The Years After (28 page)

“Who is this someone? And why wouldn’t you be screaming from the rooftops who did it?”

“I can’t say. I mean it. I don’t want you to know about any of it. It could only lead to bad things for you. I don’t want you to know anything.”

“Is he dangerous?”

“Yes. Fucking, yes.”

Her eyes were rounded in horror and disdain that she could not fake or temper down. “Oh. My. God.”

“Yeah it is. You should never have been with me. I was always going to lose you. I deserve it. I get that. But for whatever it’s worth, I never meant to date you. I never meant to fall in love with you. I never meant anything. It just was, and I didn’t know how to get out of it.”

“What kinds of things do you do?”

“Bad things.”

“Even now? Even now, you evade and lie?”

“Even now. You have to leave. You can’t know this shit.” His eyes went suddenly wide and looked hard as he kept staring at her. It wasn’t fear she felt, however, it was his panic. His fear of her knowing the truth about him. Standing up, he leaned down to grab her wrist. She yanked it out of his grasp. Although he might have tried to sound mean and different, he was still Derek and his grasp was soft and gentle.

“What can’t I know? Tell me. You owe me at least that. The truth. The unvarnished truth. No bullshit.” Tears started to course down her face. They slipped into her mouth and snot started to obstruct her breathing. She sniffed and wiped her face with her sleeves. It didn’t help. More tears came, only faster and harder. She gulped and bent over as the pain of what he told her started to register. He did bad things. Things he still refused to tell her. Her imagination was off and running.
What? What could it be?
She lifted her tear-soaked face. His eyes filled. “You owe me!” she screamed before she stood up and started pacing again. She was fuming as she walked. She took a pillow off his couch and hit it while nearly shrieking, “Tell me! I deserve that much, you lying sack of shit!”

“No. I won’t. I won’t even if you do deserve it. I know what you deserve, and it was never me.” He stared down at the floor. His face was turning pale as he clenched his hands together. “I’m sorry,” he finally whispered. It tore through her. She could hear his voice, the feelings she thought she knew were inside his heart. He sounded like the boy she’d fallen in love with. But that boy, wouldn’t be saying those things. Never. No.

“It’ll put you in danger. You can’t be hurt for what you don’t know. If you knew names or actions, you could be hurt. What I do, what I’m involved in, is illegal. You could turn me in. I’d deserve it, Olivia. I know that. But those around me don’t want that. I make them a lot of money. They would go to great extremes to make sure that doesn’t go down. So no, I won’t tell you.”

His hands dropped to his sides with his fists clenched, and his jaw locked with determination as tears brimmed his lower eyelids. They were ready to fall. His entire body was trembling. So was hers. She stopped dead and stared at him as fresh, hot tears coursed over her cheeks. Everything changed. That moment, everything she thought she knew and believed in just stopped.
Illegal.
Out all night. Cops. Dangerous
. Those words all swirled in her head and stomach nearly making her heave. She thought she knew him. But she didn’t. Not at all. Fear added to the chaos that was now her mind. She took a step back. Then another, shaking her head as her tears stung her eyelids.

She started to pass around him, nearly running for the door.
No more
. She could not stomach hearing anymore. She could not stand there and watch her childish illusions vanish in one conversation. She could not stand to know how wrong she was. She felt him start to reach for her. It panicked her and she sprinted forward, throwing open the fortress doors she was only now starting to understand. Her footfalls smacked the metal steps as she ran full tilt down them. His voice rang after her. But he didn’t follow her.

She glanced back one last time. The last time she would ever again see Derek Salazar. He stood staring down at her. Tears stained his face. His shoulders slumped and his stance appeared defeated. She shook the image out of her head.
Someday.
Someday, she’d go through all her memories and feelings and hopefully be able to analyze how she could have let this go on. How she ignored what was directly in front of her. Someday, she’d find a way to forgive herself for doing that. For loving someone who was so clearly a lying, cheating, son of a bitch. And the crazy part was: she still didn’t know what his secrets were. She never stood a chance of knowing. He intended to do this to her the entire time. He must have spent hours and weeks and months lying to her. All of it to end here. Why? She could not think of a single reason why he would do that.

