And there wasn’t any hard evidence to be had. Vito had confessed that someone had tipped him off about Julian’s location, but Greyson hadn’t been stupid enough to use his own cell to call him, much less give out his name. Without more to go on, the police weren’t willing to drag Greyson in for a voice lineup.
Detective Flores hadn’t been unsympathetic to Julian’s frustration, but her attitude seemed to be that he should be happy the DA believed he was acting in self-defense when he attacked Vito, and should let the rest drop. And maybe stay away from Greyson from now on.
The elevator pinged and Julian strode down the fifth-floor corridor, glancing at the numbers on the doors as he passed. He found the one he wanted and stopped, rubbing a hand through his hair as he made a fruitless attempt to slow his racing heart.
Coming here went against every instinct. All his running, the past three years, had been a flailing attempt to never get caught in Greyson’s net again. He couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that he should accept the advice he’d been given and get out of the way before he got himself killed.
But there wasn’t any other way around it, as far as he could tell. Running from Greyson hadn’t stopped him screwing with Julian’s life, or anyone else’s. It was about damn time Julian dug his heels in and said enough.
Julian blew out a breath and checked his phone. Plenty of battery left. He hit record on the memo app he’d downloaded yesterday and watched it for a few moments as it counted out the time in milliseconds. He’d done a few test runs on the way down. There was no reason it shouldn’t work now.
He swallowed down the dread building in his chest. He wasn’t ready. He probably would never be completely ready. But he was here. He had to do this.
Stashing his phone in his pocket, he raised his right fist and pounded on the pristine black paint.
There was some shuffling inside, and the clatter of dishes. The lock turned and the door glided open.
“Julian.” Greyson’s eyes widened incrementally as he regarded Julian from the gleaming light of his foyer. “What are you doing here?”
Julian’s hands curled into fists as dread turned to anger. “Surprised to see me?”
Greyson’s mouth quirked up in a cruel smile as his gaze traveled over the healing injuries on Julian’s face, and the wrap around his left hand. “I wouldn’t say I’m surprised,” he said, crossing his arms and leaning one shoulder against the doorjamb. “You never did have much of a survival instinct.”
“And you never knew when to back the fuck off,” Julian snapped.
The whole way down, Julian had told himself, again and again, that dealing with Greyson wasn’t like dealing with other people. If you wanted him to listen to you, if you wanted to control the conversation, you had to be cold and cutthroat. Just like him.
But he couldn’t match Greyson’s cool indifference. All Julian’s guilt and fear and pain and frustration—everything he’d been trying to ignore or control for the past week—smoldered in his chest, evaporating whatever thin layer of frost he may have succeeded in building up on the way over.
He dug his nails into his palms, trying to let the flare of pain in his left hand remind him to keep it together. “The fuck is wrong with you? Don’t you even care that trying to get back at me almost got Beatrice killed?”
The only thing that changed in Greyson’s expression were his eyes, which turned to ice. Probably thought it was bad form to accuse people of attempted murder where other people might hear. He pushed off the doorjamb and motioned Julian inside.
Julian strode past him into the living room, where he had some room to maneuver if this all went to shit.
A picture window on the far side of the room showed off a view of the city that matched the decor—all of it in grays, browns, and white, with the odd splash of red. Even the pristine fake Christmas tree in front of the window was a creamy white, draped with earthy red and bronze ribbons and glass ornaments. The furniture and wall hangings inside were placed so carefully, were so deliberately coordinated, it looked like Greyson was anticipating a fucking interior design magazine to photograph the place any moment. A single bowl by the sink in the marble-surfaced kitchen was the only thing suggesting anyone lived here at all.
Greyson shut the door and took a couple steps toward Julian, his hands in his pockets. “This victim complex thing of yours is getting old, Jules. You’re always trying to blame me for your problems.”
“Kinda hard not to, Grey,” Julian shot back. His heartbeat thundered in his ears. This had to work. He had to make this work. “You do keep trying to have me killed.”
