Chapter 10: Sebastian - Hunter or Hunted

A deep breath lifted my chest. Blowing it out, I spun around. I opened one cabinet, then another. “Where do you keep your flour?”

“Spice cabinet, over the stove,” Gwen said. “But don’t change the subject, Sebastian. That was a big accusation.”

When I tossed open the cabinet door, the big plastic container labeled FLOUR stared back at me. I grabbed it, then a bowl from the cabinet I’d gotten the plate from, and laid it out on the counter. “I didn’t accuse anyone of anything.”

“You implied an accusation.”

I poured some flour into the bowl, eyeing the spices perched on the back of the stove. Garlic, salt, pepper, cayenne, paprika. Those would do. Dumping them into the flour mixture, I shook my head. “It’s a possibility.”

“No, it’s not.” Fury burned Gwen’s voice. “Simone would never turn me in. She wouldn’t.”

She hadn’t so far, and that was a good sign. Didn’t convince me that, under the right—or wrong—circumstances, she wouldn’t. But, to avoid the argument, I said, “Alright. If you say so.”

A moment of silence passed. When I glanced at her over my shoulder, her face squished up in a pout. “What makes you think she would?”

“Basic human psychology.” Bowl in hand, I slid out one of the drawers. The right one, luckily. Silverware laid neatly across it. I grabbed out a fork and turned to face her. “She’s a mom. She loves her daughter, and that same little girl’s father is the man you killed. Even though I’m sure she’s grateful he’s gone, if she goes to jail, where does Junie go? No matter how much she loves you, she loves her daughter more. If she has to choose, she will choose Junie.”

“She won’t have to,” Gwen said.

“She hasn’t up until this point, which is great.” Using the fork, I sifted the spices into the flour. “But if the cops come knocking, if she is faced with the possibility of prison, orphaning her daughter, something changes. When that real possibility is put before her⁠—”

“She won’t.” Rather than a pout, fire shined in her eyes. “She wouldn’t turn me in, Sebastian.”

I dropped the fork into the bowl and raised my hands in surrender. “Fine. If you say so.”

There came that pout again. She folded her arms and leaned back in her seat. “That’s what I’m talking about. You act like I’m naïve. Like I’m stupid or something.”

“I’m not saying you’re stupid. I’m saying you don’t know. You don’t know how she will feel unless she is put in that situation, and she hasn’t been,” I said. “Simone isn’t like you. You grew up in a shady environment, you know how to deal with cops, but that’s not Simone’s background. She was a sweet little suburban girl. If the cops come, and they know something⁠—”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about.” Gwen pointed at me. “You think you know everything, and you don’t. You didn’t see her that day. When Rhiannon found the bruises on her face, you didn’t see how she lied. It was so close to the whole story, so close to the truth, but she veered at just the right time. Her expressions were perfect, her inflection—everything. She told Edwards exactly what he needed to hear, and nothing he didn’t. And she doesn’t know enough to convict anyone anyway. It’d all be he said she said.”

Fine. Simone had already lied to the cops to cover for Gwen, and she would do it again. But that last line proved my point, whether Gwen realized it or not.

“What does she know?”

“Nothing, really. Just that I did it.” She shrugged. “That I stabbed him, got rid of the body, and got rid of his car. She doesn’t know where or how. Maybe I made a comment once or twice about how I could’ve used her help getting his body into the trunk, but she doesn’t know where I took it. She has no physical evidence.”

I nodded slowly, trailing my tongue along my teeth.

Gwen narrowed her eyes again. “What? What’s that face for?”

Turning back to the stove, I reached to the back of the cabinet overhead for the bottle of vegetable oil. A cast-iron skillet already lay on the stove. I filled it with oil and flicked the temperature up. “Why’d you make that call?”

“What?”

Meeting her gaze, I leaned against the Formica countertop. “Why were you so careful about what you told her?”

For half a second, the anger in her eyes vanished. Defeat shone in those deep pools of blue.

This wasn’t about winning the argument. But she wanted to have this conversation, and the dangers of it required an advocate for the devil. “Is it because the less she knows, the safer you are?”

“You know everything.” She glowered. “How do I know you aren’t gonna turn me in?”

