Chapter 13
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
YOU’RE NOT A BAD GIRL.
Juniper
“Justin Blockland. We met on Hinge, if you could believe it. I mean, I know I don’t seem like the Hinge type, and well, I’m not. It was the first and last time I used it. I mean—obviously,” I say, the words rushing out of me nervously, clinging together into an amorphous blob of thoughts. Sterling reaches out, canopying his hand over mine, using his thumb to calmly stroke my fingers.
“Probably feels weird saying his name, and talking about all this. I get that. It’s okay to need a minute to take a breath,” he says, his comforting words coiling me in warmth.
“You always know just what to say,” I murmur, exploring every fleck of color and insight in his eyes.
“You really do,” Dash adds quietly, almost hesitantly from his spot next to me.
Sterling winks, his face unmoving but for his eye. I love how subtly sexy he is without even realizing it. And I know that there’s probably a special place in Hell for the people who murder and manage to get turned on while coming clean, but the Devil has never met Sterling Ford.
“So Hinge ,” Sterling starts.
I look between the two of them, ready to listen to things that can put us away forever. Their feet are planted firmly on the ground. Their eyes are on me.
They’re here to stay.
“I brought a jar of jam, as a first date gift. We went to this dumpling place in Oakcreek. After we ordered, I gave him the jam and he asked me if I really made it, or if I bought it and put my label on it since,” I pause, breaking out my finger quotes to send home the sentiment. Because Justin Blockland absolutely said this, verbatim. “ Women these days are better at pretending than actually doing .”
Dash’s breath hisses through his teeth as Sterling rolls his eyes. “He wasn’t joking,” I add, not defensively but more so, in the way the world has trained me to always explain. The world wants answers from women, lots of them, no matter what asinine thing a man says or does to her. We must give logical reasons in the face of illogical trash. Always.
“I’m sure he wasn’t,” Dash adds quickly, reminding me there’s no scrutiny here. Not in these four walls, and not with these two men.
“I told him I indeed made the jam. And he told me that he once dated a woman who lied about being a bartender to look more attractive to him, and that he hoped I wasn’t doing the same thing. Then he joked he was going to take me home and put me over the stove, or chain me to it, and force me to make jam, to see if I was honest or not.”
“That’s… fucking weird,” Sterling says, causing a deep-seated giggle to break free from my chest.
“It was really weird. I started envisioning his house as a dungeon with a ton of women trapped there,” I admit, recognizing years later, my fears were a little unfounded. “I mean, I’m sure he wouldn’t have?—”
Sterling puts his hand on my thigh now, his calming thumb still hard at work as he strokes the inside of my leg. “Don’t do that. It’s done, and has been for a long time.”
Dash leans in, joining the intimate bubble we seem to be in. “How long ago was number one?”
“Four years, six months, and three days,” I recite, the tally in my mind as clear as the night itself. I don’t want to remember, but I don’t know how to forget.
“So the date—” Sterling hedges. “How’d it end up?”
I tip my head to the side, my lips falling into a sardonic line. “How do you think?” I deadpan.
“All righty.” Dash salutes somewhat playfully.
“No, I know how it ended, I mean, what happened next, sweetheart?” Sterling asks, still patient and calm.
Still, I can’t help but be nervous. I’ve never shared this. This ugly, impulsive, angry, messed-up side of me. “Don’t judge me,” I start to say, but Dash cuts me off.
“We don’t judge you, we told you that, Juni. We aren’t here to judge. Just… to help.”
Smiling, I cup my hand to his cheek, my belly tightening as I discover his unshaven jaw. “I didn’t mean don’t judge me for the killing part. I mean about the next part.” I look between them, wincing. “I went home with him.”
“You went home with him?” Dash balks, unable to hide his shock. In retrospect, Justin always surprises me too. He never should have happened because I shouldn’t have gone home with him. Glancing between their shocked faces, I admit the cringiest part of the story.
“Sometimes when you’re really, really horny, you make super-bad choices.” I shrug, because the Juniper that I am now would never have dated Justin, or considered sleeping with him. But four years ago I was lost and lonely.
