Illusions Complete Series (Illusions Series Volumes 1-3)

by Annie Jocoby

  Sticking it out. With my husband.

  “So, what does Nat tell you about Ryan?”

  “That she thinks he hates her. He does blame her for what happened to him and you. He has a point.”

  “But he keeps her there.”

  “Well, of course. His presumptive child is there, although, as I said, I highly suspect that. He has told Nat that they are basically roommates who are raising a child together. Nothing more. She won’t accept that, though. She always thinks he’ll come around.”

  “I take it he’s not coming around, though?”

  “No. He has told her, point blank, that he will never love her. When she asks why not, he always just says that he’s still in love with you, and he never sees that changing.”

  My heart melted still further. “He says that? That he’s still in love with me?”

  “Have you not been listening to me at all? He’s told anybody who will listen that you’re his soul mate. Ryan isn’t the type to take that sort of thing lightly.”

  “What about his, uh, relationship with you?”

  “What about it? Listen, I really don’t consider him to be bisexual. Yeah, he and I get into it, and I know we have feelings for each other that go beyond bros. But he doesn’t get around with guys. I do, though, and I still do. I make no apologies for that. As James Dean said, why would I want to go around with one hand tied behind my back?”

  I would imagine that the men he gets were as smoking hot as the women he gets.

  I was afraid to ask the next question. “You said earlier that you didn’t think he was back on drugs. Are you sure of that?”

  “No, not sure. But Nat doesn’t think so. He doesn’t sleep much and he doesn’t eat much, so he is starting to take on the junkie look that he had in college. But she checks for track marks, and doesn’t see any, so she doesn’t think he’s using. Oh, and there’s one other thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Nat says he paints rather obsessively. I mean, he’s at work a lot, but when he comes home, he really doesn’t pay attention to Nat, or Christopher, for that matter. He goes into his studio, and he paints portraits of you.”

  “He does?”

  “Yeah. She said he must have 50 portraits of you in that studio. Oh, and by the way, there still isn’t a stick of furniture in that house. Aside from the baby room, that is.”

  “What? Where do they sit and eat and stuff?”

  “Orange crates and TV trays. They sit on the floor. Except, of course, for the baby room, like I said. Nat got that decorated, but he refuses to get furniture for any other room in the house.”

  I wondered where Natalie slept.

  I didn’t want to know.

  But I asked anyhow. “Where does Nat sleep?”

  “She has a bed in the baby room. It’s a nice queen-sized bed.”

  “Why no furniture?”

  “Because he thinks that you will be home at any minute, and he promised you that the two of you would decorate the house together. Are you starting to get the picture here?”

  “But Nick, he doesn’t know about Dalilah. How I lied to him. He probably will never forgive me.”

  “I don’t think he should’ve forgiven you for the stupid stunt you pulled when you went off the grid like that. Jesus fucking Christ, why would you do that? Don’t you see that your actions were the snowball that started the avalanche that resulted in all of this bullshit happening?”

  “I wasn’t in my right mind.”

  “I know that, and I’m sorry for what happened to you, but you made some really poor decisions there. Any normal woman would’ve called a friend, or gone to a rape crisis center. But no, not you. You decided that the best course of action would be to go to a drug house and get high.” Then he looked thoughtful. “Come to think of it, that was Ryan’s reaction to trauma, too, so I guess that you guys do have something in common.” Then he looked at me again. “But not calling him and turning off your phone was inexcusable. And just plain stupid.”

  “I didn’t want to be found. I didn’t want to go back into that house.”

  “Don’t you think for one second that Ryan is sensitive enough not to make you go into that house again? As much as he protects you and takes care of you, and you think that he would just go ‘la la la, I think I’ll make my wife re-live her trauma every time she looks at the kitchen floor?’”

  “How did you know it was on the kitchen floor?”

  “I found some blood there. I didn’t tell Ryan that, though, over the phone, when he called from Tokyo. He would’ve gone absolutely ape-shit.”

