Dean skipped dinner. Judd fixed a plate for him and put it in the refrigerator. I wondered if Judd was used to Dean disappearing for
hours on end. Maybe, when Dean had first come here, that had been a normal thing. I found myself thinking more and more about that Dean—the twelve-year-old whose father had been arrested for serial murder.
You knew what he was doing. I slipped into Dean’s perspective without even meaning to. You couldn’t stop it.
Empathizing with Dean: his feelings toward his father, what staring at that girl’s corpse must have done to him—I couldn’t tuck that away in a separate section of my psyche. I could feel it bleeding over into my own thoughts. Right now, Dean was almost certainly thinking about the fact that he had a killer’s blood in his veins. And I had Locke’s in mine. Maybe Lia was right. Maybe I couldn’t really understand what Dean was going through
—but being a profiler meant I couldn’t stop trying to. I couldn’t keep from feeling his pain and recognizing in it an echo of my own.
After dinner, I meant to go upstairs, but my feet carried me toward the garage. I stopped, just outside the door. I could hear the muted sound of flesh hitting something—over and over, again and again. I brought my hand up to the doorknob, then pulled it back.
He doesn’t want you here, I reminded myself. But at the same time, I couldn’t keep from thinking that maybe shutting the rest of us out was less
about what Dean wanted and more about what he wouldn’t let himself want. There was a chance—a good one—that Dean didn’t need to be alone so much as he thought being alone was what he deserved.
Of its own volition, my hand reached out again. This time, I turned the knob. The door opened a crack, and the sound of heavy breathing added itself to the rhythmic thwack thwack thwack I’d heard before. A breath hitching in my throat, I pushed the door open. Dean didn’t see me.
His blond hair was beaded with sweat and stuck to his forehead. A thin white undershirt clung to his torso, soaked and nearly transparent. I could make out the lines of his stomach, his chest. His shoulders were bare, the muscles so tense that I thought they might snap like rubber bands or fight their way out from underneath his tanned skin.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
His fists collided with a punching bag. It came back at him, and he fought harder. The rhythm of hits was getting faster, and with each punch, he put more and more of his body into it. His fists were bare.
I wasn’t sure how long I stood there, watching him. There was something animal about the motions, something feral and vicious. My profiler’s eye saw each punch layered with meaning. Losing control, controlled. Punishment, release. He’d welcome the pain in his knuckles. He wouldn’t be able to stop.
I took a few steps closer, but stayed out of range. This time, I didn’t make the mistake of trying to touch him. His eyes were locked on the bag, unseeing. I wasn’t sure who he was striking out at—his father or himself. All I knew was that if he didn’t stop, something was going to give—the bag, his hands, his body, his mind.
He had to snap out of it.
“I kissed you.” I wasn’t sure what possessed me to say that, but I had to say something. I could see the moment the words broke through to him. His
movements became slightly more measured; I could feel him regaining awareness of the world around him.
“It doesn’t matter.” He continued punching the bag. “It was just a game.”
Truth or Dare. He was right. It was just a game. So why did I feel like someone had slapped me?
Dean finally stopped punching the bag. He was breathing heavily, his whole body moving with each breath. Casting a sideways glance at me, he spoke again. “You deserve better.”
“Better than a game?” I asked. Or better than you?
Dean didn’t reply. I knew, then, that this wasn’t really about me. Dean wasn’t seeing me. This was about some make-believe, idealized Cassie he’d built up in his head, something to torment himself with. A girl who deserved things. A girl he could never deserve. I hated that he was putting me up on a glass pedestal, fragile and out of reach. Like I didn’t get a say in the matter at all.
“I have a tube of lipstick.” I threw the words at him. “Locke gave it to me. I tell myself that I keep it as a reminder, but it’s not that simple.” He didn’t reply, so I just kept going. “Locke thought I could be like her.” That had been the whole point of her little game. “She wanted it so badly, Dean. I know she was a monster. I know that I should hate her. But sometimes, I wake up in the morning and for just a second, I forget. And for that second, before I remember what she did, I miss her. I didn’t even know we were related, but…”
I trailed off, and my throat tightened, because I couldn’t stop thinking that I should have known. I should have known that she was my last connection to my mother. I should have known that she wasn’t what she seemed. I should have known, and I didn’t, and people had gotten hurt.