Bringing my hands together in my lap, I smooth one thumb over the other, repeatedly, watching myself do it. “Taking care of my sisters, running my business, working the land and keeping the house together and food on the table—I was just worn out. And I wanted… hot sex,” I explain, and when I look up, expecting judgment in their eyes, I find them nodding instead.
“I get it.”
“Same.”
Well, that was easier than I thought. “Anyway, we get through the meal—separate tabs, by the way?—”
“Let me guess, Justin’s choice?” Sterling asks, his jaw tensing as the story progresses.
“Yep.”
Dash snorts, a litany of curses floating out of him.
“We went back to his place and when it was time to do the deed, he asked if he needed to wear a condom or if I was ‘like the rest of them’ and when I asked him to clarify, he said, ‘a woman who has no problem taking care of things’ if he went unsheathed.” I take another bite of toast and another sip of tea, attempting to level the rapidly rising anger inside me. “Knowingly not using protection and risking pregnancy, only to assume I’d abort a child because he couldn’t wear a condom was the last straw,” I admit, wrapping the bag’s string of oolong around my finger before dunking and releasing it again.
“What happened next?” Dash asks.
“I had the jar of jam with me, he told me to bring it in. I grabbed it and before I knew what I was doing, I was telling him I needed to get lipstick from the car, and that I had sexy plans in store.” I shake my head, remembering the walk to my van from his porch. I remember telling myself, there’s still time to do the right thing. There’s time to not do this. You don’t have to do this . But the more and more I told myself I could stop, the more my body had a mind of its own. “I had tranquilizers in the glovebox. I’d picked up the animal meds for Hudson. I was going to take them to him the next day. But I popped open the glovebox and grabbed a few syringes of horse tranquilizers.”
I face them, taking in their expressions as the truth pours out of me. If they stop caring, if they want distance, remembering the change in their faces while I’m behind bars will be the only thing that will rehabilitate me. Seeing what I lost, the moment I lost it.
“I made a little cocktail of horse tranquilizer and vecuronium. It’s a medicine they give animals before surgery to block their nerve receptors. Mixing the two makes a nice little paralytic.”
“Did you know that before you did it?” Sterling asks, and I shake my head.
“Within reason, I knew what the drugs would do separately. Together, I wasn’t sure. But I gambled.”
“What happened next?” Dash asks. I’m surprised to see he’s no longer pale, and he’s halfway through his pie.
“I mixed the paralytic with the jam, and made him believe he was going to fuck me by having him lick the jam off my fingers.” I remember his mouth closing around my jam-covered fingers, acid hitting the back of my throat at the memory. “It only took about four minutes before he said he was feeling weird. I told him to lie down on the couch. A few minutes after that, he was crying about his legs not working, that he needed help, and that I should make myself useful and call 911 since it was probably my shitty jam that gave him botulism .”
“So he just… what? His lungs were paralyzed eventually and he died?” Dash guesses. Sterling, however, watches me in silence, winking for reassurance when I look his way.
“That might have happened, had I waited long enough. But… even in his delirium, he wouldn’t stop being a total asshole.” I close my eyes and picture the wood-walled home, the old hearth, the green shag, and the copies of Hustler littered over the worn coffee table. “So I used one of his barstools, and pulled down his Saturdays Are For The Boys flag off the wall, and smothered him with it.”
Silence. Sterling stares at me while Dash studies his pie crust.
“Those flags are stupid,” Sterling finally says.
“So douchey,” Dash agrees.
A tiny smirk lifts my lips.
“Everything about him was horrendous,” I admit, “but he didn’t deserve to die. I should not have done that. It wasn’t really self-defense as it was defense of all future women from a person so… offensive. ”
Sterling nods, as if it makes perfect sense to him. Dash stacks one arm over the other, bringing a curled fist beneath his chin. “What did you do with his body?”
For a moment, I forget I’m coming clean because the discomfort is completely gone. They’ve made me feel like I’m not sharing my darkest secrets but rather, chatting memories in a safe place.
“I wrapped him in that very flag and dragged him out into my van, then buried him under the oak tree out front.”
Their heads swivel to the window above the kitchen sink, which gives a portrait view of the old oak. The one we all love. Dolly paints it all the time. Bear climbs it as Honey claps. I think Ace, Ev and Deuce’s son, buried his first hamster under that tree, too.
