Authors: Julie Hockley
The pastures came down the hill in front of the house where a handful of horses neighed
and walked around. Meatball used to love tormenting
them.
A few times when we had been here early in the morning, I had seen Lorne walking out
to tend to his horses, always with a stiff drink in his hand. I guess that made him
a functional drunk. I wasn’t used to that kind of d
runk.
Tiny and I were pacing about on the porch for a while before the doctor came back
out. When he appeared through the doorway, Tiny disappeared. He knew his place, and
he knew what was none of his busi
ness.
“It was inevitable,” Doctor Lorne told me as he dried his hands on his smock. “There
wasn’t much I could do. Her body never let the fetus develop. I just made her more
comfort
able.”
I stared ahead. “Thank
you.”
“She’s awake, if you want to go see her.” He went back in
side.
Carly was no longer pregnant. Carly was no longer going to be bringing a child into
our monstrous lives. This was what I had wanted, wasn’
t it?
I went back into the house and into Carly’s room. There was a nurse busying herself
by Carly’s bedside, checking Carly’s temperature, checking her IV. When she was done,
she lef
t us.
Carly was awake, eyes still on the ceiling. Except for the pillows plumped under her
head and the change of clothes, it was as if she hadn’t moved at
all.
I felt like all the air had been sucked out of the
room.
What was I supposed to say to her? That I ought to be shot for telling Spider that
he needed to make sure this baby never came t
o be?
I stood over her. “Carly,” I started to say as the fist in my throat expa
nded.
Carly turned her eyes and looked through me. “It’s for the best. It’s like you said,
there’s no way out for us. This is the life we made. This is the life we’ll di
e in.”
I came to grab her hand, but she pulled away and pulled the covers up to her chin,
turning her head
away.
I stayed for a minute, searching for something to say. I came up incompetent. I wasn’t
built for this kind of s
tuff.
When Spider finally got there, we had been there just a few hours. He sent a cloud
of dust storming through the air as his car came to a halt. He ran past me on the
porch without ever noticing me, his eyes straight ahead, desperate to see C
arly.
After a while he came to join me on the porch and sat, staring at his shadow on the
floorbo
ards.
“Will she be okay?” I asked him through the sounds of crickets in the dark
ness.
“Physically? She’ll be fine. She just needs to rest,” he said. “But every time she
miscarries, she changes. She gets a little darker. None of this is her fault. It’s
a medical thing. Her body just keeps fighting against any pregnancy. There’s nothing
the doctors can do to change that. She’ll probably never be able to have kids. But
Carly sees more into this than that. To her, the miscarriages are a form of punishment.
She says it’s God’s way of retaliating against us for what we do, what we’ve
done.”
“How many have there been? How many times has she miscar
ried?”
“This is her fourth miscarriage,” he tol
d me.
“So why does she
keep—”
“Why does she keep getting pregnant knowing that she’ll probably never be able to
have children?” He shook his head. “She has this idea of what her life
should
look like. She misses her family and wants what her sisters have. A bunch of kids
running around. A normal family
life.”
“This won’t happen again,” he prom
ised.
I was about to apologize for what I had said on the plane, but then I realized that
Spider was talking to him
self.
“I can’t let her do this to herself anymore,” he breathed, his head in his h
ands.
I left Spider and Carly alone so that they could grieve and regroup; I sent Tiny on
an errand before I drove
off.
I should have been off to travel for business. Especially with Spider out of commission
for however long it took. But Doctor Lorne’s farm was too close to my favorite place
in the world for me to pass up the opportunity to stop by. It felt like a lifetime
ago since I’d last been. In some ways, it had been in another
life.
Besides, it was already n
ight.
When I turned onto the gravel mile-long road to the cottage, I missed Meatball. This
was usually the point when he’d start to go nuts in the car, forcing his meaty head
through the small opening I’d leave for him when we drove. He always had to be the
first to smell the cottage air. Then he’d pummel over me as soon as I opened my car
door so that he could be first to the porch, first to the pond, first to get everything
in the cottage soaking wet and smelling of waterlogged
dog.