She expected so much more than just a few sentences to end what felt like everything to her. She expected so much more fanfare than just running down his stairs and knowing she’d never again see Derek Salazar. She was expecting answers and shared feelings and she trusted their love would find a way through it all. Instead, she backed her car up, and sped away, knowing she was a fucking naive fool that he played from the very first day. She’d been wrong. The pain started in her gut and slapped her heart before numbing her brain. It was so big, and so much, she could not let it touch her. Not yet. Not now. It would cripple her. It would easily destroy her.

And fuck!
No way she was letting Derek destroy her. She would not break over someone who didn’t deserve it.

With that resolve, she burst into her empty dorm room, curled on her side, and cried and cried and cried.

When Kylie came in later, and gently touched her shoulder, asking what happened, Olivia refused to say. She shook off Kylie’s hands and stayed facing the wall. Kylie took the hint and lay in her own bed. It was two hours later before she quit crying and Kylie finally whispered, “I’m sorry, Liv. I knew. From the start, I knew there was something he was hiding. I just… I don’t know, I guess I liked him so much, I didn’t want to think it could be
that
big of deal. I should have told you. He even seemed like he wanted me to tell you to stay away from him. I’m so sorry.”

Olivia didn’t respond. She received no comfort from Kylie. She didn’t ever tell Kylie what Derek did or kept secret, because, and it was the strangest part of her grief, she still didn’t know exactly what it was. She thought she loved him when no one else ever did. And it turned out she knew nothing when she met him, and still didn’t. Somehow, that made it more of a tragedy than everything else.

She got up the next morning, and resolved to put it away. One foot in front of the other. Concentrate exclusively on school and her music and her future. It was time to be the college freshman she came there to be. It was time to date and drink and go to parties and have fun with other college students. Like Kylie and Ally did. It was time to quit being so responsible and mature and start acting her age. It was time to stop pretending she’d somehow met her soul mate or the love of her life at eighteen years old.

If she refused to let it, he couldn’t hurt her. She could control it. It was her new mantra. So no matter how much her mom, Kylie, Ally, or even her dad tried to get her to talk, she wouldn’t. She would refuse to remember it forever.

She couldn’t bear to think, or feel, or acknowledge what she had and lost; and worst of all, how much of it was her own fault. And how much of herself she gave to Derek even though he didn’t ask for it. He often warned her. She insisted on seeing only what she decided was necessary for her. As always, she decided what reality was. And for that, she now had to learn the lesson, and pay the piper. She could never again trust someone with her heart and soul. It wasn’t remotely worth the pain of losing. But she could have fun. She could party. She could even have sex again without having so much tied up in it. And that was exactly what she intended to do, from that moment forward.

****

He kept breathing. Derek was shocked to realize how long he kept breathing no matter how many days he lay on his bed, inert and unmoving. He didn’t eat. He got up to piss and drink once in a while, but other than that, he just lay there on his pathetic bed, staring at the high ceiling. He did nothing. He didn’t watch TV or listen to music. He didn’t think or feel. He just lay there, wanting to die. He was ready to give up. To totally give up this time. He was tired of living, and his life; and the thing was: he’d always been tired of living and his life. From the time he could first remember, he was tired and hurt. And now, he was so tired of hurting so much.

He remembered lying in whatever smelly bed or on the floor that he currently called his space. How often had they moved? How many times were he, and later, Max and he abandoned for days on end in apartments or rooms? No one fed or cared for them. How many times did his dad hit him? His mother? And seeing his mother lying there, usually zoned out on drugs and never caring if she were even being hurt, let alone, having her children experience it too. She never cared. No one did. Never. Not until Olivia.

He curled on his side and stared harder at the walls. He hurt her because she gave him something no one else ever did: feelings. He deserved what he got. But she didn’t deserve what he did to her. But maybe before his sad, cold life ended, he managed to deserve a small, but beautiful escape from it all. Maybe Olivia entered his life to ease the bitterness of never mattering to anyone, and to give him a break. It was the one and only chance and opportunity he’d ever gotten in his life.

