“What were you thinking about?” she asked.
I took a nice long swallow of my Cuba libre. “I can’t get Jared’s expression out of my head. The way he looked before he died.”
“He seemed too human?” Natalie asked in a voice just above a whisper.
I shook my head. “No. He seemed like he knew this was the end and he didn’t care. He seemed like he wanted to die. I wonder if that was the drugs, or…”
A powerful swirl of emotions swelled inside me. “He had nothing to hope for any more. Nothing to hold onto, no future vision. And I know exactly how he felt. He couldn’t get his mind off the past, and off the pain.”
Natalie took a pull of her drink and ran her hand up my arm to my bicep and held it there. She saw me pulling up the text again from my sister, the one that always gutted me.
She slid her hand down my forearm. “Honey. Speaking of getting your mind off the past…Why do you keep torturing yourself? You did the best you could for her.”
“My best wasn’t good enough, though.”
“You were so young. And you learned from it, and your best was for me. And it still is. It always will be.”
I swallowed hard, feeling the emotional pain rip through me that I always felt when I thought of Louisa.
“You’ve got to let go, Shane,” she continued. “Not for her. For you. Do you think Louisa would want you to go on feeling miserable whenever you think of her? No. I like to believe she wants you to remember her fondly. You loved her, and you always will. She knows that.”
Staring at the text, I nodded slowly. Natalie’s lips were quivering as she looked at me. I tensed up, but looking at her, she softened me.
Taking a big breath, I slid my hand over the text and did something I needed to do to move on from the past: I deleted the text.
Natalie nodded, her eyes welling up with tears. I could tell she was trying to hold them back.
I tapped my lips. A smile ran across her face and she leaned in and gave me a kiss.
I felt the warm summer breeze pick up through the bar as she pulled back. It sent a chill down my spine. I swear I could feel Louisa’s presence. And she was happy, I think.
I stared into Natalie’s sparkling eyes. She was an embodiment of the phrase ‘and though she be but little, she is fierce.’ I had the physical strength, but Natalie had taught me so much in the past seven months about mental fortitude. We started dating long distance when I first took the spot on the team in Chicago. Slowly but surely, we became each others’ everything, with long chats about everything without saying directly that we’d, you know, killed two men. That wasn’t something we discussed except when our cell phones were left at the house, like tonight.
“It’s not just her that nips at me, though. It’s Bob and Jared. Crazy thing is, I feel like, given a slightly different set of circumstances, I could have ended up in his spot. Sometimes I worry about the evil I’m capable of, if I go unchecked.”
“I worry about that, too. But never forget that it was self-defense.” She looked at me. “But yes, I wonder how I’ll look into the eyes of my hypothetical kid and tell them that the world is a good place.”
Now that Natalie was feeling culpable, I felt the need to come to her aid. “You did what you had to do to protect yourself.”
“So did you,” She fired back. “And to protect me.”
I gripped the flesh of her knee underneath the bar table. A warm breeze poured in off the ocean.
“You know what?” I leaned toward her and brushed her ear with my lips. “I killed for you. And I’d do it again if you were in danger. You do something to me, Natalie. You turn me into an animal.”
She swallowed, and I noticed her breathing deeper, her chest rising and falling deeply. Her normally pale-ish skin started to blotch red on her cheeks, her neck, her chest.
I slid my hand up her thigh slowly. When I arrived with a finger between her legs, I could feel the heat pooling.
“Does that turn you on, Natalie? To know that I’d kill for you. Knowing that I’m serious about that.”
Natalie closed her eyes and shuddered. As I slid one fingertip onto her clit—she wore no panties per my request tonight—she muttered something unintelligible, *oh God*, maybe.
Her upper body was shaking, convulsing.
“Shane, please. Not here. Too many people…what if they watch? Oh, fuck…”
Her words were in direct opposition with her body.
Needless to say, I didn’t stop. Instead, I hooked one finger inside her and massaged the inside of her pussy just how I knew she liked it.
I’d enjoyed lots of practice with this over the past seven months. Usually not in such a public place, of course.
“You know why that is, Natalie?”
Her eyes shined, maybe from the moonlight reflecting off the water in the night.
“Why…what is…” she managed to ask.
“Why I’d kill for you?”
She shook her head. Her legs were convulsing. Bright red splotches across her face and chest.
“Because you’re mine, Natalie. You’ll always be mine, my love.”
“Oh Dear God.” She leaned in toward the table, squeezing my free forearm tightly and trembling madly as she came into my hand.
Her eyes fluttered open. “You’re an asshole,” she shook her head. “Making me come like that.”
I pulled my hand away from her, and gave my middle finger a lick. I was obsessed with tasting her.
I then put my finger in her mouth for her to suck off her own juices. One thing was right.
Together, we turned into feral animals.
I motioned her to lean in again toward me.
“I’m going to fuck you so good tonight you’ll have a hard time walking tomorrow.”
She giggled, then wiggled her eyebrows and nodded toward something in the room.
“What?” I asked.
I turned my head and saw the two girls who had come up to us before.
“Um, hi. We were wondering if we could get your autograph?”
They held out a marker, and then gave me their wrists to sign.
I shrugged and signed.
Natalie leaned into me when they left.
“You can mark me later.”
I grinned.
I knew I’d be marking her for a long time to come.
As far as our pasts went, well, I guess everyone was always haunted by their past. You had to kill the ghosts of the past in order to move on to the dreams of the future.
For us, the deaths of those ghosts were just a little more real than most.
We would move on, though, and the two of us would always be stronger together.
Epilogue
Natalie
I looked in the mirror, after spending two hours in hair and makeup, and I barely recognized myself.
“You. Look. So hot,” Lizzie said, standing behind me.
“Thanks. So do you.”
“Does it bother you?”
“Does what bother me?”
“You know…you’ve only slept with the one man you’re marrying. You’re marrying the guy you lost your v-card to. That’s not the way of the world any more. Most girls try out some different ones, first.”