  Dalilah started screaming again, and I picked her up and put her on my lap. I put a pacifier in her mouth and felt her bottom. “Would you excuse me? I have to change her.”

  “Sure,” he said.

  When I got back, I put Dalilah back in her bassinette.

  Nick continued. “Anyhow, I had never seen Ryan so enraged when he found out what happened to you. He immediately knew that it was Andrew who did it, and I literally had to talk him out of finding him and killing him. He literally would have. Ryan maybe a putz when it comes to women, but he’s not a pussy. He’s been around tough people in his life, and he felt he could take him.” He shook his head with a smile. “A retired government assassin, and he thought he could take him. That’s Ryan for ya.”

  “Ryan told me something about that. He told me that you talked him out of killing him.”

  “Yeah, I had to. The only thing that brought him to his senses that I told him what impact it would have on you. It took him less than a second to realize that you would suffer even worse for his actions, so he put the gun away. But I had never seen him so devastated and angry as he was at that point.”

  Nick confirmed what Ryan told me about his feelings about my rape. I was reminded, anew, of how much Ryan was affected by what had happened to me.

  “Now, of course, Ryan and his father are strained again,” Nick said. “The father was the one who hired Andrew, although Ryan had him checked out independently. Andrew was clean. Turns out he was far from clean, and he had a target for you.”

  “Target for me? What does that mean?”

  “It means that the bastard lied about Rochelle hiring people to come after you. Rochelle did no such thing. Andrew lied and said that she did, so that it made it seem that you really needed his protection. He was apparently concerned that he wouldn’t get the job unless he made it look like there were a bunch of people out there, gunning for you.”

  “How did you find that out?”

  “It’s hard to prove a negative, but Ryan hauled Rochelle in for a lie detector test about it. She passed with flying colors.”

  “Sociopaths usually can beat those tests.”

  “Yeah, but Ryan can also read people extremely well. Or haven’t you figured that out by now?”

  “Of course. That’s one of the many reasons why I am so madly in love with him still.”

  “Anyhow, he believes she is telling the truth. And there never were any names forthcoming from Andrew about who was after you. That was pretty suspicious.”

  “Ok. So Andrew lied to get the job. You said he had me as a target. What did that mean?”

  “It means that Andrew wanted you, specifically. Not sure why. But he wanted to be your bodyguard, and we think that he intended to rape you all along.”

  My hand involuntarily flew to my mouth. “Why?”

  “We’re trying to figure that out. That’s the other thing that Ryan does with his time. He paints, he works, and he obsessively looks into Andrew’s background, trying to find out anything he can about him. He still wants revenge, he just doesn’t know how to go about it.”

  Dalilah was crying again, so I picked her up and bounced her. She sucked on her fingers, and I gave her a pacifier and one of her stuffed animals.

  “Anyhow, Ryan’s theory, from what Nat tells me, is that Andrew’s mother is red-headed. Which she is. And he is angry with his mother for something, so he
took it out on you. You know, the classic killing the mother over and over thing.”

  “Why does Ryan talk to Nat and not you?”

  “Because sometimes he gets in spurts where he starts talking. Nat says that the only thing he talks about is you. He is still trying to figure out why everything happened the way that it did. You really fucked him up.”

  I sighed. I had made some really poor decisions. Poor decisions that resulted in all of this. This is why Nick was here. He was the boulder that came crashing through the window, telling me that I had made a serious wrong turn in life. They say that, when you make bad decisions, the universe tries to tell you to make a U-Turn. At first, it’s a pebble thrown at you, as the universe gently tells you to get back on track. Then, if you don’t listen, the universe sends a boulder that you cannot ignore.

  Nick was my boulder.

  But what was my pebble?

  Dalilah. She was the pebble. The universe was telling me, by my being pregnant, that I had to stay with Ryan. I ignored it, went to San Francisco without telling him he had a daughter, and now here was Nick. It wasn’t a coincidence that he was in the same Starbucks as me. No, sir. He was the boulder that I needed. I was too stupid to see it on my own.

