by Meli Raine
Lips right by my scarred soul.
“Breathe, Lily,” he says in a hypnotic voice that has the slightest lilt to it. “Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe.” His words are drawn out, gentle and soulful, designed to make all the racing pieces of me slow down, take stock, pull in for a pit stop.
Relax.
Except... I can’t. I really can’t. Because the daughter of the president of the United States is standing in front of me telling me that a little over a year and a half ago, I was mistaken for her by a gunman who tried to kill me.
The very same man who works for her boyfriend.
Who appears to have no idea.
And I can’t tell them the truth.
I know that you know.
Chapter 20
“I don’t understand, Lily. Romeo is a much better choice than Duff for your personal protection,” Mom says as she finishes her coffee and picks crumbs of a croissant off her plate.
It takes everything in me not to spray my mother with the protein drink I’m swallowing. It’s breakfast time, and after yesterday’s meeting, I’m trying my best not to think about Romeo. Having my mother bring him up feels like God is laughing at me.
Duff left the meeting without saying a word. I never had a chance to ask why he and Silas didn’t mention the note in my bedroom.
Why wouldn’t they?
Unless they think I’m making it all up.
Or they… don’t care?
What if the very people hired to protect me are somehow in on all this? Why would people whose job is to protect me ignore screaming evidence like that?
What is going on?
I’m driving myself crazy trying to keep it all in, figure it out on my own, find safety somewhere in forging a plan. I can’t have a plan if I don’t know what I’m fighting against.
Or who is fighting for me.
Logan drove me home from the meeting and covered the late shift last night. He has the personality of a tent flap. He stayed outside, glued to a headset, alternating between our front porch and an unmarked car on the street. The absence of Duff is disconcerting. Worse, though, is the absence of conversation about the note.
I know you know.
“What?”
“Duff’s fine,” she says, waving her hand as if we’re talking about favorite soft drinks. “But he did mess up. That was his shift. He failed to protect Jane.”
“The guy–or woman–who shot me is the only person responsible for what happened to me, Mom. Why do I keep having to tell you that?”
“Woman?” Breathless, she runs around the butcher block island and stands before me, eyes like moons. “Is there new information? Are you remembering more?”
“What? No!” I practically scream. I can't have her thinking I remember anything new. “No one knows whether it was a man or a woman. Everyone’s just being really sexist assuming it’s a guy.”
“Oh.” She deflates before my eyes. “I thought you might be recovering more memory.”
“Nope,” I say. That’s not a lie, either. I study her. “Why are you bringing this up now?”
“Romeo is so kind, Lily. He really feels bad that he wasn’t there in time to do what he needed to do to make everything turn out different.”
“He said that?”
“Those are his exact words.”
Chills run up and down my arms and legs, like chilled, animated ants have been unleashed all over me.
“Silas Gentian and Andrew Foster protected Jane and they trust Duff completely. They’re the ones who figured out Monica Bosworth was trying to kill her,” I tell her. “That Monica hired someone to kill her.” I don’t mention that Silas and Jane are clearly not fans of Romeo.
Why?
Why don’t they like him?
Mom grabs a laundry basket full of towels and starts to fold them aggressively. “Well, I think Romeo has a point.”
“And I think he’s–” I’m about to say an asshole, but I swallow the words. Any opinions I have of the man need to be kept to myself. He’s infiltrated my parents’ life. They trust him. They might repeat what I say.
Hopelessness tastes really bitter when you have to swallow so hard.
“He’s what, Lily?”
“He’s just doing his job.”
Mom sniffs, nose going up in that way she has when she’s upset. Her hands fold towels even faster. “I’m glad you can see that.”
“Duff is, too.”
“Too bad he wasn’t the day you were shot.”
“Why do we have to talk about that day all the time? It’s like it’s the only day that ever happened in history!” I’m holding a kitchen towel and throw it on the counter. It slides off and lands on top of Mom’s toes.
“You don’t have to be so negative about it, Lily. When did you become so negative?” Plaintive and exasperated, she’s using a voice I haven’t heard since Bowie was little.
“I’m not negative!”
“You’re nothing but negative since you woke up! It’s like you’re hiding the real Lily deep inside this shell of someone who’s pinched herself off, who’s closed herself down. Even that would be fine, but this–the negativity. It’s hard, Lily. It’s hard.” Dropping into a chair, she cradles her head in her hands.
I go numb.
If I tell Mom, if I open my mouth and stutter and stumble and force the words over the huge wall I’ve built around myself and everyone else in the world, then I release my pain. I reconnect. I become more human.
But I also become a dead human.
Worse.
I put my mother’s life at risk, too. Because Romeo walked right into my parents’ flower shop in the middle of broad daylight with Duff standing right outside and tried to murder me.
A man who would do that would kill my mother in a hot second.
She doesn’t know it, but my fake amnesia is the only thing keeping her alive.
At the same time that it’s tearing me to shreds, bleeding out my humanity drop by drop.
She’s right. I’ve changed. I’m still changing.
And I hate every minute of it.
I also hate protecting him. That’s what I’m doing. I’m protecting a killer. An almost killer.
