Chapter 15: Sebastian - Hunter or Hunted

As a child, I never gave much thought to people’s bodies. They were what they were. Then my balls dropped. Suddenly, I noticed all kinds of different things about bodies. Like boobs.

Until puberty, they were cushy things I laid my head on and thought nothing of when I hugged a woman. There was nothing sexual about a layer of fat wrapped around someone’s rib cage, until there was.

Regardless of how I feel about it, our society began sexualizing breasts a long time ago. Every person in America knows so. There is a socially acceptable way for a man to hug a woman.

The way Evan hugged Ava was not.

His hands curled around her waist, one trailing up and down her ribs. The other coasted over the back of her hip. Evan’s chest pressed so tightly against hers that they could hold a piece of paper in place between them. Towering over her, he rested his head on her crown, weeps shaking his entire body.

“If I died,” Gwen said, voice low, “do you think you’d hug my little sister like that?”

“I wouldn’t hug any teenage girl like that,” I said.

Gwen’s jaw tightened, but she said nothing.

Evan’s sobs quieted as he lifted his head. One hand went to Ava’s cheek. He tilted her chin up so their eyes met. His brows raised in the center, lips curving down at either end, but no liquid glimmered on his cheeks.

All that crying, and not a single tear.

She said something I couldn’t hear from the distance, then looked over her shoulder at us. His eyes followed. They met mine, and for a second, only a second, his mouth tightened and his forehead creased. Darkness enveloped his pale baby blues.

Then his brows raised again, and his lips fell in a frown, and the baby blues came back.

Ava turned back up to look at him. He said something, she said something, and her fingers closed around his wrist. They started our way.

“You know we’re about to be a spectacle,” I said. “Everyone’s gonna want to talk to the last person who saw Delilah alive.”

Gwen’s eyes went back into the casket. “Yeah.”

“You’re sure you’re ready for that?”

“Not really.” She still stared down at Delilah. “But I need to know if I really am the last person in this room to see Delilah alive.”

Of course she did. That’s why we were here.

“I’m so sorry, I know you told me your name,” Ava said, only a few strides away now. “I completely blanked.”

Gwen forced a smile. “Zoey.”

“And you are…?” Evan held out his hand in my direction, expression soft, but eyes cold.

“Jared.” So Gwen had told me this morning, anyway. I accepted the shake, unmoved by his iron grip. He shook my hand so hard it was like he was trying to rip my arm from its socket. “Zoey and Allie were really close. Didn’t want to send her all this way on her own.”

“I don’t know what I would do without him.” Gwen rested her head on my bicep and laced our fingers together.

Not a sign of affection for me or for her. She was playing a part. A sweet young lady, devastated by the loss of her friend, relying solely on her boyfriend for support through it.

It worked. Because Evan’s piercing eyes softened the moment he realized I wasn’t the threat. Allie hadn’t run into my arms. She had run into a woman’s. A woman as weak and malleable as he had wished Allie had been.

“But I’m so sorry to meet under the circumstances,” Gwen said to Ava. “I never would’ve thought… I’m so sorry. For your loss, I mean.”

Ava swallowed and forced a smile. “Yeah, I don’t—” She blew out a deep breath. “Thanks. I know you must be here to say goodbye and everything, but I just have so many questions. We both”—she gestured between herself and Evan, then to a man and woman near the door—“we all do. I still don’t even know where she was. I don’t know why she left.”

My eyes flicked to Evan, and my jaw tightened.

No change in his expression. He still wore that intense, almost focused frown. His brow still pulled up in the center, creasing like he was trying with all his might to look sad. No redness in his cheeks from all those weeps, no chafed skin around his eyes or nose from wiping tears and snot that came with true, body-breaking grief.

“A little town in Montana,” Gwen said.

Ava’s brows furrowed.

Evan’s face didn’t budge.

“Montana?” Ava asked. “What was she doing in Montana?”

“I’m not sure really,” Gwen said. “She didn’t talk about her life here much. Just said she wanted a fresh start. She was about to start school though. She wanted to work with kids.”

A hard swallow bobbed Evan’s throat.

Was that grief? Shame? Both?

Ava’s lip quivered. “I—I don’t understand. Why didn’t she just go to school here? And why didn’t she tell me? I mean, we were never the closest, but she was my sister. Sisters tell each other when they move across the country.”

“Honestly, I don’t know.” Shaking her head, Gwen softened her voice. “All she ever really said was that things weren’t always great at home. The day we met, she had a nasty black eye.”

Gwen didn’t look at Evan when she said that. His shoulders stiffened though.

“A black eye?” Ava’s mouth hung open. “What are you—are you sure?”