  Finally, the plane appeared on the runway. I got on, and strapped Dalilah in. Nick sat across from us.

  I was, at long last, going home.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Nick and I chatted a bit on the plane while I attended to Dalilah. She was, remarkably, doing fine with her very first plane ride. Probably better than her stupid mother. Madison was another story, of course. I could still hear her whimpering and mewling. I tried to talk to her soothingly, but, of course, that didn’t help.

  “So,” Nick was saying, once the plane was in the air. “If I didn’t happen to run into you, would you just have kept on running?”

  “I really don’t know. I haven’t exactly been myself for the past year or so. Before Rochelle, I doubt that I would’ve made such poor decisions about my life. It’s no excuse, of course, but I think that I’m still shell-shocked. Nat’s pregnancy was just the last straw.”

  “So the answer is probably yes.”

  “I don’t know. Would you believe me if I told you that I feel that the universe brought you to me to try to make me do the right thing?”

  “Yeah, I’d believe that. Although it sounds pretty New Agey to me.”

  “I guess what I’m saying is that running could never have been a long-term choice for me. Something, somewhere would’ve brought me back to Kansas City. It’s just that running into you is bringing me back before I’m ready.”

  “Sorry you’re not ready,” he said sarcastically, “but you made your bed.”

  “I know,” I said. “I know.”

  We didn’t talk much more. After a few hours, I looked out the window, as I started feeling the plane start to descend. I saw the familiar squares and itty-bitty cars below me, and extreme anxiety started to well up, until it became more like a panic. Ryan probably hates me, I thought. He will see what I did, taking his daughter and hiding her, and all his love for me will be gone. He wouldn’t be able to love a woman who would do such a thing.

  I started to do some deep breathing through my nose and mouth, trying to calm down. Nick was looking at me with his familiar smirk. I was quite sure that he was enjoying this spectacle of me feeling anxiety and panic. After all, I devastated his best friend. Nick had no compassion for me, nor should he.

  One of Nick’s cars was waiting for us at the airport hangar when we arrived. Like Ryan, Nick tended to drive only the best, and his car was a top of the line Mercedes CL-Class sedan. I was glad that he had a sedan there waiting for us, because, otherwise, I had no idea how Dalilah, Madison and I would be getting home.

  “So, should I give Ryan a warning that you’re coming home, or should I surprise him?” Nick asked, looking in his rear view mirror at Dalilah and me in the back seat.

  “Surprise him.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  My anxiety rose to a fever pitch as the car drew closer and closer to Ryan’s home.

  We finally reached the home, and I could hear yelling inside.

  “Well, you can take it from here,” Nick said, leaving me on the front porch. “I’m not getting into the middle of that.”

  “But you want me to,” I said, incredulously.

  “As I said, you made-“

  “My bed. I know, I know.”

  “See ya,” he said, his back turned as he was walking back to his car.

  I tentatively knocked, but nobody apparently heard me. After hearing a snippets of the fight, I knew why.

  Ryan was yelling “What do you want from me? I’m letting you live here, aren’t I?”

  Nat was yelling “I want us to be a family. Please, Ryan, please let’s be a family.”

  “No offense, Nat, but you aren’t my family. Christopher might be, although I doubt that, but you aren’t.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that I don’t love you, and I never will. And Christopher doesn’t look much like me.”

  “Are you saying that you think that Christopher isn’t yours?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “So why would I still be here?”

  “Nat, I don’t know. I’m too nice of a guy just to let you be out on the streets. I wish that you would just go back to your husband, but, since you’ve said that if I kick you out, you still won’t return to him, I don’t see what choice I have.”

  I remembered what Nick had said about Nate wanting Natalie back. And Nat being out on the streets? She’s an investment banker, for the love of god. I doubt that she ever would be on the streets.

