His voice gained an angry edge. “So fucking nice.”
He finished his drink and looked over at me, his eyes glittering. “I should’ve known right then. But I was so starved for attention, for anyone to notice me or look at me like I wasn’t a murdering freak, that I was completely fucking blind.”
I didn’t know what to do with my hands. They were fluttering around in my lap like frightened birds, so I sat on them and kept listening.
“We started dating. I couldn’t believe my good luck. Here was this beautiful, popular girl, choosing me. I was so happy I was delirious. My parents were over the moon. My father started talking about having me take over the business. It was like a dream, everything I ever wanted falling into place. After a year, I proposed. And she said yes.”
Nostrils flaring, he slowly inhaled. His voice shook with fury. “That evil, scheming, lying, soulless bitch said yes.”
Now I was the one who needed a drink. I abandoned the bed, sat across from Jackson, and poured myself a stiff one.
He set his glass on the table and dragged his hands through his hair. Staring at the floor, his elbows propped on his knees, he continued to talk.
“It took another year to plan the wedding. Six hundred people were invited, including the governor. It was a zoo. All my parents’ friends and business associates, all her friends and family, politicians, leaders in the liquor industry, a bunch of other people I didn’t even know. We had it here at Moonstar Ranch, of course. Great location for a wedding. The church was too small for that many guests, so the event coordinator designed this whole fantasy fairy tale theme that ended up costing more than a million dollars.”
He sighed. “I found out later the coordinator was one of Cricket’s college friends. Cricket got a cut of her fee.” He glanced up at me. He looked wrecked. He said quietly, “Because of course that’s what it was about all along. Money.”
I started to feel sick. Finishing my bourbon in one gulp didn’t help.
Jackson stood and started pacing again, like it hurt to sit still. But there was a hitch in his walk now, a slight, unsteady weaving. Everything he’d had to drink was starting to catch up to him.
“The ceremony was ready to start. The guests were seated. The violinists had begun to play. But the bride was nowhere to be found. The coordinator was having a nervous breakdown. So I went looking for Cricket. I thought she was probably just taking a minute to herself, nerves and all that. I had a hunch she’d be in the stables because she loved to ride, so that’s the first place I went. And I was right . . . she was there. And she was getting a ride.”
The inflection in his voice left no doubt to his meaning.
I gasped. “Oh, no!”
He turned and stared at me with wild, black eyes. “Oh yes. Right there in the tack room, bent over the saddle stand with her thirty-thousand-dollar wedding dress that I paid for shoved up to her waist, her panties around her ankles. They didn’t see me come in. They just kept fucking and talking, him grunting, ‘You’re always gonna be mine,’ and her crying that she was, that it was all for him, she was doing it for him, for their future, they only had to pretend for a little while longer. Everything became very clear to me. Very clear.”
His voice went dead. “And then I lost my mind.”
I covered my mouth with my hands, terrified of what he was going to say next. He staggered over to the bed and collapsed onto it, his face crumbling. He gulped in lungfuls of air. When he could talk again, his voice was a hoarse whisper.
“My hands were around his throat. She was screaming. Screaming at me to stop, I was killing him, but of course that’s exactly what I intended to do. Kill him. One of her so-called ‘friends’ that we hung out with who smiled at me and clapped me on the back every time I paid for dinner. I wanted to kill him with my bare hands. And I would have, I’m sure of it, but Cricket came at me with a big metal tool used to punch holes in leather and hit me in the face. She had to hit me three times before I let go.
“My blood was all over him. He was lying on the ground, bloody and unmoving, and she fell on him like Mary over the body of Jesus, weeping and wailing and begging him to say something. When he didn’t, she turned on me. You’ve never seen anything so savage. And the things she said. God.”
He broke off and covered his face with his hands.
“Jackson, you don’t have to tell me,” I said, but he shook his head.
“I do. I have to tell someone, because I’ve never told anyone else. Maybe if I get it out . . . maybe if I just . . .” He flopped onto his back and laid there, arms out, chest heaving.