While they’re still processing that the iconic tree is also a gravesite, I backfill details. “As he… decomposed ,” I say, uncomfortable with the word. “The oak tree got sick. Bark started falling off, leaves weren’t coming in, something was wrong. And I knew why. I knew Justin was beneath the ground, rotting the tree with his toxicity.”
“And the chemicals being emitted from his decomposition,” Dash adds logically.
“That, too.”
“Is he still under there?” Sterling asks, still peering at the oak, looking ethereal as ever with moonlight cascading over its branches, peeking through in poetic streaks.
I nod. “Yes and no. He’s under there, but now in pieces. I was afraid we’d lose the tree and that Hudson would have someone remove it, and find the body. So I dug him up and… Boiled his remains, buried him again. That way if Hudson dug the tree up, it’d just look like we buried some childhood dog or something.” I pause. “I admit, it wasn’t well-thought-out.”
Dash pales.
Sterling grips the back of his neck for comfort. I can’t tell if he’s squeamish or stressed. I hate that I’d bring him either emotion.
“There wasn’t much left by the time I dug him up, and I used my old 10-gallon pots I keep in the barn.”
“What did you do with the… runoff ?” Dash asks, burping around the last word as if struggling to not get sick.
“I made him into jam, and sent the jam to inmates convicted of hurting or killing children.” I think back to the day I spent researching who the jam would go to, and having to read all the legalities of what these men had done made me sick.
“You fed a person to other people?” Dash croaks out the question. He’s ghost white again, gripping the edge of the counter like he can’t find his equilibrium.
“Smart,” Sterling surprises us both with the singular word. He sits up a bit straighter, no longer focused on the tree out front. Instead, his gaze finds me, intense and deep. “There’s not a single trace of him to be found, and I’m assuming you didn’t deliver the jam yourself and used a dummy label?”
I nod. “I actually made it look like Smucker’s, which is a whole other legal thing but hey, once you murder, the rest feels… unimportant.”
“I can imagine.”
“Anyway, that brings us to number two. Mark. I met him in line at the art supply store in Oakcreek when I took Ivy to get new pencils. He mistook Ivy and I as a romantic couple and called us a bunch of dykes and said we are what’s wrong with the country.” I adjust in the barstool, finger-combing my almost now completely dried hair. “Two do not make a bunch. I looked it up. For anything to be considered a bunch, it takes five.”
“I know you didn’t clobber some idiot bigot in an art supply store, so what happened?” Sterling asks, pushing around the last bit of pie with his fork. I noticed Dash has gone between tea, pie and toast, likely looking to soothe his stomach any way possible. I want to tell him that time is what he needs to take his mind away from the idle worry, sickness and concern. Time and love. That’s what always does the trick for me. But instead, I answer Sterling’s question.
“I asked him to apologize for the rude things he said. I told him that Ivy is my sister, and even if she were my lover, that wouldn’t give him the right to say a single word, much less blame an entire country’s worth of issues on one singular couple.” Leaning in, I also lower my voice, not proud to put this in such crass terms, but it feels necessary. “He was terrible .”
“Sounds like it,” Sterl says, motioning for me to continue. “So what next?”
“He refused to apologize so when Ivy was putting her stuff in the van, I ran back into the art supply store. I told Ivy I had to pee. But I asked the woman at the counter what the name of the man in line was. Told him I think I got one of his bags, and that I wanted to call him to return it. She told me his name and the internet gave me the rest, easily.”
I can’t remember much about what Mark looked like, not now, all this time later. But I do remember how stubborn he was, even until the end.
“Did you break in?” Dash asks, his eyes widening. “What if he shot you? Juniper, you can’t?—”
“Four years, one month and one week. That’s how long ago it’s been since Mark Mumsen met his end, so please, please don’t retroactively stress yourself.”
“If you broke into his place, how’d you get him to eat the jam?” Sterling asks, finishing his tea.
“I knocked on his front door, he answered, I pulled down my shirt and he let me in. The rest was just promises of jam on my tits. I told him if he licks it off my feet, he can lick it off my tits. But of course, by the time he licked it off my feet, the paralytic was already well underway. He got on the couch as he lost use of his body and voice, I read him sapphic fiction out loud, then tore the pages up and shoved them down his throat until he choked.”
