Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
HIM
“What the fuck did you just do?” I grunted, staring at the needle currently sticking out of my arm before looking back at Jules. At her wide eyes and flared nostrils.
“Exactly what you asked me to do?” she replied between heavy breaths.
“Pretty sure I didn’t ask you to stab me with whatever the fuck this is.” I wrapped my fist around her hand and squeezed until she loosened her grip, then I yanked the needle from my skin and tossed it aside.
“It’s just another benzo,” she whispered. “Little higher dose to counteract the tolerance you’ve built up.”
I could already feel my eyelids getting heavy. I shook my head and blinked a few times. “I can’t believe you fucking drugged me.”
Was it hypocritical as fuck? Sure was. But we’d already established I was more of a do as I say and not as I do sorta guy.
I stumbled back a step, my ass hitting the sofa before my entire body slid down the frame.
Little higher? Yeah, don’t think so. This chick hit me with a fucking horse tranquilizer.
I glanced into the kitchen to find my mother grinning at me. She didn’t have to say it. I already knew what she was thinking because it was what I was thinking too.
Told ya so.
I must have drifted off because one long blink turned into lost time. To the clock on the wall telling me almost an hour had passed and I was still sitting on the floor in the living room. I wasn’t dead, though. So, shit was looking up.
I shifted my weight onto one arm and tried to move but the rest of me wasn’t having it. I was still so fucking tired…
When I opened my eyes again, a handful of minutes later, I found Jules standing over me. Two of her fingers resting on my neck, her attention on the clock, and her lips twitching slightly without realizing she was doing it as she counted in her head.
“Just checking your blood pressure,” she said the moment she turned back around and saw me staring at her. “You were out for a while.”
“Ya don’t say,” I hissed.
She flinched at the edge in my tone but she didn’t step away. “I was just trying to help you relax so we could talk.”
I let out a low, humorless chuckle. “Doesn’t get more relaxed than knocked the fuck out, now does it, Nurse Keller?”
She stared at me for a few seconds, her eyes watering. And suddenly I was left feeling bad again. This shit was getting real old.
“Go on, then. Talk.” I sighed. “I’m listening.”
She nodded once before sitting in front of me cross-legged on the floor like we were about to have a fucking tea party or something. And my ass was highly underdressed.
“I never wanted to be a nurse, you know?” she admitted. If she expected it to be some big “got ya” moment, it wasn’t.
Lots of people ended up doing shit they never wanted to do when they were younger. Take me, for example. Serial killin’ wasn’t exactly on my list of career choices but here we were.
“Okay?” I prompted her.
“I didn’t like people. Still don’t really like them or understand them. But animals are different. Animals were never as difficult to understand for me. I wanted to be a vet or open my own animal shelter—”
“That’s great, Jules. I like puppies too, but—”
She kept talking over me, staring past me, instead of looking at me. “Which was why I was super excited when our parents took us to a petting zoo. Robbie was nine. I was eleven. It was the first time I’d ever seen someone milk a cow in real life…”
“Glad you’re feeling so chatty and all, but what does any of this have to do with—” I tried again.
She cut me off. “You said you wanted the truth, right?”
“I sure as shit don’t want you to lie to me,” I ground out between clenched teeth.
“Then let me finish. This is the only way I can do it.”
“Go on then,” I huffed. “Tell me more about these… cows?”
“Did you know that if you don’t milk a cow, infection can set in and she can actually die? It’s called mastitis. Her udders become engorged and the pain is excruciating. Like getting kicked in the testicles times ten.”
I winced, peeking one eye open while squeezing the other one shut at the thought. “Okay, great. I get the picture. And?”
“And not long after that demonstration at the farm, Robbie began sneaking into my room. Told me how people weren’t that different from cows. That sometimes they needed to be milked too.”
“He fucking didn’t…” I tugged myself straighter, my hands clenching into fists at my sides. I didn’t feel guilty about gutting the guy, but I sure as hell felt a lot better about it now. Guess my instincts were right.
“He did. But it was my fault.” She shook her head. “I was older. I shouldn’t have been that na?ve.”
“That was not your fucking fault, Jules. You were a fucking kid,” I reminded her.
“So was he. And he was my baby brother. It was my job to take care of him. And I did. For years. Until I started to question if I was doing something wrong. Because it felt so… wrong, Cain. I knew it was wrong and I kept doing it anyway.”
I reached out a hand to wipe the tears from her face, one palm flat on the floor to keep myself from tipping over. I didn’t have words for her. There was nothing anyone could say that made that shit better.
She shook her head again, and I didn’t know if it was because she was arguing with herself or the version of her brother she saw in her mind.
Whether it was victim or villain, I couldn’t tell ya.
The brain was funny like that, always trying to make sense of the fucked-up shit that didn’t make sense. Always trying to justify it.
“Robbie insisted it was okay. Told me that Dad said it was okay. That he wanted me to do it. All big sisters did it. They just didn’t talk about it.
That worked for a while too. See?” She took a deep breath and finally met my gaze.
“I wasn’t lying when I said my father made me do it.
To me, it was the truth. For a long time, it was my truth.
I honestly believed I was doing what my parents expected of me.
I didn’t like getting in trouble. I never had a rebellious streak.
I just wanted them to be proud of me. But that sick feeling never went away. Ever.”
That made two of us.
“So I told Robbie I was going to talk to Dad, ask him if what we were doing was wrong or not. I just needed a little reassurance. To hear it from someone else. Not even twenty-four hours later, my brother tried to hang himself. On Christmas morning. Right in front of the tree, knowing how much I liked to get a peek before everyone else was up. And when I found him, after I cut him down, he said he wouldn’t make it so easy to save him next time.
That he’d write a note telling everyone it was my fault for taking advantage of him. ”
Jules choked out a sob, and I tried to grab on to her. Tug her close to my chest. She just shrugged me off and scooted farther back on the floor.
“I never brought it up again. Never acknowledged what we did. What we continued to do, after he married Natalie. I never spoke about it to anyone. Not even to him. I just shoved it all down as deep as it could go until I didn’t feel bad anymore because I didn’t feel anything anymore.
Until you forced it to come back up again in the kitchen that first time. ”
“That’s… fucked up.” Fucked up didn’t cover it. But there wasn’t a word for what it was. It was fucking diabolical.
“What’s the difference?” Jules countered. “You were gonna kill me.”
“Yeah, but you’re not a kid anymore.”
“And that makes it better?” She lifted a challenging brow.
“The only thing that separates us from those animals you love so much is the ability to decide which lines you won’t cross. Mine is kids.”
“Mine is killing people,” she mumbled. “In case you didn’t notice, I suck at it. So thank you for doing it for me.” I cocked my head to look at her. She must have sensed my question without me ever having to ask it because she added, “Robbie. He needed to be put down.”
“Yeah, and why’s that?” I wasn’t arguing with her. I was just curious as to her reasoning all of a sudden.
“His wife told him she was pregnant. And my brother… he told her that he hoped they had a little girl who looked just like me,” Jules explained. “You corrected the mistake I made when I cut him down. So, like I said, thank you.”