“So, we can’t even talk anymore?” I said into the burner cell phone on our first night in Rupert, tears tightening my vocal cords as I sat in the kitchen, a gun on the table and snow falling outside.
“No,” she answered with a sigh. “At least not often. You should have thought about all this, Reagan.”
“I know,” I whispered. They were the only words I could force out before hanging up. I couldn’t bring myself to say thank you or I’m sorry or even good-bye. I haven’t spoken to Sam since.
Luke turns the SUV into our driveway, the gravel crunching beneath its tires, filling the car with its first sounds during our ride. I look over at him as he eases the car into our garage. I glance at him often on these drives, during our forced togetherness, because I know I’ll lose him once we get into the house.
My eyes are always desperate, pleading for him to speak to me about something. Anything. Luke only talks to me out of necessity. We’re almost out of toilet paper. Pick up bananas at the store if they look good. Adam said he needs you to close tonight. These are the little gems I cling to. I answer him eagerly, hungry for more words. But he gives me only what he needs to. Instructions, never conversation.
As he turns off the car, I tear my eyes away from him and reach for the door handle.
“Wait,” he reminds me, his hand grabbing at my arm. I look down, staring at his fingers, realizing it’s the first time he’s touched me when it’s not an act. But as he pulls his hand away, I know it’s not out of love but rather an unconscious protective habit.
Luke lowers the garage door and watches it close behind us in the rearview mirror before grabbing his gun out of its hiding spot beneath the driver’s seat.
“Okay,” he instructs and hops out of his side of the car. I do the same. “I think you have a false sense of security living in the middle of nowhere, Reagan. But Fernando could still find us up here. No thanks to you.”
His last declaration is wrapped in barbed wire and hurled over his shoulder, catching and tearing at my skin as I follow him into our dimly lit house. It’s probably the closest we’ve come to true dialogue since Indonesia.
And even if every word is painful, I don’t want this to stop.
“I know,” I answer as I throw my purse on the kitchen table.
“And please stop putting your stuff wherever you feel like it,” Luke says, pointing at my purse. “This house is a mess.”
“Who are you, my father?” I ask, the words escaping my mouth before my tongue can wrangle them in.
“I’m being far kinder to you than your father would be if he was here right now,” Luke answers curtly, walking around the counter and to the fridge in the corner of our small kitchen. He pushes aside cans of Dr Pepper and juice before grabbing a bottle of water.
“I get it. I get how angry you are,” I say as he turns around. “But is this how it’s going to be for the rest of our lives? I mean, who knows how long we have to hide out up here.”
“Not long, I hope,” Luke says and takes a swig of water, droplets falling down his chin. He wipes them away with the collar of his navy long-sleeved T-shirt.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I can’t wait to get away from here.”
“You mean away from me?”
“I didn’t say that,” Luke offers unconvincingly.
“You don’t have to. It’s written all over your face,” I say, my chin nodding in his direction. “Look, I can’t go back and undo what I’ve done.”
“I don’t think you would if you could,” Luke responds, brushing past me and walking down the hall. I follow him into our tiny living room.
“You don’t think I’d take back killing Torres?” I say, my fingers digging into the center of my chest. “After seeing what it’s done to you? Done to us?”
“No, I really don’t think you would,” Luke answers, shaking his head as he turns on the lamp next to our lumpy gray couch, the luxurious furnishings of Black Angel–sanctioned safe houses long gone. “I think you’d make the exact same choice.”
“Luke, how can you say that?”
“How can I not?” Luke says, his eyes narrowed. He looks me up and down, shaking his head. “I begged you to stay in that camp in Indonesia. I pleaded with you on that car ride to apprehend him. I did everything I could to get you to see reason and not to kill Torres. I knew what would happen if you shot him and so did you. But you did it anyway. You didn’t give a crap about the consequences. Your mission was singular and selfish: kill Torres. That’s what it was for a year. You had time to think about it and change your mind. But you chose this. You chose to kill him. So don’t tell me that you’d take it back if you could. Because I know you. You wouldn’t change it. Not for me. Not for anyone.”
