by Hart, Callie
The sheer disbelief on the woman’s face when I’d handed her the keys and told her the car was hers…I was never going to forget that. The mother had taken some convincing, but in the end she’d taken it. I advised her to exchange it for another car and soon, or sell it outright and keep the money, and she hadn’t asked why. Essentially, the car had been mine to give away. I’d paid for it three times over with my twice weekly trips to see Sam. Sixsmith was a fucker of the highest order, though, and had no doubt reported the Chevy stolen, so I figured it was better to be safe than sorry.
Five years later, after I was done with college and had been working for a while, I’d picked up the Fastback. She was a thing of beauty. With the gleaming, slick, paint job in midnight black and the matte black rims to match, the thing was almost murdered out.
“Didn’t wanna put the miles on the engine,” I mumbled around my mouth full of sandwich.
Fix gave me a sidelong look, smiling, the corners of his eyes crinkling.
I’d been about to take another bite of my sandwich. I lowered it. “What?”
“Nothing. I just never realized I’d fallen in love with a greaser is all. This is a badass car, Sera.”
“I know. But I’m a badass. I deserve a badass ride. Count your lucky stars I’m even letting you drive it.”
Fix smile wavered. “You are a badass. You’ve been a badass since that night at the motel.”
I angled my head, wondering at the odd tone to his voice. “Does my badass status worry you or something?”
“Quite the opposite. Your badass status compliments my totally-fucking-awesome-smart-and-sexy-as-fuck status quite nicely.”
Asshole. I stuck my tongue out at him.
“I’m just wondering if you’ve thought this through, that’s all. You don’t have to be so strong all the time. You’re allowed to be affected by things from time to time. You don’t owe her anything, Sera. Not one thing.”
I cringed, my appetite evaporating into smoke. Silly, really. We were less than thirty minutes away from the facility where Sadie was…living? I’d been lying on a gurney, getting my stomach stitched back together, while Fix had left me to take Sadie upstairs to the psych ward at the hospital. Of course, he’d had to use a fake name when he’d dealt with the care staff. He’d become Daniel Whitechurch—the same Daniel Whitechurch who’d accompanied me on a plane back from New York City only a few hours earlier. The cops hadn’t suspected a thing when we’d both had to give our account of what had happened.
After a thorough examination, the doctors put Sadie on a seventy-two-hour hold, deciding that she was, indeed, suffering from some sort of mental illness. Since we weren’t family, they wouldn’t tell us exactly what their diagnosis was, but they seemed appropriately concerned by the fact that she’d stabbed me in the fucking stomach with a nine-inch-long piece of glass. Once the psychiatric hold had expired, they’d deemed her a risk to herself and others and had moved her to Gateway House.
Today was the first and last time I’d be paying her a visit.
“I’ve thought it through. I’ve done nothing but think it through,” I said. “Part of me thinks I’m being selfish. That I just want to see her in there with my own two eyes, so I know she’s not getting out any time soon. And if that’s the case, then I should just walk away and not step foot inside the place, because me going there is only going to rile her up and completely unbalance her again.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that. Unbalanced is Sadie’s permanent state. If you need to see her for some reason before you can move on, then just fucking do it. I know she’s sick, but really. Fuck her. She tried to fucking kill you. Came pretty close to succeeding, too. Let’s not forget that.”
He was right.
Some nights, I laid awake in bed, sweating, panicking, questioning if I’d done the right thing. If I’d just let Fix kill her, I wouldn’t be feeling like this now. More than likely, I would feel free. She would never have posed a threat to us again. Sadie would have been yet another life Fix had taken, though, and, although he never said it, I knew the weight of the dead pressed down on him every day.
