by Ashley Gee
I’ll tie her to the bed and keep her there for the rest of her life, if that is what it takes to keep her alive.
I’m barefoot because I kicked off my shiny loafers to run faster. Bits of coral and stone dig into my skin. Sharp enough to cut, but the physical pain is a distant thing. If I have to run a hundred miles across hot asphalt covered in broken glass to save her, then that is precisely what I’m going to do.
I scream her name again, even though I know she wouldn’t hear it if she was standing only a few feet away. The darkness and the angry sound of crashing waves are enough to hide any number of sins.
Hers and mine.
For the longest time, I wanted to break her. Tear her into bits so I could examine every piece until I figured out exactly what fascinated me so damn much. I succeeded, but she isn’t the only one who has been broken.
In the beginning, this had mostly been about the money. And maybe a little bit about how much I got off on forcing her to be what I want. Everything seemed to make so much more sense back then — even the worst of what I’ve done seemed justifiable.
But now, I’m just disgusted with myself.
King of Deception.
Vice Lord.
The guy who has never heard the word no.
My reputation is as big as the waves crashing onto the beach and as powerful as the undertow threatening to pull us out to sea. I tell myself I’m more than the things people say about me, but I’m not convinced that’s true.
Maybe it has never been true.
I see a dark shadow in the meager light, and I fight through the water toward it, driven by instinct.
Everything about her is dark. Her hair. Her eyes. Her thoughts, at least the ones she shares with me. But that didn’t stop her from becoming the only spot of light in my otherwise colorless world.
And I let all of my worst impulses nearly destroy her.
When I squint, there is the barest outline of a figure moving through the waves. The white dress is what gives her away. She has gone far enough out that the water has to be past her waist.
I’m running without a conscious awareness of what I’ll do when I reach her. Like every other interaction we’ve ever had, I’m operating on an instinct I’ve never fully understood.
As I chase her into the water, I realize I would give anything to rewind the clock to a time before we became what we are.
Before tragedy robbed me of a real childhood.
Before I stole her voice.
Before fate and bad luck forced us together.
Before secrets and lies drove us apart.
Before it all went wrong.
I follow her into the sea like I’d follow her to the ends of the earth if that is where she leads me. Even if it is impossible to go back, I can move forward. Into tomorrow. Into the future. Whatever place she chooses to go.
Even death.
If she throws herself on the mercy of the gods, then I’ll jump off the cliff after her.
At this point, it’s only a question of who gets to her first.
Oblivion or me.
Thirty-Seven
I wake up with sunlight streaming onto my face and a restraint on my arms tying me down to the hospital bed.
My body feels like it just got run over by a truck.
I’m only awake for a few minutes before a nurse bustles in to check my vital signs and remove the restraints. Clearly, they only had me tied down in case I woke up and tried to kill myself again.
Did I try to kill myself?
They ask me that question enough times that you think I’d have a clearer answer. I remember feeling a blackness descend over my mind, so deep that I couldn’t see any way out of it that didn’t involve just being done with all of it.
All of it meaning…life, I guess.
But with the sun shining brightly on my skin through the window and several locked doors between me and Vin, it was getting easier to see the forest for the trees.
I don’t want to die. I just want to be as far from Deception as it’s possible to get without actually leaving planet Earth.
Eventually the doctor comes in, pleasant-faced but eager to get to the point. He explains that I nearly drowned and that I was technically dead when they brought me in. My heart had to be restarted at some point.
I guess Vin and I have that in common.
“What happened?” he asks.
But he really means, Did you do it on purpose?
And I don’t have an answer that will satisfy any of us. They won’t let me go until I assure them that I’ve returned to sanity, although I’ll have to be here at least a few days for monitoring.
I say all the right words, like an intelligent person would. It seems silly to ask someone if they’re suicidal when anyone who truly is would never admit to someone who might stand in their way. I guess the better question is can we still save you?
The answer is yes, at least for now.
But I made it clear from the moment consciousness returned that I don’t want them to let Vin anywhere near me. Even with the faintly coercive nature of my hospital stay, I still get a say in who comes to visit. There isn’t anyone that I particularly want to see.
Especially Vin Cortland.
He doesn’t try very hard to get in, according to the nurses. As soon as they told him that I wasn’t going to see him, he stormed off without so much as a backwards glance.
That’s what I get for falling in love with a monster.
My hand keeps straying to my belly, and I don’t realize it until I find my palm stroking there, searching for any hint of a developing bump. I know I’m not far enough along for anything to be physically different, but my mind can’t focus on anything else.
How can something be so barely real and also entirely destructive?
No matter what empty promises Vin made, college is off the table. The $100,000 he promised me won’t be enough for paying tuition and raising a child, especially since I wouldn’t have time to work on top of all that. Vin would probably help if I asked him, or took him to court if necessary, but I’m not going to do either of those things.
As far as I’m concerned, he has ceased to exist.
