I needed to get them out of here right fucking now. I pulled out my phone to look up someone who might be able to help with relocating Celestine, only to find my service had been disconnected.
I borrowed Benny’s phone to make some calls, feeling very much like the snakes and I were in the same situation, completely cut off by an enemy beyond reach.
We found someone to come and help with relocating Celestine. Another company agreed—with a hefty urgency fee—to install a new enclosure in one of Benny’s spare rooms this afternoon. The relocation and new enclosure cost a small fortune, but I’d find a way to repay every cent, despite Benny telling me it wasn’t necessary.
Nothing else really mattered. I didn’t need any of this stuff, just the blanket Matthew had given me, my girls, and anything else that we figured would look nice in Benny’s place or could be sold for some extra cash.
“The cars are gone,” I realized as we packed the final box into the back of Benny’s Audi.
“What cars?”
I hadn’t noticed it when we came in. I’d been too focused on having Benny and severing myself from this place and Leon. “He bought me a car for my birthday every year. They’re gone.”
“You had cars this whole time?”
I nodded.
“You just wanted me to drive you around?”
I nodded again.
Benny placed a kiss on my forehead. I’d never really used the cars Leon gave me. I preferred my bike or for Matthew to drive me, and now Benny.
After everything Leon had done, I wasn’t surprised he’d reclaimed them. I didn’t even want them. But it left something inside me feeling oddly hollow. As if taking them back had erased them and any love he’d supposedly felt when he gave them to me.
The empty spaces blurred, and Benny held me tighter. “I didn’t even like them,” I mumbled as I turned into him. “Why am I upset?”
He kissed the top of my head. “It’s okay to be upset, my love. Even if you didn’t use or like them.”
I held him tighter, waiting until the hollow feeling eased, though it didn’t disappear, before I pulled back and we wenthome.
forty-one
Harper
SMILING SNAKES AND PHONE CALLS.
It had been three months and things had gone from bad to worse.
Leon had been quiet at the start. Benny, ever the optimist, had thought maybe he’d finally leave us alone to be happy together; I of course knew Leon better than that. He always got what he wanted. He wasn’t going to take this well. He wasn’t going to just let me go.
After I’d quit, Benny had encouraged me to take some time doingnothing. Well, he hadn’t said “nothing.” He’d said I should try some hobbies and find what it was Ilikedto do.
I still didn’t have any answers to that. What I did have were boxes of useless items Benny had collected for me.
First, he’d borrowed an old camera from Ginny for me to try photography. Photography was… fine. Then he’d started bringing new things home almost daily. Baskets of wool with knitting needles and crochet hooks. Sketchbooks and pencils. Canvases with tiny pots of paint.
After I’d tried to paint Celestine and ended up with an artwork more childish than Harvey’s, he’d subtly brought home somewith a predesigned picture, and all I had to do was match the colors to the numbers. He still hung the awful painting of Celestine on the wall, though.
I’d only attempted most of that stuff because he’d seemed so excited about doing it with me. What I’d learned was that the only interest I had in any of them was seeing the joy Benny seemed to get from me trying them. Maybe I just wasn’t the creative type.
Matthew had tried talking to me about some books he was reading, and I’d attempted a romance he’d shown me about a fisherman and a selkie prince, but I kept getting distracted and needing to reread and only got frustrated by it. Audiobooks were a little better, but I felt like I needed to be doing something with my hands. He’d also tried to get me to help him in the garden, but I didn’t want to put my fingers in dirt or potentially touch any bugs.
I’d managed to get through a lot more of the movies Benny wanted me to watch, but he always looked like a kicked puppy when he wasn’t able to be here to watch them with me, so I waited for him to come home from work to go through his list.
Benny had been taking me to the gym a couple of nights a week to continue teaching me MMA and self-defense. I’d enjoyed that, but that might only be because he was there and it usually ended up with us sweaty and hard.
After about a month of quiet nothing, Rachel had found another job—the only one she could get and at a pay rate far lower than she deserved. But she’d lost it again a week later and hadn’t been able to find another one since.
