Even when he was gone, he was protecting me, looking out for me.
“You were all I thought about, Bee, the whole time I was gone – this whole four years. When I finally worked up the courage to call Reggie a few years back to ask him about you, I was scared to death he’d tell me you’d packed up and left town, or shacked up with someone else... or gotten married.”
That broke my heart a little. “You thought I was with Owen.”
“It crossed my mind. Makes me sick to my fucking stomach that I ever considered it a possibility.” He ran his fingers under my jaw and pulled my face to his, pressing his forehead against mine. I loved it when he did that. “But when Reggie told me that you weren’t with anyone, that you were still living in the apartment and working at the shop, I made myself believe it was because you still needed me. But you didn’t. You had it all sorted out long before I tried to step in and help. Reggie never told me about Georgia though, probably because he didn’t know how I would react. The bastard. I owe him a punch in the fucking jaw for that.” He laughed.
I didn’t know what to say about it all.
Jake continued. “I came to the conclusion that if I couldn’t be with you myself, I was going to at least try and give you everything I could to make you happy, even if it was from a distance —even if I wasn’t going to be part of it. I’m just sorry it took me so long to do it.” He brushed his lips over mine. “Turns out you were okay without me after all.”
“I wasn’t okay, Jake,” I assured him. “I wasn’t at all.”
“That’s what I was afraid you would say. Abby okay is not the same as everyone else okay.” Jake said. “Look at your arm. Look at my brave fucking girl and her warrior ink.” He ran his fingers down the artwork covering my right arm. “I know this is one of your pictures, and this is obviously me.” He tapped the angel of death image on the motorcycle. “And this is our quote, but what is this one?” he asked, his fingers landing on the black and gray version of “The Scar” painting.
“It’s my favorite painting. The real one is in color, but I had him do it in black and white instead. It’s a woman with a scar down the middle of her entire body.”
“But he didn’t tattoo the scar itself?”
“He didn’t need to.” I’d had the artist use one of the reddest, most jagged of my scars as the red line down the center of her.
“Wow,” Jake said. “It’s beautiful and fucking amazing, just like you.” His eyes were darkening, but it didn’t push the crystal blue out entirely. Both the devil and angel in him were with me that night. “I don’t know how I ever survived without you, Bee.”
I hadn’t thought of it from his side. At least I’d had Georgia. Jake had no one. I could see how the last four years were so difficult for him.
“I turned off my feelings the second I walked away from you on the bridge,” I told him. “But when Georgia was born, it was like she just broke through it all. It was hard to do, but I had my baby, and when you have a screaming three month old with colic who won’t sleep through the night, it’s hard to get caught up in your own bullshit. The things that happened to me in the past just started not to matter with her around. They still hurt, and I didn’t avoid them. They just weren’t the most important things in my life anymore. She saved me.”
“You both saved me,” Jake said. “As much as I can be saved.” His tone became serious. “I need you to do something for me, baby.”
“Anything.” If he asked me, I would do it. It was that simple.
“I need you to tell me why you took those pictures, the ones of you after…”
“I took them for you,” I admitted. “I wanted you to see what he did to me. I wanted you to be mad because I wanted you—” I stopped just short of saying it.
“Say it Bee,” he insisted. “I need to hear it.”
“I wanted you to kill him.” The words didn’t hurt, and I wasn’t embarrassed. It was actually liberating saying aloud that I wanted Owen to die. “There’s something else, too, besides what he did to me and Georgia.”
His eyes were fully dark now. “What is it?”
“He killed Nan.”
“I need to see them, the pictures, now, and I need you to show them to me.”
“Why?”
“Because, baby, I am going to leave here tonight, and I’m going to track him down wherever he is, and I’m going to take him out of this world. I’m going to bury the pieces of him where no one will ever find them.”
I hadn’t looked at the photos since I developed them that night in the high school darkroom. I didn’t know if I could see that part of my life again. “What difference will the pictures make? You know what happened.”