the way he had been hurt.
He paused for a moment, and then pulled himself together and forced himself to keep going.
”And she came to me, this one last time, after he had assaulted her,” he continued. ”And...and I should have got her to stay. Fuck, I should have told her that I would never let her go back to him. But I was young, and so was she, and she thought she knew better – she thought she could handle it, whatever shit he threw at her. She never could have imagined that it would turn out the way it did.”
”The way it did?” I prompted him. He let out a shaky breath.
”He attacked her one night, after she went back to him,” he told me, his voice low. ”And he killed her.”
My heart stopped when he said that part out loud.
”He what?” I gasped, my head spinning. He looked over at me.
”He killed her,” he repeated himself, slowly. Like he was just coming to terms with it himself, just handling the sheer horror of what it meant to say those words out loud. ”He killed her, because he knew that it was the only way he would be able to keep her. The only way he would be able to make it so she could never escape him.”
He fell silent for a long moment, and I saw a tear roll down his cheek. I had never seen him cry before. He had always been so strong, so stoic, but talking about his sister, it was obvious he couldn’t contain the pain of it any longer.
”I should have done more,” he continued. There was so much pain in his voice, it ached to hear it come out of his mouth – ached to hear him blaming himself so brutally and so completely for it. When I knew it wasn’t him to blame for this, not a chance in hell.
”You couldn’t have done more,” I told him. ”You did everything you could-”
”If I had just-”
”You couldn’t have changed her mind,” I told him fiercely. ”And you couldn’t have stopped him, either. I know how men like that work. I know how they – I know how they function, how they twist things up so you feel like you have no choice but to go back to them, to be there for them, even when you can tell that you’re being crazy. It’s a headfuck.”
He lifted his head to look at me.
”I couldn’t let the same thing happen to anyone else,” he murmured. ”That was why I got involved with you, when this all started. I guess...I saw some part of my sister in you. And I knew I couldn’t let you get hurt the way she had.”
I swallowed hard. It was all starting to make sense to me now. It hadn’t just been about me, all of this, it had been about him too – it had been about him, making amends for what had happened to his sister, when he had lost her all those years ago. I could only imagine how much pain and how much of his past this had brought up, but he had been there for me through all of it, through every moment of it. He had never let it get in the way of doing what I needed him to do, and God, I was so grateful, I didn’t know if I would ever be able to put it into words.
I pressed my forehead to his.
”You don’t have to carry the weight of all of that alone,” I murmured to him. ”I’m here now.”
”You shouldn’t have to-”
”You’re not making me,” I pointed out to him gently. ”You’re not making me take this on. I want to, Chuck. I want to be here for you. You were here for me, when nobody else was, you helped me when it felt like everyone else had turned their backs on me. I want this, Chuck. I want you.”
He lifted his gaze to meet mine again, and I could see something shift inside of him – something, maybe, beginning the long path to forgive himself for everything that had happened with his sister. I knew it would be a long time before he was truly trusting in the fact that he’d done nothing wrong, but at least I could start to nudge him along that path. At least I could begin the journey for him.
He gazed at me for a long moment. And then, all at once, he said the words that I had been feeling for so long – the words that, despite my profession, I’d never had the nerve to put out there myself.
”I love you.”
”I love you, too,” I breathed back at once, a smile spreading over my face. Oh, hearing those words from him, it felt downright precious – seeing this man who seemed to keep so much to himself, finally giving in and allowing himself to accept that I really cared about him as much as he cared about me.
I leaned forward to kiss him, my hand on his cheek – and Cinnamon reached up to bump his head against our chins. Both of us laughed as we pulled back, and I gently moved Cinnamon to the ground below me.
”Not right now, buddy,” I murmured, as I leaned in for another kiss. And, as we deepened into the embrace, I knew everything else in the world could wait – I knew that the only thing that mattered right now was the feel of his arms around me, his body against mine, and the promise that he loved me just as much as I loved him.