Flirting With Chaos (33 page)

“Not true.”

“True.”

“Get off of me.” I formed my fingers into fists and hit his shoulders. “Move.”

“No.” He kissed my cheek. “And you know why you can’t deal with me being fucked up?”

“Leave me alone.”

“Because then you’ll have to face the fact that you have problems too.”

“I’m seeing a therapist at school.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I just cleaned a room full of invisible blood for a whole hour with you. And because just a few days ago, we were talking about your mom.” He buried his face into my neck and nibbled the skin. “I love you.”

Tears spilled out of my eyes. I didn’t have anything else to say. I just knew I didn’t want to go to a psychiatric ward or any place where crazy people went. “Can’t we just stay here? We could Google-search our symptoms, figure out the ways to fix it, and just do that.”

“No.” He planted a trail of kisses from the curve of my neck to the divide of my cleavage and cupped my breasts with his hands. “If the roof on your house was destroyed and water leaked in, would you search the Internet and try to fix it yourself?”

“No.”

“If you broke your leg, would you check online for ways to fix it instead of going to a doctor?”

I rolled my eyes. “No, asshole.”

“Then why would we let our minds continue to need repair and not get help from some geeky-ass guy that has degrees in head shit?”

“I had no idea that
head shit
was a degree.”

He tenderly bit my breasts. “We’re going. We can visit them all when we fly to Toronto, and I’ll even let you pick which facility we’ll stay at.”

I slumped in defeat. Of course I possessed the ability of free will and to do whatever the hell I desired, but in the end, the path to the solution always led right back to Jude. All the moments in my life, he had come to the rescue. Even the darkest ones.

That terrible night, when Dad had woken me up with the gun pressed against my forehead, blood covered his face and hands as well as dripped on my blanket. The scent assaulted my senses. He’d asked me about being a duppy, and I’d passed the test for not being one.

“What do we do now, Daddy?” I sat in my bed, trying my best to not appear afraid.

“This is going to be the hardest thing you’ll have to do in your life, Rainbow.” He walked over to the bed, handed the gun to me, and sat on the floor next to his guitar. The cool metal stuck to my hand. It felt so heavy.

I moved my hand away and saw more blood. “Whose blood is this, Daddy?”

“Your mother’s.” He tuned his guitar and hummed. “I couldn’t let her live.”

“But you said you couldn’t kill her.” I shut my eyes up tight and squeaked out, “Is she…is she dead?”

“Yes, Rainbow. I had to kill her.”

My fingers shook. I wrapped both of my hands around the gun, scared he’d charge for me and get me next. As far as my mom’s death, I didn’t even allow myself one second to think about it, not even half of a second. It would’ve drowned me in too much pain and stopped me from escaping him.

“Wait. Just let me sing to my baby girl, please,” Dad pleaded with the shadows in the corner. “Okay. Just one song.”

“Song?” I didn’t wipe away my tears.

“I’m a duppy too, sweetheart. I don’t have much time now. It just couldn’t be helped—”

“You’re not a duppy.”

“I am.” He strummed the melody of “Ribbons of Rainbow.”

“If you don’t kill me now, I’ll just try to kill you later, and I won’t stop. I think about it every day. For years, your mom tried to say it was all in my mind, but it wasn’t. Kill me.”

“N-No.”

“Do it, Rainbow. Don’t let me live without your mother by my side. Don’t let me live with this guilt from her death. Do it. Pull the trigger. Remember when I showed you at the gun range?”

“Yes,” I choked out.

“Do it.” The guitar notes filled the room.

“Daddy?”

“Do it while I sing your song to you. That’s how I want to die. I want to see your face and hear the song I wrote for you. Please, Rainbow.”

“D-Daddy—”

“Come close so they’ll think it was a suicide.”

“I-I don’t—”

“Do it!” Rage blazed over his face. In that moment, he did appear like a demon. I jumped off the bed and stumbled his way. His face didn’t relax. His eyes seemed enraged. “Come close so the gun is next to my lips.”

With a shivering body, I got right next to him.

“Shoot me.”

“N-No.”

“Now!”

I pulled the trigger.

The bullet boomed out and pierced his chest. His body jerked back a little. Blood gurgled out of the hole the bullet had made.

“Good girl, Rainbow. Good girl. I wrote a letter to the police, explaining everything. You won’t be in trouble. They’ll know it’s a suicide.” He blinked a few times. “At the end of the song, aim for my mouth. Okay?”

I couldn’t even speak.

“Ribbons of rainbows don’t compare to you,”
Daddy sang as crimson drops fell on his guitar.
“Swollen rain clouds envy the shades that shine from you.”

I stood there, frozen. My legs wobbled under me. My childhood flashed before my eyes, as if I was the one that was going to die. My vision clouded with tears.

A noise came from within the room. I didn’t even turn around, too scared of my singing dad in front of me.

“At the end of a storm, it’s not the clearing of clouds or the sun that brightens the skies. It’s your love, your existence, the hope and happiness in your eyes.”

Another bump sounded behind me. It had to be my window or the bathroom door being opened. I wasn’t sure and didn’t care as I fell to my knees, sobbing, unprepared to take my daddy’s life.

