Bekah

I lay in bed and stare at my engagement ring for as long as I can after Zack leaves for the airport. God, I can’t believe I'm getting married. I’m getting married to Zack, my best friend; the love of my life. Everything felt so right. Everything was going so great.

The phone ringing interrupted my daydreaming. I reach over to Zack’s side of the bed and grab it. “Hello?”

“Hey, Bekah it’s Jason from V.U. warehouse.” The person on the other side revealed.

“Oh, hey Jason. Zack isn’t here right now. Is there something I can help you with?” I ask, grinning down at my ring. I could look at it forever.

“Well, it was actually you I was looking for. Uh…Nick is here. Asking for you, s ays it’s important. He wants to talk to you…without Zack.” Jason replies.

“What? Why?” I ask. The thought was weird. I hadn’t spoken to Nick since the day he got fired. Now he wants to speak to me about…what, exactly?

“I don’t know, should I tell him to leave?” He asks.

“No,” I sigh. “No, I’m on my way. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

We exchange our goodbyes and I climb out of bed. I get dressed and grab my phone and keys before leaving the house. As soon as I pull up to the warehouse I spot Nick. He’s standing near the entrance with his arms crossed and an envelope in his hand. I get out of the car and make my way over to him. Before I can reach him, my phone dings and it’s a text from Zack telling me he’s almost home and to be naked.

I can’t help but laugh as I text him back. I still can’t believe I’m going to be marrying that dork.
“Bekah,” Nick calls.

“Hey,” I push my phone into my pocket. “What’s up?”

He looks around nervously. He’s clutching the envelope so tight his knuckles are white. “Can we talk somewhere privately?”

“Um…” Well, Zack would hate it if I went anywhere with him. “Sure, follow me.” I walk into the warehouse and to Zack’s office, greeting everyone as I walked by. Once inside the office, Nick closed the door and turned to me.

“Wow, I haven’t been in here since Zack fired me,” Nick said.

I smiled gently. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that, Nick.”

“It’s fine. Listen, I’m sorry I made you come all the way out here. I was going to just drop by your house but I didn’t know if Zack was there and…I really need to talk to you.”

Now I’m feeling nervous. “Nick, maybe…”

“I fucked up,” he admits. “When I left here that day. There was a guy…”

“A guy?”

He nods. “He said he was an old friend of yours and he wanted to know if I could bring him inside to say hello. When I told him you had gone home, but Zack was inside, he just asked where you lived. He said you had moved since the last time he had seen you and wanted to surprise you. So, I told him.”

“An old friend? What are you…”

“Then he asks for your phone number. He says he’s going to give you call if you’re not home. I give it to him, thinking no big deal…and we part ways. I didn’t think about anything more until a week later. He showed up at my house, Bekah. He was pissed. He wanted me to bring him here, introduce him to Zack. When I told him I couldn’t because I no longer worked here, he asked me if I would give something to you. I told him I couldn’t because I wasn’t in contact with you, but he insisted, so I said I would try just to get him to leave me alone.”

I didn’t reply, I didn’t know what to say. What was he talking about? Was this some joke? Was he trying to freak me out because Zack fired him?

“So, he left and a couple of days later he came back with this,” he raises the envelope. “I put it on the table, it got covered up with other mail, you know, like bills and shit. Well, this morning when I woke up and found it, I decided to open it just to see if it was important.”

I’m so fucking confused.

“I fucked up,” he sighs. He hands me the envelope. “Just open it. Then we can go to the cops if you want.”

“The cops? Nick, what…” I stop. The day Nick was fired was the day I was raped. The day Nick told some guy where I lived was the day I was…oh, God.

There was a card, like an index card inside the envelope. With sloppy handwriting, it read:

Sweet Rebekah, you don’t know who I am, and I’m going to spare you the introductions, for now. You took someone from me, someone I loved more than anyone in my life. You killed him, and so now I will take someone from you. How about that boyfriend of yours? You seem pretty fond of him so I think it will be him. Anyway, you and I will meet again soon, very soon. P.S. How cute was it that you kept calling me Jake the other night? You miss him, don’t you?

I’m shaking. My entire body is shaking and I’m positive I’m going to throw up. I try to leave the room but Nick grabs my arm. “Bekah.”

“I have to go, Nick. Um, don’t…don’t worry about this. It’s…it’s just some kind of…joke.” I run out of the room before he can stop me. I dial Zack’s number as I jump in my car and try to calm myself down.