But fuck!
Banging on his door again. More swearing and threats. Quentrell was growing increasingly restless. He did not approve of Derek’s disappearing acts just to be with Olivia, and then he topped it off by doing this? Abandoning his duty for over a week? Not acceptable. Derek wished he cared. He wished his heart quaked in fear of when they would finally shoot his locks off the door and three hulking men would enter his living room while he lay prone on his bed. He finally sat up and swung his legs to the side of the bed, but by that time, they had already entered his bedroom.

Quentrell came this time. Derek almost felt honored. The boss had interrupted his happy life for him. Wasn’t he special? His head hurt. He brushed a knuckle over his eye and tried to shake the apathy from his head. They were going to hurt him. They were going to punch and kick and maybe do much worse to him.

Why didn’t he care? What kind of asshole loser was he to not even care if they did? He almost welcomed it. Is that why Max liked to fight? Is that why he signed on to become a human punching bag? So he could forget whatever pain was inside his head and heart? Derek never thought he had either, until Olivia. And now he wished he didn’t.

Quentrell was big, unlike Max and him. The other odd thing about Derek was he was the only one of the three who disliked physical pain intensely. Quentrell reveled in inflicting it on others, or watching it be inflicted, while Max tended to direct it at himself. Quentrell walked around the bed and waved his thugs back. There were two, and both looked huge. All bulked up with tats all over them, even onto their skulls. They were scary ass. That was the way he should have presented himself to Olivia.

But Derek’s apathetic, harmless, nondescript appearance made many feel unthreatened by him. They kind of trusted him when they wanted to buy their shit. Especially the less hardened crowds he found in the college and professional circles, all people whom society would find it hard to believe did the drugs he sold. He did so well in sales because he looked like just another guy. Not particularly threatening, or menacing, just another kid, walking through a park, or down the street, or on a college campus. He was easily forgettable and small. He was just kind of there.

Quentrell was huge and looked the part he played. He ran his small, evil empire with little or no regard to law or order. His dark eyes, so like Derek’s, examined him. They settled on his face and what he saw in their cold depths chilled Derek, almost breaking through his apathy. “Starting to think you disappeared. You haven’t answered any of my messages. Even the in-person ones. That pisses me off. Even from my little bro.”

Derek never spent one day as Quentrell’s little brother. He was ten years younger than Quentrell who beat on him as often and as easily as their shared father. His dad was the same as Quentrell’s. His mother was only a junkie and prostitute his dad slept with. Just as Quentrell’s mom was, although she’d been stabbed and killed years ago.

After Derek shot his dad, he panicked and called Quentrell. He was the only person he knew to call. That was the biggest mistake of his young life, even worse than murdering his own dad. Quentrell took care of it all right, and owned his sorry ass from that day forward. To this day, Derek didn’t know where Quentrell hid the body. He would not tell Derek where. It gave Quentrell complete leverage over him besides knowing Derek shot his own dad. Derek had the gun. Quentrell had the body. And therein lay their stalemate. Derek lived for the past ten years with the threat that cops could arrest him for murder on any given day.

“I’m right here. Been sick.”

“You start using?” Quentrell’s gaze focused hard on his face. Derek ran his hand through his hair and tongued his foul teeth. He might as well have. It might have eased some of the pain. Why he never drank or used drugs was a question he didn’t really have an answer for. Something kept him off the stuff that so dominated his family and childhood, tarnishing everything he knew about.

“No. Just sick. What do you want?”

“I want you to get back to work. You have any idea how much money we’ve lost this week? Or for that matter, the last few months? You’ve been doing a shit-ass job. I think you need to be reminded why that isn’t acceptable.”

He cracked his knuckles as the muscle behind Quentrell stepped forward. Derek stared at them with lifeless eyes. He shrugged. “I’ll start. Tonight. Just get out of here.”

“Yeah. You start. Tonight. Do better, little bro. I won’t accept this shit again. Not for any pussy.”