“I don’t expect this to make any sense to you,” I said weakly. “But we were close. For years. Maybe she was only pretending, and she really fucking hated me the entire time, but I believed she was my friend. She was so important to me. I leaned on her. I trusted her. I relied on her for so much. And we laughed. We had some amazing times, Fix. It all sounds so fucked up and crazy when I say it out loud, but in a way it doesn’t matter if none of it was real to her. It was real to me, and I feel… God. I feel…”
“Like you want to say goodbye to your friend,” Fix murmured.
Staring straight ahead, I wrapped my sandwich up with numb hands, putting it back into the plastic bag at my feet. He was so astute. He saw absolutely everything with those beautiful, fierce, moonlit eyes. “Yeah. I guess you could put it like that.”
Forty minutes later, we’d found Gateway House, parked and signed in at the front desk. But when we were getting ready to be shown through to the common area where Sadie was reportedly watching television, a short woman in her forties with a high blonde ponytail and very businesslike horn-rimmed glasses intercepted us, calling us into her office.
“I’m Doctor Sandra Hewitt,” she said, vigorously shaking my hand. “I’m very glad to meet you, Sera, although I am a little surprised that you’re here. Most victims of violent physical assault choose to avoid seeing their attackers for quite some time. And you must be Daniel?” She smiled brightly up at him.
Fix smiled tightly as he also shook her hand. He was really, really hating this, and I couldn’t blame him. I was hating it, too. The place wasn’t bad at all. Everything was very relaxed, the décor plush, and none of the (super friendly) staff were wearing scrubs. It didn’t feel like a medical facility at all, but there was just something unsettling about the place.
“Listen, I’m sorry to have stopped you in the corridor there, but unfortunately I don’t think it would be wise for you to see Julia at this time. She’s really struggling to come to terms with reality at the moment. In fact…” She squinted at me, her eyes flitting sideways, taking in Fix for a second. “She’s made some very concerning accusations about you, Daniel. Can I ask what line of work you’re in?”
A good-natured frown of concern creased his brow. “I’m a hitman. I murder people for money.”
“Oh! Oh, goodness!” Sandra said, laughing. “So you’re aware of Julia’s manic delusions.”
Fix laughed, though I couldn’t quite manage to do the same. I was still reeling from the shock of what he’d just said to a professional health care worker. He’d been true to form, though. The night of the storm, when I’d asked him the very same question, he’d given me the very same answer: the disarming truth.
“Yes, sadly Julia didn’t like me spending time with Sera. Over the past few months, she began to invent this bizarre story that I was a priest or something. That she’d tried to pay me to kill Sera, and…” He shook his head, incredulity written all over him. He may have been a firm advocate for honesty, but it turned out he was a very convincing liar when he needed to be. “I just don’t know where any of it came from. She’d be fine one minute, then sending weird, random emails the next. None of it made any sense.”
“No, well I’m sure it wouldn’t. Hyperreligiosity is quite common amongst our patients here. We have no idea why, but the Church, religion, God…all seem to be triggers for people who suffer from bi-polar disorder and a number of other disorders, too. It’s not surprising that Julia assigned you this role, Daniel. The role of a negative figure head, who has power over her.” She turned to Sera. “Julia’s admitted a number of times that she wishes to kill you, Sera. She also admitted to killing your dog, though sometimes these violent fantasies bleed through into a patient’s mind, and we can never really tell—”
I cleared my throat. “Ahh, yeah. She did actually kill him.”
Sandra gave me doleful
, sympathetic eyes from behind the thick rims of her glasses. “I’m terribly sorry to hear that.” She scribbled something down on a notepad. “As I was saying, I don’t think it would be advantageous to you or to Julia if you were to see one another today. Her emotional state’s currently very erratic. I’m sorry to say I think she might try to harm you if you were to sit in a room together.”
“Right. Okay. If you think it isn’t a good idea…” Relief. Holy fuck, the relief. I’d forced myself to come, it had felt like the right thing to do, but the relief that came over me now felt like warm sunlight thawing out the ice that had formed in my veins.