“God damn it, Zack, answer your phone.” The phone rings and rings and rings. I hang up and pull out of the parking lot and zoom down the street. Our house seems like hours and hours away. Eventually, I arrive. Zack’s car is in the driveway and I jump out of the car, with the envelope clutched in my hand and run to the door. He has to know about this; we have to go to the police.

I shove the door open and stop in my tracks. Zack is sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, and in a chair, a few feet from him is a guy and a gun.

A gun that is aimed at Zack.

“Beks…” Zack's voice is soft and pleading. “Run.”

I took a step back, out of the house and I’m trying to remember how to turn around and run when the guy points the gun at me. “Get in here, bitch.” The voice is familiar. I take a step inside the door and close it when he tells me to.

The guy stands up and turns to me completely. He resembled Jake. The height, the build, his face. He was my rapist.

“Let me introduce myself. My name is Jesse, Jake’s older brother. I see you got my note.” Jesse smiled. Jake’s brother…Jake’s brother? Jake has a brother?

“What do you want?” I ask him quietly.

Jesse shrugs. “To talk and I mean, like the note says, you took someone important from me, and I’m going to take someone important away from you.”

I glance at Zack. The back of his head is matted with blood, there’s blood on his neck and seeping through his shirt. “No,” I whisper. “No, listen, let him go. Let him go and we can talk. We can figure something out.”

Jesse laughs. “No. I told you how it’s going to go. So, sit down. Let’s talk.”

I don’t sit down. If I sit down, this is over. It can’t be over. I have to stand. I have to get the gun away from him. And Zack…what happened? Why was he bleeding and was it life threatening? “I didn’t know Jake had a brother.”

Jesse nods. “Our parents disowned me. Jake kept in touch over the years. You and I have actually met before but…well, I’m not surprised you don’t remember.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Jake and I partied a lot. I introduced him to drugs. Then I introduced him to the ways of getting drugs without paying for it. See, in the beginning, I was his drug dealer. He had just started dating you, and he told me about what a hot piece of ass you were. So, when Jake started to run out of money, I struck up a deal with him. I would give him some coke if he let me sleep with you.”

I’m going to get sick.

“It took a couple of days to talk him into it, he told me he had gotten you to start using and said I could fuck you if I got you fucked up first. It was so great. Now I know why he stuck with you so long. You’re a good fuck…”

“You piece of shit,” Zack commented. Jesse ignored him but now the comment Jesse made a few weeks ago made sense. ‘God, I’ve missed you,’ he had said.

“Anyway, a few weeks later Jake decided he wanted to start to sell. So, I was out with him, showing him what to do. Well, the cops showed in the middle of a sale. I told Jake to run, and he did. I went to prison.” Jesse is pacing now. My eyes keep going back and forth from him to Zack. Zack isn’t looking as pale as he was when I first entered but he’s refusing to look at me.

“Jesse…” I start even though I don’t know what I’m going to say.

Jesse was no longer pointing the gun at me or Zack, but he still had his guard up. What are we going to do? How are we going to get out of this one? “He wrote me. He told me about how much he loved you and you didn’t appreciate him. You didn’t appreciate all the things he did for you, and you were always flirting with other men. He fucking loved you and you were a whore.”

“If I was a whore, it was because he made me one. I begged him to stop making me sleep with those men!” I retorted.

“And is that why you left him? You left him for another guy? For this guy?” He walks over to Zack and points the gun at his head.

“Stop!” I scream.

“Bekah, be quiet,” Zack demands unflinchingly.

I could slap him. “I didn’t leave him for Zack, Jesse. Jake put me in the hospital. He…”

“He put you in the hospital because you were cheating on him! You fucking whore!” He yelled, pointing the gun at me. At least the gun was off Zack. I couldn’t let Zack get hurt. This was my fault. This was all my fault, Zack couldn’t get hurt.

“I…I wasn’t,” I stuttered. “He was just a friend back then.”

He shakes the gun at me. “Liar. He told me. He wrote me and he told me how much he loved you and you were cheating on him. He told me how you made all those guys you were fucking come to his house. How you made him look like a fool.”

I’m shaking my head but I can’t think of anything to say. I’m not stupid enough to think he’s going to believe a word I say. Jake was his brother and he is more fucked up in the head than Jake was.

“He was a fool. He was a rapist and a coward. He hit her all the fucking time. He pushed her down the god damn stairs. He put her in the hospital. He was a fucking psychopath!” Zack was on his feet now. I knew what he was doing, he was doing exactly what I was doing. I was trying to keep the gun off him and he was trying to keep the gun off me.

It worked.

