J. Ward: Possession

“Oh, but see, I can’t do that. You were the one who brought her into it.”

“You don’t even know her!”

“And neither do you—or should I say, neither will you. Duke, you’ve just got to understand something—you can’t keep women from me. Didn’t work with Nicole, not going to work with this new one.”

Duke’s hand cranked down so hard on his cell that it let out a long beep, like it was going into cardiac arrest. “Listen to me. You stay the fuck away from her—”

“Not your call. And do yourself a favor. Don’t try to win her back—you don’t have a chance.”

“We’ll see about that.”

He hung up the phone and then threw the thing at the dash. Slamming his hands into the wheel, he clenched his teeth around the scream in his throat. He knew better than to try to talk to his brother—back in the early days, he’d given that enough shots to last twelve lifetimes.

No talking. No reasoning.

The only thing he could potentially work with was Cait.

“ Shit! ”

Steaming across town, he pulled into her neighborhood going Nascar fast, but slowed down—because running over some kid or somebody’s dog over was not going to help the situation. And as he came up to her house, he was sorely relieved to see her car in the driveway.

Now, if he could just get her to answer the door.

Jumping out of his truck, he jogged up to the front entrance. Just as he was about to push the doorbell, he frowned and looked over his shoulder.

He could have sworn someone was standing right behind him. The presence wasn’t aggressive, though. Quite the contrary; it was almost like, after all these years of going it alone … he’d picked up a guardian angel or something.

Whatever, he thought as he punched the bell’s button.

“Please answer the door,” he prayed as he hit the thing again.

Cait was sitting at her desk, getting nothing done, when she heard a ding-dong go off at the front of her house.

She checked her phone. No calls. But she had a feeling who it was. The question was then … what did she do about it.

Ding-donnnnng.

Getting up, she brought her bottle of water with her for no other reason than she wanted something for her hands to do. And as she closed in on the door, she thought, Well, she had wanted to see his face when she told him what she thought of him…

Now was her chance.

Opening the way up, she stood strong and stared right into Duke’s face. “You really think there’s anything you can say that I want to hear right now?”

“Can we do this inside?”

“No, here is good. You’re not going to be here long.”

“Cait, I swear—”

She held up her palm. “Wrong approach. Any vow you give me? Isn’t worth a dime.”

He cursed and paced back and forth on her stoop. “Cait, you’ve got to understand my brother—”

“This isn’t about him. It’s about you.”

“It’s all about him! He’s evil, Cait, I swear to it—he’s—”

“Evil? What do you call lying about the fact that you have a son?”

“Tony’s not mine. He’s G.B.’s.”

Cait opened her mouth. Closed it. Felt a pounding in her temples that suggested very soon, maybe in the next ten minutes, she was going to need to lie down in a dark room for several hours.

“You know what,” she said slowly. “I think it would be best if I don’t see either one of you again. Please just get in your truck and go—I’ve got enough to worry about in this life. I don’t need this drama.”

Stepping back, she was about to close the door on him when he caught the thing and held it wide. “Just let me explain. You don’t have to do anything but listen, and if at the end of it, you still think I’m full of shit? Throw me out. Hell, I’ll throw myself out. But, Cait, please. Don’t let him do this to me again.”

She frowned, thinking that was a weird phrasing.

Oddly, she remembered the janitor.

Talk it out. You need to talk it out.

“Please, Cait.” God, there was such anguish in that voice of his. “Just hear me out.”

After a long moment, she inched back enough to let him through. Closing the door, she went over to the bay window that faced the street and sat with one hip on its ledge. She didn’t want him getting any ideas that either one of them was going to get comfortable.

Duke walked around her little living room, dragging his hand through his hair, shaking his head, looking like he was about to explode from some inner conflict. Whatever. She wasn’t going to prompt him or make this easy on him in any way: As the light drained fully out of the sky, and the lamps that were on in the room became the only source of illumination, she just sat and watched him suffer.

Kind of gratifying, considering how she’d felt since she’d been to that goddamn mall.

“When you asked me whether or not I had family,” he said abruptly, “I told you I didn’t, because short of sharing some DNA with G.B.? He and I are strangers—and I want to keep it that way. I need to keep it that way.” He closed his eyes and cursed. “We grew up at Our Lady’s, and he started killing things then—”

Cait felt her eyes bug.

“G.B. exhibited all the classic signs of serious pathology. Setting fires, stealing, wetting his bed, setting traps for other kids. He was removed from the place and sent to a juvie facility by the time he was ten, and he never forgave me for the fact that I was the one they kept. He hated me—although, honestly, he hated everyone and everything, it seemed. After he left? I didn’t see him for years. But eventually, he found me at Union. Didn’t know it, though. I had no clue where he’d been or what he’d become.”

He stopped and looked at her. “I was dating a woman, had been for a while. It was my senior year and I had all kinds of plans, you know, med school—she was going to go, too. We were all about the future. But you know, premed? Hard major. And I wanted to be ahead of everyone else. I was busy busting my ass in the library—while my brother, who’d been watching me, tracking my patterns, infiltrating my life … was starting to talk to her. He’s a great one for cover-ups—a liar right out of the history books. And he got through to her, in ways I couldn’t.”

Cait blinked, the plausibility of the story increasing a little with every word he spoke—even though she wished it didn’t.

“He, ah, well, let’s just say he started sleeping with her behind my back. I found out about it all because she got pregnant. And I’m sure Tony’s not my son as I hadn’t been with her for two months before that because—to be honest, because I was focused on my work and not her.” He cursed again. “I spent a lot of time blaming myself, thinking that if I’d paid more attention to the relationship, maybe it wouldn’t have happened—but ultimately, I believe G.B. would have gotten through. He wanted to ruin me that badly. And he did—and it worked. I left school, shut down, backed out of everything. It was incredibly successful, and what he’d set out to do to me.” He dragged that hand back into his hair. “I can’t explain why the whole thing castrated me like it did. I just … the world didn’t feel safe at all, anymore. And I guess I figured, fuck it and fuck everybody. I’m out.”

As shades of her own story filled in the picture he was painting … she felt a commiseration she hadn’t expected, and probably should have fought.

The trouble was, his affect was spot on, the confusion, the pain, the anger … everything she knew from having walked that path herself ringing true.

And yet … G.B. had seemed equally credible—