Epilogue
Jackson
May, 3 months later…
“Are you almost done? We need to get going.”
Phoenix’s voice calls out from the adjoining bedroom. Despite his words, he doesn’t sound hurried, merely curious.
“Well, am I? Am I nearly done?” I ask the man with me in the white-on-white en suite bathroom of the house where I’ve been living in with Phoenix for three months.
Although…it’s not quite so white-on-white right this moment. More red-on-white-on-white, what with Jones’ blood drip, drip, dripping and forming a splodgy puddle below him.
Jones’ reply is an aggravated squeal and a thrashing of his body within the ties holding him securely to the kitchen chair I sacrificed for this particular task.
“Babe?”
“Yep, I’m almost done,” I holler to Phoenix in reply to his impatient second yell. “Should only be a few more minutes.”
“Okay, good. We’re already running late, and the last thing we need—because of, uh, your current task—is for Mom or Dad to pop by to see what’s keeping us when we don’t show up at the agreed upon time for dinner.”
I briefly sweep my eyes over the tied-up Jones and the things I have set up around him. “Yeah, just a few more minutes oughta do.”
Phoenix appears in the open doorway to the bathroom and makes his own assessing scan of my set up. Doubt is stamped on his face in his raised eyebrows and pouted lower lip. “Hmm. If you’re sure…”
“I’m sure,” I tell him.
Another long perusal by Phoenix had him commenting, “I hope we bought enough bleach. We’ve got a lot of cleaning we’re going to have to do after dinner.”
Even though neither Phoenix nor I have expressly told Jones what we have planned for him, it doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. The plastic shower curtain laid out underneath Jones, covering and protecting the white marble tiles, crinkles as he wriggles and squirms against his bonds. But his struggling only results in a fresh gush of blood spilling from the handful of shallow gashes I sliced into his skin.
Rolling my eyes, I comment, “Really? Trying to get free of the ropes didn’t work the last dozen times you tried, but you thought…thirteenth time’s the charm?”
The gag in Jones’ mouth prevents me from understanding the words he tries to scream at me, but I’ve no doubt they’re the foulest and vilest of curses in his vocabulary, based off the fiery anger blazing in his eyes.
“You don’t really have any grounds to be quite so pissed,” I tell him. “You’re not an idiot. Actually, I always had the impression that you were quite intelligent. So, you had to have some sort of an idea that this is how things would play out.” I watch as Jones shakes his head back and forth, making an insistent, wordless denial. “Really? Then what did you think would happen when you turned up here? Westerly isn’t that big of a town. I’m not sure how long you were here before we spotted you, but did you really think that you could get away with following us around unseen?”
The knife I used to cut Jones is long and slender, and Jones squeals a protest when I pick it up from where it’s resting next to me on the lip of the tub.
My current plan of action was hastily plotted and swiftly launched, once I clapped eyes on Jones around town. He was much too close to Phoenix’s whereabouts. I felt the immediate need to eliminate the possibility of him being a threat but, in hindsight, I probably should’ve taken the time to purchase a knife made just for this task. This is Phoenix’s favorite fish fileting knife—he employed it just the other night while making us lemon rosemary salmon—but I doubt he’s going to want to ever use it again for food preparation purposes after this.
I’m not sure why I keep stressing this point with Jones. “Come now, you had to know this very situation was a likely outcome once you set foot in the same town as Phoenix. All you had to do was stay away. We wouldn’t have gone looking for you, and I never would’ve bothered with you if you hadn’t made the first move. But you did. And now…”
I idly rotate the knife’s handle in my grip, over and over, the smears of blood along both sides of the blade dampening the glare of the overhead light from reflecting off the smooth, polished metal.
“You can’t be surprised that this is how it all ends.”
Jones lets his eyes fall closed. A moment passes, and then his eyelids reopen and his gaze meets mine head-on. I finally see a flare of recognition in his brown eyes. Jones’ oaky eyes are so much less remarkable, less compelling, less mesmerizing than Phoenix’s deep, luxurious pools of espresso. But within Jones’ eyes, I see knowledge. I see understanding.
Those eyes are silently telling me that he sees me. He sees who I really am. He understands my very soul.
And now he knows just what lengths I’ll go to in order to get what I want.
Resting my forearms against my legs, the sharp, narrow length of the fileting knife dangles loosely between my knees. I lean closer to Jones and whisper a truth he should’ve already realized. “Phoenix is mine. Months and months ago, when y’all set yer sights on him, you might’ve thought he was yours. But he’s not. He never was. He’s mine. And he’ll stay mine for as long as I want. Forever seems like it almost might be long enough.”
Oh, yes, Jones sees me. He understands.
Doesn’t stop him from futilely shaking his head no, those brown eyes wide and pleading, as he watches me rise from the edge of the tub with a sigh.
“And it’s not about the money,” I add. “For y’all that’s all he was, right? His money? And you wanted it. Me… I could care less if he lost all of it today and we both ended up living out of a car. I’ve done it before, I can do it again. Not that we’ll need to–Phoenix’s people wouldn’t let it come to that. Naw, for me, I just want Phoenix because he’s Phoenix. He’s mine. And nobody’s gonna be takin’ away or harmin’ what’s mine. Never again.”
With Jones nicely trussed up like a Christmas goose, it’s nothing at all for me to circle around behind him. I grab a full handful of his thick brown hair, hold his head nice and still, and easily score a long, thin slice through the delicate skin and flesh at the base of his throat.
