This Is a Dark Ride (22 page)

Angel sniffed the air. The only scents she could detect were window cleaner and air freshener. “I don’t smell it.”

He shrugged, staring out the window, looking anxious and exhausted.

“I think we did a really good job,” Angel said, feeling pretty tired herself. She turned and gave the nearly empty apartment a sweeping glance. It was downright spotless compared to how it once had been. “The bathroom is even clean.”

“I know. There’s a miracle, huh?”

“I think he’s going to be okay,” she said. There was no need to explain what she was talking about. Angel knew Sam would understand.

“He is,” Sam said.

“We all are.”

They both looked around the silent apartment. Angel wondered what Sam was thinking. She hoped they were good memories of happy times spent here, but the sadness in his eyes suggested his thoughts weren’t all happy ones.

“Is something wrong? You’ve hardly said a word to me all afternoon,” she finally asked.

He caught her in a hug. “I didn’t want you to come. I’d planned on doing this myself.”

“Wasn’t it more fun with company?”

Sam smiled. It was just a lazy little hint of a smile, but it was there. “
Everything
is more fun with your company.” Her face heated knowing exactly what he meant by
everything.

His lips were so close. So warm and full. And tempting. Hesitantly she licked the bow of his upper lip.

His breath quickened, but he didn’t take over. He allowed her to kiss him just the way she wanted to. She slid the tip of her tongue over his teeth. Nibbled on his lower lip and then his upper lip, and then she kissed the corners of his mouth until he smiled.

Finally a smile. Same sad eyes, but he did smile.

“I patched the wall,” he said, pulling back from her. “I probably did a shitty job, but the wall was shitty to begin with.”

The same anger she’d seen in his eyes on the day he’d punched that wall was back. It was darker now, gathering like a storm. His fleeting smile was a distant memory.

He straightened his arm and looked at his watch. “We gotta go.” He tossed the cleaning supplies into a box and began gathering up the rest of their things.

Everything seemed rushed. Something was different. Something was wrong.

Sam pulled the door closed, and the lock clicked. They dropped off the key into a slot on the manager’s door. Sam remained silent as they walked down the hall and descended the stairs to the foyer.

“I think it’s too cold to snow tonight.” Angel tried to think of something else to say, no longer feeling comfortable in the silence.

“Still might.” Sam said nothing else, and she couldn’t understand why that bothered her so much.

“I have to take the trash around back,” Sam said, glancing at his watch again. “Go on and get in the car.”

She didn’t go to the car; instead she followed him, and his pace increased.

She realized as she looked down the narrow alley and saw the trash cans that this was where she’d been the night Brody had found her. She’d never been back here since that night.

This was where she’d been left to die.

She stopped abruptly, unable to walk another step. Angel pressed her hand against the rough brick of the building. Mouth watering, stomach churning, she tried to swallow a gag. The taste of bile in her mouth made her cough and heave.

Sam turned back at the sound. His initial look of concern faded, and he appeared angry again. “I told you to wait in the car.”

She took several deep breaths, trying to settle her stomach.

Movement in the shadows, far beyond the row of garbage cans, caught her eye. Someone stood there, near the end of the alley. In the recess of a doorway, a shape moved.

Angel lunged forward and grabbed hold of Sam, tightening her fingers nervously around his strong arm.

“Someone is down there,” she whispered. “Let’s just leave the trash here and go.”

Sam’s sole focus seemed to be on that figure. For a long time he stared down the alley, his jaw clenched tight. Finally he looked over at her. An emotion she had not seen him have before swirled in his eyes: hate. “Go wait in the car.”

“What’s going on?”

“I’m meeting someone. There’s something I need to take care of.”

“What?”

“I have unfinished business here. It won’t take long. There’s a few things I need to take care of.”

“There’s nothing you need to take care of! You need to take care of Brody and me. Nothing else matters. This place…these people. It’s the past. Nothing can change the past.”

“Go back to the fucking car, now!”

His angry tone startled her, but then he softened a bit and touched her cheek delicately.

“It would be best for both of us,” he added.

“No, I want to stay with you.”

Sam shook his head. “You don’t. You shouldn’t. I’m meeting RJ.”

“What? Why! That part of your life is over. Let it be over.”

