Deceiver

by Robin Lovett

  Daisy. I need her.

  I shake my head and trudge up the stairs.

  I have no right to need her. She needs to get away from me.

  It’s time for me to let her go.

  Only someone like me, like my father, could take a woman from her life on grounds of revenge.

  It’s time for me to admit that I am my father’s son.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Blake comes back into the room and I open my eyes, expecting coffee at least, maybe some food, but definitely a smile on his face.

  I get none of those things.

  The black mood that has descended over him has me sitting up. The coldness that has surrounded him has me pulling the sheet up around my chest, needing to cover up, wishing I wasn’t naked.

  “Blake, what’s—”

  “You can go,” he says it like a clinical fact.

  “What do you mean, go?”

  “Pack your stuff. You’re going home.”

  “You’re taking me home?” It should be a happy thing, but the way he says it, sounds like it’s the last thing he wants or I want.

  “Not me. You. You’re leaving. I’m letting you go.”

  I scoot toward him on the bed. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s easy. Pack your fucking suitcase.” He kicks it on the floor. “And get out.”

  “But what happened? Last night you were . . .” But I can’t even think what he was last night, or even fifteen minutes ago. This calculating cynical man doesn’t resemble him. This is the man who first told me he was seeking revenge on my father.

  “Your father’s innocent. I made a mistake. Happy? You can leave.”

  “But how do you know?”

  “He filed a complaint against my father, after my mother died. Your father, apparently, was on my side.”

  “But that’s great news!” I smile, trying to encourage positivity. “Now we can go home. Like you said.”

  “We?” He frowns in disgust at me. “There is no we anymore. You are leaving. I am staying here.”

  “But, Blake—”

  “What is wrong with you?” He shouts. “I kidnapped you. I’m letting you go. You should be running away!” He’s right. I know he’s right, but running away from him right now is the last thing I want to do.

  “I want to go home. But I’m not running away from you. I’m not afraid of you.”

  “Which has always been your problem. You should be. You should be disgusted by me and turned off by me and—”

  “Why?”

  “Because I took you away from your family! For revenge—revenge that wasn’t even revenge because I had the wrong man.”

  I see it now—I understand what’s happening, why he’s become so cold. “You feel guilty.” And he can’t handle the feeling.

  “And you’re—you’re—twisted in the head. Who gives a shit what I feel. You shouldn’t. Get out of here before I hurt you worse.”

  “You won’t hurt me, Blake. I know you.” I stand up from the bed and reach for him.

  He jerks away from me like my hand is a branding iron. “You know nothing about what I can and can’t do. And you’re a fool for staying to find out.”

  I wrap the sheet around me and get closer to him. “I’m not a fool. You’re a coward. You’re scared of yourself. You’re scared of me and what I make you feel. You’re pushing me away.”

  His gaze changes. I’ve seen a lot of dark looks on his face but this—it has to be put on, it has to be an act. He becomes malicious, violent, on the verge of a brutal rage, the hatred in him worthy of a man who will harm anyone in his way. “You forget who my father was,” he growls low, and I do what I never thought I’d do.

  I cower from him. I back up and hit the bed—afraid.

  “I’d get out, if I were you,” he warns. “Before I come back.” He turns and leaves.

  I sit stunned, terrified. Sad. Not for me, but for him. For the man he believes himself to be, but is not.

  I dress and pack. I call the airport to get the first plane to Nashville, which isn’t for a few hours.

  He’s separating himself from me when he needs someone most. Losing the revenge he was depending on so much, he’s going to need help to get through it. And as twisted as it may be, I want to be that someone.

  Helping him shouldn’t be on my priority list, but it is. I should be thinking about my freedom, getting back to my life. But all I can think about is needing to be here for him.

  I venture downstairs for some food, planning to confront him. Maybe he’ll come back with me. Maybe we could date like a normal couple. Me living at my house. Him living at his. That would be nice.

  Leaving here, losing him, not seeing him again—it doesn’t feel like an option.

  I find all three of the others in the kitchen, in morning pajamas.

  “Have you seen Blake?” I ask.

  “He left,” says Penny, gently.

  I don’t like the look on any of their faces, but I ignore the awkwardness of it. “Did he say when he’d be back? I have a flight to catch.”

  “He went out on the sailboat, dear,” Aunt Maggie says. “I don’t think he’s planning to come back. Is everything all right? It sounds like you all had a fight.”

  A fight. I guess that’s what it was. A breakup fight. He left. He’s gone. Really gone.

  “Here, have a seat.” Logan holds out a chair for me, and I sit, not really thinking about it.

  “How could he just leave like that?” I mumble to myself, my eyes fixed on the garden outside. He went sailing. He’s not coming back.

  “He said something that didn’t make much sense to us.” Penny comes to sit across from me. “Daisy, was he forcing you to be here?”

  I guess it doesn’t matter now, may as well tell the whole truth. He’s not here to stop me. “He sort of kidnapped me. Blackmailed me. Said he had the proof to put my father in jail for keeping your father out of prison for killing your mother.”