“You don’t.” I shrugged. “But I won’t.”

“Why?” She paused. “I asked you about the other night, and I don’t think you ever gave me a clear answer then either. Why did you help me get away with murder, Sebastian?”

The words fell from my lips without thought. “Because I love you.”

“You didn’t love me then.”

“Of course I did. I’ve been in love with you for months. Maybe since I met you.”

Her stiff posture, her narrowed eyes, softened. Only the slightest bit. Enough to assure me that we weren’t fighting each other in this argument. We were fighting the concepts and ideas themselves.

“But it’s not even that,” I said. “I’ve been where you were. I just had a better leg to stand on. I had my land. I had somewhere to bury the body. I understood that you did what you had to, even before I knew the whole story. Because I’ve been there too.”

Softening my voice, I shook my head. “I put David’s body on top of Jason’s because they deserved to lie together for eternity. Because they were the same, because our stories were the same. Because I got away with it, and I knew that if I did for you what I did for myself, you would too. And if I’m wrong, if we do go down, we’re going down together. I won’t let you sink for this.”

Her voice was tender when she said, “I won’t either.”

“I know.”

The microwave dinged. I walked that way, grabbed out the plate, and returned to the counter. Once I grabbed a knife from inside the drawer, I looked around for something to slice on. “Where’s your cutting board?”

“I don’t have one. Just use the plate.” She stood and took a blanket off the arm of the sofa. As she sat back down at the kitchen table, she placed it around her shoulders and frowned at me. “Why can’t you understand that I feel the same way about Simone? You just said it yourself. You can’t say how you know I won’t turn on you. That’s how I feel about Simone.”

She wouldn’t like my answer, so I didn’t look up from the chicken breasts on the plate. “It happened in front of her, and you didn’t feel safe enough to tell her everything. You love her. I know you do. She’s your best friend, and she loves you, but you don’t feel safe with her.” Finally, I looked up. She still gave me that frown, but at least she’d stopped glowering. “How am I supposed to feel safe with her if you don’t?”

“It’s not what you think.” Gwen shook her head. “I do trust her.”

“Then what is it?”

“Okay, yeah, I kept the whole story from her to protect us both,” she said. “Plausible deniability and all that. But just because… I don’t know. She kept wanting to talk about it, how I felt after doing it, and I didn’t think she would understand.”

Pressing her lips together, she swallowed hard. “I’ve never felt any guilt or shame for it. I did what I had to, and it saved her life. Maybe saved mine. I rationalized it from the start, and that’s not how Simone’s mind works. Most of the time, she’s a feel-first kind of person. If the roles were reversed, the guilt would’ve eaten her away by now. She wouldn’t have been able to live with the shame. And I get that. It’s who she is. It’s what I love about her.

“But that’s not me. I feel things for a heartbeat, and then I logic my way out of it. I did what I had to, and I can live with that, but I couldn’t live with her judgment. And if it wasn’t judgment, if it wasn’t me looking like a psychopath, I couldn’t live with the sympathy. The pity.”

I replayed that in my mind as I washed my hands in the sink. When I was done drying them on the dishrag, I tossed some seasoning onto the chunks of chicken. “I think I get the first half of what you said. I’m a bit lost on the last part.”

A slow, shaking breath trembled Gwen’s frame. Holding the blanket tighter around her shoulders, she propped her elbow on the table and rested her head in her hand. “Simone was the first person I met from the ranch. She came to my hometown. She saw me at my worst. No, she didn’t just see me. She saved me. The day I came here, I’d—” She pinched her eyes shut and shook her head again. “Simone gave me a number to call if I needed her. I got in this little trailer, I was gonna try to make do on my own, and I couldn’t. Some shit happened, and I was…” Unable to meet my gaze, she licked her dry lips. “I was terrified I would never get out.

“She and Axel came,” Gwen said, voice softer. “They calmed me down. They gave me somewhere to go. Simone was this pillar to me at that moment. She’d been where I was, but she was better now. I learned from her example. I became who I am because of her. She showed me that I’m more than my trauma. And then, that night, when I saw her like that… I didn’t even recognize her, Sebastian. Her face was so swollen, she couldn’t even open her eye, and—And she had been my hero. Then she was the one who needed saving. So I saved her. But I was okay.

