Song of the Fireflies

Chapter Twenty-Four

Elias

Tate and Jen said their good-byes at the airport. By this time, she was so worried about Tate’s safety that she only glared at me and Bray with accusing eyes. She was adamant about Tate calling her every chance he got to let her know that he was OK. But her fears didn’t lie only with us. She was equally worried about what could happen to Tate when he got to Corpus Christi. In her eyes, Caleb was no better.

Jen was a great girl. She and Tate were perfect for one another, I believed. And the more difficult my and Bray’s relationship became, the more I envied the two of them. I wanted nothing more than for Bray and me to be like they were. Free. If Bray wanted to beat the shit out of me, I would’ve welcomed it. I would’ve welcomed anything over what we had and what we were now going through.

We hit the road just after one o’clock in the afternoon and were in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, by seven o’clock. We pulled into a small motel when one of Tate’s tires blew out. It was so loud it sounded like a gunshot.

“You change the tire,” Tate told Caleb, “and I’ll call Rocky.”

“Why are you calling him?” Caleb asked.

“Because obviously we’re not going to make it there when I told him we would.”

Caleb went around to the back of the Jeep and took the spare tire down from the mount.

Tate rented two rooms first and handed me a key when he came out of the front office.

“I’ll put it on your tab,” he said with a smirk.

“How long is that tab, anyway?” I asked in jest. “At least eight hundred bucks, I’m sure.”

“Shit, man, I’m charging you interest,” he said, grinning. “We’ll get it all squared away when this is over with.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said, and he disappeared inside the door two rooms down from where the Jeep was parked.

All of the rooms opened to the outside rather than inside onto a maze of hallways. I looked at our room key, which was an actual key—that’s how old the motel was—instead of a card. Our room was right next to Tate and Caleb’s. Bray finally got out of the Jeep after Caleb asked her to so he could jack it up.

“I’m going to get a shower,” I called out to Bray. “Want to come?”

A faint smile appeared around her eyes, and she crossed her arms as if there was a chill in the air, even though it was a sticky, humid night.

“I’ll take one after you,” she said.

I knew what she was doing. She was trying to distance herself from me. To prepare me. And while I didn’t exactly think that was the way to go about making the most of the three days we had left together, I couldn’t bring myself to argue with her about it.

I slipped inside the room and left her outside with Caleb while he changed the tire.

Bray

I hadn’t told Elias yet about me overhearing his conversation with Tate on the back porch at Adam’s house. The conversation about Caleb and his rape sentence. The office room Elias and I had stayed in was right next to the back porch. I’d listened to them from the window. I had also heard their conversation about me, Tate telling Elias that he should talk me into turning myself in. Tate was right in all of the advice he gave Elias, but I felt beyond redemption. There was no hope left for me. I hated it that I was dragging the one person in the world I loved more than any other through the mud with me. But he wasn’t going to leave me alone. No matter what I did or said to him, Elias would never leave me to my fate. I both loved and resented him for it. I resented him only because it hurt that much more, knowing that I was ruining him.

I sat down on the faded yellow concrete parking chock in the empty spot next to the Jeep. Caleb was pumping the metal lever on the tire jack, raising the Jeep off the asphalt.

“Mind if I ask you something?”

Caleb glanced over at me briefly.

“If I said no, would you still ask?”

“Probably,” I said.

I caught his eyes rolling as he looked back at the jack.

“What is jail like?”

Caleb stopped pumping the jack for a second, but he didn’t look at me. When he went back to work he answered, “Jail or prison? Jail is pretty manageable. Prison is a whole ’nother nightmare. Why do you ask?” He glanced back at me with a gleam in his eye. “Worried about what they’re going to do to you in there?”

My heart skipped a beat. He enjoyed asking me that. I didn’t let it get to me.

“Yes,” I answered honestly. I still had no plans on going to jail or prison, but I wanted to know what it was like just the same.

Caleb pumped the jack lever one final time and stood upright, wiping light sweat from his forehead with the top of his forearm.

“No idea what it’s like in women’s prison,” he said. “But I imagine it’s not too much different. The short time I spent locked up, it really wasn’t that different from what you see on TV. Not as harsh where I was. No one raped me in the ass or made me their bitch, but if I had shown even a fraction of fear they might’ve tried. Guess I have Tate and Kyle to thank for that.” He laughed lightly. “They beat the shit out of me growing up. I had a lot of practice. But yeah, I did get into fights, and I did get my ass beat once, but I had friends on the inside. They looked after me while I was in there, and I look after them while I’m out here.”

My expression shifted from interest to confusion, but he wouldn’t elaborate. I knew whatever he’d been doing for his “friends” on the inside must’ve been illegal.

“Did you kill that girl?” He looked right into my eyes.

“Not on purpose,” I said.