Meatball had led a charmed life with me as far as a dog’s life was conce
rned.
But that hadn’t always been the
case.
The first day I laid eyes on him, Meatball was in a cage that was barely big enough
for him to stand in. I had business dealings with a creep of a distributor who ran
dogfights on the side as a pastime. We were walking past the two dozen cages of barking,
raging dogs. That was how I noticed Meatball. He was the only one that wasn’t acting
up. He sat and watched us go by without a s
ound.
When the meeting ended and I was walking back to my car alone, Meatball was there,
waiting for me by the car. I had no idea how he had gotten there. I hesitated at first—he
was, after all, a huge ball of meat that was trained to fight to the death. Though
the dog didn’t growl, he wasn’t moving either. I opened the door; he got in and took
possession of the front seat, staring straight ahead. I glanced around, shrugged,
and followed him in. We never looked
back.
It took a while before he would even let me give him a bath. I had to coax him with
hotdogs. He had a big gash that went from one ear down to the side of his jaw and
multiple lacerations on his thick neck and paws. I cleaned him up and decided to keep
him. Or he decided to keep me. I wasn’t really sure how it had really happ
ened.
Before I knew it, I had a dog named Meat
ball.
As soon as I opened the door to the cottage, I knew Emmy had been there. It was the
way the dust had shifted, and it was the jacket she had left on the back of one of
the kitchen chairs. My heart bounced. I didn’t know which was worse—the thought that
she might still be there and see me, or the thought that she was
gone.
I kept the light off and crept upst
airs.
The bed was e
mpty.
I stared at it for a while, as though it were unfamiliar. The only way I remembered
it was with Emmy in it. Now it was just sheets and a mattress. For
eign.
I climbed in and turned my face into the pillow. I could still smell her shampoo.
Or I dreamed of the smell of her sha
mpoo.
I dreamed that my face was in her hair. I could hear her soft breaths over the song
of the crickets out
side.
I honestly tried to resist at first. Hearing her breathing, so close, was a piece
of my he
aven.
But my fingers crept up the side of her body, following her curves, over skin and
T-shirt while she squirmed in her sleep. By the time my fingers made it up her neck,
she was awake and had flipped over, her face flush and plump from sleep. Her sweet,
teasing smile made my darkness cru
mble.
With my fingertips over her eyelids, I bade her to close her eyes before putting my
lips to hers, drinking in their smoothness. It was like silk falling over an a
pple.
I worked my way down to her neck. What I really wanted to do was bite off a piece
of it, to keep. Instead, I nuzzled in hard, on purpose. She twisted, trying not to
l
augh.
I kept going to the top of her chest, jealous of the collar of her T-shirt that bordered
her clavicle. I glanced up, catching Emmy’s emerald eyes peeking through thick eyelashes.
She never listened to me, not even at play … but God, did I love to see those
eyes.
I kept our eyes locked as my chin ran over her cotton T-shirt while my fingers crept
up to pull her shirt up, revealing her delicious stomach and tiny belly button. I
growled, took the skin between my teeth, and gently tugged. She laughed, fin
ally.
I loved to hear her l
augh.
I loved that I could make her l
augh.
I wished she would laugh al
ways.
I kissed her stomach, and she resisted, twisting again, taking a slight jump back.
Gasping. I chuckled and kissed it again. She screamed, in horror. I looked up to find
her pushing herself up to the wall, away from me. I tendered my hand to her, trying
to calm her, but she screamed again. Her hands were covered in b
lood.
I looked down at the beautiful milky skin of her belly to find it oozing red, a gash
in place of where my lips had been. I tasted her blood in my mouth. It was thick and
lusc
ious.
My eyes shot open like a bullet had gone off in the dead of night. I sat up in bed
and took a couple breaths to shake it
off.
I jumped out of bed and went to the fridge to get a drink. It was totally empty. Not
even a ketchup bo
ttle.