Unlike my earlier cuts, which were only for prying information from Jones on the whereabouts of Mueller and Silva, I intend for this one to go deep. I’m no longer interested in gaining truthful responses to questions about motives and plots and threatful intents. The time for playing is over; Phoenix is right, we shouldn’t be late for dinner with his parents.
Desperate gurgles force gush after gush of liquid crimson to cascade down from Jones’ neck and onto his chest. This new blood joins the dried remnants of the old, a natural paint coloring the black outlines of tattooed adornment in a rainbow of red.
Phoenix pops his head into the bathroom again to let me know that he laid out clothes for me to change into on the bed.
“Hmm. Thank you, Phee.”
“Of course, love.”
The waterfall of blood is slowing to a trickling stream and Jones’ head droops down heavily. The rise and fall of his chest comes slower and slower.
“And you said you can have full permission to borrow your friend’s boat whenever you want?” I ask Phoenix, wanting the reassurance that the next phase of my plan is well in hand.
“Not only permission, but encouragement,” Phoenix replies. “Hadley’s planning to be in London for at least another six months and he doesn’t want his boat sitting in dock, being unused for that long.” Peering at his reflection in the large mirror over the sink, Phoenix smooths down a section of hair, although, to me, his silky, jaw-length dark hair didn’t look to have a single strand out of place. “I can tell him that I took you fishing,” Phoenix says, his need to primp temporarily sated. “That way we can excuse away any accidental blood. You know...just in case.”
It sounds like a reasonable idea, except... “Didn’t you tell me once that you hate fishing?”
“Almost in direct proportion to how much I love you,” he replies.
“Which means...”
Phoenix’s answering smile looks as goofy and giddy as the one I can feel sitting on my face. “He probably won’t believe me, because I hate fishing. Passionately, totally, fervently.”
“The way–”
“Yes, the same way I love you. Although, not as much. Because, sweetheart, my adoration for you...sometimes it feels like my body can’t even contain it all.”
Jones is finally completely still. No oxygen is going in and out of his lungs. The blood has stopped seeping from the gaping slash across his neck.
A dead body is probably not a typical accessory for a love confession but, what the hell, why not.
“You know I’ll do anything for you,” I say.
While I was trying not to be crude and outright refer to fucking, Phoenix’s gaze slips past me to the man I just casually murdered in our en suite bathroom. Which is fair, I suppose. A gift of bloodshed does convey a depth of devotion that sex or a bushel of flowers could never match.
“You know I can’t live without you.”
“The sessions with Dr. Bhatnagar are supposed to be fixing that,” Phoenix replies, batting his long, thick eyelashes and attempting to appear innocent.
I amend my statement to “I don’t want to live without you.” I’m still baffled by the way I feel, which shows in my voice as I admit, “I can’t imagine that there exists another person in the entire universe that I could love as much as I love you.”
Phoenix reaches for me, but then changes his mind when he recalls that I have a decent amount of Jones’ blood splattered on me.
“And that’s why I’ll happily lie right to my best friend’s face if I have to, even though he’ll know I’m lying. For you. Everything I am, everything I do, from now until forever...it’s all for you.”
“Ditto?” I offer feebly. The sort of verbal poetry Phoenix is capable of is far beyond my abilities. The best I can do is promise him everything that he’s promising me.
His fingers twitch and Phoenix groans as he states, “I really, really want to touch you right now. And I can’t. Or rather, I shouldn’t.” Tipping his head at the messy situation behind me, Phoenix orders, “Do what needs to be done with...that. Then hop in the shower to get clean. Do it quickly, though, I want you in our bed as soon as I can have you.”
“But what about dinner? Your parents?” I remind him.
When Phoenix turns to leave the bathroom, my gaze drops to the perfect fit of his dress pants over his pert ass. I still don’t think I’m attracted to other men or the male body, but Phoenix... Phoenix is Phoenix. And him I definitely find fucking attractive, seemingly more and more as each day goes by.
“I’ll give them a call and tell them we won’t be able to make it tonight. It seems I’m too sick to venture over to their house for dinner.” Glancing over his shoulder, Phoenix gives me a sassy wink.
“Oh, so you’d not only lie to your friend for me, but you’d also lie to your parents, too?”
“Anything means anything,” Phoenix replies. A thoughtful expression crosses his face. “But would it be a lie? Pretty sure if I don’t have you naked in my bed, and my cock buried in your ass, within the next hour, I’m going to die. Sounds to me like I’m plenty sick.”
“Hmm. Fair enough.”
“Now, go on,” he tells me. Strolling back into the bedroom, Phoenix’s voice floats back to me, full of filthy promise and needful lust. “I’ll be in here, waiting.”
Grabbing the knife again, I hack through the ropes tying Jones’ body to our former kitchen chair. It tumbles and falls to the plastic shower curtain-covered floor with a wet, meaty thump. A roll of duct tape is nearby, at the ready to use to secure Jones’ plastic shroud.
I get the shower curtain wrapped around his legs and torso, winding long strips of torn off duct tape around it. Before covering up Jones’ face, I stop to admire the sneer still etched on his death-locked face—the fabric gag stuffed in his mouth not preventing him from looking pissed off about his untimely end.
“Did you hear that, Jones?” I ask my former, uh…coworker, I guess. “Phoenix Wilding will do anything for me.” For obvious reasons—being dead reasons—Jones doesn’t respond. “And Jones, you, unfortunately, got to find out that I’ll do anything for him. I’ll burn the world down if I need to. Phoenix Wilding is mine. And to keep him…nothing, and nobody, will get in my way. I’ll do whatever it takes. Anything. Anything at all. If this isn’t how you wanted things to end, you guys really should’ve locked me up in a stronger box. Because, once he set me free…”