One (24 page)

The colors become
brighter.

At the last second a
rainbow erupts before my eyes. It's brighter and stronger than
anything I've ever seen. I clutch Pax tightly. I don't open my eyes.
I don't want the colors to disappear. They make me warm. They make me
happy.

He
makes me
happy.

Afterwards, it is
quiet. The silence is too perfect to be interrupted by loud
breathing. I lay in his arms. I hear his heartbeat and I'm never more
grateful to be alive.

The night is calm
before the storm.

Seven months earlier

He steps inside, the
shadow in my nightmare.

He looks surprised for
a moment, but then it fades as fast as it comes. "Hello,
Julianna," he greets me pleasantly. He closes the door, but not
before I see what's inside, not before I see everything.

I gasp, and my legs
won't stay standing anymore. I crumble like a pile of ashes, falling
to the floor without a sound. "What have you done?" I
whisper.

His face is impassive,
unmoving. "This is none of your concern, Julianna." He says
the words as if we're talking about the weather, about the food
inside Max's Diner. He's talking as if he's a god, and the problems
of the mortals don't matter. "You shouldn't be here."

No, I shouldn't. No one
should. I shake my head slowly, the movement almost painful to make
because my body is frozen with dread. "What have you done?"
I repeat again.

"I'm sorry it has
come to this," he sighs, and it almost sounds believable.
Almost. "You were always such a good girl. Always so obedient.
I'm sorry you won't be able to leave tonight." He walks toward
me. Braidon's face flashes inside my head.

Survival kicks in.
"Please," I squeak. I lower my eyes in a submissive pose,
flickering over his body.

"Julianna."
His voice is deceptively gentle. "We can't remain ghosts if
someone sees us, now can we?" He crouches, and his fingers are
tight around my arms as he forces me up. I keep looking down.
I am
small. I am small. I am small.

"Look at me,
Julianna." I flinch, but I lock my gaze with his. "I am
sorry,
chica
, I really am." There's a glimmer in his
eyes. It isn't sorrow. He reaches to his side to grab the gun
attached there. His hands touch an empty holster.

The weapon is cool
against my palm. My hands are shaking as I aim it into his stomach.
He freezes when he feels the point of the gun. "Move back,"
I command. My voice wavers. It doesn't sound strong. I'm not strong.
I'm desperate.

He looks surprised at
what I've managed to do, but he does as I instruct, holding his hands
up in a non-threatening gesture. He cocks an eyebrow. "Very
smooth. You belong with us-"

"Don't," I
break in angrily.
Don't you
dare.

He pauses, but he
doesn't push more.

"I'm not what you
are," I deny.

"Sometimes, we
don't become what we expect."

"A monster?"
I grate out.

The pleasant, almost
nonchalant expression on his face hardens. "Drop the gun,
Julianna."

I shake my head again.
For a moment, I almost let the gun fall to the floor. For a moment, I
contemplate forgetting what I saw. But then I see the truth in his
eyes.

One of us will not
survive this night.

I stand straighter,
making up my mind. I'm a survivor.

There isn't time to
hesitate.

I pull the trigger.

Instantly, I see red.
It starts as a small circle, and then spreads like the ripples of a
pond. He looks down at his body in disbelief.

"Juan Gonzales,
you are a murderer," I whisper. My whole body quakes, but the
gun is still pointed at him. "You killed my Grandma-" his
eyes widen in surprise at this. Anger pulses through me, overriding
my fear. "Yes,
you
held the gun that killed her. She was
innocent
. She didn't know anything about what you were doing!
Nothing!
You killed her because she happened to walk by and
saw something she shouldn't have." The gun shakes with my anger,
and for a second, I want to pull the trigger again. I want the red to
fill my vision so I don't have to look at his face. "You're a
criminal and a liar and a cheat-"

"If I'm a
criminal, then so are you," he smiles at me, his mouth filled
with blood. I flinch. "What have you been doing on the farms, if
not doing a criminal's work?" he smirks. "You know what we
do here. You know what we are."

"I'm nothing like
you!" I spit.