Jesse moved the gun back to Zack and my heart sunk. Shut up, Zack! Shut the fuck up! “I’m really going to enjoy blowing your head off, but I’m not done with my story,” Jesse tells him. He turns back to me, the gun still on Zack. “I got the news that Jake had killed himself in a letter. My parents didn’t even call me. You see, Jake sent me a letter dated the day he died. In the letter, he told me he was going to try to win you back. He said he couldn’t live without you, he loved you and he would rather die without you. Of course, they wouldn’t give me the letter. The just told me bits and pieces of it. I didn’t get the actual letter until I was released due to its sensitive content.”

I watched Zack as Jesse spoke. I could see the wheels turning in his head. God, I hoped he didn’t do anything stupid.

“Jake needed help. He showed up that day and he was distraught. There was nothing I could do and Zack wasn’t even there. This has nothing to do with him.” I tell him.

“Tell me what happened,” Jesse demanded.

I shook my head. “I don’t remember. He was there, he was upset…he shot me. He tried to kill me and then…”

“Then he shot himself in the head,” Zack interjected. Seriously, if Jesse doesn’t kill him I’m going to!

“You killed him,” Jesse accused. “You wouldn’t forgive him and so he killed himself.”

“Maybe you’re right,” I don’t realize I’m crying until I taste salt. This can’t be happening. Not again. “Let Zack go. Okay? You and me, we can get in my car; we can go anywhere you want and settle this. This is between me and you. It’s my fault he’s dead.”

“Rebekah! Seriously, shut up. Baby, please.” Zack is begging me but he doesn’t understand. I can’t let anything happen to him. My feet are moving towards Zack before I realize it.

“No. I came here to take someone from you and that’s exactly what I’m going to do,” Jesse says. “You know, I fucking tried to kill all of them. Jake told me about Zack and his friends. He told how much he hated them because you loved them, and so I was going to take them all from you. See, I followed them. I got online and figured out what show they were at and I met them there. I watched them get on the bus and watched the bus drive off…then, they made a stop and I knew it was time. They stopped at a truck stop! A truck stop of all places, can you believe it? It was like God was telling me to do this – to kill them.”

Oh God. Is he…he saying what I think he’s saying?

“So, I stole one. A guy dropped his keys on his way to the store – another sign from God – and so I got into the semi and waited. The bus took off after a few minutes, and I followed…and then, once we were on the open road I ran the bus off the road. Man, imagine how pissed off I was when they released the name of the only death and it wasn’t any of the four I wanted dead. I mean, a broken leg? You got away with a broken leg, are you kidding me, dude?”

“You’re a fucking psychopath,” Zack chuckled. I’m too surprised to say anything. It was Jesse. Jesse was the reason for the wreck. He’s the one who stole the semi, he ran the bus off the road; he almost killed Zack and Matt and Brian and Johnny. He actually did kill Jordan, the bus driver. He’s a murderer. He’s a murderer and he’s angry and most importantly, he’s got his gun pointed at the most important person in my life.

I stand in front of Zack. He tries to push me from him, out of the way of the gun but I refuse to move. It’s like those stories you hear about the car wreck and the mother with a baby trapped in the car and she lifts the car up to get to the baby. “Jesse, I’m sorry about Jake. I should have forgiven him. He loved me and I was selfish.”

“Are you fucking serious?” Zack was able to push me off him. “You know that’s not true, Beks! Don’t say that shit.”

“Zack! He’s going to kill you, do you understand? God, I love you but if you do not shut up I’m going to…”

“Shut up,” Jesse demands.

Zack ignores him. “Better me than you! I can’t do this again, Beks. You don’t remember it but I do. I remember exactly what you looked like covered in blood. Bekah, I was covered in your blood!”

“I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry but…”

Jesse says something; we ignore him.

“No buts! This is all too familiar, and this time the outcome is going to be different!” Zack yells. He’s right. It is because this time I’m not going to get lucky, I’m not going to survive this time around. I’m going to die because I can’t let Zack die.

Zack and I keep yelling back and forth and I keep hearing a third voice – Jesse’s voice, but I can’t help but ignore it. Zack is all that matters. I can’t let anything happen to him…

I don’t know if I hear it or if I feel it first – the loud crack of gunfire, the immediate excruciating pain.

He shot me.

Notes

Déjà vu, anyone?? One chapter left and Bekah is shot! Will she die like I originally planned in the prequel or will she and Zack finally get their happy ending?

Thank you so much for reading! Don't forget to comment and rate if you haven't already!

Thank you to Hollie, Cheyenne16, C.H.Sullivan, foREVer-A7X, Kimmie, a7xdeathbats6661, imagine fiction and ShadowSkye for commenting!

Title credit: Avenged Sevenfold "Angels" (One of my favourites!)