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Dove steps in front of me. “Gwenna. Do you remember that night? The night in Breckenridge, when you and Bear—” I’m nodding, so he pauses; when I don’t speak, he goes on. “He told you it was him, and you were very upset. Sliced your fingernails into his neck—” Dove points to his own throat— “cut up his face. He got in the snow and laid there so you could go at him, he let you punch him, got his nose all busted up, black eye right here…” Dove gestures to his own eye. “When we found him, he had called your friend Jamie and waited with you while she got there. I guess you passed out. We found Barrett walking through the woods. He didn’t know what day it was, what time it was. He was in shock.”
“He thought that we were there to kill him,” Michael puts forth.
Dove’s eyes hold mine. “That’s what he wanted.”
His words slice at my soul. My poor Bear. I try to imagine myself beating him up, but I can’t remember. My chest aches. “Why are you telling me this?”
Their eyes meet for a moment. This time, Michael speaks. “Gwenna, we understand your feelings. How betrayed you must feel. Angry. No one has been in your position here but you. And we respect that. We just wanted you to understand that Barrett loves you. More than his own life. He wants you to be happy. He wants healing for you.”
I shake my head. Without Barrett, I can never heal. “It doesn’t make sense…” but it doesn’t have to. It’s my heart. “You don’t get it.” I put my head in my hands again. “No one gets it! I can’t be happy without Barrett! He’s my happy. Even if he did do something awful.” I lift my face and look at both of them, his friends who helped him. “I don’t care, okay! I know him, I love Barrett, I forgive him. There’s no other option. I’m a human being and not some robot. I was shocked and upset.” I start sobbing. “It wore off in like a day and then I realized that he didn’t— I know he doesn’t want to be with me.”
Dove’s arms are around me again, squeezing me against his chest a little hard. “Gwenna.” His hands grip my shoulders. I look up into his brown eyes. “Barrett would do anything to be with you. He would have killed Niccolo in a heartbeat if you hadn’t shot him.”
My mind hums. I get a heavy breath. “I killed him. I killed Jamie’s boyfriend.” I can feel hysterics gather in my chest, a heavy wall of weight that needs to be let out. “Is Bear going to be okay? Am I going to get arrested?”
“Gwenna… Calm down.” Dove’s hand rubs a circle on my back. “If you can calm down, there’s some things we want to tell you.”
Fear pierces my heart. “What kind of things?”
The two men look at each other, and then at me.
NICCOLO
It was never really my fault. Were it not for Dad’s addiction to loose pussy, I would never have been on that road at that time. Who expects a person walking by the road’s side dressed in black?
I was going faster than I should have been. You could say that. But I had snow tires. Again, I didn’t know there would be anybody walking on the shoulder. I didn’t see her face until it hit the windshield. From that moment forward, I knew my victim: Gwenna White, my new conquest’s best friend. Gwenna White, the guest of Larry Madison and family. She was even in his jacket.
She was carrying a plant: a gardenia. It hit the hood of the car, the edge of the plastic pot leaving a tiny dent I never could get out.
When I left her there, she seemed unconscious but alive. I couldn’t call the police. For starters, I didn’t have cell phone service. Since I had to leave the scene to go get help, why would I tattle on myself? And ruin my career? And ruin my reputation? Why? Because that would undo what had happened?
I got to my brother John as fast as I could. I told him I’d seen a hit and run, and so I called it in—anonymously, of course. With our dad’s reputation, why leave names? John understood.
Not long after that, something strange happened: John got a call on the same secret agent phone I used to call about Gwenna. He got a call from Barrett Drake. John rushed off, and only later did I find out why.
Months later, we stayed up over gin and tonic. John asked me about Gwenna—what had I heard about the girl’s recovery—and I almost passed out. He didn’t know. Thank fuck, he didn’t know my secret. I was still with Jamie. He was curious, he said.
I told him the girl was living. Didn’t die.
John told me about Barrett. How he couldn’t eat or sleep, was all thrown off and felt so fucking terrible. Boo-hoo. But it worked out. Because John decided he’d tell Barrett that his victim had lived.
See, that’s the beauty of it.
That one night, two hit-and-runs.
Mine, and Barrett’s.
His victim: some nameless native woman with dementia, living in a teepee in the forest. She wasn’t found for weeks due to the snow-packed ground and when she was, no obituary. Just a little news brief.
How would Barrett know Gwen wasn’t his victim? He’d been so drunk, John didn’t think he remembered the correct road name. They’d left a dead victim, but who’s to say the dead never come back? That John hadn’t simply been wrong? In fact, the stories in the papers later said she’d done just that: died and returned. A murder with no dead.
Lucky.
So lucky.
John cared so much for his friend, he helped his own brother. Only one of his accomplices, General Broomfield’s son, Michael, known in ACE as Bluebell, questioned the location of the wreck when John told all of them the victim had survived. But Bluebell—Michael—had been drunk as well. They’d all been drinking. And who questioned John—their honest, valiant Breck?
Breck was a hero.
