Page 67 of Quake
“Meagan,please.”
My mouth flapped uselessly as I realized what she was asking me to do.
“I can’t,” I cried, smoothing her bloodstained hair away from her face. “I can’t, Mel. I’m not strong like you.”
“Please, Meg,” she pleaded again. “It hurts so much. I just want it to stop.” She coughed, blood trickling from her mouth.
My gaze darted around the room, and it settled on a knife that’d fallen to the floor. Picking it up with shaking fingers, my skin stuck to the drying blood. It was the knife her murderer had used.
“I…” Mel gasped. “Not… Him…”
“You didn’t know him?” I asked, leaning against the bed, the knife clutched in my hand. “The man who…”
She blinked once. Just like the game we played as kids.Yes.
I looked at the knife, then back to her. She blinked once.Yes.
“Yes… Please…Meg. Make it stop,” she said once more, her voice fading to barely a whisper. “Love…you.”
That was the last thing I ever heard her say.
In that moment, I think she understood she was dying. That there was no saving her. I think she’d accepted it, and that was why she asked me to do what I did. She was in so much pain.
Wherever she was now, I hoped she was at peace.
26
Caleb
Iwantednothing more than to fling myself into the ocean that night and float away into darkness.
But something stopped me. I didn’t understand it, but there was something more. Something was left unsaid that would make sense of this whole mess.
There had to be an explanation.
The Juliette I knew wasn’t capable of such horror. I saw the fear in her eyes plain as day. It was genuine. There was no way anyone was that good of an actor. Not even a Hollywood superstar. No chance in hell.
After I’d left my parents house, I hadn’t realized I’d taken the folder with me. All the answers I wanted to know about her past were in there. The complete truth. I assumed it was the police report, having been procured through an elaborate web of bribes, threats, and subterfuge. That was my father. He could work for the Australian spy agency ASIO the way he was going.
Had she ever planned on confiding in me? Was our relationship merely a sick twisted game? Or was she completely real and honest all this time?
There was only one way to find out, and knowing what I’d find inside the folder made me feel sick.
That night, I sat in my car and saw the truth. I saw the face of her sister—so similar to hers, to Juliette’s—and it almost destroyed me.
* * *
Anglingthe rearview mirror in my car, I stared at my blackened skin, prodding it with my fingers.
Dad had clocked me on the cheek with all the strength he could muster, and the pressure had forced my eye to blacken around the bottom and my cheek to yellow with an impressive Carmichael-shaped bruise. He’d been one of the best boxer-punchers going around. Good defense, powerful jabs and counterattacks. It was no wonder he’d been able to clip me like he had.
Three days had passed since the night my entire world turned upside down. Three days of fucking agony.
I could barely face things at Beat, coaching, managing, having to go about my daily business, knowing what I did now. The terrible truth Juliette had been keeping hidden inside her all this time. The cause of her fear.
It didn’t help that everywhere I looked, I saw her ghost. Beat was infused with our story, our feelings… I couldn’t even go into the back room knowing it was the place where I’d finally been able to have her body. I’d fucked her there in the spare bed, indulged in her soft moans, pounded into her slick opening, and came inside her. I’d fallen for her in this place.
Being here was agony, and I wasn’t sure I would ever get over it.