I flipped the switch on and checked the cupboards and the pantry. They had also been
cleared out. I grit my teeth and grasped the back of the kitchen chair. I closed my
eyes and took a few more calming breaths, resisting the urge to fling the chair across
the
room.
I sighed and pushed the kitchen table over. There was a loose board where I usually
hid a stack of cash for emergencies. One of my many spots around the prop
erty.
I took the stash out and poorly hid it under the pillow of our—her—bed. So that the
next time Emmy was desperate for money and couldn’t afford damn groceries, she would
miraculously come across this hidden stash of cash. I only hoped that she wouldn’t
be too stubborn to tak
e it.
Before closing the cottage door, I put everything back the way it was, as though I
had never been there. I sat in my car for a while and looked at my little cottage,
the place that I loved, the place where I loved. It was her place now—hers and Meatba
ll’s.
I was drumming my fingers against the steering wheel, debating … then ran back inside
to get the jacket that Emmy had forgotten. I put the key in the ignition and vowed
to never re
turn.
UNHINGED
Griff, with the smile that could melt an ice rink and the arms that could crush a
car. Griff, with the shot of enflamed hair that could only be overtaken by mine. It
was hard to not let his effortless joy spread through when I was around him. Before
I knew it, I was smiling, with such force that I could feel it in my t
eeth.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him as I pulled out of his grizzly arms and bent
down to reassure Meatball that this was a friendly at
tack.
“I could say the same for you.” His gaze jumped from the peeling wallpaper to the
secondhand furniture to the disgusting stains that covered every possible surface
of the house. “Is this how the other half l
ives?”
I heard a cackle to the side, where Hunter was fidgeting by the archway into the living
room.
“Is this how the other half lives?” he repeated to himself, giggling, shaking his
head in utter amazement. And he continued to stand there, impervious to the fact that
he was sur
plus.
“How did you find me here?” I whispered to G
riff.
“Is there somewhere we can talk?” He eyed Hunter from the corner of his eye. “A
lone.”
“My room is at the top of the stairs. Behind the cur
tain.”
He sighed. “Sounds glamo
rous.”
I went to the kitchen to put the stolen food away. Meatball and Hunter were on my
tail; only one of them was wel
come.
“Do you know
who
that is?” Hunter was so excited he was vibra
ting.
I stood on my toes to put a box of cereal up on the top shelf. “No. I have absolutely
no idea who that man I called Griff and hugge
d is.”
“That’s Griffin the Grappler Connan.
The
Grap
pler.”
I was sure that if I’d turned around, I would have found that Hunter had tears in
his
eyes.
“He’s the best fighter known to man! His technique, his persistence, his dedication
to the sport … I cried when he retired. I have his poster in my
room.”
When Hunter’s voice turned to that of a tween girl, I threw whatever was left of the
groceries into the cupboard and stepped
back.
“Oh my god!” he peeped. “You think he’d sign my poster if I asked
him?”
“I don’t know, Hunter,” I said as I got out of the kitchen as quickly as I could.
I had so many questions lighting up my brain that I couldn’t afford to focus on anything
else.
“Can you ask him?” he called out from the kitchen as I ran up the st
airs.
It took me a little while to come to terms with the fact that Griff,
my
Griff, was under the same roof as me. This was the same Griff who had been at the
Farm, entrenched in the underworld with me. This was the same Griff who had loved
Rocco as a brother, as much as I had. This was the same Griff who had known, though
hated, Cameron. It wasn’t until I saw Griff lounged on my bed that realization really
set in. I hadn’t imagined it all. Cameron, Rocco, Carly—they had really existed. Which
meant that Spider also existed; he still l
ived.
Having Griff there was like having characters in your favorite horror novel come to
life.
“I’ve been waiting here since last night,” he told me in his colossal English accent.
“Interesting mates you have. Seems no one knows anything about where you go or what
you do around
here.”
I stood by the doorway, trying to find something to do with my
arms.
He pointed to the ceiling. “Looks like the roof’s about to cav
e in.”
The roof had been leaking into my room since I had moved in. I mostly ignored it.