Luke’s words suck out every trace of air in my chest. His words aren’t just mean. They’re true. I am selfish. It’s the unfortunate adjective used to describe me the most. Not brave. Not loyal. Not fearless. Selfish. I only see what’s in front of me. What I want. What I need. What I think is right. I ignore everyone trying to turn my head from side to side. I push away their anxious attempts to get me to see the bigger picture, the wide and expansive world beyond my narrow one. It’s easy to blame Torres or my mother’s death on my selfish behavior. But as I finally suck oxygen into my aching chest I realize, I’ve always been this way. Even when I thought I was doing good, the end always somehow benefited me.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I reply quietly, holding out my hands in surrender.
“It’d be nice to start with I’m sorry,” Luke answers, running his fingers through his dark hair, his muscle memory forgetting just how short he was forced to cut it.
“I’m sure I’ve said I’m sorry,” I say and chew at the inside of my lip.
“No. Not really,” Luke says and shakes his head. “I’ve been waiting for it. But three weeks later and still no sorry.”
I stare down at the floor and know he’s right. I haven’t said it out loud. Only to the Luke in my head. Because sorry has never felt close to good enough. So I’ve said nothing.
I clear my throat, keep my eyes on the ground, and say, “Of course I’m sorry. But how do you say you’re sorry for something like this?”
I feel Luke staring at me. I glance up, still half expecting to be met with his kind blue eyes. But they’re just as dark as his mood. My Luke is not in this room. He hasn’t changed. I’ve changed him.
“Listen to other people, Reagan,” Luke finally replies softly and turns his back on me. “Then you’ll never have to say you’re sorry.”
“Luke, please don’t walk out on me,” I call out to him as he climbs up the steep stairs that lead to our two small bedrooms. “Please, stay and talk to me. Let’s try to work on this.”
“There’s nothing to work on,” he throws over his shoulder. “I’ll pretend to be your boyfriend when we’re out in the world for our cover. I’ll keep you safe. That’s all I can do.”
“But Luke…” I call after him but he answers me by slamming his bedroom door.
You did this to yourself, Reagan. You did this to yourself.
I lower my body onto our couch, still fully dressed in my coat, hat, and gloves. My body begins to shake even though my blood is burgeoning on searing. The floorboards of our old house creak above my head. I look up and listen as he opens and closes his dresser drawers, changes into his pajamas, the old bed whining beneath him as he climbs under the covers.
“Oh God,” I whisper, grasping at my knees, rocking my body back and forth. “What have I done?”
THREE
“Liv, I thought you’d like a snack,” Luke says, placing a white dish on the counter next to a stack of books I’m supposed to put away. I carefully move the plate closer to me, trying not to elbow the wobbly tower of discarded holiday gifts customers decide not to purchase once they made it to the register.
“Thank you,” I reply and look up at him. He smiles at me for the first time
in twenty-four hours. But it’s only because Adam is standing a few feet away sorting through store receipts and inventory slips.
“I made extra. I know they’re your favorite,” Luke adds as I look down at the oversized triple-chocolate-chip cookie. He’s right. They are my favorite. I can tell the cookie is still warm without even touching it, its semisweet chocolate chips glistening and melting onto the plate. Perhaps this is more than a cookie. Maybe it’s an I’m sorry.
“Thanks, babe,” I say with a hopeful smile and lean across the countertop to give him a kiss. The moment his cold lips meet mine, my optimism evaporates. It’s still a stage kiss. Without feelings or heat or emotion. Purely for show. So I guess the cookie is too. Just another prop in our little play.
“You guys are so cute, I want to puke,” Adam jokes beside me, inciting a forced laugh from this show’s leading man and leading lady.
“Better get back,” Luke says, dusting the flour and powdered sugar off of his green-and-white-striped apron. “Enjoy the cookie.”
“I will,” I answer with a stage smile and take a bite, the warm chocolate coating my tongue. I watch Luke as he walks away from me. He doesn’t look back. He never looks back.
