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“Hayley!” Chris snapped.
She ignored him. “So that’s a pro, you can do it front of me. It’ll just be one more fucked up reel in my late night showing of blood and gore. And I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think it hurts. I mean, I obviously I can’t say for certain since I’m not missing half my head. But it happens so fast that I don’t think it has time to hurt. So there’s a pro for you, too. I also know I can’t kill you myself. Sorry. I already failed to save someone. Graduating to murder seems like a downward spiral. Can’t do it. So that’s a con. If you’re gonna do this, you’ve gotta do it yourself and accept the consequences of what comes after, if anything does. That’s one thing I don’t know, what’s out there after. If there’s anything at all.
“So I couldn’t save someone who should have been saved, which is how I know that if you do this, it will bother them. Probably forever. It’s been five years for me and I still don’t sleep through most nights. I only have two people in my life who love me. So the math on that is that you have twice as many people who love you. And they’re all in this room. And their late night showing of IED’s and soldiers dying is now going include their brother blowing his head off. So that’s a con. If you care. Maybe you don’t. Maybe that’s a pro for you. You can punish them forever by doing this.”
With her free hand, Hayley grasped the hem of her shirt and lifted it revealing scars crisscrossing her belly. “Jesus,” Easy muttered.
Hayley put her shirt down. “I also know exactly what it’s like to close your eyes when you think it’s for the last time and then wake up later, confused as hell.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice conspiratorially, “And secretly disappointed that it can’t just be over.” She straightened back up. “Because you know you’ll never be the same again, but it seems like nobody else fucking knows it. So that’s a pro. That’s something nobody else knows, that when the life you wanted doesn’t exist anymore, it’s not so fucking easy to just pick a new one off the shelf and step into it. And if you take the gun, you don’t have to try.”
She stepped forward and set the gun down gently on the coffee table next to the remote. “And I’ll tell you the last thing I know. When I woke up, next to my dead boyfriend, who’d recently had his head blown off right in front of me and all that blood came out of his nose, the first thing I thought was, ‘There should really be more stars in the sky on the night that you die.’ I don’t know why I thought that, or I why I even remember it. But I did. So go outside. It’s a nice night. That’s neither a pro or a con. Just some advice. There’s also less cleanup. That’s just a pro for us.”
Easy sat perfectly still, looking at Hayley, and then slowly reached out.
“Jimmy,” Chris said, but Easy didn’t pick up the gun. Instead he picked up the remote and turned off the television.
“Did they catch him?” he asked. “The guy who killed your boyfriend?”
Hayley shook her head. “No. He wrote me letters about falling in love with me that night. And how sorry he was that he thought I was dead when I passed out and he threw me in the grave he’d already dug. His shovel broke when he was covering me up. That’s how I got away. He left to buy a new one and I woke up and made it to the road. He says it was fate. We’re meant for each other. He sent the letters to my parent’s house where I was recovering. I had to run away in case he came for me. He might’ve hurt them. I can’t ever go home unless they catch him.”
“Well, who is he?!” Easy nearly yelled.
Hayley shrugged. “I don’t know. No one does. I’d never seen him before. He wore gloves and the DNA from his semen wasn’t in any database.”
“Semen,” Easy bit out.
“He made Jake watch. Told him if he couldn’t protect me, he didn’t deserve me.”
Easy swallowed convulsively. “Jesus Fucking Christ.”
“Then he pulled out a gun. Jake asked me to save him. Begged me. But my hands were tied. There was nothing I could do.”
“How did he get you?” Caleb asked suddenly.
Hayley glanced at him. “We were on a date. Restaurant parking lot. He said he had a flat tire. Asked Jake for help changing it. I don’t really remember much about that. They found stun gun marks on my neck at the hospital. Jake had the same marks on his neck when they found his body.”
