I felt like this that day at the Weyland’s house, before the hospital and stint at Villa Theresa. Like I should let go and drift away. That it’d be better to hand over the wheel for a while.
I didn’t have Pearl and Winnie back then. I didn’t have reasons to live, not like now. I have to remember that. Pearl and Winnie are sleeping upstairs in their beds. It’s my job to keep them safe.
I slide the glass door wider open. The heat on my thighs is almost too intense, even through the thick fabric of my winter-weight leggings. Exposed to the air, the flames dance. I reach forward and feed our marriage license into the flames, holding on until the blackened papers curl all the way to my fingers and pain bites the tips.
I can finally exhale. I take another document.State of Connecticut, County of Fairfield—Deed. I feed that to the fire next. I sort through the rest of the papers, setting aside anything that belongs to Pearl and Winnie, and burn the rest, piece by piece. Nothing that can’t be replaced, the man said.
Like me.
When I’m done, I wander back to the sofa and lie down.I’m bone tired. I watch the smoke from the documents dissipate and the fire burn lower as my eyelids droop. I must fall asleep because what feels like hours later, I’m jostled awake as someone—Adrian—hoists me in his arms. For a second, I forget and nestle my nose in his shirt, inhaling that whiskey and soap scent that means safety and love and all my dreams come true.
And then I remember. The pain sinks into me like teeth. I keep my eyes squeezed shut. I’m too weak and exhausted to fight him.
He carries me up the stairs and down the hall to the nursery, pushing the door open with his foot. The jewelry in my pockets clinks the whole way, but if he notices, he doesn’t do anything about it. He lays me in the daybed. I immediately turn my back to him and curl into a ball.
I expect him to leave, but instead, he slips off my ballet flats and peels off my socks. I hold my breath while his finger ghosts over the arch of my foot where the cuts from the glass are well on their way to fully healed.
“What happened?” he asks, his voice deep and soft.
I don’t answer.
Eventually, he sighs and covers me with the quilt hanging over the footrail.
I turn my head and peek under my lashes as he walks soundlessly into Pearl’s room and straightens her blanket. He stops by Winnie’s crib on the way out and reaches in. I can’t see what he does to her—maybe stroke the back of her hand. He does that a lot. He touches babies like he’s testing to see if their paint has set.
Less than two weeks ago, my heart would have melted. I would have repeated my affirmations in my head like a mantra, as though if I were grateful enough, some higher power would spare me from losing all this. I fooled myself. I’ve always known prayers don’t work.
Adrian doesn’t love me.
He never did.
I’m trapped here with the living corpse of everything I ever wanted for the next eighteen years.
How am I going to get out of this?
I can’t tear it all down this time.
I tuck my clasped hands to my chest and curl even tighter, falling asleep with the sharp scent of smoke in my nose.
6
ADRIAN
I can’t sleepat all anymore. I haven’t been able to since Cora walked in on me with Delaney. I’m having nightmares about the kidnapping again.
I was eleven when it happened. Mom had already packed up for a new life in Europe. The guys weren’t professionals. It was a crime of opportunity. Dad had been flashing cash around the wrong people, cash he’d probably immediately lost at a poker table.
They snatched me off East 75th Street on my way to school. I wasn’t necessarily their target. I was just lost in my head as usual and slow off the mark. It could’ve just as easily been Logan or Lucian if they’d been the slowest. Gideon wasn’t there that day.
The kidnappers locked me in a pitch-black basement for four days. They gave me a gallon jug of water and a bucket to shit in and left me there. I thought I’d die down there. They didn’t come back. Apparently, Dad dithered, and I escaped before any money exchanged hands.
I ended up busting through the door with a hunk of concrete I found buried in the dirt floor. I was pretty dehydratedby then. I spent a few days in the hospital, expecting my mom to show up every time a person came through the door. She didn’t come. Dad told me she was too busy fucking some ski instructor named Sven. I honestly don’t know if Dad even called her.
For years, I had nightmares about that basement several times a week. I’d do anything to avoid going to bed. When I was a kid, I played video games until I crashed out in my chair. When I was older, I worked myself to the point where I’d pass out at my desk.
The nightmares got better when I got together with Cora. She’s the first woman I ever slept with overnight. There was something in her presence that made me sleep deep enough that if I dreamed, I didn’t know it.
She smells good, and she’s warm, but all women are. She sleeps pretty well herself, but if she senses a threat—if there’s a footstep in the hall or a siren in the distance—she shoots straight up in bed, instantly awake. I think that’s what lets me relax.
