Chapter Nine
Tanner
Ican’t look at her.
The plan was to ignore her and walk home alone for the first time. We always walk together to and from school, but I can tell by her silence that she’s disgusted by me. I’m supposed to care what other people think but I just don’t.
Except Berkleigh. When she’s mad at me it makes me want to break things. When she’s sad, it makes me want to hurt people, and when she smiles and talks on and on and on—it’s really annoying, too—it makes me want to sit close to her. The other day I wanted to hold her hand.
It’s weird because I don’t like touching people and I hate it when they touch me even more.
“Why did you do that?” Her question is quiet and it reminds me that my clothes are still covered in blood.
“He was being an asshole.”
“You’re not supposed to say bad words, Tanner. You’ll get in trouble.” She puts her hand on my arm and I recoil. Not because of her touch but because I don’t want her to get blood on her skin.
“Who’s gonna tell? You?” I stop walking, curious what her answer will be. Is our friendship over? I’m not sure how I would react if she stopped being my Sweet Bee.
“Never. You’re my best friend, I would never get you in trouble.”
I nod, looking straight ahead as we keep walking.
We’re best friends and best friends don’t lie to each other.
This woman drives me fucking crazy.
She’s a lot stronger than what I gave her credit for, that’s for sure. It doesn’t change what she did to me when we were eleven, and it doesn’t absolve her of the consequences of her actions.
Or maybe it should, just a little.
I can’t fucking wrap my head around this situation.
Things were a lot easier, cut and dry, when we understood each other’s roles in our lives.
Now, lines are blurring together and all of these different feelings are confusing the fuck out of me.
The only one I understand is lust. That one’s easy, I’ve been dealing with it since I got back two years ago.
That’s a lie. I can at least admit that to myself.
I’ve been lusting after Berkleigh Brigham ever since her tits first made an appearance the summer before eighth grade.
By chance—calculated planning on my part—we walked out of our respective homes in complete sync.
She was heading to the local store for her mom and I was…
pretending I needed to help my dad with his truck.
Three minutes later, she was running back inside, sobbing, because I’d told her she looked like a whore.
Then I showed her a dollar bill and asked her if it was too much for a blow job.
It was cruel, I can accept that, but back then, the beatings from my dad were a daily thing, often ripping open the scars made by my uncle two years earlier.
To be fair, I was used to the pain. So much so that I could bleed without showing an ounce of discomfort on my face.
But every time my father rubbed his dick when he saw her had me growling like a feral animal.
He knew exactly what he was doing and my deeply ingrained instinct to protect her, despite my childhood anger, only got me more frequent and dangerous beatings.
And with each lashing of his belt, my resentment grew. My hatred became a living, breathing thing.
I didn’t just loathe her—although she was the epicenter of every negative emotion I had—I hated my parents, my so-called friends who made me ridiculously popular at school, and as a result, my entire existence.
Obviously, I wasn’t thrilled about wanting her to the point of jacking off to my mental pictures of her. At thirteen, my hormones should’ve been triggered by any and every girl within a ten mile radius. Except that wasn’t the case. My brain and body were hyperfocused only on her.
And for that, I abhorred her even more.
Today, I’ve got a fuckload of lust still brewing. Then there’s this other thing I’m not sure what to name. It’s warm in my chest, heavy, and makes me do stupid shit like wink and grin. The bitterness, however, is no longer a constant heat wave making my veins boil, but more of a low-grade fever.
Hell, I’m not supposed to be able to feel anything. Isn’t that what the three different shrinks in the military told me? So why is this five-foot-nothing little blonde who should only see hatred in my eyes getting a different side of me?
A better man would dig deep and analyze whatever it is that’s fucking with my head, but I’ve got bigger problems to deal with that don’t involve self-reflection.
After our conversation a few hours ago—and by conversation I do mean I talked, she listened, then did as she was told—I put her to bed and came straight to my office once she fell asleep.
Not gonna lie, I watched her like a love-sick stalker as she drifted into deep slumber, wondering what her dreams would be and if those fucking pricks would plague them.