“You’re my escape when I am falling. You’re my salvation,”
he cried, barely able to hold up his guitar.
“You lift me up and wipe the tears away. You’re my salvation.”

I heard footsteps approach. A hand landed on my shoulder. I glanced back to see Jude standing there with a scared look on his face. “Rain?”

I couldn’t find any words on my tongue and turned back to Daddy. He never noticed Jude in the room. He just sang and played his guitar.

Jude got down on his knees with me and wrapped his arms around my waist from behind. His body pressed into my back. Later, whenever I would think back on this moment, that’s the biggest thing I’d remember: Jude holding me.

When Dad finished, he still didn’t say anything about Jude. I doubted he realized he was even there.

“Go ahead, Rainbow. Put the gun to my mouth and pull the trigger.”

“I don’t want to, Daddy. Please don’t make me do this. It’s wrong.”

“If you don’t kill me, I will kill you.” He frowned. “It may not be tonight, but it will be soon. One day when you’re sleeping in your bed, I’ll come and hurt you. I think about it when I close my eyes. I dream about peeling your skin just to hear the sounds you would make.”

I gasped.

Jude’s body trembled against me. He slipped his hands to where my fingers wrapped around the gun and helped me raise it to my dad’s mouth. We held the gun together, both of us shaking.

“Don’t cry, my Rainbow. It’s going to be okay. You’ll be better.”

“I love you.” It felt like he was already gone.

My chest caved in with pain. Both of my parents would be dead in one night, and I had never seen it coming. The week had been normal. The morning had seemed fine. But by the end of the night, they would both be dead.

“Daddy, please. I don’t want to,” I cried until snot dripped from my nose and spit dribbled out of the corners of my mouth. “Please, Daddy.”

“Sometimes it’s okay to kill, if you’re saving someone else in the process, Rainbow.” Dad wiped my tears from my face with bloody hands. “Go ahead, sweetheart. Do it for Daddy. Pull the trigger.”

And I did.

With Jude’s help.

I shoved the gun inside my dad’s open mouth and pulled the trigger. The back of his head and all the contents sprayed to the wall behind him.

Jude wrenched the gun from my hand, set it down, and carried me away. Not one time did he ever ask me what happened that night. Not one time. He took me downstairs, searched for the phones, put one in, and called the police.

No one asked me questions. Apparently, Dad had footage of what he’d done to Mom and maintained a video diary of how he dreamed of killing me too. I never saw it. I could barely watch them load the discs into the boxes.

I just slept in Jude’s arms that night and for days afterward in his bedroom. I never knew how I became clean or ate. In one moment, the cops had been carting my dead mother’s body up from the basement. In the next moment, I’d woken up in Jude’s bedroom with his arms having been around me for weeks, until my grandmother flew in from Jamaica and began taking care of me.

She never took me to Dad’s funeral. I wasn’t allowed to say his name or keep pictures of him around.

Jude was always there to help me. He’ll be there again.

Chapter 24

Just Jude and Rain

I A
LWAYS
W
ONDERED
W
HAT
J
UDE
had thought about that night. We never discussed it. Back in the hotel suite, he moved off of me and lay in the space on my right.

“What’s going through your mind?”

“The night my parents died.” I rolled over and faced him.

“Why are you thinking about that?” He ran his fingers through my curls.

“Why did you help me kill Dad?”

“Because he said he would hurt you one day.”

I scooted over, buried my face in his chest, and let him wrap his arms around me. “I don’t think most people would have helped me like that.”

“We’re not most people. We’re just Jude and Rain. Don’t you like the sound of our names together?”

“Jude and Rain,” I whispered. “Yes. I like that.”

“I can see us having a good life one day, if we can clean up all of the blood from the past.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Let’s not mention blood. Let’s save all of that for the doctors in Toronto. I’m done cleaning that stuff up.”

His body tensed under me. “So, you’re saying that you’ll come with me, to get help together?”

“Definitely. If we’re going to be together, the last place I want you hanging out by yourself is at a clinic full of female sex addicts.”

“Hmm.” He laughed. “I didn’t think of it that way. There would be lots of females there. Better yet, why don’t you stay here?”

I punched his thigh.

“Rainy, that was too close to my happy stick.”

“Just make sure your happy stick stays in your pants while we’re there before I snap it into two happy twigs.”

He shuddered. “You’re a cheeky little wench aren’t you?”

“Oy, don’t give me any rubbish. Just be making sure your willy stays in your pants. I’ll not have you wanking about.”

“Please stop. This bad British accent is degrading to me, my mom, and every person that has connections there. No one even says ‘oy.’ What the fuck is that?”

“They do too say ‘oy.’”

“Just for that, I’m going to make you pay.” He whipped me around so that his cock pressed into my behind. “I’m going to make you say ‘oy’ right now.”

“Oh, really?” My breath caught in my throat. “How are you going to do that?”

He rubbed the head near my opening. “I love how any time I touch your pussy, it’s just dripping. I’d lick it all up right now if I didn’t crave feeling that pink, moist flesh tight around my dick.”

“There you go, Rainy,” he said, thrusting into me, and I screamed.

“Oh, Jude.”

He moved in and out of my slick tunnel. “Fuck. Lift up a little. I have to touch those big breasts of yours. I was thinking of them the whole time I sat in my room.”