Greyson scoffed. “Give me a break.”
“First you get those boys at school to go after me—”
“I still don’t know where you got that idea,” Greyson said, brushing an imaginary speck of dust off his sweater. “This is what I’m talking about. You get yourself in these bad situations, and then you can’t face the consequences and try to pass the blame off on someone else.”
“So, what, I’m supposed to believe it was a coincidence that less than twenty-four hours after you threatened me, Vito and a couple of his friends just-so-happened to be waiting outside my work to jump me?”
“Maybe it was cosmic intervention,” Greyson said, a smirk twitching the corner of his mouth.
Julian’s stomach twisted as heat rose in his ears. “Really?” He was shouting by now, incapable of keeping his volume in check. “You want to fucking stand there and tell me cosmic intervention was responsible for putting an innocent person in the hospital?”
Greyson’s eyes narrowed. “You’re the one who thought screwing around with a gang would be a good idea,” he said, a subtle edge creeping into his tone. “They wouldn’t have given a shit where you were if you hadn’t messed with them in the first place.”
“That’s your justification?” Julian demanded. “I screwed up three years ago and that makes it okay that you almost got Beatrice killed?”
“Look, I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish, here,” Greyson said, dropping his voice to a low growl as he strode the last few feet separating them. The look on his face was one Julian knew too well. It meant push me any further and I’ll push back. Hard. “I tried to tell her to stay away from you if she didn’t want trouble. It’s not my fault she didn’t listen. And it sure as hell isn’t my fault you couldn’t protect her.”
Fuck the plan. Hot rage burned up the last of Julian’s self-control. He seized Greyson’s collar with both hands, ignoring the sharp flare of pain in his left fist. “She wouldn’t need protection if it wasn’t for you, you son of a bitch. You want to talk about responsibility? Own up to your own fucking choices.”
“Get your hands off me,” Greyson rumbled.
“Why didn’t you kill me yourself, instead of hiding behind people you couldn’t control? Didn’t want to get your hands dirty? Or are you just that much of a coward?”
Greyson shoved Julian off him, lip twisting in disgust. “Let me spell this out for you, nice and clear,” he said, prodding Julian’s chest with one finger. “Because apparently you’re too fucking stupid to understand how this is going to go if I don’t: I want you gone. I don’t care how you get gone, but you’re going to get the fuck out of my way. And in case that’s still too difficult for your tiny brain to understand, that means you either get your ass on the next flight out of here, or I make another call to your old friends and tell them about your little shithole upstate.” He dropped his voice to a low rumble, getting in Julian’s face. “And trust me when I say that the next time they find you, they’ll do the job right. I’ll make sure of it. Dumb luck won’t save you a third time.”
Julian knew he should be filled with dread that he’d gone too far. Instead, it was relief that made him stumble back a step. If he couldn’t convince anyone Greyson wanted him dead with a recording of that speech, they’d never believe it. “Fuck you, Greyson,” he rasped.
“Get out,” Greyson said, jerking his head
toward the door.
Julian didn’t wait to be told twice.
Twenty-Five
Beatrice sat in the back seat of her mom’s car, watching the cold, steel architecture of the city give way to the dead, brown trees and lonely, weathered buildings of the highway. It had been five days since she was admitted to the hospital, and the ride home with her family was tense and too quiet. Even the classic rock blaring from the radio couldn’t drown out the fraught silence inside the car.
Her family had been fretting over her nonstop since they arrived after her surgery. Beatrice couldn’t remember if she’d ever had the full force of her family’s attention before. She didn’t like it. It was like being hunted down by three buzzing, panicked helicopters. She couldn’t escape the searchlights.
Mike and Joyce squabbled over stupid non-problems whenever they were on hover duty at the same time. Nath seemed to sense this stressed Beatrice out, so he’d been trying to run interference on her behalf. But his prickly version of running interference just added fuel to the fire.
