I climbed the stairs one by one, the carpet rough under my inexperienced toes.
No, Peter couldn’t come with me. He couldn’t be part of the real world. This thing that was happening now was a dream, but I could never do it to Andrew. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if he found out. He might not have shown me his love recently, but I knew it was there somewhere.
My head felt uncharacteristically light; my breathing was even although I could feel my heart hammering against my chest. If I had to be absolutely honest with myself, I didn’t know what I was thinking anymore. My head had stopped working. Finally on par with my heart? I didn’t know.
I pushed the door open to our room, tip-toeing with my heels in my hand. A soft light welcomed me in, and I closed the door behind me. The bedside lamp was on, and it cast his hunched over shadow on the wall to his side, a bigger, more miserable version of the Andrew in front of me. He sat on the edge of the bed, his suit crumpled and his tie undone, his head in his hands.
“Hey,” I said softly. It took him so long to look up that I thought he hadn’t heard me. When he finally lifted his head, he looked old and tired. It was like the times you meet old school friends and you can’t believe how much they’ve aged since the last time you saw them, older versions of themselves with the difficulties of life hiding in their eyes.
For a moment I felt the urge to sit next to him and put my hand on his leg, and it caught me off guard. I tried to remember when last I’d had any emotion behind physical contact with him. But I had never seen him like this before, the pained expression in his eyes, something on the verge of a wince. But those dark eyes, those angry, lovely dark eyes, were guarded somehow, and I was unsure now. The corners of his mouth pulled down, like he had a bad aftertaste of something in his mouth, warning me off.
“Had a good night?” he asked, and his voice was hoarse.
“Yes, it was alright,” I checked myself in the mirror, picked invisible threads from my dress, anything not to have to look into the ominous pools of black. I could feel his eyes on me, “Not really my kind of thing, these girl-things.”
Girl things. It was true though, the one bit, anyway. What I had done had never been my kind of thing, not before now. Now I wasn’t so sure, and the question of whether it was or not suddenly seemed important. At least it was true what I had said, the part about it being alright. It wasn’t anything more than just alright. I felt sufficiently dead on the inside now. A different kind of dead than before when there had been nothing from Andrew anymore, but dead all the same.
“I’m glad you got out for a while, sweetheart,” he said. The word was hollow when he said it. Maybe I was just being silly. He’d called me sweetheart a million times and I’d never questioned the way it was delivered.
I walked into the bathroom.
“What did you do?” I called to the room. It was little less uncomfortable now that I knew he couldn’t see me.
“I spent some time with Gavin in the Riverview bar.”
“Oh, that’s nice dear.”
That explained his appearance then. I shook my head, annoyance quickly replacing the worry I felt a second ago. He must have had hard liquor. I hated it when he drank, it changed him into a completely different person. Someone even less relatable, if that was even possible at this point in our relationship.
I carefully took off the dress, and hung it on the hook behind the door. It was such a beautiful color. Such a sinful color.
I heard him shuffle in the room, dropping things, and it confirmed my suspicion that he’d had too much. I stayed in the bathroom until I heard the bed creak under his weight. I didn’t want to see him make a fool of himself. Men were such idiots.
The light clicked off and I padded over to the bed, putting my phone on charge and placing it on the nightstand.
“You might want to drink some water,” I said. My voice sounded a lot more harsh than I’d intended, but it was out there now, hanging in the dark for him to do whatever he wanted with it.
“I think I’ll be alright.”
His voice was even lower now, his words sluggish, struggling to form on his tongue.
“You’ll feel rotten in the morning.”
His hangover moods were never anything less than foul.
“I don’t know,” he said, slowly turning on his side so his back was to me, “a hangover seems so much more comfortable than a cheating wife.”
It ripped through me like a hurricane. My stomach plummeted, my blood turned to ice in my veins and I couldn’t feel my body. I leaned my deadweight against the headboard, gasping for air, panic fighting a winning battle against the numbness that had pulled over me like a blanket, and an awful feeling started turning in my stomach. Like being in love turned black. Like every single butterfly died.
Andrew was gone, snoring next to me like everything around us hadn’t just shattered.
Chapter Seventeen - Andrew
An anvil on my chest pulled me out of a deep, uncomfortable sleep, and I felt sick to my stomach before I even opened my eyes, so I kept them closed.
My head thudded dully and that familiar tightness, brought on by obscene amounts of alcohol, was lodged firmly in my throat, but it wasn’t just a hangover I was feeling. The covers around me were uncomfortable on my skin. I didn’t want to wake up. Something was nagging at me at the back of my mind, pulling me back up every time I wanted to fall asleep again.
Then it all came crashing down on me, every event of the previous day hitting my full on. Blows to my jaw, bang, my chest,bang, my stomach, bang. My heart, bang. Claire all over someone else. Lies. Deceit. Bang .Bang. Bang. Everything we were, gone, just like that. And then the bar, and Gavin, and a lot of vodka. And a conversation.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out the bright light from the windows, trying to remember what it was he’d said.
