Lili Germain - Four Score

It’s fragile, this peace of ours, but while it lasts?

It’s fucking perfect.

While Jase makes us breakfast, I bite the proverbial bullet and call Elliot. I’m nervous, so nervous my hands are shaking as I dial the number to the tattoo studio from the landline. I still haven’t picked up a new phone after Jase smashed mine in a fit of rage. Elliot answers on the third ring, and I smile as I hear his voice.

“El,” I say, my smile so wide he can probably hear it. “It’s Julz.”

There’s a pause, and I hear him clear his throat. “Hey.” His tone is guarded, standoffish, and I scramble to fill the awkward silence.

The words are tumbling out of my mouth before I even know what I’m saying. “I just wanted to call and tell you I’m sorry about the other night.” My heart is thudding painfully in my chest, and I’m hyper-aware of Jase’s proximity as he flips eggs in the kitchen.

“Uh-huh.”

“I shouldn’t have made you leave. I’m sorry, Elliot.” I suck at apologies. They always come out awkward and stilted.

“Yeah, well,” he says. “I did kind of break in and interrupt you, so it’s not all your fault.”

“You were just trying to make sure I was okay,” I say quickly, relieved that he’s talking and that he doesn’t seem too mad at me.

“How’s loverboy?” Elliot asks, chuckling. “Hope his pretty face isn’t too messed up.”

I roll my eyes, hearing the obvious pleasure in his voice over smashing Jase’s face in. “You should see the other guy,” I joke.

There’s a brief silence, and while I’m thinking of how to fill it, Elliot does it for me.

“You sound … happy,” he says, and he sounds anything but. Which kills me.

“I am,” I say falteringly. “At least, I think I am. I will be. Once I take Dornan and his other sons out. Then I can finally be free.”

I hear Elliot clearing his throat.

“You made me happy too, you know,” I say quietly. “Do you know?”

More throat clearing. “Yeah,” he replies. “I just went and fucked it all up, though.”

I chuckle, but there’s no humor in the sound. It’s like a cross between a dry-heave and a sob. “I fucked it all up, El. But that’s lovely of you to take the blame.”

“Any time.”

“I have to go,” I say softly,

“I’ll always be here for you, you know that, right?” His breathing is heavy. His words weighed down with everything.

“Yeah,” I whisper. “Always.”

“But, Julz,” he continues, his tone making my breath hitch. “I need you to not call me for a little while, okay? Unless you’re in trouble, or something, but otherwise, just … I need some space, okay?”

I swallow thickly. Don’t cry. “Okay,” I whisper, and then the line goes dead.

Limbo.

A place un-christened souls inhabit. Trapped. Yearning as they roam empty corridors, always reaching for the sunlight but never quite touching it.

A quiet calm. An anxious wait. A refuge from a storm that threatens to wreak havoc and destroy everything in its wake.

Our limbo is temporary, and we indulge in it. What choice do we have? The starkness of our future lays heavy and invisible between us, like the souls of the broken children we left behind that fateful day. Our innocent selves—gone but not forgotten—still screaming for mercy in the recesses of our minds.

For the first few nights of our brief time together, we begin the night alone, but dream after dream assaults me. Reminding me of Dornan, the way he tasted as he came inside my mouth, or the droplets of blood that spread like fire as they soaked the sheets below us more than once.

It’s okay, though, because Jase is always there, and after a few nights, we decide to stop pretending and just sleep in the same bed all night.

And when we do? I don’t wake up in a pool of tears and sweat, haunted by zombified versions of the men I’ve killed and the man I’m yet to kill. I sleep soundly and wake gently, a welcome reprieve from years of horrific nights spent trying not to fall back into an endless loop of nightmares.

For a few glorious days, life is beautiful.

But that’s the thing about this life. Remember when I said, nothing good ever lasts?

Well, it’s true.

One call, eight days after the explosions, shatters our fragile peace.

Because Dornan is awake.

I’m sitting on the balcony, feet propped up on the wall in front of me, looking out to the ocean. There’s no wind this afternoon, and the water is like glass. It’s breathtaking, and it somehow calms me just being able to see it. People standing on long boards, paddling in the bay. Surfers on the shore, their boards forgotten since there are no waves. Children are building sandcastles on the shore, and in the distance, I can see the Ferris wheel turning on the pier.