“Simone wasn’t. She hasn’t been, not really. Not since it happened.” Her eyes stayed on the tabletop. A few moments of silence passed, long enough for me to bread the chicken and toss it into the hot oil. “I didn’t want it to be about me. I didn’t want her to focus on making me feel better. I didn’t want her to feel bad for me. I just wanted to help her like she helped me. No questions, no pressure. Just assurance that everything was okay. That it would be okay.”

Ah. Now I saw her point. She trusted Simone. More than I trusted most people. Gwen hadn’t told her the whole truth, not because she feared what Simone would do with it, but to protect her from it.

I respected that. “I get it.”

Finally looking up, she squinted at me again. “Do you? Because you’re still giving me that look. Like you think I’m full of shit.”

“I don’t know how you keep getting all this dialogue from my face, but it’s not saying any of that.”

“Okay.” She stood, still bundling the blanket around her body, and joined me at the counter. She stood only a couple feet away, to the left of the stove while I stood on the right. “Use your words then. What are you thinking?”

She wouldn’t like my answer. But she asked for it. “I think it’s a good thing you didn’t tell her everything.”

Hip propped against the counter to stabilize her still unsteady gait, she went back to glowering. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what I said.” With the fork I’d stirred the flour with, I flipped one of the chicken strips. “Even if you trust her, I’m just not sure that I do.”

“Right. Because you don’t trust anyone.” She rolled her eyes and brushed past me. At the sink, she filled a glass with water. “You don’t trust me either. That’s why you taunted me for months with those texts.”

“I was never taunting⁠—”

“Regardless of what you intended, that’s how it landed.” She turned the faucet off with more force than necessary. “Imagine the roles were reversed. Imagine I found Jason’s body, buried it for you, and sent you all these weird creepy texts for months instead of just telling you that it was me, Sebastian. Imagine how that would make you feel.”

Like I wanted to crawl out of my skin. Like I had to constantly look over my shoulder. Like someone was stalking me. Like they were waiting for the moment to ruin my life.

“You’re right.” I raised my hands in surrender, hot specks of oil smacking against my back through my shirt. “Hindsight’s 20/20. I should’ve phrased the messages differently, or never sent them at all⁠—”

“You should’ve told me it was you.” Setting her cup down, she leaned against the sink. “You shouldn’t have hidden that from me.”

“You weren’t exactly forthcoming with it either⁠—”

“Straw man argument, Sebastian.” She pointed at me, eyes wide. “You didn’t tell me about Jason because nobody just goes around telling everybody about the murders they committed. But when you see your friend—or girlfriend—getting rid of a body, you just tell her. You don’t lie. You don’t keep it a secret and taunt her with anonymous texts for months. If Simone had seen me getting rid of the body, she would’ve asked what the hell I was doing. Yeah, she would’ve helped me, but she wouldn’t have played this game that you did. Because she trusts me. And you don’t.

“You don’t trust anyone, Sebastian. And that’s why you don’t understand my relationship with Simone. The only close relationships you have in your life are with Lizzie and Rhiannon. And I know, you were busy raising her, then with your career, and I get it. I really get why you don’t have close friendships. I don’t hold it against you. But you’re going to have to learn to trust somebody eventually. At least me.”

Fine. Even drunk, she mopped the floor with me.

I softened my voice as I reached out to touch her arm. “I do trust you.”

She stepped back before my hand could make contact. “Until your back was against the wall, you didn’t.”

“That’s not true.” Frowning, I shook my head. “It’s more complicated than that. But back to Simone⁠—”

“You want to go back to Simone? Fine.” Face screwed up in confusion, she shook her head some more. “You don’t understand women. You don’t understand our friendships, our connections, the way we love, or the way we feel. You think that I should trust you more than her because we’re in love. You think that it’s somehow more significant than my relationship with her. That me and Simone, our love for one another, matters less because it’s platonic instead of romantic. But it’s not. It’s just as deep. In a different way, sure. But it isn’t less.”

“Who’s being condescending now?” I asked. “I know you think I’m this antisocial weirdo, but I do have friends. I have a deep love for many people in my life. But it’s not the same as the love I have for you. You’re right about that. It is different, Gwen. In what way is it different for you?”

