Stillhouse Lake (Stillhouse Lake #1)(28)

It seems like a nice place. Calm. Centered, like Javi himself.

“Thanks for everything,” I tell him, and I mean it. He’s treated me well since the beginning. It matters, in a life like mine, where I was never treated as just myself . . . I was always my father’s daughter, then Melvin’s wife, then Lily and Brady’s mother, and then—to many—a monster who’d escaped justice. Not a person in my own right, ever. It has taken work to get to this point where I feel entirely myself, and I cherish it. I like being Gwen Proctor because real or not, she is a full and strong person, and I can rely on her.

“Thanks for this, Gwen. I’m real happy about the Jeep,” Javi says, and I realize that for the first time he’s called me by my first name. In his mind we’re now equal. I like it. I extend my hand, and we shake, and he holds on just a little longer than is necessary before he says, “Seriously. You in some kind of trouble? Because you can tell me if you are.”

“I’m not. And I’m not looking for a knight to come riding to the rescue, Javi.”

“Oh, I know. I just want to make sure you know you can always ask me if you need help.” He clears his throat. “Some people, for instance, don’t want anybody to know where they’re going when they leave town. Or what they’re driving. And I’m cool with that.”

I send him a curious look. “Even if I’m wanted?”

“Why, are you guilty of something? On the run from something?” His tone sharpens just a bit, and I see that it bothers him.

Yes, and yes. But the guilt is nebulous, not actual, and I’m not on the run from the law. Just from the lawless. “Let’s just say I might have someone trying to find me when I leave,” I say. “Look, you do what you gotta do. I’m not about to ask you to go against your ethics, Javi. I swear. And I promise you, I haven’t done anything wrong.”

He nods slowly, considering it. He finally realizes he’s still got the dish towel, and I like the self-deprecating grin as he flips it toward the sink, where it lands in a heap. I wish he hadn’t done it, because suddenly, strikingly, it looks like a disembodied lump of bloody flesh, out of place in this clean kitchen. I let out my breath slowly, hands flat on the table.

“You passed all the background checks to get your carry permit,” he says. “Far as I know, you’re legal as hell, so I got no problem telling people I don’t know where you go when you leave here, and I don’t have to tell them about the van. Don’t ask, don’t tell, you hear me?”

“I hear you.”

“Got a few buddies who live off the grid. You know how to do that?”

I nod without telling him how long I’ve been moving, running, avoiding. Without telling him anything at all, which he likely doesn’t deserve. Javi is trustworthy, nothing but, and yet I can’t bring myself to disclose things to him about Melvin, about myself. I don’t want to see him disappointed.

“We’ll be okay,” I tell him, and manage to summon up a smile. “This isn’t our first rodeo.”

“Ah.” Javi sits back, dark eyes going even darker. “Abuse?”

He doesn’t ask by whom, or whether it’s me, the kids, or all of us. He just leaves it there, and I slowly nod, because it’s true, in a way. Mel had never conventionally abused me; he’d certainly never hit me. He’d never even verbally abused me. He had controlled me, in a lot of ways, but I’d just accepted that as a normal part of married life. Mel had taken care of the finances, always. I’d had money available and credit cards, but he’d kept meticulous records, spent lots of time reviewing receipts and questioning purchases. At the time, I’d just thought he was being detail-oriented, but now I see that it was a subtle form of manipulation, of making me both dependent and hesitant to do anything without consulting him. But still within a normal range of marital behavior, or so I’d believed.

There had been one part of our lives that was strikingly not normal, but that was a personal, private hell that I’d been forced to relive under police questioning. Was it abuse? Yes, but sexual abuse between married people is a tangled topic at best. Lines blur.

Mel liked what he called breath play. He liked to put a cord around my neck and choke me. He’d been careful about using a soft, padded thing that left no real marks behind, and he’d been an expert at its use. I’d hated it and often talked him out of it, but the one time I’d outright refused, I’d seen a flash of something . . . darker. I never said no again.

He never choked me hard enough to make me pass out, though it had come very close. And I endured it, over and over, never knowing that while he was starving me for oxygen during sex, he was imagining his women in the garage, fighting the noose as he raised and lowered them off the ground.

It might not have been abuse, but there isn’t any doubt in my mind that it felt wrong. Looking back, the thought that he was using me to play out his murders, over and over again . . . it’s chilling, and sickening.

“We don’t want to be found by someone,” I say. “Let’s leave it at that, okay?”

Javi nods. I can tell this isn’t his first rodeo, either. As a range instructor, he’s probably seen plenty of frightened women seeking comfort in their own self-defense. He also knows that a gun can’t protect you unless you protect yourself mentally, emotionally, and logically. It’s the punctuation at the end, not the paragraph.