Ian reaches out, gives me a playful push. “I get it. We have time.”
I look at him. Wonder if even after I finish this, I’ll be ready. If I’ll have it in me to offer my heart to another person. Or maybe with Ian, we can skip all that. Maybe we can appreciate what we have in the moment without worrying about the bigger picture.
Gran would be horrified.Anassassin, Nadia? What were you thinking?
“Booze?” He holds out the bottle from wherever he put it and I nod, grateful the darkness hides the tears welling in my eyes.
I don’t cry. About anything, ever.
But I’m crying now, thinking of Brian, who is not actually Brian at all.
—
Ian returns tothe hotel room.
I wander the beach alone until I find myself outside Brian’s seaside hotel. He’s on the third floor, in the corner room, the one nearest me. It’s all I can do to stand there, stare at the siding on the building, and try to imagine what’s going on inside. Maybe it’s better I don’t know, because everything I come up with makes me mad.
More than that, my teeth are clenched, hands balled into fists—I’m not just upset, I’m pissed. Furious that he would do this to us, to me, to the girls. Even if the Brian I know is only a tiny piece of who he actually is, I know that small part of him, and standing here, glaring, tears still scalding my cheeks, I feel hatred like I never have before.
Generally, emotions like hate are not useful and I appreciate that I don’t have them, that I can stay calm and removed in moments when most people let their feelings overtake them, control how they act.
Now I get it.
—
When I wake,the sun is just coming up. It melts over the beach like butter, soaking me and a handful of joggers in light. It shouldbe beautiful, but it’s not. It’s harsh, glaring. It pulls me from sleep and reminds me of reality, and right now, reality sucks.
“Nadia.” A voice commands me to wake, to not lie back down and escape the world.
“What?” I manage.
“Come on. He’s going to see you. Or someone’s going to think you’re dead and call the cops.” Ian’s mouth is close to my ear. I’m lying in the sand—did I fall asleep out here, watching Brian’s room?—and Ian’s pulling on my arm, trying to get me up and down the boardwalk and back to our room.
I want to argue about how dumb that is—what kind of killer would leave a body on a popular beach to be found? Instead, I wobble to my feet and say, “I want to go home.”
“Home?”
“To Texas.”
He pauses. “Are you sure? You don’t want to—you said you wanted to—”
Kill Brian.That’s what he won’t say out loud as a group of sixtysomething speed walkers hurries by us.
I wipe sleep from my eyes, blink at him through the early golden hour. There’s a chill to the air. It creeps over my skin and I shiver, wishing I had a strong cup of coffee. “No,” I decide. “I just want to go home.”
He pauses, then says, “Okay. I’ll sort out flights.”
—
“You need tobe at the airport in two hours,” Ian says when I emerge from the bathroom. “I’ll drop you off.”
“Aren’t you coming?”
He cocks his head at me, smiles. “I have to go home. But call me when you need me.”
“Okay.” I nod, busy myself with packing up my hairbrush, my gun. But his words rattle me. Last night, he’d said he’d come with me. He’d stay, he’d help. Of course, now he’s telling me to call when I need him—maybe that means when I’m ready. He’s giving me space, understanding that this is not easy, that it’s not as simple as taking a shot and moving on.
The room is small and suddenly claustrophobic. I sit on the edge of the bed, rolling up my phone cord, staring at Ian, who has his back to me as he does assassin things—checking his gun (he prefers a Sig Sauer to a Glock), the sharpness of his knives—busywork as common as staring at a cell phone for anyone else. But I’m thinking of what it felt like to be with him, even briefly, last night.
