Never Better: A Dark Obsession Novel
Page 17
“You could have told me, you ridiculous fuckhead. You could have told me so I could thank the man who saved my goddamn life.”
And then she just flung herself at him.
Like a hug, disguised as a punch.
* * *
He wouldn’t talk, at first. As if the whole business had been trapped inside him so long that even her knowing couldn’t dislodge it. She had to persuade him into other things, before it finally started to come loose—like sitting down on the side of his tub so she could see to his pretty gross looking wound.
But still, it took some doing.
She had to come at it slowly, from the side.
“So. Anything you feel like talking about?”
“I was thinking a good topic would be: how generous you are.”
“If you’re saying that because you still think you’ve committed some egregious crime against my person by killing the man who attacked me, I’m just going to go ahead and cut you off right there. For multiple reasons.”
“Multiple? I can’t even think of one.”
“Then let me help you out. For starters, the words killing the man who attacked me are in there. And they basically mean that instead of me dying, I am now alive.”
She looked up at him then, sure that he would have given an inch for that. But his expression was just as despairing as it had been when she first told him she knew. If anything, it looked worse—as if prolonged exposure to all of this was eating him alive.
Or was it just her acceptance that was doing it?
He sure seemed like he was hell-bent on destroying it, every time he opened his mouth. “Yeah, and you wouldn’t have even been in danger if it wasn’t for me.”
“Ah, so that’s what you’re going to go with.”
“I’m not going with anything. It’s true.”
“Then you made him do that.”
“I didn’t make him, but—”
“You knew he was likely to attack me, but told him to go upstairs, anyway.”
“No, of course not, of course I didn’t, I could never, I just—”
“Oh I see. You just indulged his worst instincts beforehand.”
He held up a hand, at that. Closed his eyes, briefly.
Though when he opened them again, he didn’t look any better for it. And he didn’t sound any better, either. “I get it, all right. I wasn’t directly responsible for anything. But I still worked for a man who hired men like that. I still went where he told me to go and did what he wanted me to do. And no amount of telling myself that I did those things for reasons other than petty crime can dissolve that.”
She didn’t mean to laugh, once he’d finished speaking. He was clearly suffering, and it felt mean to do it. But the problem was: everything he said only seemed to make the secret he’d kept seem more foolish.
“You weren’t even a thief, were you? Oh my god, you were still working for the government. You were like, infiltrating a criminal organization.”
“I don’t see what difference that makes.”
“To be honest, I don’t, either. If you’d been some kind of career criminal who stole people’s jewelry for a living, I’d still love you. Nothing would change for me. But the problem is, you think it should. You think worse than that. You think that doing a perfectly legitimate thing puts you completely beyond love.”
“It doesn’t feel legitimate when you’re doing it, Lydia.”
“But it is, all the same. You were doing your job. You were saving lives.”
“Saving lives is just a justification, I told you, I told you that.”
“Is it still one when the life is mine?”
That struck him. Though, it did it way harder than she’d intended.
He almost put a hand to his chest, when he heard it.
And only slowly descended into rue.
“Goddamn. You walked me right into that.”
“I take it that means the answer is no.”
“The answer is always going to be no, sometimes. The needs of the many don’t always outweigh the needs of the few. But god, it was never just a justification for you. It will never be, for you. I would have done anything—anything to prevent you from coming to harm. And I doubt I’d regret a single one of the actions I took to make that happen.”
“Then why do you?”
“Why do I what?”
“Regret the actions you took.”
He went to answer her immediately—then seemed to stop, and consider.
And a second later, it was obvious why. He thought she meant the shooting.
Not all the things that had happened after the fact.
“You mean everything since.”
“Well, you do seem to beat yourself up about it a lot.”
“Because I lied, Lydia. I wasn’t just some guy you met at a therapy group.”