Just like my dreams. Those have shattered like shards of glass, and I don’t have the will left to gather them all up and glue the pieces back together.
I barely have enough will left to keep myself alive.
But it isn’t just me anymore, is it?
My palm presses hard against my belly again, pushing until it almost hurts. I just need to feel something, a stirring or a lump of tissue, anything to prove this is real.
With a start, I remember that my mother was in her last semester of high school when she got pregnant with me. I count up the months in my head, only to realize that she would have had to be exactly as old as I am when she conceived, practically down to the month.
Like mother, like dumbass daughter.
Everything I have ever done has been in the hopes of breaking the legacy that she left for me. And she had actually managed the one thing that I couldn’t.
Finally escape Deception and never look back.
But I’m not the same as my mother, for all the good it will do me. I won’t be able to abandon a life that I created, no matter how difficult it will be to stay. And if I’m lucky enough to have a girl, she will never be tempted to sell her soul for a better life. I’ll provide for her the life that I always dreamed of having.
A new sense of determination washes over me as I think about it. All the PTA meetings that my mother never bothered to attend, the afternoons when I would get home from school to a dirty house because she was still asleep in bed, how she never managed to hold down a job for more than a few months.
What she did to Vin was just the culmination of a lifetime of terrible decisions. Maybe it was jealousy or some desire for Vin to stay weak so she could keep her job taking care of him. I’ll probably never know, and I don’t really care about the reason anymore.
S
he had been a perfect example of all the things that are the polar opposite of motherhood. I shouldn’t expect anything she has ever done to make sense to me.
I’m going to be everything she wasn’t.
I’m going to be everything for this baby she refused to be for me.
I’m going to be the kind of mother I deserved to have.
Something good will come out of the twisted wreckage of whatever it is we used to be. Something new and innocent, born a freshly blank slate that will know from the moment it enters the world that it has its mother’s unconditional love.
I’ll turn Zion’s old room into a nursery and enroll in night classes at the community college. My job at the Gas and Sip is almost certainly still waiting for me, and I can probably convince Amelia to help out with babysitting. If Vin has even the tiniest bit of his soul left, then he’ll keep his promises. Grandpa can stay in the care home, and Zion will stay at a place that actually cares about rehabilitation.
This baby and I can make it on our own.
Lightness fills my chest for the first time since I woke up in the hospital. It amazes me that I could so easily flip that switch in my brain, but I’ve gone from dreading the thought of what this new life would mean for my future to embracing it.
A nurse comes in with a handful of pills in blister packages, rattling off long confusing names as she pops them into a plastic cup.
“Are all of those safe to take when your pregnant?”
She looks up at me in obvious surprise. “You’re pregnant?”
“Tested positive yesterday.”
“We should have that on file, I don’t remember seeing it.” Brows furrowing, she leaves the cup of pills on the table and goes to a computer terminal in the corner of the room. She pecks at the keyboard a few times while mumbling to herself. “The damn techs should have drawn enough blood for a full panel. Results need to be cleared before any orders get put in.” Her sigh of relief is palpable. “Nope. We always run a pregnancy test with the full workup, blood not urine because that’s the only way to be sure. You are definitely not pregnant.”
Her words hit me like a punch to the gut. “I took a test yesterday. Did I lose the baby because I went into the water?”
The smile she gives me is gently reassuring. “No, honey. Your hCG levels would still be elevated if you had a miscarriage that recently. It takes weeks for them to go back to normal.” The nurse returns to the side of the bed and holds out the pill cup to me, giving it a little shake. “Word of advice, always double check those drug store tests. Peeing on a stick is great and all, but they’re not always 100% accurate. Consider yourself lucky it was a false positive this time and not a false negative.”
Not pregnant.
I sit with that realization for a moment, feeling a unique sense of desperate relief and keening loss.
Nothing good could possibly have come from this twisted situation, and it was stupid of me to think that anything could.
Definitely not pregnant
I start to cry when the words bang off the insides of my skull.
But I can’t say if they are tears of relief or pain.
Thirty-Eight
Zaya wasn’t breathing when I pulled her out of the water.
Her body was colder than death, which might be what saved her life. The frigid water acted like the mundane version of cryostasis, slowing her heart and diminishing her body’s need for oxygen so her brain didn’t burn out.
An ambulance was already waiting on the beach when I stumbled out of the water with her limp body cradled in my arms. I likely have Amelia to thank for that. If Zaya survives, then I need to remember to send her friend a fruit basket.
The wait at the hospital might be the most excruciating hour I’ve ever experienced. I remember learning about Einstein’s Theory of Relativity in a science class at some point, but there is no greater object lesson then watching a clock on the hospital wall practically tick backwards.
One hour might as well be half a lifetime for all I can tell the difference.
