What truly pisses me off, however, what really tears the nails from the bed, is knowing Randall gets off on this. He loves applying his authority to humiliate me. Busting a nut with his power trip.
Not wanting to make a scene, I stalk toward the rear bumper and appraise Randall with a cool look. “What would you like me to do? Officer.”
A smile stretches across his face. “You can start by reciting the alphabet. Backwards.”
If he thinks this weakens me, he’s sorely mistaken.
That which doesn’t kill me makes my anger stronger.
CHAPTER 12
EVAN
For some reason, I saw that encounter going better in my head. I thought it’d be charming, in our kind of demented way. At the very least, make her laugh. Because as much as she’d given me a hard time back in the day, she always ate that stuff up, getting me jealous and riled until I snapped and stormed in to throw her over my shoulder. Then we’d fuck it out and be cool again.
This time, not so much.
I rake both hands through my hair and stare out at the dark water beyond the long pier. After Gen stormed out of the restaurant and her dipshit date gave me some unconvincing advice to leave her alone, I walked out here to get some air, get my head on straight. But so far, all I’ve succeeded in doing is wallowing over how much I miss Gen.
With a tired exhalation, I shove my hands in my pockets and leave the pier. Coming up the steps to the boardwalk, where my bike is parked along the curb, I’m not quite sure what I’m looking at until I hear Gen’s voice across the street telling a cop with his flashlight pointed at her to suck her dick.
My eyebrows soar in confusion, then knit in displeasure. The cop’s got her on the street behind a car, with her arms spread, touching her finger to her nose. Meanwhile, her dweeb date is there doing nothing while she begrudgingly walks a straight line and recites the alphabet, muttering obscenities along the way. Even from a distance I can feel the humiliation in Gen’s expression. The way her eyes stare into the distance.
I’m halfway to running over there before I stop myself. Damn it. The last thing I need right now is to go to jail for bouncing a cop’s face off the pavement. I wouldn’t make it out of a cell alive. Besides, Cooper’s already up my ass about fighting—getting locked up would give him a lifetime I told you so account that I’m not about to pay into. So I stand there, hugging the railing, fists clenched.
I recognize Rusty Randall, though I don’t know him well. Just that he’s got a reputation as a creep with a not-so-secret drinking problem of his own. To her credit, however, Gen takes it like a champ, never the type to let anyone see her rattled.
Still, it turns my stomach to watch this degrading episode. Dozens of people stare at her as they pass. She was stone-cold sober when I saw her an hour ago. And by how easily she’s navigating the test, I’d say it’s clear she didn’t pop into a bar to pound a bunch of shots after she left the restaurant. Which means Randall is only being a dick because he can.
Finally, after a brief conversation, she’s allowed to get in her car. I’m gratified to note she barely glances at her polo-clad date as she leaves.
I quickly get on my bike to follow her, making sure to keep my distance. I just want to make sure she gets home okay. After a while, though, I realize we aren’t headed to her house. We leave the lights of town behind, headed north along the coast where the population thins out and the stars appear overhead. Soon we’re winding down a two-lane road through the black wooded landscape where the moon over the bay appears in brief glimpses through the trees.
Eventually, she pulls onto the dirt shoulder near a narrow footpath you can only find if you know it’s there, even in daylight. She gets out of her car, grabs a blanket from the trunk, and proceeds through the trees. I wait a few minutes before following her. At the end of the path, where the trees give way to the sandy beach, I find her sitting on a driftwood log.
Her head lifts when she hears me approach. “You suck at tailing people,” she says.
I take that as an invitation to sit. “I stopped trying to be sly about it after I realized where you were headed.”
“I didn’t come here to meet you.” With the blanket wrapped around her shoulders, she buries her toes in the cool sand. “This is just where I come to think. Or it was.”
That she chose this place hits me right in the chest. Because it’s our spot. Always has been. It was our emergency rendezvous after running from the cops, the make-out spot when we were grounded and sneaking out of the house. Our secret hideout. Not even Cooper knows I come here.
“I saw what happened back there,” I tell her. She’s not much more than a black outline against the night. It’s so dark out here, moonlight gets swallowed before it hits the ground. The stars, though, are really something. “What was that all about?”
“Nothing. Just some asshole giving me a hard time.”
“That was Randall, right? Didn’t you used to babysit for him?” He wasn’t a super nice guy or anything, but I remember once or twice he let her slide on this or that in high school when other cops had it in for us pretty bad. It was sort of a transactional understanding.
“Yeah, well, things change.” Her voice is tight and sour.
She doesn’t elaborate just yet, and I don’t push. Thing I learned a long time ago: Gen will talk when she wants to. She’s a locked box—nothing gets in or out unless she wants it to. A person could spend a lifetime trying to pick her open.
So I wait, silent, listening. Until minutes pass and she lets out a sigh.
“Not long before I left town, I blew up Randall’s family.”
I slant my head. “How’d you manage that?”
In a voice heavy with fatigue, she explains how he assaulted her in a bar after he failed to coax her to do him in the parking lot. My fists clench so hard my knuckles crack. I want to hit something. Tear it to shreds. But I don’t dare move because I want to hear everything she has to say.
“When I got home after we closed down the bar, that’s all I could think about. Vengeance. I was raging,” Gen continues. “The Randall house was only a few blocks away, so I got it in my head to walk my ass over there at three in the morning. Next thing I know, I’m banging on the door with my hair sweaty and makeup melting off my face. His wife Kayla answered the door all bleary-eyed and confused. I forced my way past her to start shouting in the middle of her living room until Rusty came downstairs.”
I don’t miss the deep crease of shame that digs into her forehead. I have to stop myself from reaching out and taking her hand.
“I told her how her sleazeball husband tried to coerce me into sex then assaulted me in a bar. How everyone in town but her knew he was sleeping around behind her back. He denied it all, of course. Said I’d come on to him. The jilted, jealous girl.” Gen laughs humorlessly. “I was a screaming lunatic who probably looked like I’d just washed in with the tide. Meanwhile, her four kids were peering out from the hallway, terrified. Kayla had no reason to believe me, so she told me to get the hell out of her house.”
I wish I’d known, wish I’d been there for her. I could have stopped this entire ordeal dead in its tracks. Kept her from leaving. Now, I’m not sure what’s worse. Wondering this whole time what made her leave, or understanding now that if I’d just been there, we wouldn’t have lost the last year of our lives together.