“Whoa, you need to slow down,” Gavin saw me sitting at the bar, drinking vodka much too fast, “not even I can hold that kind of pace and let’s face it man, you’re way older than me.”
I chuckled without emotion and ordered another. Gavin sat down next to me.
“So, not going to Cole’s then?”
“I think I’ve just about had enough of Cole’s.”
I hated that place. Hated it with every fiber of my being.All I kept seeing was her perfect back, pushed up against the old worn stones, smiling up and being adorable for another man.
“Well, the alcohol here is definitely in a different class, I can tell you that much. Buy me a round will you?”
He leaned against the bar casually, like he did this every day of his life.
“What,” he shrugged when I didn’t follow up on his demand, “I can’t afford to drink here, you look like you need a pal, and I’m not letting you drink alone.”
So I bought him a drink.
He took a sip of the beer, “Ahh, that’s good stuff. So, what’s chewing you?”
“Claire,” I felt my stomach sink as I said her name, “As always.”
He shook his head and rolled his eyes. I couldn’t find it in me to conjure any kind of emotion in response to his reaction.
“You really need to set that female in her place, man. She’s making you miserable, by the looks of it. Nothin’ right ‘bout that.”
I sighed.
“She’s cheating on me.”
He jutted his chin out and looked at me like I was talking about the weather.
“And what are you doing about it?”
“What am I supposed to do about it?” I dropped my head onto the bar. I knew I looked pathetic, and I didn’t care.
“Well, you’re just sitting here, letting her run around with someone else? Don’t you still want her?”
“Of course I still want her!” I shouted, and then breathed deeply,“I just…” I lowered my voice again, “sometimes I just wish she would disappear. I’m so ef-ing tired.”
Gavin took another sip of his drink and looked around the bar before pulli
ng his chair closer to me. He leaned his elbow on the bar.
“Where is she now?”
“At Cole’s. With him.”My voice sounded muffled with my mouth that close to the wood.
“You really want it all to go away?”
I groaned and rolled my head to the side, looking at him from the smooth bar surface. I nodded. The alcohol was making me feel detached. I couldn’t really feel my legs anymore, and my elbows felt like they were disconnected at the joints. I picked my head up again and the room tilted around me. My fingers wrapped around the cold glass but I had to concentrate to lift it to my mouth without spilling. But the numb feeling I had been looking for when I’d started drinking still wasn’t there, my chest was still burning fiercely.
“Well, I can do that for you.”
I looked into my glass that was almost empty now, and snorted.
“I can make it all go away.”
I shook my head. No one could fix this. It had happened. The hole in my chest had been carelessly hacked out.
“Come on, you don’t deserve this crap, you deserve a woman that respects you. You’re a cool guy, you can do so much better.”
“I’m not leaving her.”
“I’m not saying leave her, she already left you, by the sounds of it—“
“Don’t say that!”I shouted again. How could he suggest such a thing? Did he have any idea what it felt like to be me right now?
“Calm down, buddy,” he held up his hands, palms toward me. Then he shifted closer again, so close that his face was very close to mine. It made me dizzy trying to focus on something that close.
“I’ll take her out for you,” his voice was almost a whisper now.
What he was saying didn’t make sense. My head was spinning and I struggled to keep my focus on his eyes. They were intense though, and I couldn’t help but think how much he looked like a convict, even with his bushy mustache and curly hair. It had to be the piercing that did it.
He snapped his fingers in front of my face and I jerked my head back.
“Listen to me, man. I’ll kill her for you. I'll give you the friends and family discount. Then she’s gone, and this whole mess is cleared up. No one has to know.”
A wave of nausea travelled through my body as I remembered his words. My stomach twisted and turned and my head started throbbing violently in time with my heart. I remembered it now. I’d accepted his offer.
I’d said yes to killing Claire.
I jumped up, and clutched the nightstand as I lost my balance. This was more like still being drunk than having a hangover, but I had to do something. When I felt a little more steady I pulled on a shirt and stumbled down the stairs to reception.
“Where’s Gavin?” I huffed.
The receptionist, the older lady I’d seen before, pulled an eyebrow up at me and looked me up and down.
“He’s not on duty today,” she said in a curt voice.
I clutched my head, trying to get the spinning to stop, trying to collect myself. Where would I find him?
I raced back to the stairs and took them two at a time. On our floor I stopped with my hand on the wall, bent over, trying to catch my breath. My lungs were burning and it felt like my head was going to explode. I took two deep gulps of air and sprinted up the last flight of stairs, the narrow steps that lead to the floor where the staff lived. I came to a stop in a narrow passage, with three worn doors with peeling paint and tarnished handles.
“Gavin!”I shouted, not caring who heard, “Gavin!”
A door to my side opened. That’s right, just above our room. I should have known.
“What the hell are you doing, man?”
“You can’t do it!” I shouted, and his face turned into a terrible scowl.
