Page 17 of Gorgeous Misery

“I see you are confused.”

“OK.” I laugh. “I’ll admit to that.” My laugh carries across the pool to the outdoor kitchen and makes Sydney and Jax direct their smiles at us for a moment. Then they go back to whatever they’re talking about.

“Let me explain better.” She pauses and her blue eyes roll up as she considers what to say. She’s still the same Sasha to me. Same blonde hair. Same pretty little face. She’s still thirteen in my mind. She will always be the little girl in braces. She will always be the heartbroken kid crying her eyes out in a hotel room after Nick left. She will always be the empty shell left behind after she shot Nick in the head that day.

It doesn’t matter how I see her. Sasha Cherlin-Aston-Barlow writes her own script in this life. She has always been the one in control. She’s not a little girl. Those braces are long gone. She has been very happy for many years now and the fact that she has spelled it out very clearly that she is not interested in knowing Adam’s secret, even if it’s about Nick Tate, tells me all I need to know about her mental health these days.

She adjusted.

She moved on.

She lived.

That’s what a good little Zero girl does.

“Sometimes,” Sasha says, “ignorance is bliss, Merc.”

“Right.” I chuckle again. “Yeah. Agreed.”

“Because if we don’t know what we’re missing, do we ever truly miss it?”

“What’s this got to do with eternal life?”

“Turns out, almost nothing, actually. But you gotta watch out for the believers, right? Because belief is a lot more powerful than you think.”

“You’re in a very profound mood today.”

She nods. “Yeah. This thing with Adam.”

“What about it?”

“I dunno. It’s a thread, I think.”

“And you don’t want me to pull it.”

“No. But—” She looks away, but just as quickly looks back at me. “I would like to save Donovan. I would like to save everyone, actually. But I don’t have any say in most of that.”

“And you have a say in this,” I finish for her.

She nods. “A small one. Obviously, ignorance is still bliss. But it’s too late to be ignorant now, isn’t it?”

I nod my agreement.

Then we drop it. Because she told me what she wanted me to know—she wants to save Donovan but she doesn’t want to find Nick and whatever I find when I pull on this thread, she wants it to end with her blissful ignorance.

The next day Sasha and Jax pack up their kids in their truck and I pack up Sydney and our kids into ours. Then I follow them up to Fort Collins, Colorado for a much-needed, impromptu vacation with some old friends.

But I don’t stay in Fort Collins.

I call up a good friend with a small plane and he picks me up at an airstrip about forty miles east of Fort Collins like we’re livin’ in the old days.

So three days later I’m sitting in a truck in front of a cottage in Key West wondering if this is the moment when it all goes wrong.

Because somehow, in the time between my convo with Sasha and this moment right here, I became a believer.

CHAPTER THREE - WENDY

BIRTHDAY #17