by Meli Raine
“Why?”
“So you don’t burn out.”
“Maybe I just did.”
Her eyebrows drop, face softening. “Damn. I pushed you beyond your max.”
“Right,” I lie. Romeo’s the one who has pushed me too far. Literally. Pushed my brain through my skull with a bullet.
“I’m sorry.”
I hate how I feel inside. She’s apologizing for something she didn’t actually do.
“No need to apologize.”
“But I’m gonna. Because that’s who I am and how I operate.”
“A sadist who apologizes.” She cracks a smile.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been described better, Lily. You have a way with words.”
“They’re hard to come by,” I say.
“You’d never know.”
“You didn’t know me before. I was a talker.”
Duff happens to walk over as I say this and he lets out a snort.
Rhonda peers at him. “Got something to add?”
“Just that Lily’s right. She was a talker.”
I throw a towel at him.
“Now I get assaulted for reinforcing what you say?”
“No. For smirking while saying it. Give me back my...” Terrycloth. White. Rectangle. Mops up water.
“Towel,” Duff says evenly as he hands it back.
“Yes. Towel,” I repeat, staring at it, rolling it around and around my wrist until cotton fills my brain.
Rhonda’s eyes jump from me to Duff and back again. “Get her home. Hydrated. She needs rest.”
“I can hear you!”
Duff and Rhonda share a look I don’t appreciate. They’re patronizing.
And just like that, I really am done.
I leave.
Duff follows.
Because he always follows.
Chapter 17
“I am fine!” Duff insists on walking me all the way to the door, carrying my gym bag, which weighs all of three pounds. The short drive home involved me falling asleep with my face against the window, right at the base, so now I feel a deep ridge in my cheek where it pressed against the top of the door. My face feels rubbery, slimy, unattached.
“You crashed, Lily. And I threw that fucking ball at you. I’m sorry.”
Guilt starts to seep in around the edges of my fear and anger. “You didn’t–it wasn’t your fault. The...” Blue. Heavy. Round. “...I should have caught the ball.”
“I overestimated your abilities.”
Maybe you just underestimated your strength, I think, but those words are too complicated to come out. I just grunt.
“Where’s my–” I look around for my water bottle. An image of it is in my head. Stainless steel, with an arched top. The words water bottle won’t come to my tongue. No words will. Instead, the picture is stuck in my head, unable to move, unable to be released. My hands make a gesture of its shape.
“Water bottle?” He hands it to me.
I glare at him.
“What’s that for?”
“Nothing.” Everything. He fills in my blanks like no one else, and in moments like this, I hate him for it.
Why? Because I hate being helped so much by someone I’m still not sure I can trust. I want to trust him. I want to think he’s a good guy. I need him to be good.
The not knowing makes this such a bind. And when I’m in a bind, I turn to anger.
If I didn’t, I’d spend the rest of my life crying.
Our house is a simple two-story garrison colonial, half white-painted brick, half tan clapboards. Dad’s father had it built in the 1950s and he inherited it. I’ve lived here my whole life. There’s nothing more comforting than walking up the hosta-lined walkway, purple-tipped fronds pointing away from me like my own personal color guard.
Duff knows the drill. Walk me to the door. Hand me my bag. Stay outside. Dad doesn’t want him in the house too much.
“Lily? That you?” Mom calls out from the family room off the kitchen. She’s probably knitting. The muted sounds of some news station carry through the center hall. I kick off my shoes as I drop the bag and then I pause.
Walls swim.
My shoulders sag and I slump against the small half-wall of the foyer, a bowl for keys and spare change almost slipping off. My reflexes are good enough in my functional arm. I catch it and put it back.
I drop to the ground, spine sliding against the wall, the beadboard pressing into my skin.
I stare at the coat-closet door, overcome with the realization.
Romeo.
Romeo is back.
Maybe I’ve spent the last six months in denial, but when I found out he’d been assigned to another detail, I relaxed. I let my guard down.
I just wanted to breathe.
My foot arches in a spasm that finally lets the tears come as I dig my thumb into the tight muscle, hating my body’s rejection of my attempts to recover. Pity washes over me like a sudden rainstorm on a hot day, the kind that breaks a heat wave. I swallow it all, drinking in the poor-me drops as they turn torrential, my body curling in like my foot, all of me in pain.
He’s back.
He’s back, and he’s watching me.
When will this ever end?
“Lily? Lily!” Mom gasps, dropping to the floor, her hand going to my neck to check my pulse. I’ve found her touching my neck before, in the early days, when I came home and fainted while re-learning to walk. Blood pressure regulation is an issue for long-term coma patients.
So is elevated risk of stroke.
Right now, though, the biggest danger to me isn’t my own body.
“I’m fine. Just upset,” I sob, unable to stop crying.
“Did something bad happen today? Are you hurt?”
Gwennie comes thumping down the carpeted stairs, ponytail flapping between her shoulder blades. “Mom? What’s wrong?” She looks down at me. “Lily! What happened?” She comes closer, bending down to my level, her glasses askew, mouth open, braces gleaming.