It wasn’t his fault. He was as anxious as their parents, and had more practice picking fights than settling them. Beatrice just wanted to burrow under the blankets and cover her ears to block it all out.
True to form, getting out of the hospital this morning had been more of an ordeal than it should’ve been. If her parents weren’t arguing amongst themselves, they were asking Beatrice a million questions she didn’t have the energy to answer. Beatrice couldn’t handle it. By the time they’d packed into her mom’s ‘09 Honda Accord, she’d gone from monosyllabic to nonverbal to completely unresponsive.
Which was apparently more worrisome than anything that had happened so far, because the other three Bauers went uncharacteristically quiet in response. Beatrice could feel their searchlights gliding over her periodically, though she refused to meet anyone’s gaze. Every ten minutes or so, her mom would remind Beatrice that if she needed anything, all she had to do was ask. Once or twice, Nath reached over and gave her arm an awkward pat that Beatrice thought was meant to be a reassuring gesture.
Beatrice couldn’t take the attention anymore. She wanted to strangle the next person who asked her if she was doing all right. All anyone wanted to hear—her parents, her friends, even her nurses—was some brave, meaningless quip, tailored to put them at ease.
Oh, I’m hanging in there.
It doesn’t hurt that much.
You haven’t lived in New York until you’ve gotten stabbed a couple of times, right?
She was sick of coming up with new lies to tell. She was sick of taking care of everyone else when she was broken and angry and sad and just . . . not all right.
No one wanted to hear that the only time she wasn’t in pain was when she was asleep. They didn’t want to hear that sleep only made her feel worse, smeared as it was with heavy, claustrophobic dreams that she woke from with her heart pounding, tears staining her pillow. They didn’t want to hear that she couldn’t stop reliving those few minutes in the alley, convinced if she’d just done something differently—gotten there sooner, or kept some kind of weapon on her, or knew kickboxing, or if she’d run for help—then maybe she could’ve stopped anything bad from happening.
They didn’t want to hear how she was only in the hospital because she’d been trying to protect someone she loved, who she’d discovered too late didn’t care about her at all. Even thinking about that one made her face burn with shame. She had been so, so stupid.
She knew she was weird. She knew she put people off with her strange clothes and dorky sense of humor. She knew she had too many freckles and too much untamable hair to ever be called a beauty. Yet she’d still somehow convinced herself that Julian might actually come to love her.
Of course he didn’t love her. How could she have even thought he would? Beatrice had always had a habit of throwing her heart at people who didn’t give a crap about her. She’d been doing it since she was little, when she’d sit on the floor, crying, because she couldn’t understand what she’d done to make her biological father walk out of her life.
She’d thought she learned her lesson after she turned nine. A birthday card had come in the mail—late, as usual—claiming to be from her biological father, who was supposed to be in Alaska at the time. Beatrice had found it on the table when she came home from school, and for a moment, looking at the return address, she felt relieved. Frank hadn’t forgotten her after all. It had just taken a few days for the card to come.
Then she made the mistake of checking the postmark on the envelope.
It wasn’t from Alaska. The card had been sent out from the post office down the street from her house.
In a haze of denial, she’d gone to her closet in search of an explanation. She took out all the other cards she’d tucked away in the folds of an old blanket, where her mom couldn’t find them and toss them out. Six more birthday cards, plus a few odd Christmas cards she’d received since Frank left when she was just a few months old.
Every last one was postmarked from right around the corner.
It felt like the ground crumbled out from underneath her. All those years hanging onto this tentative promise that, despite all evidence to the contrary, she hadn’t been completely forgotten. Maybe Frank never visited, or called, but he cared enough to remember she existed once or twice a year, and say love you, kid at the bottom of a brightly colored card.
But all the cards did was prove to what lengths her mom would go to stop Beatrice crying. Here, stupid. Take this card and shut up.
