by Sam Mariano
So, yeah.
Maybe we are fucked.
The worst part is, Griff told Moira. I wouldn’t have told Moira until and unless the fucking bank took our house, but Friday I come home from work to Moira sitting at the table, all upset.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she demands.
Glaring mildly at Griff seated beside her, I answer, “Because there’s nothing to tell. Not yet. We’re still figuring things out. We don’t know how bad it is, and even if it’s the absolute worst… I’ll figure something out.”
Shaking her head, she stares at the table top. “We shouldn’t have done this. We should have waited. We should have let the paperwork go through first—”
Before she can say anything else Griff can latch onto with his goddamn insecurities, I cut her off. “Hey, no. No. Stop that. This is why I didn’t tell you. There’s no problem, okay? Not yet. We did what we needed to do.”
Her eyes, so full of concern, flash to mine. “And now you could lose everything.”
I reach across the table and cover her hand with mine. “Not everything,” I tell her, firmly. “The most important things I have can’t be taken from me. From any of us,” I add, glancing pointedly at Griff. “We all have each other, and we’re all going to be fine.”
Despite my assurances, she says, “Maybe we should sell the house. If we sell ours and he sells his, we can use the money to keep your businesses going and we can move into a smaller place. We don’t need all this room. We all sleep together anyway—hell, we can move to a one bedroom for now.”
“Moira.” I meet her gaze and hold it, draining the franticness out of her. I need her calming presence. I already have to deal with Griff being touchy about shit, I need Moira to be steady and trust me.
Fucking Griff.
Staring her down calms her considerably. Even though as far as she knows, the facts do not back me up, I manage to convey to her that I have things under control.
Or, I think so, until she says, “I could get a job.”
“All right.” I keep her hand and stand, pulling her to her feet. She doesn’t know where I’m going with this so she hesitates. I pick her up and drape her little ass over my shoulder as she squeals.
“Sebastian! What are you doing?”
“Come on,” I tell Griff, nodding as I head for the bedroom.
“Are we done talking about this?” he asks tentatively, standing and following me nonetheless.
“Yep,” I say, simply.
After we’ve worn my wife out and she sleeps nestled against Griff, I stare at her naked back and let the doubts creep in.
If Donovan doesn’t come through, the money he took me for is the least of my problems. Tens of thousands of dollars can be made up, but without that prenup, Griff’s toast. Obviously she can’t touch my house, but Moira’s right; we would have to sell ours. We’d need the money.
Our first house flashes through my mind, even though we wouldn’t move to a shithole. It’s not like we’d be completely broke, and we would build things back up, but all those years, all that effort… everything just ripped away from us… it’s bullshit.
It makes me fucking sad. I logged all those hours and worked as hard as I did then so I wouldn’t have to now. Now I have Moira and Griff and we can be a family; I don’t want to spend 18 hours of every day gone.
I’m tempted to go see Donovan again, but he told me not to. Conveniently, he told me that until the job is done, I shouldn’t come around.
Helplessness is not a feeling I’m accustomed to anymore. Once upon a time I felt that way, and I vowed never to let it happen again. That claustrophobic fucking feeling.
There’s nothing worse than powerlessness.
Moira shifts in her sleep. I’m feeling a little selfish so instead of letting her remain asleep, I give her hip a little squeeze and let my hand drift forward, placing the flat of my palm against her abdomen and lightly rubbing.
Her dark hair tickles my face as she turns to look at me over her shoulder. “You’re still awake?” she whispers.
I shrug.
Her husband senses on high alert, she eases off Griff and rolls over to face me. Her pretty face is relaxed and calm, none of this stress weighing on her mind. Exactly how I want it.
Not wanting to stress her out, I let it go myself. I reach for her and drag her close, tucking her beneath my chin. Her sweet little body snuggled up against mine, her lips pressed lovingly against my chest as she kisses away whatever worries must be keeping me awake, I’m cognizant of this being what really matters. Hell, even Griff lying there on the other side of my bed, happy for once in his fucking life.
We have all we need.
I want my stuff, my businesses, the empire I’ve poured countless years of my life into building, but all I need is right here in this bed.
No one can touch this.
28
Griff
The phone is still pressed to my ear, a shrill voice lobbing obscenities at me, but I can’t quite process any of it.
This can’t be real.
This can’t be true.
Ashley’s hysterical sister isn’t making any sense at this point, but between the lines of hurled insults, casual accusations, and muffled sobs, one statement rings clear, reverberates off the walls of my mind.
Ashley is dead.
Last night while Moira’s sister visited us, while I played with her baby and Moira snuggled close… Ashley decided to end her life.
That doesn’t make sense.
There are a lot of things I know about the woman I spent years married to, and there’s one truth I would stake my fucking life on.
Ashley is too vain to put a gun in her mouth and shoot a hole through the back of her head. The amount of pain she would have to be in to even consider it…
There is no fucking possibility. If Ashley wanted to kill herself, she’d use pills. Not only because there’s a good chance she would fail and just get a fuck load of sympathy and attention out of it, but because it’s more dignified and glamorous than blowing a motherfucking hole in her head.
