Page 69 of Quake
It took a few false starts, but I told her everything. From the dinner with my parents to Juliette’s sudden change, then her dumping me, the confrontation with my father, and the contents of the folder. What she’d done to her sister on her request. The terrible secret that had turned her into a shell of who she once was.
Ren was silent for a long time before she raised her hand and ran her fingers over the bruise on my cheek.
“I don’t know what to say,” she murmured, dropping her hand and staring out the window at the Melbourne skyline. “That’s…heavy.”
“To think she’s been carrying it around for six years, not telling a soul.”
“It must’ve taken a fuckload of strength to be able to do something like that,” she went on. “No wonder she was so frightened of the world.”
“I don’t even know what I should be feeling about it,” I muttered, not knowing if I should throw something, hit someone, or forgo my manly pride and cry.
“They never caught the guy?” Ren asked.
I shook my head. “No.”
“I don’t know how it feels, but I can understand her motives. Don’t you remember what that family went through back then?”
I glanced at her with a frown.
“It was all over the news,” she explained. “Torn apart and sensationalized. They were harassed pretty bad from what I remember. No wonder she wanted to change her name and start fresh. If they found out what really happened, it would—”
“Fuck.” I ran my hand over my face, realizing the threat Dad must’ve rammed down Juliette’s throat. He was going to expose her secret to the press. What did she say the other night? There were others she needed to protect.
“What’s wrong?” Ren was peering at me, her brow furrowed.
“He didn’t say…” I murmured. “He didn’t…”
“Who didn’t say what?”
“My dad was blackmailing her…” It was worse than I’d imagined.
“What the fuck?” Ren exclaimed. “I knew your dad was an asshole but blackmailing Juliette? Holy…”
“What do I do?” I asked, my fingers digging into her shoulders. I practically shook her, trying to make sense out of everything. “What do I do?”
Ren curled her fingers around my wrists. “Do you love her?”
I stared at her, knowing her question was simple as fuck, but I didn’t know how to answer.
“If you truly love her, then you’ll do whatever it takes to work it out,” Ren went on. “You don’t fall in love and that’s it. You need to work on it. With a woman like Juliette, she needs more than a few nice words and a kiss on the cheek. Love is about more than finding someone pretty you want to fuck. Juliette… I think she needs someone to believe in her more than anything. She was faced with an impossible choice, Caleb.”
Did she allow her sister to suffer or take her already fading life to spare her pain? Those were her choices, and both came with suffering of her own. No matter what she did, Juliette would have blamed herself. She spared her sister agony and took it on herself.
Wasn’t that the ultimate form of love? It was a horrible thing she had to do, but it wasn’t done out of malice. Far from it.
I couldn’t hold onto my emotions anymore, and I felt a tear slide down my cheek.
Ren smiled sadly and brushed it away. “I think you have your answer.”
* * *
IleftPulse with one purpose in mind.Find Juliette.
That afternoon, I called, I texted, I left voice mail, and I went to her house, but she didn’t answer. I did the same on Sunday, hoping she would finally lose her temper under the constant barrage and answer me.
She never did.
I camped outside her block of flats like a fucked-up stalker, hoping to catch her on the way in or out.