I shake my head. Mom’s arms go to my shoulders, pulling me in for an embrace. I feel like a little girl again, and normally that upsets me. I don’t like being treated like a kid.
But this is Mom. I welcome it now. I cry. She lets me. We hold the space together. She’s just here with me, experiencing time as I process what happened at the gym. That’s what I really need. Space. Time. Air.
I need to breathe.
Can’t breathe when Romeo’s watching me.
“Whatever happened today, it isn’t going to be like this forever, sweetie,” she says, her voice muffled. My ear is against her shoulder and I just inhale and exhale, my mind turning porous. “Nothing lasts forever.”
“I know.” Gwennie looks at Duff on the doorstep and gives him a nervous smile. He just shrugs. She looks back and me and mouths, Oreos?
I nod. I cry some more. I sniff into Mom’s chest.
“You’re amazing. You push and you push and you push yourself to defy the odds. Full recovery or bust, right?”
“That’s my bumper sticker,” I joke, sniffing some more.
She laughs. It’s an old sound, one I haven’t heard in a while. Mom’s laugh is like Before. That feels better than anything else I’ve experienced in a long time.
“You can fall apart. It’s okay. You never have to put on a brave front. You never have to lie to me, Lily.”
I freeze. My body tingles with the immediate creation of a forcefield. Not to keep her out.
To keep myself from leaking.
“There is nothing you can’t share with me. I won’t judge, I won’t pry, I won’t–I won’t do anything you don’t want. Having you alive and alert and able to talk and walk and be and do is more than I ever hoped for. And I hoped for a lot all those fourteen months. Prayed a lifetime of prayers, too.”
“I know.”
“But never did I dream you’d come this far. Never. You’re a force of nature, Lily Grace Thornton, and I admire you.”
More
tears fill my eyes.
“I learned from you, Mom. Never give up.”
“Don’t shortchange yourself. I gave you tools. You choose every day how to use them.”
Guilt is not one of those tools, but it is the one I’m holding in my hand right now. Firm grip, too.
I can’t even form words to extract myself. Inside, I’m a tuning fork that’s been struck against too many hard surfaces over and over. No amount of time will calm me down.
Only being pressed by something bigger will do the trick.
“You just went grey! Let’s get you to your room.”
When I came home, Mom and Dad gave up their first-floor bedroom for me. It’s weird to use it, like I’m invading their intimate space. Mom stripped out the carpeting and had hardwood floors installed. During that first month, I was still in a hospital bed, with a wheelchair and then a walker. Home-health nurses came daily.
Now, the bed is my old one, with the comforter I bought just before it happened. All my posters and clothes are there, too, and my reading chair.
No one’s offered to swap rooms back, because stairs are still an issue for me.
It hurt coming home to a house that felt like mine, but to a room that definitely wasn’t. Like my old life had been erased. That room at the top of the stairs had been mine since I was a newborn, just home from the hospital.
I came home from the hospital this time, too.
Mom stands, then offers me her hand. I take it, not because I need support, but because I want it.
“Duff looks unhappy,” Mom says, frowning as she glances outside. My eyes track hers and I see him, still in workout clothes, on his phone.
His piercing gaze could crack screens.
Gwennie appears with a plate of cookies, dark-chocolate cookie dust lining her lips as she chews.
“That’s just Duff’s resting bitchface.”
“Lily!”
“What? It’s true.” I pop a cookie in my mouth to shut up and turn, heading into my bedroom, needing the escape. In my room, I can breathe a little easier. It's not the old sanctuary I once had, but nothing is the same. I take what I can get these days. Being out from under Mom's scrutiny is a luxury.
I plop down on my bed, sitting then leaning back, letting my legs dangle off the edge. The ceiling isn't mine, but the walls have been painted a cheery lilac color I love. Mom and Dad's room belongs to me now, and it feels like someone took my life and put a different layer of skin on top of it. The bones are the same but the appearance sure has changed.
Like a face transplant. Same person, different look.
Something crinkles under my palm as my hand slides under the pillows at the head of my bed. Pillow tag? I grab it, expecting resistance, but it comes freely. It's a small piece of paper, ragged at the sides, with glue on one straight edge.
A torn back of an envelope.
My eyes struggle to focus. I need my stupid glasses. But then I realize the words are big, bold, simple:
I know you know.
Being terrified all the time takes its toll. My heart does what the heart does when threatened. My arms and legs go hard and full, but numb. My wiring tries to figure out how best to protect me. But the constant, low-grade threat level I live with is a little tired of my fight-or-flight response crying wolf.
Is this note a joke?
No. No way would Bowie, Gwennie, Mom, or Dad do this.
Romeo.
Romeo was in my bedroom.
I know you know.
He's playing a different game now, isn't he? If I don't tell anyone about the note, he'll assume I'm hiding the fact that I know he's my shooter. If I come forward, I guarantee my security team will be beefed up–and he'll be added to it.
Wait. Could it be Duff? Someone else smoking me out to make me come forward?
Madness. Madness descends, making my mind turn to hot cotton again, taking me out of linear thought, flying through the long stretch of time until Mom calls my name and Gwennie yells to me about cookies. I tether myself to my body, returning from wherever my soul goes when the cotton appears, my breath a reminder that I am. I feel. I exist.
