Page 28 of Making His Bones

Elektra

We were getting closer to the site. I remembered to breathe deeply. The aroma of pine trees should have soothed me.

“The pitch-black hours belong to one’s inner nature, which has its own rules and authorities.”

I knew what I meant but was surprised that Gray did. He asked, “When do they think it happened?”

“Time of death was figured at between nine and ten PM.”

It wasn’t dark—that would be too overwhelming for me—but we walked the access road that ringed the rectangular containment pond. My heart wrenched and tears stung my eyes even ten years later. I had been forced to come out here to identify Delilah’s body, something I later felt was an unnecessary toll on a parent. My husband wasn’t asked to come out because as a man, he was “working,” and as a woman, I had nothing better to do than look at my daughter’s bloated, orange body dusted with maggots. Naked, need I add. Because she was in a suitcase, certain things hadn’t happened. Flies hadn’t swarmed her, and the maggots hadn’t eaten her eyes yet. That was perhaps the most horrifying thing for me. Her eyes were wide open, encircled by lavender rings, like a kid’s idea of a Halloween mask.

Of course I didn’t know the stages of decomposition back then.

I said, “Violent criminals are like sledgehammers. Their hands are fists, and they can’t plan one minute past their own greed. Usually it’s easy to catch them, because out of the need for attention, they blow it. They blab too much. They come back to the crime scene.”

Gray asked lightly, “But nothing? No one was out here?”

I knew it must be hard for him, too, tagging along after his girlfriend—why did I just use that word?—who wanted to return to her daughter’s murder scene, like a guilty party. “No one saw anyone or anything until they drained this pond for routine maintenance. A worker saw the suitcase.”

“He was the unfortunate one who unzipped it?”

“Yeah. I don’t blame him. He’s not going to call his bosses in to look at a suitcase full of Bermuda shorts and condoms.”

It wasn’t until Gray chuckled that I realized I’d said something funny. I did that a lot, used humor to deflect from painful situations. “In retrospect, a sanitation worker said he saw a pickup truck out here the day of the murder, but because he didn’t recall it until ten days later, all he remembered is that it was reddish-brown. Maybe American make. That could be a third of all men in this area.”

Gray stopped walking. He took my chin in his palm to force me to look at him. “Elektra, we don’t have to do this.” He traced my lower lip with his thumb. “How is this helping?”

“Like I said. It will help bring me closure. I know that’s an absurd concept. Whoever has closure on their child being brutally murdered? But it will help me say goodbye to her.”

Maybe I thought that saying it would help. “Closure” was such a remote concept for me. Nobody knew how many times I rocked like a tiny baby bawling my lungs out after Delilah died. Why God, why me? My face was so perpetually puffy someone thought I’d been stung by a nest of bees. This went on for a year until one day, standing by the back door smoking the last cigarette of my life, I made a decision to go to school. I’m not saying the transition was easy. It took every cell of will I possessed. Until recently, I’d still felt I’d been coasting on willpower. Gray’s support helped lift me up.

I can’t describe the fond, caring look Gray gave me then. For such a drop-dead handsome man, he was surprisingly free of ego. He cared what others thought. He even had a lack of self-esteem, a very attractive vulnerability. For a sultry, growly guy who had achieved so much in his years—IMDb said he had several speaking roles, the biggest being in a J. Lo movie—he was shockingly free of vanity and pride. Maybe the tumult and degradation he’d endured to even be considered for a J. Lo movie had kept any arrogance in check. I liked it.

He kissed me then. What soft, delicious lips he had. My hand automatically ran up his developed chest to clutch his shoulder. It was almost as though I could taste the tanned, silken skin through my hand. When our tongues intertwined, I thrust my pelvic bone against him. Being so much shorter than him, my pussy only rubbed against his thigh, but I could clutch it in the right way, so I was almost masturbating against him. He knew it and slid his hands down to cup my ass.

I was having the time of my life with Gray Whaley. Really. I was not analyzing, unpacking, or decoding it. I didn’t color it with established ideas about past men. I told myself, this is all new, this has nothing to do with Brandon. I am going to take it as it comes.

When Gray had surprised the shit out of me in the shower, I had just surrendered. His masculine aura, the pheromones he emitted, simply took control of my will. That he didn’t whip out his dick was a mark in his favor. And, of course, the talented and adroit manner in which he diddled me grew my appreciation of him a hundredfold. This was a man to be reckoned with.

And I really wanted to ask him if he had truly ejaculated inside his pants, against my hip.

His penis was lengthy and engorged, a gargantuan work of art, especially after I was used to Brandon’s unimpressive dick. Gray was hung like a pack of wolves. He was a serious stud.

Gray pulled back from the kiss, panting against my face. “I’m sorry,” he growled. “Wrong place for this.”

I rubbed my cheek against his sculpted chin. “Or maybe the right place. Healing. A new world.”

He kissed me again, but it was chaste. “What’s that in your hand?”

I looked blankly at it, having temporarily forgotten. “Oh. A piece of skull.”

Gray recoiled, as though he hadn’t presided over a TV show where people got their asses chomped by dogs. “What the fuck? Why?”

“It’s Delilah’s,” I said, as though that made everything better. “Her remains were returned to me when the case went cold.”

“Yeah, but—why’d you bring it?”

I shrugged. “I thought it might point us in a new direction.”