I can’t even imagine it. My stomach feels sick. I don’t like Ashley at this point, let alone love her, but I didn’t want her dead. Sure, in moments of anger I might have thought that, but…
Fuck.
“You did this!” her sister suddenly screams, drawing me out of my thoughts. I wince and pull the phone away from my ear.
“I didn’t do anything,” I state. “Look, I’m sorry to hear this, Sara. Obviously. This is… Jesus. But this is not my fault.”
“Yes, it is! You took everything from her! You divorced her—left her for another woman!”
This is an impressive revisionist history, but since the woman is clearly mourning and in pain, I don’t bother setting her straight.
“Look, I’m at work. I have to go. When you’ve had a chance to calm down, call me and we’ll talk about…” I want to say ‘funeral arrangements’ but the words get stuck on my tongue. Funeral arrangements? I can’t be talking about funeral arrangements. Ashley’s a year shy of thirty fucking years old. I can’t be planning her funeral.
Visions of white roses spring to mind, clustered around a casket. I don’t know what she’d want to be buried in. Can there even be an open casket?
My stomach rolls over.
“Sara, I can’t do this. I have to… I have to go.”
She vents a few more muffled, obscenity-laced insults at me before I give up and disconnect the call. I can’t breathe right and I need to get out of this office.
Shoving my phone in my pocket, I push up out of my seat and make a beeline out of the building. I tug at my tie, trying to pull air into my lungs.
A cold burst of winter air hits me, reminding me I left my jacket inside. I’m outside in a thin dress shirt, my sleeves rolled up to the elbow, and somehow I still feel hot under the collar.
Dead.
Ashley is dead.
The words keep playing and replaying in my he
ad. No matter how hard I struggle against them, no matter how impossible they feel, there has to be some truth to it. This can’t just be a mistake. You can’t think someone is dead and go so far as to notify people and then it turns out to be a mistake.
No, this is permanent.
The woman I married is dead, and the circumstances are fishy as fuck.
I don’t even think Ashley would know how to fire a gun. I lived with her for years; I would know if she ever went to lessons. She would’ve made me buy her some pink, rhinestone-encrusted fucking thing so she could go to a range once and get bored.
I should have asked what kind of gun was used.
Why would I think to fucking ask that? Sara wouldn’t even know. I don’t even know where it happened. Couldn’t have been our house; I took her key.
Holy fuck.
Nothing about this feels right. Ashley would never in a million years go quietly. She would need a complete fucking lobotomy for any of this to add up. Even if she somehow overcame her self-obsession enough to decide to end her life—and she was not in that headspace last time I saw her, which was not long ago—she would call me first. I’m the one who resisted her tricks and pissed her off, so she would have reached out to me. Not for any nice reason, of course, but to punish me. She might’ve emotionally blackmailed me with threats of hurting herself, or maybe sent some well thought-out, heartfelt text, backhandedly explaining all the ways I made her miserable, all the reasons it’s my fault she has come to this—without using that verbiage, of course.
Dread moves through me at the thought of it, but it’s perhaps worse that she can’t do any of that shit to me ever again.
Because that means she’s gone—not just from my life, but from the world.
Was she dead when Gwen left late last night and Seb and I took Moira up to bed? Was Ashley dead when I was buried balls deep inside Moira, getting off on her moans, the feel of her body, the visual of Seb right across from me fucking her mouth?
Before that? Was she dead when Moira shuttled her baby niece between me and Seb, bursting with maternal love? When baby Layla played with my face and slobbered all over me? When I slipped away to clean the baby drool off and Moira subtly followed, pushed me in the bathroom, and made out with me for a few minutes? She winked at me and slipped back out to attend to her sister and niece, but fuck, I felt good.
Everything felt good, and now I know this was happening.
I need to talk to Seb. I need to tell him. He’s gonna fucking flip. I mean, he won’t be torn up about it—not like he was married to her, and with all the trouble she’s been causing lately, the bastard might even be relieved to…
My thoughts slow to a crawl.
Now he might be persuaded to put a gun in someone’s mouth. I can’t picture him pulling the trigger because I love the fucking guy, and that’s just not a thing you can picture someone you love doing…
No, it couldn’t have—he wouldn’t do that. That’s too far. Seb’s not a fucking murderer, what am I thinking? Plus, he was at the house with us. He’s the one who told Moira to invite her sister over for dinner, and he was there with us all night visiting. Gwen didn’t leave until late, and he was right there at the front door seeing her off.
No, of course Seb didn’t have anything to do with it. I can’t believe that thought even crossed my mind.
Overwhelmed with a need to see him, to tell him about this, to see that he’s shocked, too, I pat my pocket for my keys. Finding them, I head straight for my car. My jacket’s still in the office, but who fucking cares?
I fire up the engine, back out of my spot, and peel out of the parking lot. I break several traffic laws along the way, but I can’t drive fast enough. Thankfully there aren’t many people on the road today, but Seb’s across town so it still takes forever to get to him.
I could’ve called him, given him a heads up, but I didn’t bother.
Since I didn’t bother, I shouldn’t be too shocked when I get to where he’s supposed to be and he’s already left. The curly-haired girl who watches his every move when he’s around—major infatuation there, but she’s just a kid, so it’s nothing to worry about—told me he was meeting with his Realtor over at the retail space he told me about.