“No. You were some guy who went to the therapy group to make sure I was okay. Right? Even though you didn’t have to. Even though you’d already done enough. Even though there was no reason to feel guilty you did, and you came to me. And you watched over me, every day since, like some penance for a crime you didn’t commit. Then finally, finally when all of this gave you just one tiny thing for yourself, when you realized I wanted you, you tried to cut it out of yourself rather than harm me.” She stopped there, to get back control of her voice. It was starting to quaver. It was starting to fill up with a million emotions that she barely knew how to feel. And when she had it, she finished with the only truth that really mattered about him. The only thing he ever needed to understand. “You would cut out your own heart, before you saw me suffer in even the smallest way.”
And then suddenly, he was holding her.
He was pulling her into his arms, as forcefully as she’d run into his. “You’re right,” he said, against the side of her face. “You’re right, I would. I would, god I would do it a thousand times over, if I thought it would help.”
Though it was the thing he said next that struck her harder.
The thing he murmured, as he stroked her hair.
“Do you know what happens at the end of the film Truly, Madly, Deeply?”
“Of course I do. A better question would be: why are you asking?”
“He recites a poem to her.”
“Yeah, I know. I know the poem.”
“He says, ‘and your feet will want to march to where I am sleeping. But you will go on living’,” he said.
And she wanted to laugh then. She wanted to correct him, because the quote wasn’t exactly true. It was my feet. Not your. It was I will go on living.
Not you will.
Yet somehow, she got the feeling that was the point.
He wasn’t asking her to remember lines.
He was telling her something.
And that something wasn’t good.
“Why are you saying this to me Isaac?”
“Because you will go on living, honey.”
“Don’t talk like that. You’re not going anywhere.”
She pushed against his chest, then.
But he was holding her weirdly tight.
Much too tight, for him.
“You know I am. You heard what I promised the people who still worry that you’ll talk, who still think it was you who shot him, not me, not an accident. Who think me being with you is a reason to silence you forever. And once I do what I have to do to them, it’s unlikely I’ll be coming back.”
“Then I’ll stop you. You know I’ll stop you.”
“No you won’t,” he said.
Though, still, she didn’t expect him to do anything. She didn’t for a second imagine that he’d tighten his hold—not enough to hurt, but enough to tell her exactly what he was doing. He was cutting off the circulation, from her throat to her neck. Just a little, but a little did something very particular, she knew. It put you to sleep.
Holy fuck, he was putting her to sleep.
Isaac, she tried to scream, hands scrabbling at his grip.
Oh god, it was already too late.
* * *
She waited for three days, in his apartment. Three days of frantic calls to Letty, to make sure she stayed safe at Tate’s parents’ house. Three days of being sure this Smith character was going to bust in at any moment, and kill her. But mostly, three days of knowing Isaac was probably dead. If things had gone in his favor, he would have returned straight away. He would have called her and said he was fine. He would have let her know somehow, that everything was okay.
Yet still, she tried to keep hoping. She scanned the news, looking for hints of what he might have done and who he might have done it to. She searched his name, and the name of the man he’d mentioned. Smith and Isaac Morales, she tried, then only later realized that neither were probably accurate.
Smith was too simple for someone who ran some kind of crime empire.
And Isaac Morales was likely an alias. It had to be, really. How could he have given her his actual one, given the life he led? She could have blurted it to the wrong person, and then he would have been fucked.
But god, it made her furious to realize it.
It made her root through his cupboards and throw things off his shelves, sure that she was doing it to find something. Some hint of the real him, some answer to all the questions she still had, some sign that he was really a bad guy. He had lied for his own ends, she told herself. He had made it all up, just to get what he wanted.
Though even as she did it, she knew she was being a fool.
She knew before she even found the book, nestled between encyclopedias.
It was copy of Green Eggs and Ham, of all things, obviously loved and near falling apart. And there, in the corner of the inside flap, was a scrawled message.
To Isaac, she read. All my love, mom.
Then suddenly she was crying. No, not just crying—she was sobbing, in the middle of his apartment. And of course, it only got worse when she found other things. A copy of The Fly and a tattered menu from that shitty diner. All his romance novels and the things that made him smell like cinnamon and films that starred fucking Robert Duvall.
