Page 32 of Eternally Devoted

“It was really weird. I started envisioning his house as a dungeon with a ton of women trapped there,” I admit, recognizing years later, my fears were a little unfounded. “I mean, I’m sure he wouldn’t have?—”

Sterling puts his hand on my thigh now, his calming thumb still hard at work as he strokes the inside of my leg. “Don’t do that. It’s done, and has been for a long time.”

Dash leans in, joining the intimate bubble we seem to be in. “How long ago was number one?”

“Four years, six months, and three days,” I recite, the tally in my mind as clear as the night itself. I don’t want to remember, but I don’t know how to forget.

“So the date—” Sterling hedges. “How’d it end up?”

I tip my head to the side, my lips falling into a sardonic line. “How do you think?” I deadpan.

“All righty.” Dash salutes somewhat playfully.

“No, I know how it ended, I mean, what happened next, sweetheart?” Sterling asks, still patient and calm.

Still, I can’t help but be nervous. I’ve never shared this. This ugly, impulsive, angry, messed-up side of me. “Don’t judge me,” I start to say, but Dash cuts me off.

“We don’t judge you, we told you that, Juni. We aren’t here to judge. Just… to help.”

Smiling, I cup my hand to his cheek, my belly tightening as I discover his unshaven jaw. “I didn’t mean don’t judge me for the killing part. I mean about thenextpart.” I look between them, wincing. “I went home with him.”

“You went home with him?” Dash balks, unable to hide his shock. In retrospect, Justin always surprises me too. He never should have happened because I shouldn’t have gone home with him. Glancing between their shocked faces, I admit the cringiest part of the story.

“Sometimes when you’re really, really horny, you make super-bad choices.” I shrug, because the Juniper that I amnowwould never have dated Justin, or considered sleeping with him. But four years ago I was lost and lonely.

Bringing my hands together in my lap, I smooth one thumb over the other, repeatedly, watching myself do it. “Taking care of my sisters, running my business, working the land and keeping the house together and food on the table—I was just worn out. And I wanted… hot sex,” I explain, and when I look up, expecting judgment in their eyes, I find them nodding instead.

“I get it.”

“Same.”

Well, that was easier than I thought. “Anyway, we get through the meal—separate tabs, by the way?—”

“Let me guess, Justin’s choice?” Sterling asks, his jaw tensing as the story progresses.

“Yep.”

Dash snorts, a litany of curses floating out of him.

“We went back to his place and when it was time to do the deed, he asked if he needed to wear a condom or if I was ‘like the rest of them’ and when I asked him to clarify, he said, ‘a woman who has no problem taking care of things’ if hewent unsheathed.” I take another bite of toast and another sip of tea, attempting to level the rapidly rising anger inside me. “Knowingly not using protection and risking pregnancy, only to assume I’d abort a child because he couldn’t wear a condom was the last straw,” I admit, wrapping the bag’s string of oolong around my finger before dunking and releasing it again.

“What happened next?” Dash asks.

“I had the jar of jam with me, he told me to bring it in. I grabbed it and before I knew what I was doing, I was telling him I needed to get lipstick from the car, and that I had sexy plans in store.” I shake my head, remembering the walk to my van from his porch. I remember telling myself,there’s still time to do the right thing. There’s time to not do this. You don’t have to do this. But the more and more I told myself I could stop, the more my body had a mind of its own. “I had tranquilizers in the glovebox. I’d picked up the animal meds for Hudson. I was going to take them to him the next day. But I popped open the glovebox and grabbed a few syringes of horse tranquilizers.”

I face them, taking in their expressions as the truth pours out of me. If they stop caring, if they want distance, remembering the change in their faces while I’m behind bars will be the only thing that will rehabilitate me. Seeing what I lost, the moment I lost it.

“I made a little cocktail of horse tranquilizer and vecuronium. It’s a medicine they give animals before surgery to block their nerve receptors. Mixing the two makes a nice little paralytic.”

“Did you know that before you did it?” Sterling asks, and I shake my head.

“Within reason, I knew what the drugs would do separately. Together, I wasn’t sure. But I gambled.”

“What happened next?” Dash asks. I’m surprised to see he’s no longer pale, and he’s halfway through his pie.

“I mixed the paralytic with the jam, and made him believe he was going to fuck me by having him lick the jam off my fingers.” I remember his mouth closing around my jam-covered fingers, acid hitting the back of my throat at the memory. “It only took about four minutes before he said he was feeling weird. I told him to lie down on the couch. A few minutes after that, he was crying about his legs not working, that he needed help, and that I should make myself useful and call 911 since it was probably my shitty jam that gave himbotulism.”

“So he just… what? His lungs were paralyzed eventually and he died?” Dash guesses. Sterling, however, watches me in silence, winking for reassurance when I look his way.

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