So much life in front of me, people living normal, unencumbered existences. People without prices on their heads.

People who didn’t have to die to get away from the life they were born into.

I want to be one of those people, but as I listen to Jase speaking on his cell phone in the kitchen, I’m reminded yet again of the horrific existence we share. The cold reality of our families and their sins.

“Already?” Jase asks whoever’s on the phone. “He was in a friggin’ coma two days ago.” A pause. “Whatever. So, he’s at the clubhouse now?”

A spike of dread stabs into my stomach, and I look at the ground. I can’t be staring at that beautiful Ferris wheel, or the innocent children on the beach while I think about Dornan.

“Yeah, I’ll be there,” Jase says. I hear him toss something down on the bench, and assume it’s his phone.

I rise and enter the kitchen, almost colliding with him. We eye each other awkwardly as the waves of reality begin to crash against our thinly constructed wall of denial and hope.

“He’s awake,” Jase says grimly.

“Already?” I ask dully.

“Yesterday, actually,” Jase says. The bitterness in his voice is like poison. “I have to go to Va Va Voom to see him.”

I’m already grabbing my purse, but when I look back at Jase, he’s horrified.

“What?” I ask, alarmed.

He points at my purse. “What are you doing?”

I look down, expecting to see a spider or something on my purse, but there’s nothing.

“I’m coming with you.”

Jase’s face twists with anger. “You. Are. Not. Coming,” he growls.

I raise my eyebrows. “He’ll be expecting Sammi. If I’m not there, he’ll kill me.”

Jase shakes his head. “He’ll kill you anyway. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“There’s a lot wrong with me,” I snap impatiently. “I think we’ve established that.”

“I’m not letting you go anywhere near him, Juliette.”

I shake my head. “Jason. What did you think was going to happen? Did you think I’d just forget about it all because we had sex a couple times?”

My tone is nastier than I’d intended, but I’m livid. What did he think, that I’d abandon my vengeance so casually?

Jase bites his lip, and the next words come out with difficulty. “I fucking love you, Juliette.”

I smile despite the tension. “I fucking love you, too. But my love for you doesn’t change my hate for him.”

Jase looks dangerously close to throwing me over his shoulder and locking me in his bedroom until he can talk me into staying away from Dornan. But I won’t let him. I refuse to give up my vendetta against the Ross brothers and their demon father.

The score’s only at four. And until it’s at seven? Love will have to wait.

“You think this is funny?” Jase demands loudly. “I went to your fucking funeral. You can never forget something like that! And now you’re going to walk back in there, and expect that he’s not going to figure you out soon? He’ll kill you for real this time.”

I struggle to stay calm. “Maybe he will.” I shrug. “It’s been a risk all along, but you know what? He hasn’t found me out yet, Jason.”

“So,” Jase says bitterly. “You’re saying that your need to make him pay is more important than what we have?”

“It’s not just about me,” I counter. “Or you. Or us. It’s about my father! It’s about Mariana! They died trying to save us from this life, and we owe it to them to do everything we can to destroy that man.”

Jase’s eyes burn into me; the sadness and reluctance to let me go is almost too much to stand. I feel like I can’t breathe, especially when he puts his hands on my shoulders and begs me. “Not like this,” he says feverishly. “Please, Julz, not like this.”

It’s probably the wrong reaction, but his begging makes me so angry, I could scream. How dare he try to use what we have against me? How dare he try to stop me from claiming vengeance against the man who destroyed us all?

I see red, and regrettably, I go for the sucker punch. “He killed your mother and left her in a bathtub full of blood for you to find. You’re his son, and he did that to you?” My voice threatens to break. It’s so high and shrill. “What do you think he did to them?! I know they suffered. I know it more than I know anything.” I clutch at my chest as I think of my father and what he must have endured at the end. “He made them suffer, and now I’m going to make him suffer.”

Jase’s face is drawn, fixed, decided. “Juliette,” he warns, “If you walk out that door—”

“If I walk out that door, what?” I interrupt. “What are you gonna do, huh? Nothing, just like you did nothing for six years.” I’m nasty, and I can’t help it. “Don’t worry. Leave it up to Julz. I’ll clean up the mess that you never could.”