“You guys are obnoxiously adorable,” Adam says, eyeing my fake smile as I watch Luke leave. It’s early afternoon and the Book Loft is momentarily slow. But soon school will let out and students will fill up the café in search of snacks, hot chocolate, and coffee. The day’s gossip will bounce off the walls, ruining the quiet for the retirees who come here to relax and read. “How’d you two meet?”
“Biology class,” I answer, sticking to the carefully scripted cover we were told to memorize on the plane. “We were assigned to be lab partners.”
“Fell in love while dissecting frogs?” Adam asks, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes,” I answer with a genuine laugh. “Nothing says ‘let’s make out’ like the smell of formaldehyde.”
Adam chuckles and turns back to his stack of invoices, marking each one with his signature. “You guys are really lucky to have found each other.”
“Oh, what are you talking about?” I say and take another bite of my cookie. “You’re like Manchester’s most eligible bachelor. I bet if we raffled off dates with you we could raise some serious money.”
“Ha, maybe,” Adam says, looking up from his stack of paperwork, his easy smile sinking. He opens his mouth to say something then closes it.
“What?”
“It’s just hard to find something that lasts past Saturday night.”
“Those are words to a song from the forties, you know,” I say, licking chocolate off of my thumb. “Ever hear of ‘Sunday Kind of Love’?”
“I don’t think so,” Adam says. “Sing it.”
“You don’t want to hear me sing,” I answer awkwardly, a large chunk of cookie in my mouth. I cover my lips with my hand as I swallow it down. “My grandma used to sing it when I was a kid. It’s an old jazz standard tune. It goes ‘I want a Sunday kind of love / A love to last past Saturday night.’”
“Exactly,” Adam says, pointing a finger at me. “The newness is exciting but it’d be nice to have something that’s … you know … comfortable.”
“Sweatpants kind of love?” I ask.
“Sweatpants, holey T-shirt, and morning breath kind of love,” Adam answers. “They should really add that into the lyrics.”
“I don’t think ‘Morning Breath Kind of Love’ would have sold as many records.”
“Yeah. Maybe you’re right.”
Adam smiles at me before looking back down at his paperwork, his grin quickly fading, and his face suddenly sullen and serious.
I study him, lean my elbows against the countertop, and say, “I had you all wrong.”
“What do you mean?” Adam asks.
“I don’t know,” I answer with a shrug. “I guess I thought you’d be more interested in having fun and dating every girl in town than having a girlfriend.”
“I’m an old soul, I guess,” Adam answers, still shuffling through papers, busying his hands with staples and signatures. “Besides, if I wanted to hook up every weekend, I’d have taken the bar, bought a bunch of two-thousand-dollar suits, and stayed in New York. Believe me, Liv. I’ll take what you two have any day.”
Adam closes his folder and walks toward his cramped office in the back of the store, leaving me alone with my lies. But for me, I’m not acting. I’m not faking my feelings for Luke. Sometimes, I lose myself in the illusion of our manufactured bliss. I scold myself for forgetting that he’s really pretending. He’s just trying to stay alive.
The irony is not lost on me. This is exactly the life I dreamed of back in Ohio. The quiet, white picket-fence life my mother told me I wasn’t supposed to have. She said I wasn’t meant to be happy. I was meant to change the world. Over a year after that last fight in our New Albany living room, I’m so very far from either one.
I catch Luke across the store in the café, pulling out a tray of cookies, getting ready for the afternoon rush. His hand moves across his face, pushing away hair that’s no longer there, cut off onto a bathroom floor in Maine. Some tics just don’t die.
I miss him. I miss his blond hair and blue eyes. I miss his dimples. The way his cheeks folded almost in half when I made him laugh. I miss the sound of my name on his tongue. My real name. The way he used to touch me on the small of my back. Like I was something precious. Something to care for. Something to love.
Luke turns around, smiling at Imogene, and my blood chills, my heart slows. My body returns to its default state of numb.