No. Just because he didn’t succeed in murdering me doesn’t mean he’s not a killer. I’m sure I’m not his only victim.
Mom gets up and pours herself another cup of coffee, and I shudder. If he’d shoot me in cold blood in broad daylight, what would he do to my mom? Bowie? Gwennie? Dad?
Elbows on the table, I lean into my clenched hands and blow out hard, my breath forming condensation on my new eyeglasses. That’s another change. Before, I didn’t need them. Perfect vision.
Now my eyeball doesn’t like to play nice with some of the muscles around it, and something about my left cornea is off. I’m an assemblage of broken and mutilated surfaces that have to be arranged just so. As long as you blur your eyes slightly, I look like a whole human being.
Just don’t look at the edges. At all.
Because they don’t line up. Maybe that’s why my vision’s blurry. It’s an act of kindness from a trixter God.
“You... honey, you really don’t remember anything?”
“What?” Lost in my thoughts, it takes a few seconds to recalibrate and realize Mom’s sitting across the table from me, steam rising up from her cup like it’s interviewing me.
“You–well, Romeo told me that memory is an extraordinary neurological process. Even small pieces of recall are gold.”
“Are you still harping on this?”
“He brought it up yesterday when he called.”
Yesterday. Romeo called yesterday.
After the meeting.
Tap tap tap.
The back door rattles with a knock. It’s Duff. Mom rolls her eyes. I answer, opening the door.
He looks at me. I’m wearing the leggings and big t-shirt that I slept in and I’m holding half a chocolate nutrition drink. “You forget your–” he moves his hand aro
und his head, like he’s polishing it, “–appointment? We’ve got twenty-five minutes and the drive is twenty of that.”
“Shit.”
“Lily! Language!”
“Eight months ago, you’d have been thrilled to hear me say shit.”
Mom laughs, a quiet huff of acknowledgement. She looks up. “Hi, Duff.”
“Bee.” He nods. I watch him. Something about the way he holds himself is different.
“Careful with the balls this time,” she tells him.
His eyebrows go up.
“You took Lily’s breath away.”
I’m dying inside, wanting to make a terrible double entendre joke, but...
“Learned from my mistake,” he responds, not taking the bait.
Narrow eyes pierce the air between them. “Did you?”
Ouch.
Who is the negative one?
“Anyway, it’s not PT, Mom. Bye.”
I grab my keys and purse, gulping down the rest of my drink as I walk out the door. It slams accidentally, then I hear it open as Duff joins me.
“Fight with your mom?”
“Not talking about it.” I frown. “And what’s this?” I imitate his head-polishing gesture as he opens the car door for me. I fought him on riding in the back long ago. Inner-ear problems are hard enough. Back seat? No way.
“Your appointment.”
“I have an appointment with a bowling-ball polisher?”
I get a tiny bit of a real smile. “The wig people.”
I pat my head, letting my fingers brush along the scars. “Right. Don’t you like my hair the way it is?”
The look he gives me makes me emotional suddenly, warm and most of all–seen. “I don’t think you need a wig.”
“I need a head transplant.”
“You need to stop talking and close the door so we can be on time.”
I do what he says, and as Duff pulls out of our driveway, I let out a long sigh.
“Fight with your mom?”
“You asked me that already.”
“Just testing your neurological function.”
I give him the middle finger and turn away, staring out the window.
He coughs, then says under his breath, “Another test I can check off. Your small motor skills are just fine, Lily.”
“Just fine.”
Chapter 21
I wanted a little caffeine. That’s all. Asking Duff to stop by Hot Cup of Hope near The Thorn Poke seemed simple.
But no.
Here’s the problem with being assumed dead for fourteen months by everyone but your parents: your friends fade away. To be fair, I faded first, but then I came back. A few of my friends have come out of the woodwork, slowly, as they learn I’m home. But very few.
It’s like I’m not real.
I grew up here. Stayed after high school and got a degree at the community college. I was one semester away from finishing my bachelor’s in business when Romeo shot me. I’m the epitome of hometown girl. Hometown woman.
And now? Hometown freak.
Hometown ghost.
Jessalyn and Kimmy and I were best buddies through high school. They left for college and only came home for holidays. That’s how it was. Local friends were fading, and when I met Jane, I was excited. A new friend! Someone I hadn’t known my whole life. Someone who lived here and who would stay here.
I know how to pick ‘em, huh?
So the first time I decide I want to pretend to be normal and get a cinnamon latte, I’m surprised to run into Jessalyn.
“OMIGOD Lily! Look at you! I am so sorry I haven’t visited before,” she gushes. Inside, I cringe. This is what happens every time I run into someone I know who hasn’t come to see me. Their guilt is at the forefront. It’s like a housewarming gift thrust at me before I can make eye contact at the door.
“Jessalyn,” I say, smiling as she comes in for a hug. Her eyes meet mine and widen.
I know.
Just like that, I know.
Rhonda and Mom are lying when they say my smile is just fine.