Or maybe her subconscious is plotting a whole bunch of ways to get her revenge. That thought makes my lips tick up into a slow, demonic smile, and ever since finding her broken and sobbing on my front porch, I can pinpoint the emotion growing in my gut.
Calculated rage. I can deal with that one, too. I’m intimately familiar with it.
Simple and motivating, that emotion is the reason I’m damn good at my job and the reason I’m about to change every aspect of Berkleigh’s life.
Like I reminded her earlier, revenge is a meal that tastes better when served cold. If it’s hot, you get burned.
In short, planning is surviving.
In my office I take out one of the many burner phones I keep scattered around.
I come here every time Berkleigh takes a nap or zones out in front of the television, using this time to my advantage by locking myself in my work room and scouring the Internet and town cameras in hopes of finding her attackers.
Turns out Gerald, the bald guy from Lennox, has a rap sheet as long as my kill list. Armed robbery, assault, stalking, embezzlement, and on and on.
Charged on all counts but only convicted for assault in the second degree, he ended up doing a stint in NYSDOC—New York State Department of Corrections—up in Marcy, about an hour and a half northwest of Albany.
I guess all the rehabilitation programs in the world couldn’t change this motherfucker.
Good thing my practices have a one hundred percent success rate in stopping criminals from escalating.
When I tapped into his parole officer’s records, there was a short note about him finding a job as a security guard for an investment bank but, of course, those notes were barely afterthoughts so the actual name of the company wasn’t there.
I did get a number, though, and that’s the biggest lead yet so I’m running with it.
But before any of this is done, there’s something more important that needs my full attention.
Berkleigh’s home.
Under the cover of night, I run to her place and let myself in.
After I’d found her on Sunday night, I made sure to come over and lock up since she’d crawled—fucking crawled like an animal left to die—to my place, leaving everything here as it was.
I didn’t need her key since I made one for myself about two weeks after I returned from active duty. As if that’s any surprise.
As I get my first good look at the place since the incident, that familiar low-grade fever starts rising to dangerous levels with every scenario that I piece together from the damage in the house.
Broken glass in the living room, with blood on what’s left of her dining room display cabinet, litters the carpet next to the four-chair table set.
A flash of Berkleigh being slammed against the glass door and thrown on the floor assaults my mind.
When I turn to look at the stairs, the first thing I see is the small pool of blood at the foot of the last step. Farther up, I notice one of the spindles is missing, then find it lying just below in two broken pieces. Splintered and splattered with droplets of blood.
My mind tries to piece it together, coming up with Berkleigh falling, or more likely being pushed or kicked, down the stairs. She tries to break her fall but her momentum is too high. The wooden bar breaks and Berkleigh continues her fall.
Blood is all over her front door, her distorted handprints covering the floor and wall as if she fought to bring herself standing but failed miserably.
My jaw is about to crack open a few teeth from the amount of grinding I’m doing but, still, I keep going.
Upstairs is where I almost lose my fucking dinner.
Blood stains the hallway in thin streaks rather than massive pools, like she was being dragged by her hair, or her ankle. When I reach her bedroom, all I can do is stare at the bed where the sheets and bedspread are crumpled, one pillow at the foot of the mattress, the other on the floor.
My hope was to find wet stains or any type of DNA I could have tested, but all I found were areoles with a faint amount of blood.
I block the images of what probably happened, forcing myself not to see them so I don’t burn this fucking house to the ground and build her a brand new one.
It’s then I decide, she’s not coming back. It doesn’t matter what she wants and it doesn’t matter how hard she fights me on this. She’s not going to live in a house that’ll haunt her dreams for the rest of her fucking days. Not on my watch.
But first, I need this place scrubbed clean.
On my way back downstairs, I bring the burner phone up to my ear and make the call.
“Rottweiler. I need a clean up crew.”
“Roger that.” I don’t know his name, we don’t share that kind of information for safety reasons.
We punch in a number, give our DOGs code name, then the address.
That’s it. By tomorrow, the house will look like it did forty-eight hours ago, minus the glass door on the dining room cabinet that I’ll replace myself.
Then she can sell it. The house, I mean. Or she can keep it and rent it out. Her choice.