* * *
At the end of every shift, fifteen minutes before closing time, my stomach predictably tightens into an uneasy knot. There’s an old clock with a bell tower at the Presbyterian church down the street. Its bells sing out the Westminster Chimes at the top of each hour, and clang once, twice, and three times to mark each quarter hour.
At 9:44, my skin begins to ache, like I know the three bells and a night of icy silence are coming. But tonight, my skin pricks ten minutes earlier than normal. Those imaginary pins penetrate my spine, an unconscious warning. At first, I wait to hear the clangs. But when the bells don’t come, I slowly turn around and see a pair of dark eyes watching me from across the store. When my eyes lock with his, I expect him to look away. He doesn’t. He’s standing near the magazines, a copy of GQ open in his hands. But he’s still staring. I examine his face, categorizing each feature. A paranoid twitch from my Black Angel upbringing. Five foot ten. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Fair skin. Strong jaw. Mid-twenties. Even as I look him up and down, his eyes don’t leave mine.
One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi.
“Liv,” a voice says from behind me, startling me to the point that I nearly drop the biographies I’m re-shelving. I turn around. Luke.
“Jesus,” I whisper and pull a quivering hand to my chest.
“What’s wrong with you?” Luke asks, cocking his head.
“Nothing, I just…” I turn back around but the stranger is gone. I crane my neck, looking for him in the rows of books or up in the café. But he’s disappeared.
“Liv,” Luke says again.
“Sorry,” I answer, turning around and shaking my head. “You just scared me. That’s all.”
“I’m going out with Imogene and Adam after closing,” he says, tossing me the keys to the SUV.
“You’re not coming home with me?” I ask, staring down at the keys in my hand, each word slow to escape my throat.
“No,” he says and puts his hands into the pocket of his jeans. “I’ll get a ride from Adam later.”
“Oh … o … kay,” I stammer and look down at the keys, my fingers pressing hard into the metal.
“What is it?” Luke asks, narrowing his color-corrected dark eyes at me.
I close my fist around the silver heart key chain I bought at a knick-knacky store a couple blocks away and consider asking him to walk me to the car after our shift.
But I don’t want to alarm him. Or make him angry. Or remind him of the danger we’re in. The danger I put him in.
It was nothing. It was nothing.
“Nothing,” I answer quietly and turn toward the bookshelf. Luke stands there, studying me for a second longer, and I wait for him to push. He’s the one person in my life who always knows when something is wrong and never lets me get away with hiding it. I shelve a biography on George Washington and another on David Foster Wallace. I pretend to concentrate and hold in an anxious breath, anticipating his questioning. But he says nothing. He just stares at me for one long beat before turning on his heel and disappearing beyond the high shelves.
* * *
By the time I get home, my lungs ache from holding my breath on and off during the drive. I had to force myself every two minutes to take in new air. On the walk alone to the car, I had my hand in the pocket of my oversized tote, my finger wrapped around the trigger of my loaded Glock 22. I could feel my heart beating faster with each step, blood rushing to every muscle. A vital physical side effect of fear. Fight or flight. Ready to kill. Ready to run.
My body was blazing beneath my peacoat in spite of it being barely twenty degrees outside. The combination of extreme temperatures caused my skin to burn and the bottom of my feet to itch in my leather boots.
As I turned the corner past Charlie’s, my legs picked up the pace. I waited to hear the crunch of someone’s feet behind me in the snow. I could almost feel the pressure of a gun barrel at my back and taste a dirty hand on my freezing mouth. The daymares played out behind my eyes. But the footsteps and gun barrel and the silencing hand never came. As I sat in the car with the doors locked, my breath still visible despite the blast of manufactured hot air, I leaned forward, resting my forehead against the top of the steering wheel, the stitches in the cold leather digging into my skin. Perhaps I’m just paranoid, looking for monsters in the shadows. Imagining things that aren’t really there.
Without Luke at home, the stillness of our house freaks me out. We live in near silence, but I find comfort in hearing the floor creak or the water run while he brushes his teeth. There’s life in this house. Even if that life wants very little to do with me.
You Won't See Me Coming Page 2