That woman, the one by the door, the one Ava had gestured to, popped her head up. Her wide eyes fell on Ava, then on Gwen, then on Evan. They lingered there a moment. His stayed on hers. The baby blues returned. So did that bullshit wrinkle in his forehead.

The woman patted the arm of the man she’d been standing with. She squared her shoulders and pasted on a smile as she started our way.

“Pretty sure, yeah,” Gwen said. “I never really asked about it, but⁠—”

The woman pressed her manicured fingers to Ava’s elbow. “Daddy needs your help getting some things out of the car. Would you meet him out there, honey?”

“Mom, this is Zoey,” Ava said, not even looking at her mother. “She knew Allie. Like, recently. She said Allie had a black eye when they met, and she’s gotta be mistaken, right? I saw Allie the day before she left, and⁠—”

“Zoey,” the woman repeated, holding out her hand. “That lady—she didn’t tell me your name, but she told me you’d be coming.” Her voice was some odd combination of timid and assertive. “Thank you. Thank you for being here.”

Ava blinked hard at her mother in disbelief.

For half a second, Gwen did too. It only took a heartbeat for her to resume her character. She forced a sad smile and shook the woman’s hand. “Thank you for having me. I’m really grateful. Charlotte, right?”

“Wait, what lady?” Ava turned to face her mother better. “What are you talking about?”

Charlotte gave Ava one of those tight-lipped, mothering smiles and squeezed her daughter’s shoulder. “We’ll talk this all through later. Could you please go help your dad, sweetie?”

Mouth ajar, Ava’s shoulders slumped. She glanced at her mom, then Gwen, then Evan. Defeated, she said something under her breath and headed for the door.

“Teenagers.” Charlotte exhaled slowly, staring Evan and me down with a glance. She settled on me. “Are you two friends?”

I laid a hand on the small of Gwen’s back. “Zoey is my girlfriend.”

“Oh, sure.” She gave Evan a smile, a bit more legitimate than the one she’d worn earlier. “Evan, where are your manners? Get this young man a drink.”

Because she wanted to speak to Gwen in private. She wanted to tell her what and what not to say in front of her daughter. She wanted to tell her that Delilah’s photo was larger than the corner Gwen saw of it.

But I didn’t mind. I wanted a moment in private with Evan anyway.

Gwen didn’t seem to mind either. “Would you mind getting me a glass of wine, baby?”

* * *

As we left the viewing room and headed down the hall, Evan started on the small talk. “Montana, huh? That’s a long drive.”

“Too long, yeah,” I agreed, letting him stay half a stride ahead. He seemed to appreciate that. “We flew. Only a couple hours by plane.”

“Not too bad of a trip then. I bet the view of those mountains is badass up there.”

Without sparing too many glances, I paid specific attention to his demeanor. The way he carried himself beside me compared to the way he’d held himself beside Ava and Charlotte.

Next to the women, his shoulders were softer, his eyes sweeter.

Now, his chin pointed to the sky, chest poked out. His long-sleeve button-up looked tight around his upper arms. Like he was flexing. Reminding me that he was the alpha in this interaction.

“Badass from the ground too,” I said. “You ever been?”

“Nah, not much of a mountain guy.” At the end of the hall, he led us down a flight of stairs. Mahogany wainscoting and checkered carpet quieted any of the low chatter in the viewing rooms behind us. “I try to hit Miami every spring though.”

“Try LA one of these days. People talk a lot of shit, but it beats Miami by a landslide.”

“Allie always wanted to go to LA.” Rounding the bend to the final half flight of steps, Evan’s strong, manly demeanor remained, but his voice changed. Softened, maybe? “Promised her I would take her there one day. Guess I’m a liar.”

Considering the way Charlotte fawned over him, despite knowing he had—at the very least—groomed and abused her daughter? Yeah. He was a liar.

He stepped off the stairs and veered through the doorway on our right. A line formed behind an old wooden bar. Nothing fancy, but a decent little spot for the grieving to drink their sorrows away. He headed for the bar and took a seat on the red, worn in leather stool. I settled in beside him.

“Did you meet her?” His posture lightened once more, like it had with Ava and Charlotte. “Allie, I mean. You said your girl was real close with her, so you would have at some point.”

“A couple times, yeah.” I shrugged. “You know how it is. ‘Allie just came in, can I call you back later?’ Oh, ‘Allie has no one to hang out with at the tree lighting, do you mind if she comes?’”