"And yet you have
helped us cultivate illegal drugs, packaged it for transfer across
American and Canadian borders-"

"Don't-"

"-And shot me with
a handgun." I stiffen. "Are you not a criminal, just like
me, Julianna?" I back away. I hear voices outside. My heart
starts to beat as I look at him in horror. Is he right? Am I just
like him? I'm not pure, but
am I like him?
I take another step
back.

"You can run, but
you can't hide Julianna. We are ghosts. We can go anywhere. We will
find you," his lethal threat is a whisper. He's begun foaming at
the mouth.

"You are not a
ghost, Gonzales. You are not invincible." With those parting
words, I run.

I don't turn back.

I'm on my back.

He wakes me up with his
mouth.

It feels like I'm on a
cloud, drifting pleasantly along, and then something cool and
delicious is poured over me. At first it's just a drop, and then
slowly it spreads, going to secret places, building something hot and
tingling.

I hear my moan. I feel
the covers slip from my body until every inch of me is bared. Then he
kisses me and suddenly the cloud is gone, replaced with something
sexier.

"Mmmm," I
make a sound as Pax bites my neck, reminding me of a vampire. "My
own little Edward…"

"Little?" he
snorts, backing up. "Why don't you look again?" He presses
his hardness into my hand. Immediately, my fingers close around the
length of him. "And who the hell is Edward?" he demands.

Boys.
I hold
back a giggle. "It's nothing. Just a sparkly vampire…" I
kiss him before he can say more. His hands move over my body, and
soon, the only thing I think about is Pax. Colors flicker in my head,
and when Pax starts moving, I know that I'm going to see them burst.
I sigh in anticipation, capturing his mouth with mine.

I'm still sore from the
night before so when Pax touches me at my core, it's both pleasurable
and painful at the same time. My thighs clamp around his hand. I moan
into his mouth, spreading my fingers across his back. His eyes are
questioning when he looks at me.

"Yes," I tell
him.

"Are you sure? I
don’t want to hurt you…"

I touch his face,
forcing him closer to me. "You would never hurt me. Never."

Before he can respond,
I kiss him, letting his scent and the feelings he coaxes from me
override the lingering darkness in my head. This is what he does to
me. He gives me colors where there is only a void.

I let myself forget and
soon I feel him moving over me, taking me, just as I take him. His
eyes don't leave me. It's his promise to me.

We move until I feel
Pax start to shake. I know the second he reaches his orgasm. I feel
it rising inside me, too.

"I love you, Pax."

"I love you,
Jules," he growls.

We fall over the edge
together.

After a minute, Pax
pulls me on top of his chest. Instantly, I move my head until I'm
right on top of his heartbeat. I like hearing it. We stay like that
for a long time.

"Pax," I
break the silence softly. I point toward the window. "Look, the
sun's coming up."

"Hmm. It does that
every day. Can't get the damn thing to stop." I hear the teasing
in his voice.

I slap his chest
playfully, watching a grin spread across his face. "It's
pretty."

"It can blind
you." He rubs my back. "It'll incinerate you before you can
come within miles of it." He kisses my nose.

"Party pooper."

"Sometimes, you
just got to call it how it is." He kisses my cheek.

I lay my head back on
his chest. The longer I'm awake the more guilt I feel about what
happened last night. I draw imaginary shapes on Pax's chest. I watch
his body rise and fall with each breath.
This
was almost taken
from the world yesterday.

Suddenly, I feel an
overwhelming sadness. I swallow a few times until I can speak. "Pax,"
I begin softly.

"Yeah."

"I'd like to tell
you more about me."

"Great. Because
I'd like to know more." He sounds serious, and I wonder if he's
thinking about what I told him yesterday, about someone coming for
me.

"Before I begin, I
just want you to know that last night and every day and night before
that has been some of the best in my life. I've never felt so free,
so happy, so
able
to enjoy life before. I was holding so much
in, and being with you doesn't make it disappear, but it makes it
bearable. It makes it seem like anything is possible."

He starts to say
something, but I put a finger over his mouth. "Listen first,"
I say gently, touching his cheek tenderly. I take a deep breath.
"Last night wasn't an accident." I watch his face, but he's
difficult to read. "The man in the car last night was my ex-
boyfriend Braidon." Pax's eyebrows shoot up. "I don't know
how he found me, but he was obviously unhappy to see us together.
He's very… obsessive. He's needy. He can't help it though. I truly
feel like he's not right in the head. He needs help."

