But I’m still shaking my head. “He would’ve—”
“What? Said something? Confessed? Does Zach seem like the kind of guy to perform an act of contrition?”
My head spins. I can’t work the new pieces of information into my existing picture and it’s throwing me straight into overwhelm.
“Has he asked you yet?”
“Asked me what?” I toss my head and face away from Caylon, chewing on the side of my knuckle. A month ago, I would have welcomed his intervention, but now… Now it’s a nightmare.
Then the question clicks home.
Has he asked to drug you? Asked to incapacitate you so you can’t touch him. “He won’t ask me,” I say with more confidence than I feel. “We don’t… need things to be like that.”
“Do you really believe that?”
I don’t know what to believe any longer.
Caylon starts the car and navigates back down to the central city. The lights grow duller as we drive closer. Instead of a sparkling row of gems they turn into cracked casings that cast desultory glows across pothole riven streets.
The obvious answer to his questions is yes. Yes, I believe that, because anything else would be unthinkable. I also believe the opposite, because he came close once before. Not with drugs, but when my mind couldn’t take it any longer and checked out. I didn’t object, but I didn’t say yes because it hadn’t been within my ability to do so.
“He’ll fuck you up and then he’ll fuck you over. If it hadn’t been the recording, it would’ve been something else. Checked in with Em lately, have you?”
“Not after she got me fired, no.”
“How d’you think she felt when he publicly broadcast he was sleeping with you right in front of her?”
“Em cared more about his money than him.”
“Because he trained her to. Hasn’t he started that with you, yet? Buying presents. Making you accept gifts, even when you don’t want them. Burrowing farther and farther into your life until everything is tied up with his pretty purse strings.”
The makeup. That’s the one that springs to mind first. The hundreds of dollars in makeup that I barely know how to use but try to, anyway. Out of a sense of obligation because I can’t stand to think of all that money going to waste.
But it’s not just that. My clothes. My hair.My job.
Even the lawyer. He mightn’t have been able to help, but if he could, Zach would have owned that just as surely as he owned me.
If he could buy me access to my sister, he would’ve done it already.
Him being the assailant of Sierra’s school bully makes sense. Aside from it obviously not being me, I hadn’t given it much thought. But that fits, doesn’t it? What else is Zach if not a bully?
Then I push the thoughts aside.
“Oh, great,” Caylon says, as though he can read my mind. “Is that the famous—but he wouldn’t do that to me—expression? How gullible are you?”
“You’re the one who’s friends with him by choice.”
At that, Caylon cackles. “At least now you’re admitting you’re not with him out of love. What does he have over you? Apart from the gun. That’s a given. Did he hit you with a guilt trip about finding his poor dead Ma? Has he wailed about how tough it is to grow up in a house filled with models all keen to make his father jealous?”
“You’re sick. Just because he has money doesn’t mean his life has been easy.”
“Oh, boohoo. Like any of us wouldn’t swap in a heartbeat.” Caylon drops his concentration from me, turning it back to the road just in time to take a corner at far too high a speed. I grasp the handle above the door and close my eyes, feeling my centre of gravity shifting at an impossible angle.
“Could you slow down?”
The request makes him pump his foot harder on the accelerator, because of course. What was I thinking?
“Please, Caylon.”