Beatrice had never confronted her mom about it. She didn’t want to hear the lies. There was a small, anxious part of her heart that was terrified to hear the truth, too. She didn’t want her parents to admit they’d never wanted her around. That she reminded them of a bad time in Joyce’s life that everyone would have much rather forgotten. That it would have been easier on everyone if Beatrice had never been born. She wasn’t strong enough to face that reality if it was said out loud. At least if it was only a thought in her head, there was a possibility she was wrong.
So she’d stopped asking for help. Stopped asking for attention. Stopped asking for love.
If she never needed anything, no one would ever stop to wonder how such a weird little duck as Beatrice had slipped into the nest unnoticed. And if no one realized she didn’t belong, no one would push her out.
Beatrice’s phone buzzed in her pocket as Mike exited the highway, but she couldn’t bring herself to check it. She’d been getting notifications almost nonstop since her admittance into the hospital. Anxious get well messages from out-of-state relatives and random acquaintances. Texts from Kinsey and Sasha asking if she wanted them to bring anything the next time they came to visit, or valiantly trying to distract her with silly videos and memes. Emails from her professors with information about making up the finals she was going to miss during the month or so her doctors had told her it would take to recover. A flurry of texts from Greyson she’d never answered.
I heard what happened.
Are you okay?
I want to come see you.
Please don’t stay mad at me. I love you.
Lies.
He didn’t love her. He just wanted what everyone else wanted—a conflict-adverse, people-pleasing invertebrate who never objected to being pushed around. She’d blocked his number after that. And then went through her social media accounts to make sure he was blocked on all of those, too.
The really pathetic thing was that she couldn’t stop looking for messages from Julian. She kept refreshing her texting app whenever she checked her phone. Thinking maybe she’d missed something. Maybe he’d tried to contact her and it had gotten lost in all the other notifications. Maybe . . .
Maybe she was a complete idiot, still wishing he would talk to her.
The moment Mike parked in front of the apartment, Beatrice got out, not giving anyone time to fuss over her. She could walk just fine, even if the fading bruise on her knee gave her a lit
tle trouble with stairs. Most of her other injuries didn’t hurt so much anymore. Her bruises were greenish and dull. A few bumps and scrapes were nearly gone. Her side still ached, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been the first few days. She’d been prescribed more pain meds if she needed them, but she planned on not needing them. The meds made her feel fuzzy and nonlinear, and she wanted to be able to think clearly again. Maybe then she’d have a chance to snap out of this horrible funk.
Nath caught up to her on the stairs, and climbed with her in a kind of silent solidarity, carrying her overnight bag on his shoulder. Their parents hung back near the car, talking in low voices. Probably fretting over what to do about Beatrice.
At least dealing with Nath by himself wasn’t so bad. He’d gone very scowly and grumbly the past five days, but he never seemed upset with her for not being able to fake a good mood. That was more than could be said for most of her other visitors.
“Fair warning,” he said when they reached their landing. He narrowed his eyes. “There’s . . . flowers, inside. They came this morning before we left.”
Beatrice gave him a blank look. The arrival of flowers didn’t seem that odd, under the circumstances. She’d received a few bouquets at the hospital, including a few from relatives, one from her coworkers at Java Mama, and one from her statistics class that she suspected Kinsey had organized. It seemed plausible an aunt or someone would send flowers to the apartment on the day Beatrice was discharged, to welcome her home. There didn’t seem to be any need for a cryptic warning if that was the case.
But Nath maintained his grim expression and unlocked the door, leading the way inside.
Beatrice froze on the threshold. The apartment was overrun with greenery. For a moment, she wasn’t sure if it was possible to fight through the dense foliage to her room without a machete. Carnations, roses, gardenias, orchids, poinsettias—and a dozen other flower varieties that Beatrice couldn’t name—spilled out of the vases that crowded the free space on the kitchen table and overflowed onto the floor in the foyer and kitchen. They had even infested part of the living room, blocking the lower half of the TV and sitting on top of old bills and dirty dishes on the coffee table. Her home didn’t smell like home anymore, so thick was the scent of flowers in the air.
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