“It’s not over.”

“It is, Sam. It’s over when you
let
it be over; when you let it go. You’re not like him. You can’t—”

“He’s the one that hurt you too, Angel. He’s Bobby.” Sam faced her solemnly.

Her breath caught in her throat, and she was unable to speak for a moment.
Why didn’t he tell her? How long had he known this? How could he be sure?

“No, it can’t be.”

The figure moved forward a few steps, and the streetlight overhead gave her a glimpse of dark, familiar blue work clothes. Her heart sped up.

“I want to stay with you,” Angel said. If Sam had to face this, then goddamn it, she had to as well. “I love you, Sam.”

“I love you, Angel.” Sam gave her hand a squeeze. Angel squeezed back, but she wondered if he had even noticed since he just let her hand go.

Sam slammed the trash bag into a can, and the man in the work clothes turned toward the sound.

“RJ.”

The figure froze, and Angel cowered behind Sam.

“Sam? Jesus…Sammy, is that you? I didn’t think you were going to show.” He laughed, and it seemed like an eerily familiar sound. God, she couldn’t look at him, couldn’t stand the thought of looking into that ugly face again. Details about that night that she thought she’d forgotten came rushing through her mind.

“I was surprised you called me. I mean at first I was, but after I thought it over, I figured you were probably missing me. I knew it would happen sooner or later. I’ve missed you a lot too, Sammy.”

“I said I wanted to see you.” Sam’s arms were oddly positioned at his sides, hands balled into fists. His body seemed rigid. “I didn’t say I missed you.”

“I thought you’d come alone,” RJ said. He was looking at her. She couldn’t see his face in the shadows, but she could feel him staring at her.

“So what’s the deal, Sammy? You like girls now?” the man said with a chuckle. “Poor kid. You just never could decide what you wanted to be. Last I’d heard of you, you were playing bottom to some washed-up junkie who thought he was Jim Morrison.”

Sam moved toward him slowly, head held high, appearing more confident than she had ever seen him.

“I tried to keep tabs on you. It’s not that big of a town. I hear shit,” RJ continued.

“I hear shit too,” Sam said in a low voice. “I hear that girl…the one you beat to death? I hear her crying, at night when I’m trying to sleep. I hear…I hear Angel, asking you to let her go, before you beat her and dumped her in the fucking snow like trash.”

“Angel? Who’s that? What’s wrong with you, Sam? What are you talking about?”

Sam grabbed a handful of the man’s shirt and slammed him hard up against the building. His body crashed into the brick with a dull
thud
, and Angel heard the sharp exhale of his breath.

“You don’t even care what their names were, do you?” Sam shouted. “They were nothing to you! Nothing!”

Each word he spoke was punctuated by a heavy jab from Sam’s large fist into the man’s face and head. When Sam let his shirt go, RJ lolled back against the brick, his head bowed limply forward, chin against his chest.

Then Sam unleashed a flurry of punches onto RJ’s body, one after another, in rapid succession. Sam didn’t stop until RJ fell to his knees.

The man made an attempt to stand, but instead he staggered forward and fell in a heap at Sam’s feet.

Angel wasn’t sure what she expected to happen next, but it certainly wasn’t for Sam to begin kicking and stomping him. The Sam she knew had always struck her as gentle and kind, but what she now witnessed was far from either. It was brutal and it was violent, and yet as snow began softly falling around them, it was surreal and, in a unique way, incredibly beautiful.

It was easy to see by looking at Sam that he was a powerful man, and for some reason, seeing all that power unleashed was mesmerizing.

He was doing this for her—but he hadn’t even wanted her to know.

Sam meant to kill RJ. There was not a single doubt in Angel’s mind that was now Sam’s sole intention. To obliterate, to unleash upon RJ all the rage that smoldered in his heart. A dark part of her wanted to see it happen, because he deserved it, more for what he’d done to the girl who had actually died at his hands than for what he had done to Angel. And for what he had done to Sam. Because of RJ, Sam had been cursed to walk the earth carrying the burden and guilt of RJ’s sins.

Not fair. Sam had done nothing wrong. He was as innocent in all of this as the little girl who had been raped at the hands of a man she’d been told to call Daddy. RJ deserved what he was getting…every bit of it. The fucker should die in the snow right here and now, at the hands of a man who had once loved him.

