46. Rhaim

46

RHAIM

I got Sable to report Corvo's vehicle stolen and asked her to put in a noise complaint for the storage facility I'd left Bobby in after half an hour. I knew it'd take her awhile to wipe the feeds of any nearby cameras, plus I needed to get away from the scene.

It was half past three and I'd managed not to look at my phone the whole time—I'd had it turned off for hours, so no one could track me—but once I was twenty minutes away from my place, I pulled over to turn it back on.

The first thing that came in was a text from Lia, asking if I was all right.

Rather than answer her, I flipped into the cameras at her apartment, and found her still awake—pacing her living room, clearly worried about me.

And I remembered watching another beautiful woman anxiously pacing just like that.

I'd managed to keep things away from Isabelle for years—for our entire courtship, and then afterwards, up until our last six months. She knew Nero jerked my chain, and that I sometimes went out of town for "business trips" but she trusted me and knew better than to question, up until the day it suddenly became too late.

She was supposed to be out of the farmhouse, off on a girl's trip, and I'd gotten lax and didn't check my cameras when I came back. So when I walked in—looking much like I did now, I noticed, in my truck's rearview mirror—Isabelle had caught me.

I still remembered the way she'd looked at me, her eyes wide with panic. "What happened to you? Are you okay?" she'd asked, rushing up.

There was blood from the person I'd "taken care of" on me—and after she'd reached for the stain on my stomach on instinct, it was on her, too, like I might have stabbed her myself.

She'd gawked at her newly bloody hand in horror, then reached for her phone—I slapped it away, and we both heard it clatter on the hardwood floor.

"Rhaim?" she asked, aghast.

"I'm fine," I told her. "I hit a deer."

She blinked like she couldn't believe me. "You're not fine—you look like a crime scene—you—" she said, and then stopped. "Baby, what did you do?"

"Nothing." I brushed by her, careful not to stain her with anything else, heading to the bathroom.

"This isn't nothing!" she said, holding up her blood-stained hand. I took it, and dragged her into the bathroom with me, putting it underneath cold water in the sink, taking a bar of soap to scrub it clean.

"What the fuck, Rhaim?—"

"You're going to be fine," I told her, with an air of finality.

"No I'm not!" she shouted, looking at me, as I started the shower and taking my clothes off. "I—I just want you to talk to me."

I moved to hold her shoulders with freshly cleaned hands. "I've had a long night. I hit a deer. I dragged it off to the side of the road. That's it," and as I said the words, I willed her to let it go.

To just be happy .

But she couldn't—not after the next morning, when she'd gone out to inspect my truck and hadn't found a single dent or scratch.

And then, even though I didn't know it, it became too late.

Every time I stayed late at work she would call incessantly, and demanded we Facetime to prove where I was. I tried to blame it on pregnancy hormones, but I was afraid I knew the truth.

I was afraid both of us did.

So I kept my nose clean. I wouldn't let Nero send me out, not even on legitimate business, and because Isabelle was pregnant, he understood.

But after months of good behavior on my part—past that homicide—I decided we had to talk.

"Therapy?" Her voice rose in an angry arc. "You think I need therapy?"

I slowly lowered my hands in front of her like I was trying to calm a horse. "You called me ten times yesterday, Issy."

"Is a therapist going to fix you lying to me?"

"I didn't lie to you." I managed to say it with a completely straight face. I'd had so much practice at lying, it was sometimes hard to remember what was the truth.

The only things I knew were certain was that I loved her and our unborn child with all of the damaged organ I called a heart—and I would've given anything to turn back time.

"This was why I didn't want to have a baby with you!" Her words shot me and rattled around my entire being, hurting me worse than a hollow-point bullet could. But before I could respond she went on. "I can't live like this, Rhaim. I don't know how other people do." And then more quietly, "My mother told me not to marry you."

It felt like my entire life was cracking like a bat-crushed skull, and everything that had been good in it was draining out.

"I love you, Issy." I said it from my heart, from my chest, hoping she would listen. "And the baby. That's real. And you know it."

Tears were streaming down her face. "I love you, too."

I dared to step near her and take her hands. "Then just trust me. And stop asking questions."

"I'm a journalist."

I squeezed her hands in mine. "You're a wedding columnist," I corrected her, as a tease.

And as she pulled her hands away from mine, I realized it'd been the exact wrong thing to say.

