by Callie Hart
“What do you think’s going to happen if you murder me, Paxton?” I snap. “You think you’re just going to be able to walk away? You think someone’s not already on their way up here right now? Thalia’s body’s down there on the sidewalk. The doorman will have identified her. The cops are going to come up here and they’re going to find…what? Me, dead on the floor? You standing calmly over me, my blood all over you and that letter opener in your hand?”
“It doesn’t matter what they find,” Paxton says. His tone is no longer venomous but rather flat, dashed with a little boredom. He seems eerily calm. “You forget…I’m a well respected business man. I come from old money. My family members have been entrepreneurs and philanthropists in this city for generations. We’ve donated millions of dollars to charity over the years. We’re the social elite. You are a working class nobody with aspirations of grandeur. A money-grabbing whore with stars in her eyes. When they sit me down and interview me, I’ll tell them in great detail what happened here tonight. I had an urgent call from a dear friend. She said she was being held hostage by a crazy woman in her apartment and was trapped on her balcony. I rushed to her aid to find you pushing her over the edge. When I confronted you, a fight ensued, and in the struggle you were unfortunately injured. I only say unfortunately, because you won’t be alive to answer for the trouble and hurt you’ve caused. You’ll be dead. I’ll get a slap on the wrist perhaps. I’m one of the most well respected investment bankers in this entire city. I have endless resources and enough money to buy the best defense attorney there is. I won’t spend a single night in a jail cell. At the end of this whole debacle, I’ll probably be lauded as a hero for catching you, Elizabeth. I’ll be a goddamn hero, and you…you and your whole family will be shamed.”
“I’m the one who’s ashamed .”
Paxton’s eyes grow wide. He hasn’t heard the door to Thalia’s apartment open. He hasn’t heard someone enter in behind him. Neither have I. We both spin around, and there he is, standing there in behind the kitchen counter. Only it can’t be true. It simply can’t be. Raphael … There’s no way he can be here now, his eyes filled with agony and anger. His body is vibrating, his shoulders shaking, those pale, flashing jade eyes of his filled with so much rage and disappointment. Paxton stumbles, reaching out and catching himself, holding himself up as he clings to the back of the armchair next to him.
“Raphael? What…how ? How are you here?” he whispers.
“I walked out of the front door,” Raph says stonily. “I drove across the city. I got out of my car, and then…and then my friend landed on the roof of my car and died .” He sounds numb. He sounds like he can’t even comprehend what he’s just seen. There’s no way Thalia could have survived that fall, I know that—her apartment is on the seventeenth floor—but I haven’t looked over the edge and seen for myself. It absolutely kills me that Raphael saw it happen with his own two eyes. It guts me, hollows me out, and leaves me gasping for breath. Raphael sends an assessing glance my way, his eyes quickly skating over my body. He looks concerned. Frowns. When he looks back to Paxton, his expression is murderous. “Nate told me he was worried about Beth. He told me I needed to get over here immediately…that he thought you were going to hurt the woman I loved. I didn’t believe him. I didn’t for a second think…”
“You don’t know what’s good for you right now,” Paxton says firmly. “You’ve been locked away from the world for so long that you can’t read people anymore. She’s not good for you. She’s worthless , Raphael. She—”
The world seems to stop.
The room smells like white musk and vanilla from Thalia’s candles, coupled with the rotten food on her counters. The air is filled with dust motes that catch and spiral, traveling lazily though the dim light cast off by a lamp in the corner.
Raphael’s shirt is creased into horizontal lines, probably from where he was sitting in his car.
Paxton’s mouth is moving, but strangely the space seems devoid of all sound. I can hear nothing but the staccato, frantic beating of my own heart, throbbing in my ears. Then suddenly Paxton’s no longer talking. He’s turning, and he’s spinning. His face is a bitter, cruel mask. And he’s lunging. Lunging toward me with Thalia’s letter opener still clenched tightly in his hand. He raises it, holding the blade high over his head. I know I should move, I should stagger back out of his reach, but I’ve lost command of my body. I am still as stone as he comes for me. I can’t even scream.