“Jesus,” Dash breathes, his eyes wide, signaling his despair. Knowing full well I may lose one or both of them, I continue to layer facts and details, hoping to protect us from a permanent break.
We are just getting started. I won’t succumb to loss just yet.
“I’m still me,” I whisper, tears springing unexpectedly to my eyes. “I just… I got to a point in my life where I couldn’t stand it. The one-off comments about my body, the whistles at job sites, the way their eyes go to my boobs before anywhere else or sometimes that's the only place they look… the ghosting, the lies, the cheating.” I shake my head, a catalog of men filtering through my mind. “Dolly, Ivy, myself, we all dated a bunch of duds. And they weren’t just duds. They were offensive. Abusive. Horrible. And I think when I used Hinge , I was hoping to break the spell. Find a guy who wanted to hook up but could do it without bringing all the awful bullshit along. And when he joked about chaining me to a stove to make jam my whole life, I snapped.”
More silence as Sterling considers everything I’ve said, staring into his cup, stroking a hand down his face with the other. Dash blinks down at his plate, both palms spread, flat against the counter.
They’re processing. I expected long bouts of processing where they both felt disgusted with me for the things I’ve done. I understand that.
“There are some things neither of you can understand. I lost my mom young, and my dad not too long after that. My entire life, all I’ve wanted was to make jam and have a loving little family of my own to serve. All I’ve wanted was love. A household full of it, no matter how that looked. You know? And not familial love, like with my sisters. Something engrossing and exquisite and passionate.” My pulse picks up as heat prickles along my cheeks and down my chest. “But you know what I got? I got pricks that wanted to feel me up and say crude things to me, egg me on and gaslight me when I dared to stand up to them. I got assholes and sexual predators. Over and over. And I know the answer isn’t murder,” I breathe, nostrils waving with each heated, hissed word. But I’m angry now. Not at them, but at this world full of men so terrible that a woman would rather be alone with a bear than a man.
Taking me off guard, Dash speaks, still pale but now his slice of pie is gone. That’s a good sign. “The things women have to deal with,” he says, shaking his head, sipping what seems to be the last of his tea. I get to my feet to refill the kettle. “But I’ve never heard that name—Mark Mumsen.”
“He wasn’t from Bluebell. He was from Riverside. I think I got lucky in that regard. Only a few of the men were actually from Bluebell. It’s how, maybe, I’ve avoided suspicion.” I lift one shoulder then let it fall. “Truth is, I don’t feel bad for those men not being alive, and because I don’t feel bad, I rarely revisit it. Once the shock and adrenaline wear down, I feel good.”
“No regrets,” Dash breathes.
I nod. “No regrets. I don’t want to be a murderer, but I don’t want those men to populate the world either.”
“Mark,” Sterling loops back. “What did you do, you know, after you smothered him with the pages of the lesbian romance book?” He smirks, and I love the way the hair at his nape drags over his collar just slightly when he shakes his head. I’d love to run my fingers through that soft hair while I encourage his mouth to find Dash’s.
“I learned my lesson from Justin. It was… disgusting and messy. And burned the bottom of my pots,” I tell them as I tear open another oolong tea bag. “I rolled him up in a blanket and ran him through a woodchipper I bought off Craigslist.” Plucking an apple slice from the pie, I drop it into my mouth, humming responsively at the sweet cinnamon flavor. “I buried his chipped remains.”
“You didn’t really want to make mulch?” Sterling questions, something like awe in his eyes. That’s what I told him when he drove me upstate to buy the chipper years ago.
With a sad smile I nod. “It was only a partial lie. I did want to make mulch for the garden, but the primary reason for buying the chipper was definitely Mark.”
“And Mark’s chipped remains are…?”
“Beneath the porch. I think that’s why my tomato plants aren’t growing anymore. All the poisonous men in the soil.”
“All?” Dash questions hoarsely, volleyed back to pale and sweaty. “There’s more than Mark?”