Sandra smiled in a benevolent, saintly way. “You know, you don’t need to feel bad about Julia being here, Sera. This is the best place for her. This is one hundred percent where she needs to be.”
I drove us home. About ten miles from the apartment, Fix began toying with the back of my neck, stroking his fingers up and down, weaving them through my hair. His touch was like live electricity, but instead of causing me pain, as it had Zeth when he’d run that current through him in the bathtub back in New York, the electricity that sparked from his fingertips now made my head dance and spin with pleasure. I still couldn’t believe that he was mine, and I was his. That the constant fear of death was no longer hanging over our heads, and we could simply…be.
“I’ve been thinking about what that shrink said,” Fix rumbled. His voice was so ridiculously sexy—deep but carrying a playful warmth that made me want to blush.
“And?”
“And Julia’s where she needs to be now. But…what about us? Where should we be?”
That was a monumentally huge question. I’d been trying to figure that out myself, but I hadn’t wanted to ask him. I hadn’t wanted to assume…
“I don’t believe in the church anymore. I’m never going to go to Mass, or Confession again. But I would like to go back to church one last time, if you’ll come with me.”
“What for?”
Fix untangled his hand from my hair. He used it to rub at his stubble, his gaze pointed out of the window—I sensed that he wasn’t actually seeing any of the buildings or the houses that streaked by as we grew closer and closer to my place. After a moment’s thought, he shifted in his seat, repositioning his whole body so that he was facing me. He rubbed at his jaw again, wincing as if he were in pain.
“Jesus,” I laughed. “If whatever you want to say is causing you this much trouble, then might I suggest you don’t say it?”
“It’s not causing me trouble. I’m just…I’m gonna ask you something, and I’m weighing up how badly I’m going to want to hurl myself off a bridge if you say no.”
Oh fuck.
Nooooooo.
He wasn’t. He was not going to ask me what I thought he was going to ask me. I shot him a wide-eyed look, daring to take my gaze off the road for a split second in order to deliver it properly. “Don’t do it,” I whispered.
He looked very serious. The joking twitch at the corner of his mouth was nowhere to be seen. “Why not?”
“Because. If you ask, I’m going to say yes. And if I say yes, then everything will change.”
“Like what?”
I wrung my hands over the steering wheel, trying to settle the jittering bounce in my right knee that had just started up. “We’ll have to make plans. We’ll have to decide where to live. We’ll have to figure out if I’m going to sell my business. You’ll have to stop killing people—”
“I’ve already stopped killing people.” He winked.
“No, you haven’t!”
“I didn’t kill Julia. And Monica’s shut down all of our accounts on the dark web. We’re officially offline.”
“Until you need money.”
“Tisk, tisk. You know I don’t take the money. You know I don’t need it, either. I’d be hurt if you weren’t so obviously shitting yourself right now.”
“I—” I gaped, opening my mouth and then closing it again. “I am not shitting myself.”
“You are. You’re being a coward.”
I reached for a blistering retort, but none came to hand. “You’re the one too scared of my answer to even ask the question in the first place.”
His full mouth curved up into an amused smile, and his lone dimple appeared in his right cheek. “Fine. Sera Lafferty. Since the very first moment I aimed my sniper rifle at you and targeted you down its sights, I knew—”
“Stop! Oh my god, please, Fix, you need to stop!”
“See. You’re the coward, not me.”
“I just really don’t think this is something we should be doing in a car on the way back from a psychiatric hospital.”
“Any other excuses you want to fling out there for good measure? What about the fact that we’ve only known each other for two months?”
I nodded my head up and down like crazy. “Yes! That! That is a very good point!”
“And kids. We haven’t even talked about kids. Do you want them?”
I eyed him nervously. “Do you?”
“You can’t ask me what I want, wait for me to answer, and then give the opposite answer just to prove how bad we are for each other, Sera.”