Because she knew then, she knew.
He’d shared all the things that really mattered with her.
And now he was gone. He was gone. She knew he was gone before she even saw the news, at the end of that third day. Local businessman with ties to organized crime found dead, it said. Several warehouse fires reported in connection with his murder, it said. Then in her cheeriest voice, the news reporter confirmed what she already felt in her heart:
Unfortunately, nobody got out alive.
Epilogue
She tried not to think about him too often, in the days that followed. Partly because doing it was like falling down a rabbit hole of questions she’d never now get the answers to. But mostly because it hurt. It hurt so bad, it sometimes winded her.
Though he was right about one thing:
She did go on living. She went on living for herself.
And sometimes, she went on living because of him.
He’d given her back her life a thousand times over, and she knew to waste it would be a sin. So, she went to classes and parties and places she’d never been before. She spent time with Letty, and called her mom.
And gradually, it started to get better.
She told herself that it was getting better.
Perhaps part of her even believed it.
Until the postcard. It was just in amongst the mail that Letty had left on the kitchen table, so cheery and incongruous looking she almost thought it was junk. Just one of those things that got sent to you to advertise vacations.
And sure enough, on the front:
Visit Sunny Miami Beach!
Though it was the back that interested her. It was the back that made her breath catch in her throat, before she’d even started reading. She had to stop before she’d gotten past the first line, because a big part of her knew, she knew. But a little part was still unsure. The tone was too friendly—and it had been weeks, he would never have left her for weeks.
He was dead.
He had to be dead.
In life, you just didn’t get happy endings.
And anyway, hadn’t her ending been happy enough?
She was alive. She was living. She was safe, he had made sure she was safe, and given his life to do it.
It wasn’t cool to ask for more beyond that.
She was sure it wasn’t cool—and then, she read the rest.
Just thought I’d send you a postcard to let you know how I’m doing. Last time we met you seemed so concerned—but honestly I’m fine. Never better, in fact. The weather is beautiful here, and everyone is so friendly. Honestly, I can’t help feeling that you should see it for yourself. There’s still time, before winter sets in.
Or, at least, I hope there is. I hope.
However, I completely understand if you haven’t forgiven me for going three weeks without so much as a word. Work just made it impossible—I got so swamped, that for a while, I could barely function. And then my old boss started yapping at my heels. You know how he is—always wanting me to do things I believe aren’t necessary, then trying to punish me for things that definitely are. But I’m okay now. It’s all done with, now.
You can rest easy on that score.
I hope you’re resting easy, anyway.
It’s the only thing I ever wanted for you.
All my love—
She stopped there. She had to.
Partly because she was crying.
And partly because she saw the last two words, and laughed. She laughed harder than she ever had in her whole life—joyously, boldly, with all of her body.
He’d signed it Martin Blank.
Acknowledgements
First of all, this book would not be standing without the love, support and hard work of Bronwyn Green. Thank you for everything you do, every day, all the time. Also to Jess, who has the patience of a saint. And finally, to the resistance, for keeping me sane when the world decided to go off the rails. I won’t stop writing, as long as you guys keep fighting alongside me.
About the Author
Charlotte Stein is the RT and DABWAHA nominated author of over fifty short stories, novellas and novels. When not writing deeply emotional and intensely sexy books, she can be found eating jelly turtles, watching terrible sitcoms and occasionally lusting after hunks. For more information, visit www.charlottestein.net
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Other Books by Charlotte
Never Sweeter
Never Loved
Control
Addicted
Deep Desires
Intrusion
Forbidden
Taken
Restraint
Curveball
Sweet Agony
The Professor
Telling Tales
Run To You
Doubled
You Already Know
All Other Things
Raw Heat
Almost Real
Make Me
Closer
Giving
Reawakening
Ever Unknown
Lust Dazed
Guarded
The Horizon
Past Pleasures
Power Play
Waiting In Vain
The Things That Make Me Give In