I nod. “That brings us to number three. Jeffrey Morgan. We matched on Soulmate Search ?—”
“I didn’t know you were looking for dates,” Sterling cuts in, sitting up straight as he pushes his empty mug toward me. I refill it with a new tea bag and hot water, and a squirt of honey because I know that’s how he likes it. “All these years you were… looking? ”
Our eyes idle before I break the contact to look at Dash. He peers at me the same way as Sterling—his eyes wide, brimming with surprise and something more, something I can’t quite place.
I nod. “My entire life, all I wanted was my own little family. Well, my jam and my family. And as soon as Dolly set her eyes on Hudson, I knew it was only a matter of time before I was the last woman standing. Ivy was unexpected, but now here I am. And I was right. I’m the last one to be wed, to find my happiness, to change my name and have babies and chaperone field trips and be yawning all day on Christmas because of all the Christmas Eve lovemaking.”
Unexpected tears cloud my vision, but I swipe at them before they can fall. Sterling takes me in his arms, embracing me while pressing his lips to the top of my head, strong hands stroking my back with calm reassurance.
“You’ll have that, just like your sisters,” he consoles as I try as hard as I can to hide my falling tears.
“I didn’t want to be a bad person,” I breathe against him, my words muffled by his strong chest. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone, I never wanted to kill anyone.” He loosens his hold to put just enough space between us that we can eye each other. Sterling smiles at me before casting a look at Dash behind me. A moment later, Dash’s chest comes to my back, and my body melts between the two of them.
Dash’s lips graze the backside of my ear, my hair sticking to his stubble as he whispers, “We know, Juni. We know.”
Their acceptance of my darkness makes my eyes sting and panic climb my throat. What if this is the tender moment before they turn me in? The calm before they do the right, sane thing? Turning, I place a palm against each of their chests, twisting my gaze between them.
“Please,” I beg, unable to keep the fear from streaking down my cheeks. “I didn’t want to be a bad girl.”
“No,” Sterling breathes, his brows tightening, forehead ridged with concern. “You’re not a bad girl. You’re not.”
“You’re so sweet, Juniper Sky. You know you’re the sweetest girl in all of Bluebell, don’t you?” Dash rasps, their words filling in the tiny bits of space between our three bodies. Dash tightens his arms around me, and Sterling does, too, leaving me squished happily between them. The weight of their bodies slows my frantic heart, steadying my pulse as I blink through, fighting the remaining tears as I nod.
Dash and Sterling step apart, leading me to my living room. Dash sits on the couch while Sterling takes an armchair near the hearth. “You know we love you, and we know where your heart is. And I may have a reaction to what you’re saying, but that’s not because I’m thinking bad things about you. It’s because I’m processing, that’s all,” Dash says, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees.
That’s exactly what I needed to hear, and I somehow think he knew just that.
“Maybe you finish telling us about Jeffrey Morgan over here, hmm?” Sterl suggests, getting to his feet only to crouch by the hearth. He moves logs around and starts a fire, while Dash drapes a blanket over my curled legs where I’m tucked at the opposite side of the couch as he is.
Once we’re settled back in, the proverbial spotlight is on me, along with a gentle reminder. “We gotta do some digging before the sun comes up, sweetheart, so the sooner we get it all out there, the quicker the three of us can figure out what our next play is.”
My mouth goes dry, and my eyes fall to the broken stitching on the old couch. I pulled the thread with my pinkie nail when I was eight and my dad was laying into me about using nail polish at the dinner table. Something about taking off the varnish, I don’t know. But I stare at that piece of thread, loose around the piping on the couch cushion, and focus on those last five words.
What our next play is.
Our.
As in, now that Sterling and Dash are aware, they’re as much part of this as I am. And while I know that no one is to blame but me, my heart swells from the declaration that my life means as much as theirs. Because that’s what it means, right? If they’re willing to go all in, they’re willing to go down in flames, too. And that must mean that they value me as much as themselves.
“Our?” I breathe, the word thin and wobbly, so small in such a big space.
“We’re with you,” Sterl confirms. My eyes veer to Dash, and he nods, a tiny wink lifting his cheek.
The fire crackles, and I stare into the dancing flames as I pick up where I left off, knowing now with all certainty that they aren’t going to run. They aren’t gonna bail. They’re not going to turn me in.
“Back to Jeffrey Morgan. Actually, back three years, nine months, two weeks.”