“It’s…” She paused, thinking of a good rebuttal. “It’s friendship. That’s how we started. That’s the love that I had for you to begin with. With something else. Something⁠—”

“Something more.” Shifting my position so I could flip the chicken with my left hand while still looking at her on my right, I shrugged. “I’m not saying it’s a dramatic difference in quantity, Gwen, but it is more. Romantic love is platonic love with another layer.”

Teeth gritted, still glowering, she waved a dismissive hand at me and spun around. “I can’t argue with you about this right now.”

“Great. Then don’t.”

A twinge of satisfaction bubbled in my chest. She was done with that part of the conversation, not because she made her point clear, but because she saw mine, and she agreed. I’d been doing the therapy thing my whole life, and I knew I needed to get the smartass, God complex under control. But how the hell could I stop feeling so good when I knew I was right?

“But we need to,” Gwen said, fishing around in the fridge. She came out with a glass jar of apple juice. Good choice. Apple aided digestion. “We have to finish this, because I can’t. I can’t with your attitude. You act like you’re some progressive, knight in shining armor, and then you just—you—Ugh.” She set the glass jar on the counter with a clink then thrust her fists down at her sides. “And you’re not. You’re just not.”

I squinted at her, raising my shoulders. “I told you not to put me on a pedestal. I never claimed to be a knight in shining armor, Gwen.”

“That—Ugh.” Groaning, she ran a hand through her hair and grabbed a fistful at the back. “Yes. You did. The other night. Standing over his grave, that’s exactly who you painted yourself as. Maybe because you’d prefer I see you as a hero than a lunatic who could rip off the jaw of a man you once called a friend.”

I winced. She noticed.

“You hold yourself up on a pedestal,” she said, raising her voice. “You know you’re better than most men out there, and you own it. But that’s just it. When you took me to that grave, you made it out like we were on the same page. Like we saw the same things that are wrong with the world. Two broken, screwed up people who did a screwed up thing to make this screwed up world just a little bit better. It was about survival when I killed David. Then I saw what you did, how you rationalized it, and you validated what I’ve been fighting myself about for months. I’m not what’s broken. The world is.

“And killing Evan, killing men like him, is a small way I can make a difference. It won’t save the world, but it’ll save his next victim. It’ll save the next Delilah. And that’s what you said. That’s why you said you did it. To protect Lizzie, to protect the girl who came after Sarah, but if that were true, we wouldn’t be standing here arguing about it.

“Killing Jason was vengeance. Because you loved Sarah, and because he took her from you.” Her voice broke on those words, and my chest ached. When her eyes softened, the bands of muscles around my heart clenched tighter. “And I respect that. I understand it. I get why you don’t want to ruin your life—or risk it—with another murder. But I thought we felt the same way. After you took me to that grave, I thought we were on the same page.”

We were. And we weren’t.

The hot frying oil crackled. It shot from the pan. The burning heat smacked me on the forearm.

Fighting the urge to mutter a curse, I took the browned chicken from the pan with a fresh fork and tossed it onto another plate. As it cooled, I threw another piece into the hot oil.

“Are you going to say something?” Gwen asked.

“Are you going to eat something?” I held out the plate.

She snatched it from my hands. “I’ll eat if you respond.”

“We do feel the same way.” A deep breath passed from my nostrils. “In a lot of ways, at least.”

Air a bit thinner now, she stretched past me and reached into the silverware drawer. Confusion wrinkled her face as she settled in against the counter, ripping the chicken tender apart with a fork and butter knife. “What does that mean?”

“I’ve seen stories like yours, like Simone’s, like Delilah’s, my entire life.” An image of my mom flickered through my mind. At her worst, with a swollen lip and black and blue around her eye. “I see it. I feel for you, and for Simone, and Delilah.” And Sarah, and my mom. “But it’s always going to be like watching a movie to me, Gwen. I can’t live it the way that you all have. My eyes watered and my chest tightened earlier, when you gave your speech, but it didn’t hit me the way that it hit everybody else, because I’m not one of you.”