He nodded and then reached in the back of the Jeep and pulled out a tire iron. Bending over in front of the blown tire he attached one end to a lug nut. “Then you should’ve just went to the police,” he said, spinning the tire iron once. “You really fucked up by running.”

“I know,” I sighed. “But there’s nothing I can do about that now.”

I gazed contemplatively out at the falling darkness, the way the grayish-blue light fell over the parking lot. The horizon was pink and orange as the last of the sun fell behind the clouds. I thought about how blunt Caleb had been just now, how right he was.

“Did Cera ever see you while you were in prison?”

Caleb stood upright, still clasping the tire iron in his dirty, blackened hand. I knew I would strike a nerve bringing up her name, but I didn’t care much.

“You’re overstepping your bounds,” he warned.

“Did she?” I pressed.

He glared at me.

“It’s obvious you still love that girl,” I said, further angering him. “And I don’t think you’re a bad guy. An asshole at times, and a womanizing pig, but you’re clearly not a bad guy. You just happened to end up with the shit end of the stick. I just want to know if she loved you as much as you loved her.”

A deep sigh escaped Caleb’s lungs. His head dropped for a moment as if he were quietly arguing with himself for giving in to me at all.

Then he sat down beside me on the yellow chock. The tire iron clattered softly against the asphalt as he put it down next to his low black Nike shoes. He rested his arms atop his bent knees. Absently, I studied the tattoo of the Asian girl on his left arm. We looked out at the colorful, darkening horizon.

“No,” he said. “Cera never came to visit me. Not even once. I was convicted of raping someone, and she believed everyone else over me. But I didn’t blame her. I still don’t.”

I looked at him, but he didn’t look back. “I guess it would be hard to put your faith in someone who was accused of rape,” I said. “But… I think if she truly loved you then she would’ve known that you were innocent. She would’ve been able to feel it.”

“Cera did love me,” he said with a hint of acid in his voice. “You don’t spend five years of your life with someone, happy every morning when you wake up next to him, a smile in your voice every time you talk to him on the phone, if you didn’t love him.”

I nodded. I couldn’t argue with that.

Then he said, “Elias loves you. A little pussy-whipped, I think, but it’s still love.”

I was surprised by the sincerity in his face.

He grabbed the tire iron and stood back up. “Yes, I think Elias will visit you when you go to prison,” he said, and it sobered me in the darkest of ways. “That is what you want to know, isn’t it?”

I didn’t answer, but I didn’t really have to.

He started loosening another lug nut.

“And if he doesn’t,” he went on, “it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t love you, just like Cera. It just means he’s confused and a little scared. That’s all it is.”

Caleb was lying to himself, and he knew it. He turned the tire iron harder, the muscles in his arms hardening with each push. I saw the side of his temple where a vein was beginning to bulge, and the way his jaw clenched tightly as he ground his teeth. He knew deep down that Cera may not have loved him as much as he thought she did, but he struggled with not allowing himself to believe it every single day of his life.

“Don’t you have something better to do?” he asked as he dismounted the bad tire and dropped it on its side. “Go shower with your fiancé. Watch TV, hell, I don’t care much, just anything but hanging around out here with me.” He looked at me from a bent-over position in front of where the tire used to be and then grinned. “Unless you want to be Grace’s replacement? I have no fucking problem putting your little ass up on that hood and licking your pussy until the sun comes up.”

My eyes popped wide open. I swallowed hard. I stood up and dusted off the back of my shorts.

Normally, I would be offended by that, but Caleb was harmless, and I knew that sex and his extreme personality was his way of coping with the way his life turned out. I mean, sure, it wasn’t that Caleb wouldn’t do something like that even with Elias just feet away, but he was still harmless. I just shook my head and rolled my eyes at him.

He smiled and nodded toward the room where Elias was and said, “Get outta here.”

I smiled back and walked away.

Elias was still in the shower when I walked into the room, glad he thought to leave the outside door cracked so it wouldn’t lock me out.

I sat down on the bed and looked at the cigarette-stained phone on the nightstand.

I picked it up, placed the receiver to my ear and punched in my parents’ number.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mom.”

“Where the hell are you, Brayelle?” she said harshly into my ear. “I’ve been calling you! Where’s your phone? The police are everywhere looking for you! You need to come home. Now. Where are you? We’ll come get you. Tell me where you are.” I wondered if she’d stop talking long enough to catch her breath.

“It doesn’t matter where I am.”

My mom pulled her mouth away from the phone and said to my dad, “It’s Brayelle. No, no, I’m talking to her. Just wait.” And then her voice was loud again. “What do you mean it doesn’t matter? What have you done? Did you or that guy have a hand in that girl’s death? Tell me the truth. You killed her, didn’t you? It’s just like that girl and that boy, Mitchell, said. You were fighting with her that night. You shoved her off that cliff because of Elias Kline. Didn’t you?” She was all but screaming into the phone.