“Get in here,” he hissed, grabbing my arm and jerking me into the room, “do you want the whole world to know? If word of this comes out it can get very ugly, my friend. And you don’t want that.”
I was bent over again, my hands on my knees to support me. I gasped for breath. God I felt awful. That much exercise was not to be recommended after copious amounts of alcohol.
“You can’t,” I said, and groaned, clutching my head again, “you can’t do it. You can’t kill her.”
Chapter Eighteen - Claire
I wiped my cheeks with my hands and saw that my mascara had pooled under my eyes. I probably looked like a raccoon. Andrew was gone, and I was sure he would never come back. I had just gone down to grab something to eat, and when I came back the room was empty. I looked at the black bag that I had pulled out in a frenzy and then half-shoved under the bed when I realized what I had been thinking. I felt like I was being ripped apart, my chest ached something awful. What was I doing?
Someone knocked on the door and my heart tumbled as I hurried to open it.
“I thought you were—” I stopped. It wasn’t Andrew. Peter stood at the door. The carefree smile on his face disappeared when he saw the state I was in, and a concerned look took its place.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, stepping into the room without an invitation. A tight fist clutched around my throat, making it hard for me to breathe. He just turned up, what if he had done this while Andrew had been here?
I walked to the bed and collapsed on it, hands covering my face. My shoulders shook as the sobs took over. I felt the mattress sink as Peter sat down next to me, and he cast an arm around my shoulders.
“Hey, it’s alright, it’s gonna be fine,” he cooed, but it just made me cry harder.
“He knows,” I wailed, “oh my god what am I going to do?”
“Hold up, who knows?” he held my wrists gently in his hands and tugged, trying to get my hands away from my face.
“Andrew, he knows about us.”
I sniveled and wiped my nose on my sleeve, then tried to get the make-up off my cheeks with the back of my hands.I had a feeling I was just mopping it around my face.
I looked at Peter, his eyebrows pulled down low over his eyes.
“Who’s Andrew?”
The tears started rolling over my cheeks again.
“My husband, he found out about us.”
A sharp pain wrapped itself around my throat when I tried to stop the hysterics and I took deep breaths, trying to ignore the pain in my lungs, trying to calm down. Peter’s face was blank for a moment, his eyes uncomprehending. Then his eyes widened, his mouth dropped open, and a deep crease formed in his forehead.
“Wait a minute, you’re telling me you’re married?”
I sucked my lip, and nodded slightly. He jumped up, and started backing away from me, but I caught his wrist.
“Please, don’t—”
“You didn’t think to tell me this when we met!?”
“Peter, I’m sorry, please don’t leave.”
He turned around and rubbed the back of his neck, his other hand on his hip as he paced the room.
“I really thought you were something special,” he said. His voice was lower but his eyes were still fiery when he looked at me, “I can’t believe this!”
I stood up, and wiped the tears from my cheeks. I was losing him, and I couldn’t afford that. I needed him. I wouldn’t have anyone left if Andrew was gone.
“Peter, please,” I walked over to him. He was angry, very angry, and I could see his hesitation when I stretched out a hand to his face. He could reject me right now, and leave, and that would be the end of it. My life would be over. My heart slowed almost to a stop as I reached my fingers across, waiting for them to touch the taut skin over his cheekbone.
He let me. His expression faltered, and his hands twitched. I stepped closer and ran my other hand down his neck.
“I never meant to hurt anyone. You were there when I really needed someone… you’ve done so much…”
I inched my face closer, hoping he would fall for it. I really needed him now, and I would do what I had to make him stay. A tiny voice at the back of my mind was telling me I’d lost it, but the calm that had come over me
now, the quiet in my chest,overruled that voice, so I ignored it.
I slid my hand down to his chest, my lips almost on his now, and looked into his eyes with the biggest eyes I could manage. Then I looked down at his lips and kissed him. He kissed me back.
It was intense immediately. His breathing sped up, and his body pushed against mine, urging me in the direction of the bed. I stepped back, letting him guide me. It took two steps and we collapsed on the bed. His hands were in my hair on my neck, running down my body and back up, and my body responded.
When he started slipping his hands under my clothes, I pulled away from his mouth.
“Do you want this?”
He murmured something against my mouth that I couldn’t make out.
“We can make this work,” I said, my voice breathless.
“How?” he was kissing my cheek, and making his way towards my neck.
“You can take care of Andrew for me.”
He stopped, his head still hovering in my neck.
“What do you mean?” his voice was close to my ear and his breath on my neck gave me goose bumps. I breathed in deeply, trying to concentrate, trying to keep all the pieces together.
I pushed against his chest, asking him to move a little, and I twisted under him, reaching down for the black bag. I reached in and pulled out the gun.
“Jesus,” he gasped and jumped back, almost falling off the bed on the other side, “what the hell is that?”
DECEPTION HOTEL: A Wedding, an Affair, and Murder for Hire Page 8