  This whole scenario was starting to become ridiculous.

  “So, it’s her, isn’t it? She’s the reason why you can’t love me?”

  “Yes, and I’ve told you that 100,000 times. Yes. It’s her. It’s always going to be her. Only her. Accept that, or move out.”

  I looked at Dalilah, and wondered if he would feel the same about me once he found out what I had done.

  Then I heard Nat crying.

  I picked up Dalilah in her car seat, and Madison in her carrier, and prepared to find a way to leave the scene. I didn’t have car keys anymore, so taking my Volvo wouldn’t be possible. Anyways, it would be like stealing. I started to dial a cab, thinking that I didn’t need to be in the middle of that drama, and I would come back at a later time.

  However, right when I was about to call a cab, the door opened, and I was face to face with a shocked and startled Nat.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  “Iris?” she said. “What are you doing here?” She looked shocked and more than a little befuddled. Her beautiful blue eyes were puffy and her face was streaked with tears, but she still would look right on the cover of a magazine.

  “What?” I heard Ryan inside. “Nat, who are you talking to?” Then he was immediately behind Natalie at the front door.

  I felt sheepish as I said “surprise!”

  Ryan looked even more shocked than Nat. He looked different than the last time I saw him. His hair was back to normal and he no longer had a beard and moustache, but he still looked pale, thin, and tired. Like Nick said, he was taking on a junkie appearance. This was no doubt how he looked in college.

  He still took my breath away.

  Then he looked at Dalilah. Then back at me. In those beautiful green eyes I saw befuddlement, anger, and pure love. He never could hide the love in his eyes, no matter how irritated he was with me.

  He stood there with his mouth open, and Nat stood there looking at me with an increasingly pissed-off expression. Her pissed-off expression became even moreso as she eyed the child that was so obviously Ryan’s. In her arms was apparently Christopher in his carrier. I looked at the child, and I saw what everybody else saw. Dark curly hair, blue eyes, dimpled chin. Mini Nate. Beautiful child, but I didn’t see Ryan in
him at all.

  I tried to make light of the situation. “Well, is anybody gonna invite me in?”

  “You can’t be here,” Nat told me. “You don’t live here anymore.”

  “I know that. Hence my asking for an invitation as opposed to just barging on in.”

  Ryan pushed Natalie aside a little bit, then put his hand on my shoulder. “Come on in, Iris,” he said, giving Nat a look. “Of course, you’re welcome anytime.”

  I flinched at his calling me by my name instead of calling me “beautiful,” and his invitation also seemed just a bit cold. But what did I expect, showing up here with his four-month-old child after having gone off the grid for eight months? Not to mention the fact that I divorced him.

  I didn’t blame him for not rolling out the red carpet.

  I entered the spacious home which, just like Nick had said, had not a stick of real furniture in it. There were orange crates in a circle, but, other than that, there wasn’t anything in this home. Natalie came in as well, even though she was apparently leaving before. I immediately opened the carrier, and Madison dashed out and ran into another room.

  Ryan was in the kitchen. “Well, this is quite a surprise. I’m embarrassed that I don’t have a place for you to sit. I probably should make you something to eat, but there really isn’t much here.”

  “I haven’t gone to the store this week,” Nat said. “And Ryan never goes to the store.”

  “Don’t start,” Ryan said.

  “Well, it’s true. You never go to the store. You never cook. I don’t understand that at all, because you were always an amazing cook in college.”

  I was a little taken aback by that. Ryan always had a full fridge of everything you could think of, and he loved going to the store. And one of the many things that made me fall head over heels for the guy was his cooking ability.

  Ryan looked sheepish as he brought out some cheese, crackers and hard salami. “I’m so sorry, Iris. Short notice.”

  “No, no. I’m sorry, I should’ve given you notice.”

  Nat said, “Allright, since nobody else is, I’m going to address the 800 lb gorilla. Who is that?” she said, pointing to Dalilah.