Goddamnit! How the fuck was I that obvious to him? I scowled deeply as I took the exit and then a left, heading back toward the apartment. We were almost home. So fucking close. If I didn’t shut this down now, he was going to take me upstairs and he was going to start kissing me, I would be fucking doomed. “This is completely the wrong way to go about this,” I said firmly. “You don’t even have a ring, Felix Marcosa.”
The silver in his eyes sparked as a wide, shit-eating grin took over his entire countenance. “All right. Okay. Whatever you say, Sera Lafferty.”
“Jesus. You have a ring, don’t you?”
He shrugged, laughing softly under his breath as he turned to look out of his window.
“Fix! You’re joking. You have not got a ring.”
“What? I didn’t say anything!” He held up his hands as I repeatedly tried to swat him to death. “Sera! Sera, fuck! Watch the road. You’re going to run Julian over.”
He was right; poor old Julian was standing right in the middle of the entryway to the underground parking lot beneath my building, looking lost. We’d arrived home and I hadn’t even noticed, I was that distracted by the conversation. I swerved around Julian and parked, then got out of the car before Fix could lock the doors and trap me inside the vehicle with him; I knew his fucking game. He got out right behind me. “You’re running away from me now. Very cowardly.”
“I’m not running away. I just have to help Julian inside. It’s my civic duty.”
My heart felt like it was skipping backwards the entire time I helped the old man inside the building and up flight after flight of stairs; Fix was right behind me, smirking like the Cheshire fucking Cat. “Some people might say that using an eighty-nine-year-old as a human shield to protect yourself from the man you love might be a little unnecessary,” he observed.
“He’s ninety actually. It was your birthday last week, right, Julian?”
“Who, me?” The old man’s head whipped back and forth between me and Fix. Poor bastard. I totally was using him as a human shield, and it was pathetic. The door to apartment 12B was wide open. I really was going to have to call Rhonda and get her to come over today. Julian seemed to be even more out of it than usual. I settled him in front of the TV, reheated some food for him, and fussed around the old man’s apartment, straightening things up, and all the while, Fix leaned against the wall with his arms across his chest, the same broad smirk plastered all over his face, and that damned dimple cutting into his cheek, watching me intently.
Fucker.
He didn’t belong here. He was larger than life. His presence was so huge, it felt like he sucked all the air out of a room simply by walking into it. The black t-shirt and the ripped black jeans. The way the muscles in his arms and his chest flexed whenever he laughed under his breath. His shock of
devastatingly thick, dark hair, that was now a little wavy, falling into his eyes.
I was so in love with him.
I was so fucking screwed.
Eventually, there was nothing left to do but vacate Julian’s apartment and go home. My ears were on fire, burning red hot as I opened up the door and let us in. Fix hummed quietly as he slipped past me and went into the kitchen. I heard him opening up the fridge.
For real? He was going to play it cool now? Uhhh, no way. He was biding his time, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. I stalked after him, index finger raised, ready to give him a piece of my mind, but Fix was one step ahead. Leaning against the kitchen counter, now facing me, he unscrewed the top off a beer and handed it to me, raising his eyebrows. “Look like you’ve got something you want to say there, Angel.”
“You’re unbelievable, you know that?”
“Why? Because I love you? Or because I want you to participate in an archaic tradition that doesn’t really mean anything anymore, just so I get to see you in a really fancy dress?”
“I hate wearing fancy dresses. Especially white ones.”
“Liar. You wear white all the time. And you looked like you enjoyed that fancy dress you wore to Rabbit’s party.”
“That was different, Felix!”
“Okay. So don’t wear the fancy white dress. Wouldn’t be the end of the world.” He raised his own beer and pressed it to his still-smiling lips, drinking down the amber liquid while I openly snarled at him. His laughter nearly caused him to choke. “Fuck, Angel. If you really don’t want to, then I’m not gonna make you.”
“Why does it even matter? Like you said, it’s an archaic tradition that doesn’t even mean anything anymore.”