And the little girl in her mind screamed and pleaded for retribution.
Let Sam kill him. Let Sam kill him
. It became a song in her mind, over and over,
kill him
, and with each blow the man on the ground became her stepfather, Paul, and the one stomping him was the little girl she used to be.

Kill him. Kill him.

“It’s not Paul,” she reminded herself out loud, in a whisper. Even if it was Paul, would it change what he had done? This wasn’t going to change what RJ had done either, not to Sam, not to her, and not to that poor girl RJ had murdered.

Sam, a sweet, gentle soul with a kind heart. What felt so right, so satisfying now, would surely torture him later. Killing RJ wouldn’t change anything that had already happened; it would only be one more cloud over the things that
should
be. The things that
would
be.

“Sam!” Angel shouted. “Please, stop!”

Sam’s foot came down on the man again, and she swore she heard the crunch of bone beneath his sole.

“Please! No more. I love you. Brody loves you.” Her voice broke, and she fought to force out more words. “Don’t make our lives like that fucking sign. A dark ride…it’s not. It doesn’t have to be that way. It’s
not
that way. We have so much more than people who pretend to have everything! We have love. It’s real.”
It is real, isn’t it?
Angel breathed in a deep breath of icy air, imaging herself lying dead here in this alley. “Tell me it’s real.”

He froze, arms stiff at his side once more, hands still clenched into iron fists. “It’s real.”

“And it’s enough,” she said quietly. “Please?”

It was enough. Sam didn’t need one more burden on his conscience. Maybe he thought killing RJ would put the demons inside of Sam’s own heart to rest, but Angel knew the good inside of Sam would never be able to accept taking a life.

Sam turned his head toward her, the sallow light catching his eyes. In their depths she saw the need he had, for acceptance…for atonement.

She extended her hand and offered both to him, and smiled when he covered her fingers with his own. Angel looked down at his hand, at the blood smeared on his knuckles. His index finger was swollen.

“It’s all right,” she said. “We need to get home. Brody will be worried, don’t you think?”

Sam blinked away snowflakes on his lashes.

The man on the ground moaned, and Angel exhaled the breath she hadn’t known she was holding in.

Sam hadn’t killed him
. And despite the wooden sign she’d seen and wondered over, so many times…this wasn’t a dark ride; it had been a ride full of light. Glorious light.

She looked down at the beaten figure in the snow. Bruises on his face began to darken. Blood oozed and bubbled from his grotesquely twisted nose.

Despite the disfigurement, Angel knew the moment her eyes focused on the man’s face that RJ and Bobby weren’t the same person. The man lying broken at her feet was definitely not the one who had hurt her that night. The realization didn’t make her feel anything. It really didn’t matter. RJ wasn’t Bobby, who wasn’t Paul. None of it mattered, and it never would again.

“I want to kill him,” Sam said without emotion.

Angel pulled Sam’s hand to her face. “But you didn’t and you won’t because we’re better than that. Me, you…Brody. We’re
good
people. We’re not like that.” She shook her head. “It’s not him, Sam. Bobby and RJ aren’t the same person.”

Sam’s eyes widened. “It’s not him? I was so sure…when I read that note. I was so sure it was him.” He laid his hand on his forehead, squeezing until his knuckles paled. “I thought I could make things right. I just wanted to make things right for you.”

“Don’t you see?” Angel said, hugging him. “You already have.”

She looked back down at the injured man and felt no sympathy. For what he had done to Sam, to that other girl…she was tempted to kick him once herself.

Her gaze fixed on Sam’s, and she saw that he finally appeared to be at peace. For the very first time since she’d looked into those gorgeous eyes, she saw no haunted look. No pain. He looked triumphant. He’d finally fought his demons. And he’d won.

Angel looked back down at the man bleeding in the snow. He hadn’t hurt her but he had killed a girl, and he’d ruined Sam’s life for years. He’d twisted Sam’s love and his trust, and he’d abused him in a way that was very much like what Paul had done to her.

RJ wasn’t dead but he’d taken one hell of a beating, and he
did
deserve all he’d got and more.

She gently kissed Sam’s swollen finger.