I didn’t have a window, so at least I knew when it was raining out, and Meatball would
enjoy the water bucket that would fill up once it started raining a
gain.
When I had finally settled on coolly stuffing my hands in my pockets, Griff sat up
and smiled. The sleeves of his button-down shirt hid the tattooed skin that I knew
was somewhere under t
here.
“You gonna sit or
what?”
“I’m fine standing.” I attempted to lean against the wall, but I misjudged how far
from it I was and staggered a few steps back ins
tead.
This made him laugh his deep belly laugh. He was on me before I could find the edge
of the wall. He grabbed me in a tackle and carried me to my bed, where he sat me down
and kept me in his clinch. I had forgotten how much warmth exuded from Griff. He didn’t
hold back anyt
hing.
Meatball had taken a seat in front of the door, watching every move I made. I didn’t
know much about canine behavior, but I could swear he was mad at me for some reason.
I assumed he was still upset at having to leave Cameron’s cot
tage.
“You don’t know how glad I am to see you,” Griff said, his voice low and solemn. “Can’t
say I ever expected to see you again. But when I got here, got so close, and you weren’t
here …” He caught his breath. “Well, I thought I was going to go me
ntal.”
“Yeah, Hunter has that effect on people.” Honestly, I had never expected to see him
either. The last time I had seen Griff, he was working for drug barons in the middle
of a cornfield somewhere in the eastern United States. I had no way of ever being
able to find him a
gain.
“I’m just glad you’re here,
safe.”
I pulled away so that I could look him in the eyes. “How on earth did you find me …
here, of all pl
aces?”
“I’ve got a guardian a
ngel.”
He got up, searched through the red duffel bag that he had flung on my bedroom floor,
and threw a grocery-sized paper bag onto the
bed.
“Go ahead,” he insisted when I hesitated. “Take a
look.”
When I opened the bag, I found money. Stacks and stacks of hundred-dollar bills. I
couldn’t hide my surprise when my head popped up. Griff mirrored my astonish
ment.
“A few days ago, a couple of guards came up to me, told me that I was done guarding
the shed, and blindfolded me,” he explained and turned his eyes to the sky. “I thought
for sure that I was a goner, Em. We drove for hours, or at least it felt like it.
No one talked the whole way. Then the car stopped. They pulled me out, handed me the
bag, and gave me a sealed envelope that had this i
n it.”
Griff took a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it t
o me.
I unfolded it delicately, like I was disarming a
bomb.
Emily. 1777 Riverside Road, Callister
, NY.
My first name. My address. Neatly t
yped.
“I don’t understand,” I said as I held on to the piece of paper. My hands were shaking,
and I didn’t know
why.
“Neither do I,” he admitted, taking my hands, steadying them. “The guards told me
to walk south and took off. When I took the blindfold off, I was alone on the side
of a logging road with a bag of money, my stuff, and the only key I had to find you.
I walked for two hours before I found a town and a convenience store, which was also
their bus sta
tion.
“The weird thing is that I’d been planning my escape from hell for weeks, and I was
about to run when they gave me my leave. I was going to come find you, rescue you
from that asshole. That hellhole he was keeping you in.” A drop of water fell from
my ceiling into the bucket on the floor. His mouth stretched thin. “What new level
of hell have you gotten yourself into this
time?”
I couldn’t really disagree with Griff. The house made a pigsty look like a palace.
But it was the only thing I could count on. At least when I woke up in the morning,
I knew where I was. With the rest of my life completely in turmoil, I needed this
stability. This place was like the bully you befriended just so you could get a little
p
eace.
“It’s really not that bad of a place,” I said. “It grows on you after a w
hile.”
“If you say so. Doesn’t really matter, though. It’s not like we’re sta
ying.”
“It’s
not?”
He patted the paper bag. “There won’t be much left after I pay off my loan sharks,
but I’m sure we can afford to live somewhere better than this sh
anty.”