I treasured her skill with words and feelings, because of my own lack. I knew that writing about everyone else's magnificent love stories was what had given her the faith to believe in us—that her writing that column was the only reason I had her in my life.

Because I always knew her mother was right.

"I need to go to my appointment. I'm going to be late," she said, and then took a deep breath. "And I'm going alone."

"Issy," I said, in a low tone, just short of pleading. "I stayed home today so that I could go with you." If we were lucky this was going to be the ultrasound we found out the baby's sex with. "I want to be with you," I said more firmly, hoping she would hear it.

"And I want time to think," she said, stepping back.

There was no way in hell I was letting her go. "I need this to work out, Issy." On no planet was I going to be my father, some derelict hated by his own son. I knew in my bones we were having a boy; I was certain today's test would only confirm it.

She stared up at me with dark, forlorn eyes and shook her head. "You should have thought about that before you gaslit me."

I swallowed. My choices were to let her go, or to triple down and crush the very thing I loved the most.

I took a step back, let her pass, and she and the baby died on the trip home, without me—and every extra day that I'd had since then was a day that I'd spent dying, too.

I sat in my truck watching Lia pace back and forth. There was still a stripe of Bobby's blood from my temple to my chin.

No matter what Lia thought she knew about me—she didn't deserve this.

It didn't matter that she knew exactly what I was. In fact, in doing so, I'd probably helped Lia skip over any happiness we might have had. Either I would curse her with the regret of chaining herself to a man twice her age, or, very much more likely, her father would kill me.

There was no way for us to win, and in all my rush to somehow mold her into the perfect woman for Corvo—and for me—I'd forgotten who she was at the core of it.

Someone who had feelings.

All this time I'd been trying to keep her safe from everyone else but me—when in actuality, if we did this, I'd be the one hurting her most of all.

It didn't matter that she wanted it—I'd seen her wrists. I knew she played with knives.

Lia made bad decisions sometimes.

That didn't make me being one of them right.

I called her up before I could change my mind, and watched her run to her phone to answer. "Are you okay?" she asked, rubbing her face with one hand.

"Yeah."

"Did you want to come over?"

My beautiful, horny girl. "No—it's late."

I watched her pull her phone away from her face to look at the time. "No kidding." And then she pouted at the camera. "I hope whatever you went off to do was worth it."

"It wasn't."

She finally heard my tone then, and rose up to sitting. "Can we Facetime or something?"

"No." Even if I wasn't still covered in blood, her seeing me wouldn't have made anything easier. "I'm sorry, Lia. I can't do this."

She blinked, and I heard her give a soft gasp. "What do you mean?"

"All this extracurricular shit. We can work together—but we can't be anything else."

Her jaw dropped. "Why not?"

"The reasons don't matter."

"They do to me!" She got out of her bed and walked over to the camera. "Is—is there someone else?" she asked, her voice in a high arc. "I don't want to lose you."

"You can't lose what you never had."

Her hand clenched around her phone and I was worried she would throw it. "You take that back!" she demanded, but then when met with my stony silence, started to sputter. "What the fuck, Rhaim. You—you—" she started, and I knew what she was processing.

The fact that I'd told her I'd always be there for her—and that that had been a lie.

Her expression crumpled. She started crying, then realized I could see her, and threw a pillow at the camera.

"I'll see you on Monday, Lia," I said, and then hung up.

The next morning, I realized I might have been more of an asshole than usual.

I knew Lia was more stable than her dad wanted to give her credit for, but it occurred to me that breaking things off with someone with a history of self-harm like I had was probably not the best way to handle things.

I didn't know what was, though—but me being me, I had come up with precautions. Lia's PI told me she hadn't left her apartment building, but he'd been in contact with her, so I knew she was currently all right.

I had him text her to tell her that I was going out. And, just after noon, I had him send her the photo I'd had him take of me and Sable at the café weeks ago, looking intimate.

I figured it was better to look like a cheating asshole than a plain one. It was a bus Sable wouldn't mind being thrown under, and hopefully Lia would figure out her shit by Monday and then both of us could somehow play nice.

On Sunday, I drove to the cemetery like I usually did. It was in a misting drizzle, so I opened up my umbrella as soon as I got out of my truck. There was no one else out; it was clear the weather was only going to get worse.

There was a time when I would've just walked around the cemetery in the rain, both looking and feeling lost, resembling something that'd crawled out of the earth by the time I was through, but over time I'd gotten better.