“Don’t make yourself say these things because I need to hear them,” Dean said hoarsely. “You’re nothing like Locke.” He wiped his palms on his
jeans, and I heard the words he wasn’t saying.
You’re nothing like me.
“Maybe,” I said softly, “to do what you and I do, we have to have a little bit of the monster in us.”
A breath caught in Dean’s throat, and for the longest time, the two of us stood there in silence: breathing in, breathing out, breathing through the truth I’d just uttered.
“Your hands are bleeding,” I said finally, my voice as hoarse as his had been a moment before. “You’re hurt.”
“No, I’m…” Dean looked down, caught sight of his bleeding knuckles, and swallowed the rest of his argument.
If I hadn’t interrupted, you would have beaten your hands raw. That knowledge spurred me into action. A minute later, I was back with a clean towel and a basin of water.
“Sit,” I said. When Dean didn’t move, I fixed him with a look and repeated the order. Physically, I resembled my mother, but when given proper motivation, I could do a decent impression of my paternal grandmother. A person butted heads with Nonna at his or her own risk.
Taking in the stubborn set of my jaw, Dean sat down on the workout bench. He held out his hand for the towel. I ignored him and knelt, dipping the towel into the water.
“Hand,” I said.
“Cassie—”
“Hand,” I repeated. I felt him ready to refuse, but somehow, his hand found its way to mine. Slowly, I turned it over. Carefully, gingerly, I cleaned the blood from his knuckles, coaxing the towel along sinew and bone. The water was lukewarm, but heat spread through my body as my thumb trailed lightly over his skin.
I put down his left hand and started in on the right. Neither of us said anything. I didn’t even look at him. I kept my eyes fixed on his fingers, his knuckles, the scar that ran along the length of his thumb.
“I hurt you.” Dean broke the silence. I could feel the moment slipping away. I wanted it back, so ferociously it surprised me.
I don’t want to want this. I wanted everything to stay the same. I could do this. I’d been doing this. Nothing had to change.
I put Dean’s hand down. “You didn’t hurt me,” I told him firmly. “You grabbed my wrist.” I pushed up my sleeve and brandished my right arm as proof. Next to his tan, my skin was almost unbearably fair. “No marks. No bruises. Nothing. I’m fine.”
“You were lucky,” Dean said. “I was…somewhere else.”
“I know.” The night before, when Agent Sterling’s arrival had sent me into a tailspin, he’d been the one to break the hold that somewhere else had on me. Dean held my gaze for a moment, and understanding flickered in his eyes.
“You blame yourself for what happened with Agent Locke.” Dean was a profiler, the same as me. He could climb into my head as easily as I could climb into his. “To the girls Locke killed, to Michael, to me.”
I didn’t reply.
“It wasn’t your fault, Cassie. You couldn’t have known.” Opposite me, Dean swallowed hard. My eyes traced the movement of his Adam’s apple. His lips parted, and he spoke. “My father made me watch.”
Those whispered words carried the power of a gunshot, but I didn’t react. If I said anything, if I breathed, if I so much as moved, Dean would clam up again.
“I found out what he was doing, and he made me watch.”
What were we doing, trading secrets? Trading guilt? What he’d just told me was so much bigger than anything I could have told him. He was
drowning, and I didn’t know how to pull him out. The two of us sat there in silence, him on the workout bench, me on the floor. I wanted to touch him, but I didn’t. I wanted to tell him it would be okay, but I didn’t. I pictured the girl we’d seen on the news.
The dead girl.
Dean could whale away on a punching bag until the skin on his knuckles was gone. We could trade confessions that no one should ever have to make. But none of that could change the fact that Dean wouldn’t get a good night’s sleep until this case was closed—and neither would I.