I know there are people filtering in and out around me. My parents come for a bit, but didn’t stay very long. Iain doesn’t say anything as he slouches in the uncomfortable plastic seat next to me, but just rolls his eyes when I tell him to go if he wants.
It doesn’t escape my notice that there isn’t anyone there for Zaya. Her brother is still locked up, and her grandfather is too far gone to understand what might be happening.
She doesn’t have anyone but me.
And I drove her to the point of suicide.
I’m not usually the type to go around analyzing my own behavior, but I’ve heard enough about the feeling to recognize guilt. I’ve just never had the opportunity to feel it in the way I do now.
It surprises me how little I feel about the revelation that it was her mother who poisoned me. I might be surprised later, when the shock of all this wears off, but it’s hard to care about anything aside from Zaya’s life being on the line. And it didn’t sound like she had any explanation for why her mother would want to kill me, and a reason is all I ever wanted.
Until I married her.
Now, it’s hard to remember that I ever wanted anything aside from Zaya.
If she dies, I’m not going to be able to live with myself. We might as well have a suicide pact at this point, because the minute her coffin gets lowered into the ground, I’m throwing myself in after it.
But fear will make you crazy.
Everyone else leaves after a few hours except for Iain. His head rests against the back of the seat, looking so relaxed that I might assume he is sleeping save for the fact that his eyes are wide open and staring.
“This is your fault,” I grouse.
“That’s the grief talking.” His voice is mellow, which means he probably smoked a dab before coming to the hospital. “Nobody makes Vin Cortland do what he doesn’t want to do, remember?”
“Poking holes in the condoms was your idea.”
“As if you wouldn’t have thought of something equally diabolical if given enough time. At best, I’m your accomplice.” Iain glances at me briefly, before returning his attention to the ceiling tiles. “To be fair, if I thought you’d caught actual feelings for the girl, then I might have given you different advice.”
Just because I’m ready to admit things to myself doesn’t mean I’m ready to let the rest of the world in on it. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Okay, man.” He lifts his head again, gaze taking in the crowded waiting room before sliding up and down my tense form. “I think the asshole doth protest too much.”
Before I can think of a suitably barbaric response, a nurse with a clipboard calls out my name.
Iain’s dry laugh is easy to ignore as I bound to my feet and rush over to her.
“Vincent Cortland?” At my nod, the nurse checks something on her clipboard before looking back up. “Zaya Milbourne is awake.”
“Cortland,” I correct automatically. “Zaya Cortland.”
Then exactly what she said finally filters through the frenzy in my mind.
Zaya is awake, which means she isn’t dead.
The sense of relief I feel is so keen that it weakens my knees. I have to grip the back of a nearby chair to keep from falling over. Thankfully, it’s bolted to the floor.
When I move to stride toward the double doors, the nurse stops me with a hand on my chest.
“She doesn’t want to see you.” She sounds apologetic, but her gaze is resolute. “This kind of thing happens sometimes, people go into shock. We’ll be keeping her for a couple of days, so you might want to come back.”
“I’m her husband,” I snap.
“Patients always have the right to refuse visitors, including family.” The nurse backs away, keeping her gaze on me like she thinks I might dive past her. “Your wife is on the third floor. You can try calling the unit tomorrow.”
She turns on her heel and strides away before I have a cha
nce to argue anymore with her.
Iain sidles up next to me “Third floor is the psych unit. It’s where they put the people who try to off themselves.”
I don’t bother to ask him how he knows that.
Under other circumstances, I would have barreled after that nurse like a steamroller and forced the staff to allow me in to see Zaya or suffer the consequences.
Except I know I’ve finally found a situation I can’t bully my way through. Even if I forced my way into to her room and insist she talk to me, I won’t be able to force my way into her heart. And that is exactly what I plan to do, no matter how long it takes.
I’m going to make this right, even if it kills us both.
It’s amazing what you can do when money is no object.
I only have to make two phone calls, one to a private investigator and another to the bank for a wire transfer, to get a last known address.
The drive to LAX is completely silent, because the rush of my own thoughts is enough of a distraction at the moment. My anachronistic love for girl power pop songs is legendary, but I need to be alone with the maelstrom inside my own head.
This isn’t a problem that Taylor Swift can fix.
But two hours of total silence can do a lot to keep things in perspective.
The gate agent raises an eyebrow when I buy a ticket for the next flight to Portland without so much as a carry-on bag. It probably doesn’t help that I’m still dressed in my tuxedo from the wedding, although only the wrinkled pants and stained shirt are left, I realize. My uselessly expensive suit jacket disappeared somewhere.
Probably the hospital waiting room, if I had to guess.
The agent’s gaze rests on the loosened bowtie hanging around my neck for a beat too long, but she still sells me the ticket. And she doesn’t alert the TSA, because I make it through security without any problems.
The wait isn’t long until boarding, but I spend the next hour pacing up and down past the same gift shop. If I actually stop to think about what I’m doing, then I might realize what a bad idea this is.