Now I used it more as meditation. I'd made a habit of circling the grounds, thinking to myself and appreciating the architecture. Isabelle's parents had been the ones to pick it, but it'd been a good choice. It had presence, because it was one of the oldest in the nation. Back in the day, people had taken time to celebrate their losses, erecting massive crypts in any style that'd made them feel closer to God. There were intricately carved miniature gothic cathedrals, Egyptian revival pyramids, and more weeping angels and carved little lambs than you could shake a stick at. And while God hadn't, as of yet, chosen to reveal himself and his reasons to me, walking around the cemetery still helped me to reset myself each Sunday, and this one was no different.

In fact, today it was even more useful than normal, because as I crested one of the slight hills it contained and looked around, it reminded me of the only thing that would happen if I'd chosen to continue on with Lia.

Death, death, and more death, as far as the eye could see.

Then I caught a flash of dark pink, out of the corner of my eye.

I turned to follow it—and saw a speeding Lamborghini, flying up the narrow roads paved between the crypts. The thing screeched to a stop, and I already knew who was driving.

"Fuck you!" Lia shouted at the top of her lungs, getting out of her car. She was wearing a black dress, as befit the location, and started stalking up the hill for me, her heels sinking into the wet dirt. She was as awkward as a newborn foal walking across the cemetery's well-trimmed grass, until she took them off to walk without them.

"Hello to you too," I told her—and I wondered why her PI hadn't warned me she was coming.

That's when I realized the jig was up.

"That picture was taken at least a week ago, Rhaim—it was sunny then, it's not sunny now. And you making my guy send me that—means that you knew about him. I confronted him, he told me everything," she said, stopping the length of a grave away from me, radiating anger.

No wonder her PI had found her every bit as frightening as he did me—with her here, her dress flapping behind her in the light breeze, and humidity making her hair look wild, she looked like a witch summoning her powers.

"And you snooping explains how you knew about my book account—which you took down!—and my psych history!" she proclaimed, shaking her heels at me.

I realized she wasn't wearing long sleeves for once, even though the weather deserved it. "If it's any consolation, you started stalking me first."

"You don't even know ," she said brashly. "So is that why you can't be with me? Because I'm crazy and I read too much?"

She was crying now, but not because she was sad—because she was angry.

"Moth," I said, in a low voice, stepping forward while she fiercely wiped tears or rain away from the cheeks beneath her eyes. "Take this," I said, offering her my umbrella. She took it, and threw it aside, where the wind caught it and made it race off, tumbling back behind her.

Clearly, I wasn't going to get off that easy. "I'm almost twice your age and your father will kill me if I betray him," I said.

"So?" she asked, shaking her head. "None of that's new. What changed?"

"Nothing did. I just found my common sense."

"I refuse to believe that!"

I heaved a deep sigh. "It's true, nonetheless."

"No," she declared, stepping forward. "Do you want to know what I think happened?"

I eyed her dourly. "Yes, I cannot wait to be psychoanalyzed by a child."

Lia twitched at me calling her that, but she didn't lose steam. "You got scared."

"Oh, please," I laughed. "Of what?"

She stood her ground. "Of being happy. With me."

I cleared the distance between us and grabbed her, faster than she could've jumped away, and whirled her against me, putting her back against my chest. I bound her to me with one arm while I roughly took hold of her chin with my other hand. "Are you looking at what I'm looking at right now?" I growled in her ear, forcing her to survey our surroundings. "Do you realize where we're at? And why I'm fucking here?"

"Yes," she hissed. I could feel her pulse thundering beneath my hand at her throat. "Because you'd rather pretend to be dead than admit you want me."

My choices then were to squeeze her in two, or let her go. I released her roughly, and she stumbled, then caught herself and whirled.

Her eyes were wild, but I could tell she wasn't going to back down. There was no way to make her see sense. She was too young and too stupid to know better, to realize how bad I was for her. The choice was always going to be mine, and I was always going to have to be the adult.

I should have never let her tempt me.

I turned on my heel and started walking towards where I'd left my car. Halfway down the hill I heard her call my name.

"Rhaim!" she shouted. "If she truly loved you, she would've wanted you to be happy!"

I ignored her, until she went on, even louder.

"So was what you had even real? Or not?" she taunted, and I stopped and turned.