Chapter Thirty-Six
Thirty-Six
Caine
It takes a long time to dig a hole deep enough to bury a body, and almost as long to cover that body back up. By the time we’re done, dawn is revealing the pines around us in all their glory. The light through the branches paints the forest in muted shades of green and brown.
Margot’s barely louder than a whisper. “It’s pretty.
” She’s gazing at the trees. I’m looking at her.
Memorizing every detail, wishing we could stay here forever.
We’ll be farther from the body once we leave the woods, but that’s when it will creep closer.
Once we cross the tree line, it’s real. Today might squirm its way between us like a root breaking through a water main.
She could decide she doesn’t want a relationship with a literal skeleton in the closet.
Her gaze moves to the fresh dirt and the medium-sized pines I cut as a precaution against animals poking around.
Maybe it’s overkill, or maybe it won’t be enough.
The fucked-up part is I don’t even care.
What matters is that Nicholas is dead, and Margot is free.
That’s peace of mind I’d go to prison for a dozen times over.
Wrapping my arms around her, I inhale hard.
The tang of sweat and the soft, summertime smell of her fill my nose.
“I can’t believe you killed him.” Her voice is thick, cutting into my thoughts.
My heart hits my shoes. The moment of reckoning arrived sooner than I thought it might. How can I feel like I’m a second from shattering into a thousand tiny pieces, but also understand?
“Yeah,” I say, unable to keep the dread out of my tone.
Her inhale is wet and choked. “For me.”
What—
Spinning in my arms, she flings hers around me, shoving her face against my filthy chest. The words come out strangled. “Thank you. No one’s ever—I’m so sorry—” She sputters nonsense and bursts into tears.
I don’t understand, but I ease us both to the ground, sitting so I can rock her. The movement soothes me too. I don’t know how long she cries for, but it’s full morning by the time she stops.
Her exhale is shaky, and a self-deprecating laugh accompanies it. “Thank you.”
It’s terrifying how fast hope fills me. “You don’t have to thank me.”
“I should have been the one to do it.” Still sitting between my bent legs, she pulls the neckline of her camisole up to wipe her eyes. “It wasn’t your problem. You’re one of the kindest people I know, and you had to kill someone because of me. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t you dare apologize.” Admitting what I’m about to say feels reckless; now is probably not the best time to drag out my darkest secret.
But I want her truly out from under his shadow.
No more guilt, no more worries, no more feeling responsible for anything to do with him.
Ever. “Like I mentioned the other night, when I was in my twenties, I almost killed Joel. Sometimes I wish I had.” She tries to twist in my arms to see my face, but I hold her tight, keeping her back to my chest. I won’t be able to say what I need to say if she’s looking at me.
When she realizes I don’t want her to turn, Margot relaxes back against me.
“This was years after our mom died. Shane and I didn’t live at home anymore, but my tools were still there, so I’d go over on the weekends. Work on my motorcycle and this project car I was trying to get running for Delaney before she graduated.”
Even though the air is cool on my sweat-chilled skin, the memory of how hot the cracked pavement was beneath my back as I wrestled with the starter is visceral.
Where I should smell pine and Margot, gasoline and the bitter, metallic odor of old tools waft over me.
I can almost feel the sweat stinging my eyes.
“I was under the car when I heard Delaney and Joel fussing at each other in the house. That wasn’t unusual, but it would typically end after a minute with one of them storming off.
Slamming a door, throwing a phone, you know the deal.
This time, they kept going, getting louder and louder.
So I hauled myself out from under the car and walked into the house in time to see Joel backhand Delaney across the face. ”
Nausea chokes me, and I clear my throat. Even decades out, it makes me feel like I could dig Joel up and knock his teeth down his throat again.
“I shouted at Joel, asked if he was out of his goddamned mind. He wasn’t even ashamed; only pissed I was in the middle of it.
Delaney wasn’t surprised at all by his behavior, and that made me lose it.
He’d kicked my ass around the block hundreds of times growing up, but I’d never questioned that.
I was always in trouble; figured I had it coming.
” I clear my throat. “She didn’t, though.
It sounds ridiculous, but I never thought he’d hit her.
Wouldn’t have let her stay there if I’d known. ”
Margot makes a disapproving noise in her throat, her fingertips tracing the vines tattooed on my forearms, following the foliage up, down, and around. “You didn’t have it coming. None of you did, that’s not how you treat kids.”