And yes, I know.
I know.
When I come out, Mom's peeking through the sheers at the little window next to the front door. “He’s an odd one, isn’t he? Paying penance.” Miraculously, Gwennie still has cookies on that plate. I grab one.
“Penance?” I mumble around the chewing.
“The man can’t forgive himself for what happened to you.”
I swallow dry. Gwennie catches my eyes and points to the other room. She’s shy and quiet and this is painful for her. I nod. She escapes with her cookies.
“He’s never said a word to me about it,” I answer Mom.
“Men like that aren’t talkers. They’re doers.” Disturbed, she looks around me, trying to watch him. “Like the man who tried to kill Jane Borokov and shot you instead.”
Romeo.
“You’re putting Duff and the man who tried to kill me in the same category?”
“Only in the sense that they are men of action. Duff used action to save you when the other man used it to kill you. Too bad Duff wasn’t fast enough.”
“Gee, Mom, no wonder Duff blames himself,” I say pointedly. “The only person who deserves the blame is the man who pulled the trigger on the gun pointed at the back of my head.”
She flinches.
I leave.
Guilt expunged.
The note rests in my pocket, burning a hole through my soul. I know what I need to do next. Opening the door, I march out to Duff, whose astonished expression at my arrival is almost comical.
He's even more surprised when I grab his hand and pull him into the bushes.
Didn't know men could turn that red.
“What are you–”
“Did you do this?” I demand, shoving the scrap of paper into his hand.
He looks at it, confused. Reads it. His face turns to granite. “You think I would do something like this?” he growls, pissed.
“I don't know.”
“If you suspect me of this kind of shit, Lily, order me off your team. Now.” The growl turns into something bigger, stronger, threatening.
“Is that what you want?” I challenge, staring at the note.
“Someone is mindfucking you,” he says, holding the note gingerly, searching his pocket. He finds a small plastic bag and puts the note in it.
“Is it you? You didn't answer my question.”
His head jerks up, eyes blazing. “No, Lily. I did not do it,” he says clearly, enunciating every word in the clipped voice of a man on trial.
“Good.” I sag against the house siding, feeling a slime of moss against my bare calf. “Because if you did, I'd–”
“You'd what?” His voice softens, eyes watching like it matters. Like my trust is important to him.
Like I'm important to him.
And not just because I'm a client.
“I'd have you fired.”
“Maybe you should. Someone got in your house and planted this.”
“You're not the only one watching me.”
“No,” he says, picking up his phone, dialing. “I'm not. Let me handle this.”
“What should I tell my mom? Dad? Gwennie?”
“We'll increase security.” He shakes his head. “I don't get it. If the shooter's trying to get you, why this? It's a taunt.”
“It's a test,” I whisper.
“Of what?”
“That's the part I don't understand, Duff.”
“If that's all you don't understand, Lily, then you're ahead of me.”
“I wish I knew more.”
Duff holds up the note. “Someone thinks you do.”
“They're wrong,” I lie.
He nods. The other end of the phone is filled with Silas's voice and suddenly, I feel better. Telling Duff was the right move.
I hope.
Chapter 18
“Again?” I
groan, playing it up on purpose as Duff sits across from me at the conference table. After hiding in my room following my conversation with Mom, and a really bad night’s sleep, I’m at the office of an unnamed company run by a guy named Andrew Foster. He’s the one who manages my security force, the team of guys (mostly Duff) who watch me twenty-four/seven. Dad and Mom know all the ins and outs, but what I know is this:
They haven’t called any of the guards off.
And Jane Borokov pays for every penny.
I stir my crappy coffee with powdered creamer in it. Duff’s drinking water and ignoring me.
“Duff? Seriously? I thought this was just a status meeting. You’re going to question me about the shooting again?”
“After that damn note yesterday? Hell, yes. It’s my job.”
“To ask me the same questions over and over when I’ve already answered them?”
“Someone tried to kill you. And–”
“No–someone tried to kill Jane.”
“My ears are burning,” says a woman’s voice, my brain working overtime to catch up and connect it to the face that appears.
“Jane?” I wasn’t expecting this. The sight of her makes my nervous system go a bit haywire. I don’t know why.
She smiles, but doesn’t come in for a hug, looking as uncertain as I feel. I try to reverse roles: how would I feel if she’d been shot because someone tried to have me killed?
Awful.
I’d feel awful.
Giving her the benefit of the doubt, I smile at her. She smiles back, visibly relieved.
And then Romeo walks into the room.
We both tense up.
We both notice each other tensing up.
We do an eyeballs-only double take at each other.
My stomach sinks.
I can’t.
I can’t.
“Jane,” Romeo says, giving her a curt nod and no expression. Eyes moving to me, he says my name softly, gently, like one would address a child. “Lily.”
“Hi,” I say, giving him a polite smile, the muscles moving back to baseline.
Silas Gentian walks in behind Romeo, all business on his face as he sits down and hands out folders. Jane sits next to him, and I panic, because that means the only empty seat is between Duff and me.