3
“You shouldn’t be here,” I yell over the engine and the thunder. I step forward, unsure if I’m even awake, as rain beats down on my shoulders. Cress is struggling to find her footing beside the loud car and she stares at me like I’m a nightmare.
“What about ‘I had nowhere else to go’ is escaping you right now?” She grunts.
The attitude’s the same. Good to know.
Pushing the cautious thoughts away I move across the driveway, careful not to step on her and reach into the Cuda to kill the engine.
Turning back to her, I don’t wait for permission before pulling her off the ground and into my arms. She’s soaking wet and covered in bruises so large it’s hard to tell where one begins and another ends.
My heart pounds in my chest at the sight of her.
It’s been two years.
The last time I laid eyes on her was his funeral and she spat at me.
“I don’t ever want to see your face again, Riggs Monroe.” She had been so serious I could hear the tone of her voice to this day.
So why? She could have gone to the hospital, to her mother’s. But she came here.
I carry her into the garage and carefully lay her on the couch, only for her to push herself up and away from me with a pained grunt.
“Careful,” I groan and back away from her.
I leave her on the couch and dart back into the rain to check the car—make sure whatever she’s running from didn’t follow her.
I stand in the downpour, listening for anything out of the ordinary, letting it cool the heat that builds between my shoulder blades and across my chest.
I swallow the nausea and run into the house, grabbing a change of clothes and the first aid kit just in case she needs it before returning to her.
I stop in the doorway at the sight of her, like my brain’s forgotten she’s real.
Her damp curls stick to her neck and her cautious hazel eyes scan the garage as her fingers dig into her ribcage.
Even from here it’s clear she’s struggling with every breath she takes.
Her head snaps in my direction when my boot hits the pavement and I raise both hands, “it’s just me.” This doesn’t soothe her but she breathes again, her brows pulling tightly.
“I’m not wearing those.” She stares at the clothes in my hand.
“That’s good, because they’re not for you.” I throw the first aid kit at the end of the couch away from her and tug off my soaked shirt, never taking my eyes off her as I exchange it for the dry one. They were for her but her attitude is feral and I won’t admit it.
Cress reaches for the first aid kit and hisses in pain. Before I can stop myself, I move across the divide and hand it to her. She snatches it away and sets it in her lap.
“Let me help,” I say to her and the look she gives me is vicious. “Alright.”
There was a time she begged for my help, my attention, my voice.
Now we’re nothing but strangers, caught in a bloodthirsty circle of memories and mistakes.
If I close my eyes I can hear her laughter as Koa causes a scene, dancing across tables in restaurants, opening boxes of cereal in the grocery store to taste test, or driving too fast just to listen to the world whip by.
But that’s not who’s in front of me.
Cress is tired, exhausted even, and as much as she hates me, something brought her here.
“What happened?” I ask, finally finding my balance as I trip over memories.
“Three guys showed up at the house. Threatening me and demanding shit.” She doesn’t look up from digging in the first aid kit. “This is useless… everything in here is expired, and I bought these for Rafe when he was eleven…” she holds up a box of Spider-Man bandaids.
“You’re still there?” I ask, stuck on the house.
“Yeah,” she snaps, “it’s mine.”
“I didn’t…” I sigh, “I know it is. I just assumed.”
“You assumed wrong,” she’s quick to shut me down and the memory bubbles up without warning. I can hear him plain as day like I’m stuck in it and unable to run.
“You think she’ll like it?” Koa jogs up the step, and spreads his arms out wide on the porch.
The neighbours across the street rake their lawn and stare at us.
I don’t blame them, Koa looks fresh out of jail with his tattooed caramel skin and harsh style of leather and work boots.
The Cuda probably doesn’t help, it’s not meant for streets like these. It’s loud, messy and fast.
“It’s not exactly… close.” I say as he shrugs, that’s Koa. When he gets a plan in his head there’s no stopping him. It’s full send or nothing. That penalty apparently applies to purchasing homes in neighborhoods where kids like us don’t belong.
“The hospital is five minutes away,” he says, pointing over the trees to the west of us.
“She finishes school this year.” It’s logical, I’ll give him that, but it’s a whole thirty five minutes away from the garage.
“There’s a shop out back and three bedrooms.” He sounds so excited and I just feel abandoned. “So Birdie can live with us.”
It’s selfish.
“So?” Koa smiles at me, that stupid smile that I can’t say no to.
“She’s going to love it,” I respond.
When I recenter myself in the present Cress is lifting her tank top and inspecting a nasty purple bruise forming on her ribcage. I sit straighter and try to control my emotions but it’s nearly impossible after seeing the state of her body.
“Who were they?” I ask her and she drops her wet tank top.
“I don’t know.” She inhales slowly and takes the expired antiseptic out and dabs it across the split skin on her cheek with her fingers without flinching.
