I nod, kissing his palm as tears cling to my lashes. Grief thickens my throat. It’s fine. I’ll have Kane in the real world. I’ll leave it for a little bit so I can be with our babies. This way, I get to have all of them.
He tenderly presses his lips to my forehead and whispers, “I love you,” without removing them from my skin. “I’ve been dying every day over the last three years without you.”
“I love you too.”
How can I love him when I’m lying to him again?
As always, he believes my deceits as he sits back with a smile on his face. The only time things between us have been good are when one of us lies to the other. I always thought the relationship I had with Asher was toxic, but this is worse. We don’t care if the world around us burns as long as we get to insulate ourselves with half-truths and manipulation.
He winces as he rests his left elbow on the door to pull a small card from the pocket of his sweats. Blood stains the white edges and the raised design, but I crane my neck to read the blue letters as he turns it over.
“Coordinates,” he says softly. Placing the card on his thigh, he enters the numbers into his phone, leaving another phone in his hoodie pocket.
The bitter taste of jealousy coats my tongue as I ask, “Why do you have two phones?”
Three years is a long time. He could have moved on, started a new life, a family. That’s why men have two phones. Kane laughs lightly. “It’s fucked but I can’t get rid of it because it has—” He shakes his head. “I just can’t get rid of it.”
All of his focus is on the phone in his hand as he taps over the protective plastic on the glass. He uses the tip of his nose to double click the satellite map after entering the coordinates. He holds it up for us both to see. “What the fuck?” He pulls the phone back at the blurred image of land.
I reach over his arm, moving the image to see what’s near it because it’s too landlocked to be the island. “Claret Farms?” I ask myself because the name sounds familiar. “That was on the crates delivered to Helene’s house.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. She said she doesn’t like the farmer but he’s the only person who can give her the quality of meat she likes.”
“Ready?” He smiles with sheer malice as he turns to look at me, tucking the tucks the card away.
No.
But I nod, fearful of what will happen if he speaks to Helene. She’ll tell him about the baby, how I fucked it up. She’ll make all the horrible things she said come true. Yet I can’t tell him instead of her, so I pull my sleeves down, holding them in my fists while he drives.
77
DELILAH
Idon’t know how long we’ve been driving for when I wake up in front of large wooden gates. They must be at least twenty feet tall with a large steel beam at the top, connecting it to the other fence panels on hidden hinges. We couldn’t prepare for our arrival when all the maps had blurry images of the land.
Kane takes a steadying breath as he rolls his window down to push the intercom buzzer. We both look at each other when the gates immediately rattle, opening slowly without any confirmation of our identity. He hesitantly inches forward as I stare wide-eyed at the acreage we’re trapped in. The gates swiftly close behind us. Animals openly graze without any pens to keep them trapped other than another set of large wooden gates further ahead. They automatically open like the first ones we went through, so he drives forward, ignoring the traditional farmhouse between the two sets of gates.
A goat bleats as it jumps up onto a wooden fence, following our crawl along the gravel driveway. There’s even more fields, stretching further than I can see separated by neat hedgerows with a smaller fence in the distance. And even more animals.Alpacas, donkeys, a horse, and cows with little horned goats happily bleating as they playfully jump on the other animals.
We continue following the gravel road until we reach a large house that doesn’t fit the scenery. It makes sense, considering this freak is the butcher for a cannibal, and I’m sure Helene has the means to give them risk pay, which they’ve clearly used on their land.
Kane moves his left arm like he’s done sporadically on the drive. But he pulls it back quicker than the other times as he uses his right hand to put the car in park. Without moving his lips he whispers, “Ready?”
“With you? Always.” I mean it despite the way my heart hammers in my chest. I’m tired, my body aching, yearning for the relief the vials bring, but I need to stay on his good side before I can ask for more. I try to make as little noise as possible as I get out of the car and lightly press the door closed. There’s a small gap where the latch hasn’t fully engaged, so I leave it.
He automatically threads his fingers through mine as we walk to the front door. I don’t know if his sleeve is annoying him, but he grits his teeth every time the empty cuff hits his thigh, so I tuck it into the pocket of his hoodie.
We pause at the front of the house, standing in front of the large wooden door on what I think is the most luxurious farmhouse in existence. There’s no signage to give the name of the people who live here as I lightly squeeze his hand.
No one will enjoy working for Helene when she’s a sadistic cunt, so we’ll make a deal with the butcher. If they don’t help us, we’ll kill them to hide in the next delivery.
I squeeze again as I raise my hand to knock on the door and avoid looking at the loose part of his sleeve tucked into the pocket. He wouldn’t tell me how it happened, or when, so I don’t know if he’s still coming to terms with the loss, or if he’s ignoringit because it was so long ago. Asking again will only make him less agreeable when I ask for drugs.
I have no idea who’s going to be on the other side of the door when it opens, but I’m not expecting a teenaged girl with the strangest silvery-blue eyes I’ve ever seen. They almost appear purple with the sun shining directly on them. Her dark hair swishes to the side as she looks between me and Kane, then assesses us from head to toe. “Who are you and why are you at my house?”
She’s not very polite either.