A loud, enraged yell splits apart the air, and Raphael is a blur of black and grey and white. He vaults over the back of the arm chair that stands between us, and then he falls on Paxton, grappling him, tackling him, sending him crashing to the ground. The scene before me turns to chaos. I’ve never seen such violence. I’ve never been so afraid.
“RAPH !” My own scream sounds flat and muted. The two men struggle, wrestling on the ground. Raph is on top of Paxton, and then Paxton somehow manages to slide free, rolling, pinning Raph to the floor.
“I’m the only one!” he hollers. “I’m the only one who really cares about you. I’m the only one who loves you!”
Shock registers on Raph’s face. This is clearly the last thing he ever expected to come from his friend’s mouth. He had no idea. Paxton believes differently, but Raph…there’s no way he ever guessed at what was going on in his head. He falls slack for a second, his expression all horror and surprise. “You’re…what are you saying?” he whispers.
“Don’t fucking pretend,” Paxton sobs. “All of these years, you’ve let me fawn over you. You’ve allowed me to make such a fucking fool of myself, and you’ve done nothing to stop me. You’ve enjoyed it. You’ve reveled in the attention. These women…these fucking sluts…they were nothing but a distraction and you know it. You’re just afraid. You’re afraid to admit the truth to yourself. You know it, Raphael. You know you love me, the same way I love you.”
Raph wraps his hands around Paxton’s wrists, restraining him, violently shaking his head. “You’re wrong. You’re so wrong,” he says. “You were my friend. Nothing more.” Their position may be one of violence, a war for dominance, but Raphael’s words are calm. Paxton must register the certainty in his voice, because a flicker of doubt flashes across his face. He falters, leaning back.
“It’s…not true. You don’t need to lie to yourself anymore. This is the truth. We don’t need to hide it anymore. We just need to be honest with one another. We can have a life together, Raph. An amazing life. We can go anywhere, do anything, be whoever we want to be.”
“You’re not listening. You’re fucking delusional . I don’t have feelings for you. I’m in love with Beth. I knew it from the moment I laid eyes on her. I told you I was in love with her weeks ago.”
Paxton’s body sags. He goes utterly limp. “Stop. Stop saying that.”
“You killed Chloe. You allowed Thalia to think she was responsible, when you did this. You broke her fucking heart, and she’s dead. In some weird, warped world, in a thousand years, I might have been able to forgive you for that. But this? Trying to kill Beth? I’ll fucking despise you for the rest of time. I’ll never be able to forgive that. You’re a dead man, Paxton. A fucking dead man.” Raph grabs for the letter opener in Paxton’s hand. He almost manages to snatch it free from him. There’s no doubt in my mind what will happen if he succeeds in taking it; he’ll plunge it into Paxton’s chest. He’ll fucking kill him, and there’ll be no way of stopping him. Another wave of panic seizes me. I’ve just found this amazing man. He’s just become a part of my life. I can’t lose him. Not now. Not when I’ve finally allowed someone in, to break down all of my walls, to love me and care for me…to show me what it truly means to be happy. I react without thinking. I can’t allow this to happen. I just can’t.
I’m too slow, though.
It’s as if Paxton knows what’s coming, and he can’t bear it. His hand moves quickly, before either of us can get to him. The blade of the letter opener rises again. It jerks swiftly backwar
ds, and then it’s inching little by little…into his own neck.
I freeze.
I can’t fucking move.
A stream of blood jets from Paxton’s throat, vivid, bright, and crimson. The spray rains down on Raphael, arcing, hitting the side of the sofa with extreme force. Paxton’s eyes go wide. His lips tremble as the shock of what he’s done sets in.
