Chapter 36 #2
I grabbed a plate and filled it with a little bit of everything, then packed up the leftovers and stored them for when Joel got back. He’d scarf down the rest. When I settled back on the couch with my plate, my eyes landed on a shadow in the corner.
The backpack.
I hadn’t dared to open it since I retrieved it from the lost and found in Las Vegas. It was Pandora’s box. Whatever escaped couldn’t be put back in.
The apartment was silent, save for the steady tapping of the ceiling fan pull chains as they rattled against each other.
Maybe I should open the backpack.
Like . . . exposure therapy.
I could prove to myself that it was just a backpack full of junk. The money I had won for Joel’s freedom—the eighty thousand Cole kept safe for me and the money from Vegas—was now in a safety-deposit box.
I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t just put it in my savings account. It seemed too risky.
I was still waiting for the other shoe to drop; for Valentine to rear his ugly head and demand what he was owed. If it came down to it, I’d give him the money in a heartbeat.
“There’s nothing scary inside the backpack,” I whispered to myself.
It was just clothes and prepackaged snacks from the train that probably needed to be thrown away anyway.
I didn’t want ants to get in . . .
The urge to do something other than crawl back into bed was unfamiliar. Might as well make the most of it since I didn’t actually feel like eating.
I abandoned my plate, grabbed a trash bag from beneath the kitchen sink, and snapped it open as I walked right up to the backpack, then paused.
Fear crept up my neck like kudzu vines.
Pandora’s box. The insidious thought wrapped around my throat as my heart rate ramped up inside my chest. Once it was open, I couldn’t put it back.
That was stupid. It was just a backpack. I’d empty it out, save anything that belonged to me, then throw the damn thing away.
Frankly, I should have just left it in Vegas.
I opened the mouth of the trash bag and laid it open on the floor, then unzipped the bag.
The puff of air that escaped the zipper smelled exactly like the cabin.
Immediately, I was taken back to West Virginia.
To mountain air. To endless conversations.
To losing my virginity. To warm morning cuddles.
To counting stars and tracing constellations. To him.
It’s just a backpack. I’m just emotionally raw after my session with Dr. Chen and Jake coming by. It’s just a backpack.
It’s just a backpack.
It’s just a backpack.
The decks of playing cards I had practiced with over and over again were sitting right at the top. I wouldn’t need those again.
Immediately in the trash.
I reached into the backpack again, then gave the playing cards a second look as memories played like a movie in my mind.
Jude eating me out while I went through speed drills.
The time I took a break from practicing and we took turns seeing who could throw cards most accurately.
The hour we spent building a house of cards only for it to come tumbling down when a particularly strong draft crept through an the window on a particularly breezy day.
Nope. Nope. Nope. They were just playing cards.
There were a handful of musty clothes we had packed. Those immediately went into the trash. No matter what Jude had said, washing clothes in the sink was not the same as a washing machine.
. . . Even if we had hung them out to dry during the day. The feeling of putting on crunchy, air-dried clothes should have been bothersome, but it wasn’t. It felt like wearing sunshine.
The snacks went into the trash without a second thought. Most of them were crushed to smithereens after endless days of travel across the country.
In my haste to switch backpacks after Jude was arrested, there was a handful of chips that I had never cashed out at the casino. Those, I kept. Maybe I’d go back to Vegas and play one more epic hand someday.
Someday.
Someday, when I could handle the thought of blackjack again. When I could redeem the thing I had truly come to love that he had tarnished.
Three mass-market paperbacks were wedged in the bottom. I had been reading one of them on the train. The page I had paused on when we disembarked in Arizona was still dog-eared.
It had been months, but I knew exactly where I had left off in the story.
It felt sacrilegious to throw away a book. It wasn’t the book’s fault that it had been purchased by a liar.
I froze as the four-letter word slipped through my mind.
Liar.
Maybe that’s what hurt the most.
Jude had shared so much with me. Things that I knew to be true. But he didn’t trust me enough to be truthful about who he really was.
No. Stop it. Jude’s lies are not my fault.
It was something Dr. Chen had reiterated over and over: we’re all responsible for our own choices.
The weight of Jude’s decision to not tell me the whole truth rested solely on his shoulders.
I had been through every iteration of why. Why hadn’t he told me? Why hadn’t he trusted me?
You can’t lie about something you don’t know.
I wanted to believe that he had a good reason for not telling me that he was FBI. That knowledge would’ve changed everything.
I would’ve immediately trusted him when he kidnapped me.
But I trusted him even when I didn’t know . . . Didn’t that say more about his character than the context his job title would have provided?
Knowing would have allowed me to trust him without hating myself for it. I wouldn’t have felt like a horrible person for falling in love with a man I was supposed to fear.
Had he lied about what he felt for me? Was that just a part of his cover too? A convenient character arc in the story he wove?
The last thing in the bag was a notebook.
It wasn’t mine. It was one Jude had kept to himself while we were at the cabin.
Most of it was daily logs. What we did. Timestamps. Notes of suspicious things that happened. Physical descriptions of the guys he had seen snooping around the cabin. It read like a police report.
I guess that tracked.
But the last few pages were different. Small verses of poetry littered the page. Tally marks ended some of the lines—probably where he was counting syllables to fit the meter. Small slashes crossed out words. He had listed synonyms in the margins as he revised his work over and over again.
I sank into the corner of the floor and wall, letting the darkness take me under as I read the most recent draft he had penned.
Unassuming, the way poison ivy
blends in until it marks you. Delicate.
Clever little foxglove; hidden power
beneath a petal men call frivolous.
Dangerous. Full of spice and bitterness.
Still. I’d drink her—begging and beholden.
Most dangerous of all, cyanide eyes
I believed were blue skies. Her smile as sweet
as nightshade, satisfying my hunger.
My clever girl. My delightful demise.