“Did you give them what they wanted?” I ask. The attempts of keeping calm are failing and my control is slipping.
“I don’t have anything, Riggs,” she laughs,defeated and sad. “I told them that, but they kept going on about not killing me, that—” she pauses and I wait. “They were just there to rough me up.”
“What?” I sink to the recliner next to the couch and stare at her. I need the space to be able to breathe. “What exactly did they say?” I lean forward.
Cress stares at me. It’s deafening and it’s like all I can hear in my head is the screeching of tires and breaking glass.
I just need to keep telling myself that I’m doing it to protect her, she doesn’t need to know what really happened that night.
At least one of us can keep him, for who he was before that.
She clears her throat, “We were told to leave her alive. And that in three weeks someone would be back to collect the money.”
“Told by who?”
“If I knew, I’d tell you,” she snaps after another pained breath.
The silence that stretches across the room is agonizing, her tongue brushes over the cut on her bottom lip as she thinks of what else to say but something pops into her head and she sits up.
“A few months ago I started to notice a car parked outside the house, it wasn’t always there but more frequently than not in the last few weeks. ”
“Do you recognize them from tonight?” I ask.
“I never saw their faces, when I got home from work they were always arguing or talking to each other. I just figured it was new neighbours," she sighs. “But I found something…”
She clears her throat as I wait for her to explain.
“There was a box of Koa’s stuff I just couldn’t throw away, it had the bag in it…” she teeters off and her voice grows shaky.
The bag from the accident—the one the cops collected and gave to Koa’s mother.
“Okay,” I say, curling my hands together as another storm cloud booms above us.
“It had this book in it, it was small and brown. It was full of his writing, but I just thought it was nonsense. You know Koa.” She huffs, tears pool in her eyes and she looks away from me to get control of them. “Knew,” she corrects herself. “The back half was full of numbers.”
I stand from the chair and wander away, up to my office.
Part of the reason is to hide how painful it is not to tell her that I’m sad too.
That I lost him too. But she thinks I killed him.
Everyone does. I swipe the book off the table and bring it back to her, dropping it over the back of the couch.
“Did it look like that?” I point to the red inked numbers.
“Yeah,” she says, pulling the book into her lap.
“Koa owes money to someone,” I hiss through my teeth. That fucking bastard.
“No,” Cress shakes her head and sifts through the pages, “they were just common criminals, it’s a con or something.”
I argue, “I know what it looks like when he’s in debt to someone. That’s his. He started that book when we took this place over.”
“He’s dead, Riggs. What do they want from me?” She looks up at me with absolute fear painted on her expression.
“What they’re owed.” I cross my arms over my chest.
“I don’t understand,” Cress says. And she wouldn’t because Koa and I kept every single secret from her on purpose. To keep her safe. If he was here he’d figure out a way to fix this without involving her. Don’t you fucking dare, he’d say and spend the day in the office planning.
“Shit, Cress,” I exhale, “this garage doesn’t run on small jobs, or at least it didn’t always…”
“What?” She snaps.
“Koa, me… the boys and Birdie… we transported stuff.” I try to be vague but I can see by the way her expression shifts that I’m not going to get away with it.
“Stuff…” she questions, “what kind of stuff?”
“Stolen stuff.” I say, regretting the second it leaves my lips. “It paid for everything in here.”
“You’re lying,” Cress shifts, sliding off the couch but her body is still recovering from the beating and she stumbles slightly as she wraps her arms around her body.
“You’d never do that. He’d never risk Bird,” she argues.
“You can’t help yourself, making up bullshit to tarnish his name now that you’ve gotten rid of him.
You could never leave anything alone, Riggs. You were always jealous of him.”
Not for the same reasons you spit at me every chance you get. I want to scream at her.
“It paid for that fucking dream house you live in,” I clip instead.
Cress laughs, it’s hollow and dry.
“How do you think Koa paid for that with cash… it wasn’t because we were swapping stereos out.” I stare at her in disbelief. “Use your brain, Cress. You know what this is. You always knew what we were—what he was.”
She runs her trembling hands through her hair.
“So if he owes money, so do you!” She yells and I shake my head.
“Whoever came at you tonight, isn’t because of me…” I stop her in her tracks. “It’s because Koa never knew when to quit! He always wanted more!” That’s what got him killed, not me.
“You can’t help yourself,” she whispered, her voice defeated.
The weight of the secrets I keep would suffocate her and yet, I’d rather her take it out on me than lose what good she has of him.
“That name,” she says after a beat, pointing to Westfall in the book.
It’s one of the last entries in Koa’s handwriting.
It’s crossed out, a debt owed and paid. “It was in the other book.”
“The Westfalls?” A shiver runs down my spine. “Cress this is important,” I step forward, dropping tone along with all the anger I feel. “Do you remember how much money was beside that name?”
“Exactly what they told me to have ready.” She hears the seriousness in my tone and swallows hard. “Half a million.”