“I won’t…be with…out…you…” His speech is gargled, choked, each one coming out slower, rasping, wet with the blood accumulating in the back of his throat. “I…won’t…”
Raphael blinks rapidly as he’s soaked with blood. The front of his shirt is the color of rubies, his face spattered and running rivers of red. “Go then,” he whispers. “Go. Because I want no part of you. I won’t mourn you. I’m going to forget your face.” He leans up, shifting his hips, and Paxton topples sideways onto the floor. He gags and chokes, his eyes filled with fear and pain. Raphael doesn’t care, though. He’s all consumed by hatred. It’s written all over him, and it’s the very last thing Paxton sees. “I’m going to forget you,” Raph snarls. “I’m going to forget you ever fucking existed.”
Eighteen
Beth
T here are birds in central park. Children everywhere, whooping and screaming. Across the city, Thalia is being buried. Her parents have returned from Corsica to see their only child interred into the earth. Paxton was buried days ago, a sea of people turned out to mourn his loss, not really believing the stories being whispered about him behind hands and into ears in polite social circles. There was a very prestigious obituary posted in T he New York Times about him, a full quarter of a page; it spoke of his highly respected career, his charitable works in the community, his academic accolades and his humanitarian works overseas. It was Raphael and Thalia that worked together in Africa, of course. Paxton did nothing but pay them a visit. He stayed in a three star hotel and drank gin and tonics at the bar while they got their hands dirty, digging wells and building schools. The people who attended Trinity Church and then followed on to Paxton’s parents’ luxury penthouse apartment on the Upper East Side know nothing of that, though. The man was very good at presenting a saintly front. His family lawyers have already managed to spin Thalia’s death as a suicide. Technically it was. She did jump from the balcony of her apartment, after all, but I will always hold him responsible. There is a burden of responsibility with things like this. If she hadn’t carried the guilt of Chloe’s death around with her for so long, she might not have been so traumatized when she learned of Paxton’s actual involvement in the accident. If he hadn’t had admitted his feelings for Raphael in such a dramatic, angry way, after years letting her believe there was still hope for them, she might not have felt that death was her only way out.
As it stands, the media have been playing the whole incident out as a double suicide, a lovers’ argument gone wrong. Thalia and Paxton argued, and after he watched the woman he loved swan dive from the seventeenth floor of her building, he couldn’t bear the pain and slit his own throat.
It feels wrong to let the lie stand. So hideously wrong that I wake up in the middle of the night, covered in a cold sweat, my own cries dying on my lips, and I want to pick up the phone. I want to call someone—one of the thousands of news reporters who hounded me for so long, wanting to pay me for my sordid tales of Raphael North—and I want to tell them the truth of it. The black and the white, from start to finish. What would it accomplish, though? Thalia is dead. Paxton is dead. There will come a time when I’ll clear away the cobwebs and the full story will come out. But now? Life is still too crazy to even contemplate such a thing. It wouldn’t be easy. It would be messy and painful, and Thalia’s parents are already suffering enough. They’re private people, and they’re already dealing with the shame of a daughter who ended her life in such a public way.
They were true New York socialites. Thalia was raised from birth with a nanny and a tutor. She spent very little time with her eccentric parents. They seemed far more occupied with their business meetings and their world travels to concern themselves with their daughter’s education or her upbringing, but for all that, they now seem genuinely harrowed and hollowed out in their loss.
Raphael, Paxton and Thalia were the true darlings of New York. Now, with two of them gone, only Raphael remains. Raphael North, a man who once featured heavily in my dreams. An unobtainable fiction of a man, richer than a person’s wildest dreams, more handsome than any Calvin Klein model, a ghost who somehow owned the streets of this bustling city without trying. Now, my Raphael North, the man I wake up to every day. The man who cooks for me, who reads to me. Who kisses the back of my neck as I study. A completely different entity altogether.
The man I love.