We? It had suddenly dawned on me that Griff meant to live … with me. It had also struck
me that I didn’t want Griff to leave. That I
wanted
to him to stay … with me. But I couldn’t leave this fleapit, ei
ther.
“I can’t leave, Griff,” I confessed, my heart racing just a little
bit.
His head jerked back. “You c
an’t?”
“I go to school here. The school year has already started. We’re never going to be
able to find a place that’s close to school and afford
able.”
Though this was not the real reason I couldn’t leave, this was all
true.
Griff was unshaven and dusty. He had let his short-cropped Mohawk grow out, and now
his hair went helter-skelter. While he looked like he had been through a third-world
car wash, his green eyes still managed to outshine the grime. I wished I had a hot
shower to offer him, but our showerhead had been streaming out lukewarm water la
tely.
With the way he was looking, with what he had been through, telling him the truth
now seemed like it would have been more information than he could have han
dled.
He assessed me for a few seconds, then he sighed. “You don’t want me around, do
you?”
“No, that’s not it at all. I just meant … What if you moved in
here
?”
“
Here?”
“
Here.”
Though he seemed to be a little less crushed, the idea wasn’t fully winning him
over.
“How many roommates do you
have?”
“Just a few,” I embellished. I had six roommates, in a four-bedroom house, if I counted
my broom closet as a room—nobody did. There were two new students who had moved into
the other bedroom. I hadn’t met them yet, but that meant that the house was
full.
“Where would I
stay?”
My curtain door flew to the side, covering Meatball’s
head.
“You can stay in my room,” Hunter offered in a squeak. I wondered how much he had
overh
eard.
Griff closed his eyes and rubbed his temples with one
hand.
“The lack of any privacy in this place is reason alone to want to stay,” he said,
his tone heavy with sar
casm.
He opened his eyes and scanned my face. I waited and hoped, though probably not as
much as Hunter hoped. When I saw the twinkle in Griff’s eyes, I remembered how his
joyfulness was almost addic
tive.
“Well,” he exhaled, “can’t be all bad if you’re
here.”
Hunter stood by grinning, as though Griff and I weren’t in the middle of an extremely
personal mo
ment.
Despite my reluctance, Griff didn’t seem to be deterred by Hunter’s presence. He held
me in a long hug, as though years had passed since we had last seen each other, and
yet as though no time had passed. As though this were the last time he would ever
se
e me.
My head had started spinning, and the tiredness had made my nausea creep
back.
It was all a little too overwhel
ming.
Griff must have sensed that I was running on fumes. He held me at arm’s length, worry
creasing his own weary eyes. He brought his lips to my
ear.
“Get some sleep,” he ordered in a whi
sper.
He went to examine his living quarters, with Hunter trailing
him.
****
I didn’t see much of Griff over the next few days. He once told me that he had been
a martial arts fighter but had to go into hiding after his gambling debts had overtaken
his life. Now he had to go back in time and use the money to settle the score. I’d
hear him come in very early in the mornings. He would poke his head through the curtain.
But I was so exhausted I couldn’t even lift my head from the pillow to see
him.
By the time I woke up in the morning, he was already
gone.
I had assumed that catching up on my schoolwork would be easy. School was one of those
things that I was good at. But I hadn’t counted on the waves of sheer exhaustion that
would take my mind and body hostage throughout the day. Cassie had had to not-so-gently
nudge me awake during our ethics c
lass.
At least I was puking on a schedule now. No more running out in the middle of a c
lass.
But every time I walked into class, I searched for him. Like Cameron would just magically
appear out of unventilated air. When he didn’t appear, it was like a fresh nail being
plunged into my heart. I didn’t know why I was so hell-bent on torturing myself like
that.
I hadn’t given up hope of finding out more about Cameron. I wanted to know how many
classes he had taken with me last year. And finding Cameron meant finding Spider.
Of course, one day I would have to explain to Cameron’s child who his or her father
was. But it was more than all that. Cameron had known everything about me, and I realized
that I had barely scratched the surface of who this man that I loved really
was.
Who was Cameron James Hil
lard?