Jessalyn hugs me harder than ever before, and her mouth goes into overdrive. She doesn’t realize that in the far corner, there sits a man with an earpiece, reading the newspaper, dressed in a suit and looking like he’s ignoring us completely. Duff’s in loose disguise and I wanted it that way. Wanted him to give me space.
When you open up space, you invite boundary crossers to wander on in.
“Your mom said you’re on your way to a full recovery,” Jessalyn says, immediately biting one cuticle. “You’ve been home how long? A month?”
“Four.”
Eyebrows up, it’s clear she’s more focused on managing social expectations than she is on me. There is a brutality to how I view people now. I didn’t have it Before. Mom says I’ve lost my shiny optimism. I tell her it drained out with my blood. That it was in the section of skull bone that shattered.
That it leaked onto the concrete floor at the store.
Mom says I’m too morbid now, too.
Duff shifts in his seat in the corner nearest to the door, where he sits on a small sofa, glancing up from his newspaper every minute or so to scan the room. Jessalyn sees where I’m looking and stretches, a saucy grin making her dimples show.
“Who’s that? Some guy you’re with?”
“What? No!”
“He’s cute, in an older-dude kind of way. Looks like a soldier. Or maybe a spy. Someone rough and dangerous.”
“Maybe he’s just old and cranky,” I reply.
Blinking hard, she looks at me with her head tilted, puzzled. “That’s... blunt.”
I shrug.
Silence stretches between us, the awkwardness weird. You shouldn’t feel this uncomfortable with one of your best friends. Ever. It violates the laws of nature.
“You sure you’re okay, Lily? You seem different.”
How would you know? You didn’t bother to find me after eight months of being awake.
She looks like I slapped her.
I guess I said that aloud.
“People say you’ve changed, Lily.”
“People like... who? Because no one’s bothered to come find me. Talk to me.”
“Kimmy’s on a long assignment in Europe.”
“Good for her.”
“You’re harder,” she continues. “More...”
“Negative?”
I get a smirk. “You’ve heard that before?”
“Been talking to my mother?”
It’s not my job to try to thaw her, but that seems to help.
“I am sorry,” Jessalyn says as we inch towards the counter in line. A man in a suit is in front of me, then I’m next. “I should have come to see you. I got busy. That’s no excuse.”
“I’m busy, too. Today I get to be fitted for a wig.” I’m wearing a baseball cap, my hair carefully arranged so the ends cover the worst of the scars. Jessalyn’s too polite to pry with examiner’s eyes.
“That’s great!”
“Is it? Because it doesn’t feel great.” I look at her hair with obvious envy.
She winces. “I don’t–I don’t know what to say.”
At least she’s being honest. Most people lie and try to say something, anything, to escape the awkwardness. “Thank you,” I confess.
“For what?”
“For saying that.”
“For saying that I don’t know what to say?”
“Yes.”
“Why would you thank me for that, Lily?” Exasperation makes her look older than we are.
“Because it’s honest. People aren’t honest with me anymore. It’s like they think I can’t handle it.”
Her eyes change, the guardedness fading. More of my old friend Jessalyn, the one I spent thousands of hours with through middle school and high school, comes back. “Then they don’t know you.”
“Maybe I don’t know me, either.”
“Oh, Lily!” Friendly arms wrap around me with a spontane
ity that makes Duff look at us sharply. Threat assessment completed in a split second, he looks back down. Sudden movement near Lily = increased alert status.
I am a client above all.
Nothing more.
“That hot older dude is watching us,” she whispers in my ear as we hug.
“Please stop saying he’s hot.”
“Rugged hot. Not billionaire hot,” she adds, making me start to choke just as it’s my turn at the counter. My eyes catch Duff’s and his eyebrows go up like he’s asking me what Jessalyn means, like he can hear everything we’re saying.
And then I pause, feet halting on the dark wood flooring.
Can he?
Am I bugged?
“Miss? Ready to order?” the counter clerk asks as the words float past me one by one, each making sense alone but the crowd of them disjointed, uneven, disconnected. Standing there, I breathe, pushed from the inside to act, to speak, to take a step, to do anything to unfreeze myself.
I can’t.
I’m stuck.
Brain has a spark plug loose.
The doctors warned me this could happen. Their clinical description is no match for what it actually feels like. My tongue presses down on the bottom of my jaw and my lymph nodes feel like balloons. My neck is a vine and my body swings from it, except the vine is gripped tight by a hand I can’t see. I look at my foot. I will it to move.
I fail.
“She’ll have a cinnamon latte, almond milk, and an everything bagel, toasted, plain,” Duff says from behind me, moving ahead to place the order, pulling out his wallet and inserting a card into the payment machine. He doesn’t touch me, but his presence is an antidote to the paralysis. I take a deep breath. I slide one foot forward, then the other.
I look at his back, broad shoulders outlined by the tight fit of his suit jacket. He is a wall of navy before me.
He blocks out the world.
“Lily?” Jessalyn’s voice is tentative as she finishes paying for her drink at the register next to mine. “You okay?”
Duff turns around and gives me a serious look. “Let’s get you to a table.”
Jessalyn’s eyes widen with meaning as she looks at him, then me. “You two are together?”