“Yeah, just like I can’t feel exactly what Axel’s struggle has been like as a gay man, but I can understand it.” She blinked hard at me. “I thought when Delilah died, and I came to you, you could understand my pain. My rage. I didn’t think you’d spit in my face.”

Shoulders drooping, I shook my head in disbelief. “How did I spit in your face?”

“When you said it had only been a few months.” She swallowed hard. “That I barely knew her.”

It was a fact. Delilah was not to Gwen what Sarah had been to me. Comparing the two wasn’t fair. Our relationships were not the same.

But if I said that, I would only dig myself in deeper.

“I wasn’t trying to discredit your friendship.”

“That’s exactly what you were trying to do.”

My jaw tightened, and my head pounded. Chest hollowing, everything blackened and blurred around the edges. It wasn’t anger, but anxiety.

This was why I hated conflict. I saw where Gwen was coming from, but she was wrong.

She loved Delilah, and one day, if they had the chance, they would have become the best of friends. Losing that, mourning what could have been, had to hurt. I did understand that.

But Sarah took the blame when I broke a priceless vase in the formal dining room. She took the beating for it.

Sarah taught me to ride a bike. She taught me to read. She did my homework with me each night. She tucked me in before bed.

She was my best friend for twenty-two years. She was the reason I survived my childhood.

I loved my sister in a way that Gwen couldn’t have loved Delilah.

As my blood pressure rose, I turned back to the chicken. The pieces I’d tossed in were browning now. I flipped them over, the methodical action lowering my racing heart.

“I had nothing when I came here, Sebastian.” Gwen’s voice was quieter now. An octave or two lower than the crackles and snaps of the frying food. “I never had siblings. But years ago, before my ex, before I was married, I had friends. Friends who were like family. And I lost them. Because of him, because of me—I don’t know. I lost my mom too. I almost lost Honey.”

Where was she going with this? It piqued my interest, drawing my gaze to hers. But she wasn’t looking at me. She stood only a foot or two away, eyes glued to the food in the pan.

“Then I came here. I felt the love of this place, of these people.” She paused. “These women. Each one of us, we all have our own stories. Events that brought us here. Pain and rage and heartache and—and you’re right. Delilah was only here a few months. But I’ve only known Simone a couple months, too. A drop compared to the years of history I had with those friends who vanished when I became too much, when I needed them.” Her eyes met mine. They were gentler than I expected. “I’ve only known you a year. I was with my husband for ten. But I love you a thousand times more than I ever loved him.

“Because it isn’t the time that matters. It’s the connections, the vulnerability, the intimacy we all share.” She grabbed the apple juice off the counter and spun off the lid. “Rhiannon’s Ranch is a house of cards. We hold one another up. If one of us falls, we all fall. That’s how I feel about Delilah. She was a part of my home. She was right alongside me, learning from me, and she fell down, and that gust of wind shoved me down with her.”

My eyes stayed on Gwen as she lifted the juice to her lips and gulped. She shifted her gaze somewhere else. On the ceiling as she sipped, then on the floor, then the wall. Not looking at any one thing in particular, not looking at anything at all.

“If she would’ve left, or gone back to him, or killed herself, it would’ve hurt. But you’re right. This”—she gestured over herself, splashing apple juice onto her chest—“this mess isn’t because a girl I knew for a couple months died. This is…”

The sizzling on the stove crescendoed. So focused on her, I forgot to pay any mind to the snapping and crackling. As I reached in to stab one of the tenders, darker than I would’ve liked them, Gwen came in closer. The heat of her body radiated into my back.

“Pop. Pop, pop, pop.” Ominous, her words echoed the oil in the pan. Gesturing to the clock on the back of the stove, reading 4 o’clock, she spoke in a haunting whisper. “Another one. Another woman, somewhere in America, dead by hands that swore to hold and protect her. Don’t you…”

My shaking fingertips flicked off the heat. I felt her stare on me. It weighed a thousand pounds. Meeting it felt like getting crushed beneath a truck.

“Don’t you feel it?” Barely above a whisper, confusion wrinkling her face, a single tear pearled the corner of her eye. “You don’t feel it.”

That time, a statement. Not a question.