His eyes squinted for a millisecond. The baby blues came back. “Right. Yeah, I guess I just—shit, man.” He crossed one arm against his chest and rubbed from his brows down the bridge of his nose with the other. A sound left him. I couldn’t tell if it was a deep breath or another one of those crocodile sobs. “I’m just a mess right now. I keep trying to imagine what the past couple months of her life were like, what she was doing, and I keep coming back to the worst possibilities.”

What she was doing. Not what she was going through. Not what led to her killing herself.

What she was doing without him.

There were two roads this conversation could take. One would assure him that I had no suspicions, which was the right path if I were certain he’d killed her. As of yet, I wasn’t.

The other would point me toward Gwen’s conclusion.

“She was happy,” I said.

His shoulders firmed the slightest bit. The corner of his eye twitched. It reminded me of the face my dad made in public when I had done something wrong and would pay for it later.

“She seemed happy to me, at least.” After that modifier, his baby blues returned. “She made a lot of good friends. She was working at a daycare in town. I don’t know, man, I would’ve never seen it coming.”

“Until a couple months ago, I wouldn’t have either.” His shoulders relaxed again. Now that he realized where I stood, he had a plan. “I don’t know what happened with her. We were together for years, you know? We go through a rough patch, and she just runs out? Leaves her family, her friends… I don’t even know what for.”

Because whatever you did to her hurt so bad, she would’ve done anything to get away.

“Yeah, that’s crazy shit,” I said.

“She was.” Now that he believed we saw the world the same way, that we were on the same page, he could tear down my opinion of Delilah. He could make her out to be the pariah he had convinced her family she was. “I think it’s the Internet. All that Me Too shit—I mean, these women hate men so much, they’ll ruin their lives with a lie.”

Over ninety percent of convicted assault allegations women made proved true. Less then ten percent were false. But to keep the conversation going, to keep from blowing my cover, I said, “Yeah, it’s a scary time to be a man. You make one mistake, and your life is over.”

“That’s what I’m saying.” He kept his voice low enough that the others in the hall wouldn’t hear him. “Shit with me and Allie, it was never perfect. We had our problems, just like anybody has problems. But for her to run out like that? Start a whole new life? I just can’t wrap my head around it.”

It took every ounce of will power to keep from rolling my eyes. “Yeah, that would’ve wrecked me, man.”

“It did.” Evan waved the bartender over. When he caught the gentleman’s attention, his posture changed again. Shoulders a little wider, chin held a bit higher. “Can we get a couple beers?”

“Sure thing,” the man said, giving Evan a once over before he turned away.

“You don’t know what she was up to, do you?” he asked me, eyes narrowed slightly. “Girls talk. Did yours tell you anything about her?”

Yours. As if Gwen was something that belonged to me. “Not really, no. She was just around sometimes.”

“You never saw her with anyone else?”

I almost laughed. He was feeling up Delilah’s sister a few yards from her damn casket, and he had the balls to ask if she’d been seeing anyone else? “I think she was just focused on school. That’s all I ever heard her talk about.”

“Yeah. Right, I heard your girl say that upstairs.” Nodding slowly, he squinted me over. “Just kinda odd to me. Allie never cared much about school. She barely graduated.”

Maybe because you tortured her all through high school. She didn’t have time to focus on her education because she was too busy coddling you.

“I don’t know, man. That’s just what Zoey told me.”

“Sure.” Evan gave the server a wave as he set the bottles of beer before us. “Yeah, I get that. I just wish I knew what was going on with her these past few months.”

She was doing her best to make up for the years you stole from her.

“I wish I could tell you more, but I only met her a couple times, man. You’d be better off asking Zoey.”

He smacked his lips together. “Yeah, well⁠—”

“Hey, baby.” Gwen’s voice approached from behind me. She managed a smile and ran a hand over my back. “I think I’m gonna head back to the room. Are you gonna be here a while?”

Thank god.

“No, I’m right behind you.” I started to stand. “You okay?”

She wiggled her brows but kept the smile. “Yeah, I’m good.” She glanced at Evan, who didn’t so much as look her way. Was that a sign of respect for me, or a symbol of disrespect for Gwen? Or for women as a whole? “Meet me outside?”

“Sure.” I gave her a quick kiss. As she turned away, I patted Evan’s shoulder. “It was nice talking to you.”

“Yeah, thanks.” Evan looked my way now. “It’s been lonely lately. Thanks for letting me talk your ear off.”

“Don’t mention it.” Were the drinks paid for, like they were at a wedding? Either way, I rummaged in my pocket for my wallet and came out with some cash. If nothing else, the tender got a nice tip. “Hang in there, man.”

“Right.” He forced a smile. “I’ll probably be down here all morning tomorrow if you’re looking to kill some time before the funeral.”

Yeah, no.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll see ya.”