"He tried to kill
us because I'm dating you? Yeah, I'd say he needs
a lot
of
help." Pax sounds angry. I understand why, but it's making me
more afraid to tell him the rest of it. I move right above Pax's face
so our eyes are level. "If Braidon found me, that means the…
others might have as well. They know we used to date."

Silence.

Pax's throat bobs up
and down. "Others?" he finally says.

"Three years ago,
my Grandma was killed by a drug lord named Juan Gonzales. I believe
she saw something she shouldn't have and paid the price for it.
Braidon's family is very powerful in Mexico," I explain. I've
often wondered if they dabbled in the drug trade as well. How else
would he know Gonzales? "His uncle introduced me to my Grandma's
murderer." I can't help the anger my voice suddenly has. "I
was an orphan, and a girl- weak, in their eyes. He trusted Braidon's
family, and he figured I was all alone and desperate for money. He
felt like I'd keep their secret." I take a deep breath.

"For six months I
worked for Gonzales, cultivating Cannabis plants, drying them, and
packaging them for sale across the country and through Canada.
Gonzales sold marijuana to anyone with the means to pay."

Silence.

I desperately want to
know what Pax is thinking, but I'm afraid as well. "I knew what
I was doing was wrong, but I couldn't go to the cops. Many of them
work for Gonzales. I couldn't
not
do anything either. He took
away the only person that mattered to me. I-I wanted to take away
what mattered to him, too."

I stare at a spot
behind Pax's head. "I studied their schedules. I knew when they
switched patrols. I managed to dig a hole underneath the barbed wire
fence and sneak into the area. I covered the soil in oil, and then I
lit a match. I watched the fields burn. I watched it destroy the
forest."

My voice quiets. I
think back to the last day I was in Minnesota. I think back to the
night that brought me here. "Seven months ago, I found one of
Gonzales's underground homes," I whisper. "He'd gone into
hiding after I burned his 'farm'. He thought it was a rival gang.
There was talk of a drug war, street style, just like how it used to
be done in Mexico." I shudder. "I did something terrible,"
I continued, my voice lower than a whisper. "I saw Gonzales. I
saw him do something more evil than I could ever imagine."

Red.

It clouds my vision. I
can't speak it. I want it buried deep inside and I don't want to
think of it ever again.

"What I saw him do
gave me courage. I-I shot him."

Pax's whole body
tightens underneath mine. If I stop now, I'll stop forever and never
tell him the whole truth. "I-I'm not sure if he's dead or
alive," I continue, my voice catching. "I shot him in the
abdomen, n-near his stomach. I wanted him to die, Pax," I
confess. "I knew I should aim at the heart, but at the last
second, I lowered the gun and shot somewhere else instead."
I'm
a coward,
I think.

"I wanted to hurt
him, Pax. I didn't think such an evil could exist in the world. I
wanted to hurt him for all the hurt he's given to everyone else."

I'm crying now. "I
thought if I hurt him, the emptiness would go away." I bury my
face in my hands. "But it didn't. There was still a hole inside
me. Nothing made it better." I pause. "Nothing except you."

The silence is
pregnant, lengthy and hurtful. He doesn't speak for a long time, so
long that I decide he's never going to speak to me again. Why should
he? His girlfriend's a criminal, and possibly, a murderer.

I feel myself
crumbling. It's as if telling another person what I did created a
crack inside me, and with each second that passes that crack is
widening. I hear it break inside.

"I need to be
alone," Pax finally says in a tone I can't decipher. He removes
me from his arms. I'm not able to do anything other than shake as I
feel Pax leave the bed. When I hear the door close I let it out, a
piercing, thick wail that comes from somewhere deeper than my heart.
It comes from my spirit, from my soul that is slowly tearing from all
the bad choices I have made. I've told him all my secrets. My body is
full of pain, as if everything inside me is twisted and in tatters.
Baring my soul and having Pax reject me is worse than a knife cutting
my skin; it feels like he's taken every cell in my body and smashed
it with a hammer until I'm nothing but dust.