“Of course you don’t.” Her wrinkled forehead ironed back out. Her tone flattened. She smacked that tear off her cheek. “Because you don’t experience it every day of your life. When you go on a first date, you’re afraid of a broken heart, that she won’t like you, or that you’re not good enough somehow. But we’re afraid of him. Of hurting his ego. Of saying no. Of pissing him off and getting fucking killed for it.”

Chills swept over my skin, pricking the hairs on the back of my neck and bringing them to their ends.

“You don’t have to walk on broken glass all day, every day.”

She held that glass jar of apple juice between her thumb and pointer finger. It swung back and forth as she paced past the fridge, then the fireplace, and back. She didn’t look at me. She didn’t look at anything. Fire shined in her eyes, but they weren’t here. They were on another dimension, maybe another time, surveying a scene I hoped I’d never see.

“You think the Jasons and the Davids of the world are the outliers.” She tore off the blanket and draped it over the dining chair. “You wouldn’t hurt a woman, you don’t have any friends who would, so the bad men are the anomalies. They’re there, you’ve seen them, but not that many of them. You think treating women with decency and respect is the norm, and it isn’t, Sebastian. You’re the anomaly. There are more bad men out there than there are good.”

I did my best to keep my expression neutral. But surely she saw the sag of my shoulders, the faster pace of my breath. Because, yes. I did pat myself on the back for being a half decent guy. And no, these weren’t thoughts that ran through my mind on a day-to-day basis.

Not for me, at least. But they ran through my mind each time Lizzie left the house.

Off the top of my head, I could name a dozen women I’d trust to watch my niece. But I couldn’t name a single man I’d leave her alone with.

So why had I pretended I didn’t understand her perspective?

She got one part wrong though. I’d always known being half decent was the anomaly. It was the very reason she thought I was an antisocial weirdo with no friends. Because I didn’t like men anymore than she did.

“I never compared Sarah and Delilah because the situation was a perfect match,” Gwen said, still pacing. “I know you loved Sarah more than I could have loved Delilah in the time we knew each other. But my rage isn’t only for Delilah, Sebastian.” She finally glanced my way, and her eyes weren’t wide with rage as I had expected. She narrowed them, deep in focus. “My rage is for Sarah. For Simone, and Eve, and Rhiannon, and Lori, and Delilah, and every other woman. Alive today, dead already, or dead a hundred years. Dead a thousand. There is a war against women, and there has been since the dawn of time.

“And this”—she spread her arms wide—“is how we protect each other. We band together. We form communities. We feel what the others feel. We share in the anger and the hate and we lock arms and together, our screams are a clap of thunder.”

I didn’t feel it, not in the way she did. I couldn’t. I didn’t have that. The locked arms, the communal scream. Not as intimately, at least, but women had always surrounded and rallied behind me.

They watched Lizzie when I worked late. They babysat while I shopped for her Christmas and birthday presents. They helped me, and they loved me, but always at arm’s length. Aside from Rhiannon, and now Gwen, those women who helped me, who cared for me, never got too close, for all the reasons Gwen had just mentioned.

Because I was a man. Getting too close to me, to any man, meant risking their life.

I envied those locked arms, that communal scream.

But I understood it.

“What is that like?” My voice stayed quiet, allowing space for that thunderous clap. “Living with that every day. Feeling your pain, and Simone’s, and Eve’s, and Rhiannon’s, and Lori’s, and Delilah’s. Sarah’s.” My throat constricted at her name. “What does it feel like?”

“A storm. A violent storm in the center of my chest.”

She clapped a hand over her breast, pointer finger and thumb digging into her collarbone. The pink skin turned white beneath her touch. Her steps grew heavier, still pacing back and forth between the fireplace, the fridge, the sink, and the stove.

“Everything burning and turning, every force of nature fighting at once. A forest fire, a tsunami, a tornado, and an earthquake, all inside of me. All of mother nature’s power, banding together, ready to burst.” Cheeks flushed, she spoke through gritted teeth. “Like I’m going to explode if I don’t do something. I can’t just sit here and do nothing.”

The glass bottle, still rocking between her fingertips, slammed into the handle of the cabinet door. It burst on impact. Glass shattered, raining in a circle.

And she screamed.