I don’t know when I started rocking us both again, but I am.
“Most of it is a blur, but I hit him. He went down, and I kept hitting him. Couldn’t stop. Didn’t want to.” My laugh is grim. “At some point, Delaney ran to Gretchen’s—she lived next door when we were growing up—and she came over with her husband, and they pulled me off him.”
Margot’s sympathetic sound makes me press a kiss to the top of her head.
“When he came to, he was mad, but not half as mad as he’d been at me for other things. Mainly pissed his face was fucked up, and he’d have to come up with an explanation to tell the guys at work. He said something about me being just like him, and I left with Delaney.”
“What happened after that?” Margot’s voice is soft.
“I called Shane. He was livid too, of course. Delaney moved in with him; he’d just graduated law school and was renting a two-bedroom apartment downtown. She was on board. Shane was never home, so she had the run of the place.”
I laugh at one of the few funny memories from that time period.
“Delaney was set on being a biologist from the moment she learned it was a career option. So when she moved in with Shane, she started collecting roadkill and keeping it in his freezer to ‘dissect.’ The high school’s science offerings didn’t impress her, and she wanted to get a jump on her skills for college, I guess. ”
“No.” Margot’s horrified, but there’s a hint of a laugh in her voice. “What did Shane do?”
“He was traumatized. Called me going, ‘I told her she has to stop, and she said I’m ruining her academic future. She’s crying and won’t come out of her room.’ ”
Margot chuckles. “She did not.”
“Yep.” I smile, remembering showing up at the apartment to mediate. “She had his number. Shane does not do well with tears.”
“What happened to the roadkill?”
I shudder. “I took it and buried it. She was pissed, but I threatened to stop working on her car if she didn’t knock it off. We ended up finding her an after-school job at a butcher shop. Took the edge off till she went to college and had her own freezer to desecrate.”
“I feel like you’re about to reveal she’s a serial killer.” Margot’s fiddling with our hands, lacing and unlacing our fingers.
That makes me laugh. “Nope. I think Shane was worried things might go that way, but she’s turned out to be the opposite. She’s constantly rehabbing some injured bird or possum. Just has a very intense desire to understand how things work.”
“I hope she never wants to know how I work,” Margot mutters, then leans her head against my shoulder.
“Not to make it grim again, but I’m sorry you experienced that.
” Her voice is gentle. “I hate that for you all. Not Joel, of course—I hope he burns in hell—but you, Delaney, and Shane. You shouldn’t have had to grow up like that. ”
Talking about all this makes me feel too exposed. “A lot of people have it worse.”
“That doesn’t make it any less fucked up.”
“Now you sound like a therapist,” I mutter.
“Was the…incident…with Joel what made you go to therapy?”
“Not right away.” I rest my chin on her shoulder. “Had to be a complete jackass for a few more years first; realize how much I needed somebody to help me sort out my shit.”
“That’s hard to do. I’m proud of you.”
I’m about to play it off, the praise warming and disconcerting me all at once.
Margot’s inhale is deep, her body tense. “And I love you.”
My heart stops.
“I have loved you. It just scared me to admit it because…” She waves her hand.
Relief rushes through me. “You don’t have to explain.
” I press a kiss to the side of her head, blinking as my eyes prickle.
A rough chuckle squeezes past the lump in my throat.
I’m holding her too tight, but I can’t let go.
It takes me a moment to compose myself enough to croak, “For a minute after Nicholas, I was so scared I ruined this.”
Margot’s laugh is as wet as my eyes. “Nope. Nothing can ruin this.” Wriggling in my grip, she pokes my arm. “Now will you let me turn around and hug you, for fuck’s sake?”
I do, and she does. Chest to chest, matching inhales—it’s the kind of hug I’ve been looking for my whole life. I tell her that, also mentioning that if a heart could come in its pants, I’m positive mine would right now.
· · ·
Back at the house, we stagger into the shower together.
It isn’t a fun, flirty shower; it’s strictly business.
Margot has been quiet since we left the woods.
I can’t tell if she’s lost inside her head or simply exhausted.
I’m not the chattiest myself; I feel one blink away from going comatose.
All I can think about is how badly I want to crawl into bed.
As we’re toweling off, Margot blurts, “I’m so sorry you’re involved in this.
You aren’t stuck with me; you know that, right?
I’m a vault. I’d never tell anybody about—”