Bad Girl Reputation by Elle Kennedy

“I saw what happened back there,” I tell her. She’s not much more than a black outline against the night. It’s so dark out here, moonlight gets swallowed before it hits the ground. The stars, though, are really something. “What was that all about?”

“Nothing. Just some asshole giving me a hard time.”

“That was Randall, right? Didn’t you used to babysit for him?” He wasn’t a super nice guy or anything, but I remember once or twice he let her slide on this or that in high school when other cops had it in for us pretty bad. It was sort of a transactional understanding.

“Yeah, well, things change.” Her voice is tight and sour.

She doesn’t elaborate just yet, and I don’t push. Thing I learned a long time ago: Gen will talk when she wants to. She’s a locked box—nothing gets in or out unless she wants it to. A person could spend a lifetime trying to pick her open.

So I wait, silent, listening. Until minutes pass and she lets out a sigh.

“Not long before I left town, I blew up Randall’s family.”

I slant my head. “How’d you manage that?”

In a voice heavy with fatigue, she explains how he assaulted her in a bar after he failed to coax her to do him in the parking lot. My fists clench so hard my knuckles crack. I want to hit something. Tear it to shreds. But I don’t dare move because I want to hear everything she has to say.

“When I got home after we closed down the bar, that’s all I could think about. Vengeance. I was raging,” Gen continues. “The Randall house was only a few blocks away, so I got it in my head to walk my ass over there at three in the morning. Next thing I know, I’m banging on the door with my hair sweaty and makeup melting off my face. His wife Kayla answered the door all bleary-eyed and confused. I forced my way past her to start shouting in the middle of her living room until Rusty came downstairs.”

I don’t miss the deep crease of shame that digs into her forehead. I have to stop myself from reaching out and taking her hand.

“I told her how her sleazeball husband tried to coerce me into sex then assaulted me in a bar. How everyone in town but her knew he was sleeping around behind her back. He denied it all, of course. Said I’d come on to him. The jilted, jealous girl.” Gen laughs humorlessly. “I was a screaming lunatic who probably looked like I’d just washed in with the tide. Meanwhile, her four kids were peering out from the hallway, terrified. Kayla had no reason to believe me, so she told me to get the hell out of her house.”

I wish I’d known, wish I’d been there for her. I could have stopped this entire ordeal dead in its tracks. Kept her from leaving. Now, I’m not sure what’s worse. Wondering this whole time what made her leave, or understanding now that if I’d just been there, we wouldn’t have lost the last year of our lives together.

“The next morning, I woke up with a monster hangover and a perfect memory of what I’d done. Every terrible moment of my total meltdown. It would’ve been less mortifying to set his cruiser on fire. At least then I’d still have had my self-respect. I couldn’t bear the shame and regret. Not for that skeezy douchebag, but for storming into that poor woman’s house and traumatizing her kids. Kayla didn’t deserve that. She was a kind woman who’d always been nice to me. Her only fault was being married to an asshole and not knowing any better.”

“I’d have killed him,” I tell her, now seriously regretting I didn’t take my shot when he had her on the boardwalk. “Beat him within an inch of his life and dragged him out to sea behind a boat.”

The urge to hop on my bike and find Randall is almost irresistible. In seconds, a montage of brutal fantasies spin through my head. Knocking every tooth out of his skull. Snapping his fingers like matchsticks. Putting his nut sack under the rear tire of my motorcycle. And that’s all for starters. Because absolutely no one lays a goddamn hand on my Genevieve.

I hate what he’s done to her. Not just that night, or this latest power trip, but the way she’s resigned herself to defeat, the exhaustion in her voice. It rips me up inside and I can’t stand it. Because there’s nothing I can do. Short of kicking his ass and spending the next twenty years in prison, I don’t know how to fix it.

“I wish you’d told me,” I say quietly.

“I—” She stops for a beat. “I didn’t tell anyone,” she finishes.

Yet I have a suspicion she’d been about to say something else.

“It’s a big part of the reason why I left,” she admits. “Not only him, but his wife and those kids. I couldn’t stomach walking around town knowing people would hear about what happened, how I made a first-rate ass of myself and ruined that family.”

“Oh, screw that.” I shake my head emphatically. “To hell with him. You did his wife a favor. And better those kids find out sooner than later that their dad’s a bastard. Trust me, the prick had it coming.” I’ve got no sympathy for him, and neither should she.

A half-hearted yeah is all she mutters in response. And all I want is to make this better for her. Take away the garbage that’s clogging up her head. Help her breathe again. Then it occurs to me, I haven’t been much help tonight. Her evening had gone to hell before Randall even got there, and that’s on me.