“You believe that, don’t you?” I asked calmly, but my heart was slowly breaking every second that went by that my mother was treating me like a criminal, having no faith in me whatsoever.

My dad grabbed the phone from her. I heard her voice fade quickly and then her arguing with him.

“Brayelle, it’s Dad. Tell me where you are and I’ll come get you.”

“Why?”

“Because you need to come home and you need to face what you did.”

“Face what I did?” I mocked and bit my bottom lip. “I-I guess I should’ve known that both of you would accuse me.”

“We’re not accusing you,” my dad said sternly. “We just—”

“—not accusing me?” I snapped cutting him off. “That’s exactly what you’re doing. Neither one of you have asked how I am. Neither of you have asked me if it was an accident.”

“Well, if it was an accident, then why did you run?” my dad asked.

“Because I was stupid and I was scared.”

“Brayelle, only the guilty run.”

My heart broke completely when he said that. I felt like I wanted to cry, but I had already cried so much that I had no tears left. I sucked in a sharp breath, rounded my chin, and said, “Dad, I just want you and Mom to know that I love you very much. And I love Rian and please tell her that for me. I know I wasn’t the best kid growing up, and I gave you both a lot of hell and for that I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t be more like Rian.”

“Honey, why are you saying these things?” My dad’s tone began to change, and maybe he really was starting to worry about where this was heading, but I wasn’t going to fall for it.

“Just tell Mom and Rian that I love them.”

“Brayelle?” He sounded genuinely worried. But it was too late for that.

I hung up.

Elias

I stepped the rest of the way out of the bathroom.

“What are you doing?” I asked, as Bray set the phone back down.

“Nothing,” she said.

“Who were you talking to?”

“No one,” she said. “Well, I was talking to myself. Rehearsing. I was going to call my mom and dad, a-and maybe my sister, but I changed my mind.”

I nodded and draped the towel over the back of my neck. I had heard everything she said to her parents on the phone, but she didn’t want me to know, and I thought it was better that I just pretended not to know.

Her conversation put a knot in my chest. The things she had said to them sounded like good-bye, the kind of good-bye that always ends badly. I thought about that painting that had been our life together, the black-and-white one that continuously filled with colors as each event unfolded and made us who we were. But that painting had become something so dark that Bosch couldn’t touch it.

“Caleb said he would eat me out on the hood of Tate’s Jeep,” she said.

I didn’t know whether to go outside and beat the shit out of him or just continue to stand there, dumbfounded by her swift change of mood.

Ultimately, I opted for beating for the shit out of Caleb.

I turned on my heel and went for the door, still only dressed in my boxers, but Bray was behind me in a flash and she grabbed me around the waist.

“No,” she whispered onto the shell of my ear as one hand came down and grabbed a handful of me. “Caleb was just being Caleb. He didn’t really mean it.”

I didn’t give a shit. I opened the door anyway, but Bray slammed it shut with the palm of her other hand and I whirled around just as she pushed my back against the door. She stripped off her shirt and took me into a deep kiss, pinning me against the door with her hand still grabbing my cock, rock hard beneath her palm.

She pulled the wet towel from around my neck. I grabbed both sides of her head and pulled her hair, forcing her neck back and pushing the tip of my tongue down the center of her throat.

“What do you want to do to me?” she asked, squeezing and pulling my cock in her hand as her fingers tightened around it.

A low growl reverberated through my chest. My teeth clamped down on her chin, and then I slid my tongue into her warm mouth.

“I want what you want,” I said breathily and kissed her even harder, wrapping my arms around her body and crushing hers against mine.

Her hand came out of my boxers and she dug all ten of her fingernails into my back. “I want everything,” she said, and it sent a tremor through my cock.

I turned her around, stripped her shorts and panties off, and forced her onto her knees in the center of the bed.

Bray

When you know you’re going to die soon, all bets are off. You feel like the person you always wanted to be, the fearless, uninhibited member of society who doesn’t give a flying fuck what anyone else thinks. You want to do and say all of the things that you were always afraid to do and say. You want to drink and do drugs until you can’t see straight, punch a random stranger in the face just for looking like an asshole, fuck until you can’t feel your legs anymore.

Elias raised my ass in the air and shoved my face against the mattress before spreading my legs apart with both hands, exposing me to the cool air. He slid a finger between my nether lips and played with my clit, rubbing and teasing and exploring until I couldn’t help but bite down on my bottom lip out of frustration.

“Fuck me,” I moaned. “Please, just fuck me.”

“Not yet,” he said, and I felt the heat from his breath closing around my pussy. A loud moan moved through my throat as I felt the sensation of my clit being sucked hard between his lips and then tugged on with his teeth.