The fucking retail space? How the hell is he meeting at the retail space not just without me, but without telling me? It wouldn’t be a big deal any other time, but right now he knows we don’t have the money to buy it. He knows our finances are tied up and looking dire given the Ashley situation.
Irrational anger surges through my veins when I pull up and see him standing inside the building, hands shoved into the pockets of his long, stylish jacket, talking to the Realtor. I park up front so he spots me immediately; a wary look passes across his face.
He should look fucking wary. I kill the engine and get out, slamming the car door behind me and heading inside. Since Seb watches all this, as soon as I swing open the door and let myself inside, he tells the woman, “Give us a minute.”
I’ve obviously met with her before and she knows I’m his partner, so she glances between us uncertainly, then nods and click-clacks into the next space over to give us some privacy.
Seb’s gaze drifts up and around, and I know immediately the motherfucker is checking for any potentially working cameras.
Goddammit.
“Did you do this?”
His voice level, his face vaguely annoyed, Seb asks, “What are you talking about?”
“I think you know what I’m talking about, Seb. What are you doing here? I told you we had to hold off on this place. You know we can’t afford to buy it right now.”
“I had to come,” he tells me. “I know you wanted to wait, but there’s another buyer sniffing around and this place is too good a deal. If we wait around, we’ll lose it. Obviously I would’ve looped you in before I did anything official, but—”
I don’t let him finish bullshitting me. I’m not in the mood for it right now. “But you knew we didn’t have the fucking money!”
Passing a hand over his mouth and caressing his strong jaw, he regards me like he’s appraising an angry pet, determining whether to throw it a bone or slip it some tranquilizer pills in a piece of lunch meat to keep it from attacking.
“Why don’t I finish up here?” he finally suggests. “We can go somewhere and talk.”
“About what?” I ask, lowly. “What do we need to talk about, Seb?”
“Whatever has you upset,” he says, evenly. “Let me just tell Elsa I’ll call her tomorrow.”
I’m still restless as hell, but I wait for my best friend to go handle fucking business while I stand here with a dead wife—and he might’ve been the one to kill her.
This is a fucking disaster.
People can’t just do shit like this and get away with it. What am I supposed to do if he gets caught?
I’m getting ahead of myself. I still want to believe he didn’t do this, but I know there’s a darkness lurking beneath Seb’s well-assembled exterior, a scrappy willingness to do whatever he has to do to save himself. As a kid he always had to fight, and he never really stopped, he just upgraded his arsenal. Maybe he doesn’t have to come to blows with the house bully or build an emotional force field around himself anymore, but what if he felt like he needed to protect me and Moira? Ashley did come to the house. Moira was going to have to admit to our arrangement and we were going to be outed publicly—and not on our own terms, but in a way that made the whole thing seem sordid and wrong.
Seb has been like a brother to me, and I know the man well. I know his heart and soul, and I know he’s loyal as hell, but I also know he shuts off that heart to anyone he feels has turned on him, abandoned him, left him out in the cold. If Moira hadn’t stopped me leaving, I would’ve felt the arctic chill of his indifference.
So how easy would it be for him to look at Ashley—someone he never had a single strong feeling for—not as a person, but as a problem he needed to solve? Lately she’s been presenting her
self like his enemy, and Seb wasn’t a great enemy to have when he had nothing, but now?
I think of the cash I know he keeps at his house. Large sums, larger sums than any rational, fiscally responsible person would keep hidden away. The money could be invested instead, but he liked to have rainy day money around that he wouldn’t have to go to a bank to get.
The kind of money there’d be no paper trail to, because it’s just cash and he’s had it hidden away so long whatever paper trail that may have once existed has been blown away by the winds of time.
Intense, oceanic eyes regard me once more as Seb walks back into the space I’m occupying. His hands are still shoved into the pockets of his charcoal gray jacket. Without a word he nods ahead of him to the door, letting me know we’re leaving.
It occurs to me for the first time in all our years together, maybe I shouldn’t feel as safe with him as I do. His love runs deep, but what if it ever stops? My favorite part of last night flashes to mind again, Moira stealing those few minutes in the bathroom with me.
What if I ever became one of Seb’s problems? If he can discard people as easily as that, like so much dead weight, just because they’re in his way… what happens if someday I’m the one in his way?
Instead of going to his car, he slides into the passenger seat of mine and shuts the door, enclosing us in this chilly fucking pocket of privacy. I look over at my best friend in the world, the man I’ve built my whole life with, and I don’t know what he’s capable of.
“What’s on your mind, Griff?” he asks me, his tone still that of a man in charge.
“A lot of fucking things, Seb,” I answer, honestly.
“Can you be more specific?” he asks, patiently.
I can, but I don’t know how. How do you ask someone the things I need to ask him? How do you look a man in the face and ask if he’s capable of murder? Even if he didn’t pull the trigger, if he had a hand in things, this is his doing.
My stomach rolls over again. I feel like I’m gonna lose the lunch I didn’t even fucking eat, but I take a deep breath and try to keep it together.