I find myself wondering how many people turned up to Thalia’s funeral as I sit on the bench in the park, watching joggers and families pass by. Maybe I should have gone to the funeral. I definitely should have gone to the funeral, but a part of me just couldn’t face it. She lied to me for so long. She hid so much. I could never have imagined hiding so much from her, she was my closest friend, and now…it feels as if I never really knew her at all. The chasms of hurt that exist within me are going to take a long time to heal. There will come a day when I won’t think of all the lies when I remember her. At some point, I’ll be able to remember her fondly. Gradually, piece-by-piece, a small rope bridge will appear over those chasms, and I’ll gingerly be able to navigate the gap without feeling like I’ll fall, myself. I’m looking forward to that day. Until then, all I can do is try not to be angry with her.
“Excuse me? Is this seat taken?”
I look up, and there’s a man standing before me. A beautiful man with piercing green eyes. He’s wearing a formal black suit with a black shirt and black tie. His dark hair is slicked back, a fashionable hipster cut, buzzed at the sides. He is a midnight man, a creature of shade and shadow. He smiles at me, his mouth quirking up a little at the corners, and my heart nearly skips out of my chest.
I return his smile, looking at the empty spot on the bench beside me. “Well…I am waiting for my boyfriend, but he appears to be late. I suppose I wouldn’t mind if you sat here for a while.”
The man with the green eyes frowns ever so slightly. “He must be a crazy fool to keep a beautiful woman like you waiting. His loss is my gain, though. I’ll gladly keep his seat warm.” He sits next to me, crossing his legs at the ankle, stacking his hands on top of one another over his stomach—a relaxed, laid back pose. Weird. New.
“I’ve just been at a funeral,” he says absently, looking out over the park.
“Oh? I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Mmm.” He shrugs, lifting just one shoulder. “It was sad. Really sad. In a lot of ways, it was kind of happy, though. It was full of music and laughter. People shared a lot of happy stories.”
I have no idea how he can talk like this. He took the fall for her for so long. He was trapped inside his own apartment for two years because of her. He did it willingly, though, to save her from suffering a far worse fate. He loved her with all his heart, as much as any friend can love another. I just…I don’t know if I could have done it. I sit for a long time, wondering how he’s managed to come to this point in the healing process so quickly. In the end, I can’t take it any longer. I have to say something.
“You’re the best man I know, Raphael. I just…I couldn’t… I don’t know how you can…” The words don’t come easily. The words don’t really come at all. Raphael knows what I’m trying to say, though. He sighs heavily, his head rolling on his shoulders as he slowly stretches.
“The accident was bad, Beth. I was so angry at Thalia for putting me in that position. I didn’t want to cut her away from my life altogether, though. Seeing her…seeing her brought it all flooding back. Each and every time. But I was hopeful that one day I’d be able to forgive her enough to invite her back in.”
“You should never have convinced yourself that you were to blame for Chloe, though. You
knew you weren’t. Carrying that burden around on your shoulders must have been crippling.”
He smiles sadly. “She came out with me that night. She was in that car because of me. If she hadn’t agreed to go out with me, she would have been on a date with someone else that night. She would have gone to dinner and had a great time. She would have gone home and had great sex with some easy, happy, safe guy. She might have fallen in love with him. Gotten married. Had children with him. Instead, she was with me . Instead, she ended up dead. That’s all there is to it.” He sounds so matter of fact about it that I don’t want to argue with him. It’s not that simple. It’s still not his fault. Now isn’t the time to hash that out, though. There’s still so much we need to talk about, but I’m confident we will get there one day. For now, it’s enough that he’s outside, sitting next to me on a park bench, enjoying the feel of the sun on his skin. Not too long ago, this would have been impossible. Raphael closes his eyes, humming, a small smile still playing over his face.
“I’m angry at Thalia for taking her own life. If she’d talked to me, things would have been so different,” he muses. “Aside from that, any anger I harbored toward her died a while back. And at the end there, I was eternally grateful to her.”
“Grateful ? Why?” My mind can’t even begin to bend around the concept.
Raphael turns his head, so that he’s facing me. He opens his eyes, and his smile, slightly sad though it is, broadens.