I tried to reach between my legs to touch his face, to feel the movement of his jaw as he licked me, but he caught my fingers in his mouth and sucked on them before grabbing both of my wrists and pinning them behind my back.

“Be fucking still,” he said.

He spread my legs apart even further and slipped his tongue inside my wetness. I gasped and moaned and whimpered. I wanted to see it, I wanted to watch him lick me, but with my cheek pressed against the mattress, all I could see was my ass raised in the air and Elias’s legs, bent at the knees, behind me. He licked me fast and hard, and I pushed my ass toward him. Then he sucked on my clit again, so hard I tried to pull away, because it was too intense.

“God, please don’t stop,” I begged him.

He flicked the tip of his tongue against my little bead, spreading my lips with the fingers of his free hand. When he let go of my wrists, I found the sheets above my head and grasped them tight. Two fingers slid into my pussy, and he moved them in and out of me while he licked my clit as I began to crawl upward across the bed.

“Oh goddamn!” I closed my eyes and held fast onto the pillow, as he curled his fingers into a hook inside of me, forbidding me to move any farther. He held me there, licking and sucking and fucking me with his fingers until my body became stiff as I felt my orgasm coming on.

“I’m going to come,” I said through uneven breaths. “God, please don’t fucking stop.”

He stopped.

“No, please, Elias, don’t stop!” I wanted to cry. No, I was crying. Every part of my body was opened up to him, wanting him, yearning to feel him inside of me. But I needed that orgasm. I fucking needed it.

He shoved his cock deep inside of me where I ached for him, hitting the spot. I gasped and grabbed fistfuls of the sheets again. The surprise and the intensity of it took the breath right out of my lungs. Tears streamed down my face. Tears of emotional pain. Of anger. Of guilt. I wanted it out of me. All of it. And instead of clawing at my wrists for a release, I wanted Elias to fuck it out of me. The bed banged against the wall as he slammed against me from behind. His strong fingers dug partway into my thighs and my ass cheeks as he made sure to keep me spread wide open for him to see.

I still wanted to watch. I wanted to see what he could see, his hard cock moving in and out of me, glistening with my wetness. I felt the orgasm brewing again so quickly. I wanted to call out to him, tell him I was about to come again, but I was afraid he would stop again.

I got very still. Very quiet. But I think he knew I was going to come, because I was so quiet and still.

“Say it,” he told me, still thrusting in and out of me. “Say it, baby.”

“I’m going to come,” I whispered.

He thrust hard and held his cock deep inside of me for a moment. Then he did it again and held it there for another moment.

I felt my eyes rolling into the back of my head.

“Oh goddamn, Elias… if you fucking stop I’ll kill you. I’ll fucking kill you!”

He slammed into me harder and held himself there, so deep I could’ve sworn I felt it in my soul.

I gasped and shuddered as an explosion went off deep inside my belly, my legs trembled and shook and felt like jelly the more I tried to hold myself up on them. I felt myself constricting around his cock as I came, and tears of relief and pleasure streamed down my face.

Elias let out a moan and pulled his cock from inside of me just before he came on my backside.

Everything was quiet except our heavy breathing.

He collapsed on top of me, the sweat of his naked chest mixed with the sweat on my back. He kissed me there with his arms wrapped around my stomach. I felt the tip of his tongue moving up my spine and between my shoulder blades. He rosed up and made his way back down and kissed me between the legs softly. Chills attacked my body all over. He kissed my thighs, giving each one the same amount of attention.

I rolled over onto my back, and Elias crawled up my body, his hands pressed into the bed on either side of me, and he kissed me all the way up. My belly button. My stomach. My breastbone. And with the same grace and attention that he gave my thighs, he kissed each breast.

I cupped his face in my hands and guided him toward my lips. His warm naked body fell between my legs and he kissed me with so much passion that I never wanted to open my eyes again. I wanted to die in this bed, just like this, with him on top of me. If I’d known he would’ve given me that kind of death, I would’ve asked it of him. But I didn’t want to ruin the moment. Because I knew in my heart that it would be the last moment like this I would ever share with him.

Three days. I promised him, and I had every intention of staying true to my word.

Three days.

Elias

“I love you, Bray,” I whispered as I lay with my face nuzzled against her breasts. I wanted to hear her heart beating. “I love you more than you will ever know.”

She wound her fingers gently through the top of my hair. “How is that?” she asked in a quiet voice.

“Because I would do anything for you,” I said. “You just don’t realize yet what ‘anything’ truly means.”

“Maybe I will someday,” she whispered, and I shut my eyes softly, holding in the tears. “I love you, too, Elias. More than you could possibly ever know.”

“How is that?” I asked.

I felt her lips against my hair. “Because I’d never ask you to prove your ‘anything.’ ”

We fell fast asleep, our bodies tangled, the sound of her heartbeat so soothing in my ear.