  “Damn it,” Logan mutters and walks away. “Fucking idiot.”

  “But why did he bring you to Charleston?” Penny asks. She doesn’t seem surprised, though, and I am relieved she doesn’t accuse me of lying.

  “He said it was better punishment for my father to lose his only daughter than for him to go to prison.”

  Aunt Maggie shrieks. “So, what was he going to do? Keep you?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “But you—I don’t understand,” Penny says. “You were together. Like together-together. Weren’t you?”

  I shrug. “If you mean having sex, yeah.”

  “Was he forcing you to do that too?” Her eyes are wide with horror.

  “No, no.” I wave away her fear. “That was a nice perk of the situation.” More than nice. A life-changing experience that got to me on a soul-deep level. My heart won’t be the same. The cravings he awoke in me—I don’t know how I’ll survive without him to satisfy me anymore.

  The emptiness that lies ahead of me, the slipping back into my life of boredom, I don’t just dread it. I fear it. “What am I going to do now?” I say—asking myself more than anyone.

  “It’s your choice. I can’t tell you to leave him,” Penny says, her voice tight with internal anger. “But he’s a mess.” She glances at Logan. “I don’t want to be around him right now.”

  Logan nods in agreement.

  “He needs someone,” I say, even though I shouldn’t. “He shouldn’t be alone. Losing his sole means of avenging his mother as he saw it is going to destroy him. He needs—”

  “It’s all right, dear.” Aunt Maggie puts a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll be here with him. I’m the best person to help him right now.”

  “I could meet you in Nashville?” Penny asks me, hopefully. “We could start on the charity.”

  It’s like a light bulb in front of my eyes. I leap from my chair to hug Penny. “Thank you.”

  Something to do. Something to keep me from falling into the pits of boredom and anx
iety about my life. Something to distract me from the inevitable hole there will be in my world without him.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I don’t leave the marina. I spend the night lying in the V-berth, staring out the hatch at the night sky, envisioning where she is now.

  On a plane. At home with her father. Somewhere. Somewhere I can’t go.

  My revenge is gone. The woman who was convincing me I didn’t need it is gone.

  Everything was for nothing.

  And I have nothing left.

  Nothing except my past—the memories, the things I would forget if I could. The good and the terrible and the pain, they’ve all left me.

  I didn’t realize what Daisy was doing to me until now. She was reopening me to all of it, all the things I’ve spent my life cutting myself off from. And I hate her for it, because the reopening hurts more than I can stand. Except . . . for some masochistic reason I almost like it, re-feeling the parts of me that hurt, remembering that the parts of me I’ve tried to forget are still there.

  I’m not an incomplete person. Just a really fucked-up person. A person the world would be better off without.

  Footsteps on the deck wake me the next morning.

  “Blake, are you there?” It’s my aunt’s voice.

  There’s no way I can ignore her. She’s going to come below deck and seek me out.

  I roll from the bed and stand at the ladder to the cockpit. “Aunt Maggie, you don’t need to be here.”

  “Sure, I do.” She holds out a cup of coffee to me. “I brought breakfast.”

  I can’t not accept coffee. “Thank you.” I come above deck, squinting against the sunlight. “Too bright,” I complain, and roll out the canopy cover to the cockpit.

  “Some sun would do your hermetic tendencies good.”

  I anchor the canopy and sit across from her. “Not today.” I sip the coffee and stare at my bare feet.

  “She left about an hour after you did.”

  I nod, but don’t look at her.

  “Just thought you might like to know,” she adds.

  “It’s good she’s gone.”

  “If you say so.” She sits back and is quiet.

  I can’t stop seeing and feeling Daisy. My skin still hums with her. My ears still ring with her cries—her ecstatic cries. How we were together . . . the intensity and the overwhelming magic that was us.

  “Will you take me for a sail?” Aunt Maggie says.

  On instinct, I check the flag pole. “There’s not much wind.”

  “You want to know a secret?” She’s far too sunny, with an orange scarf in her hair and a bright pink blouse. One glance at her too-familiar eyes, full of loving though painful memories, and I have to look away. “I don’t really care how much wind there is. I just want to spend the day on the boat with you. Will you indulge me?”

  I sit up a little straighter. “No one wants to be around me when I’m like this.”

  She moves to my side of the cockpit and I stiffen. “I want to be around you,” she says quietly. She rubs a hand up and down my arm, and something eases in me. At the same time something else tightens.

  “You don’t want to be near me,” I say, staring at the floor, wishing I could shrug her off me. I don’t deserve the comfort, but I can’t bring myself to deny it either.

  Aunt Maggie kisses my stubbled cheek. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”

  I close my eyes and whisper, “I’m just like him.”

  She stiffens next to me. “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “Blake, please—”

  I force away from her. “The anger, the manipulations, the lies, they’re just the beginning, then the loss of control, the . . .”

  The violence.

  A temper that triggers at the most innocent of things. Contempt and malice for anyone who dares detract from what I want. It’s a slippery slope. And I’m fast on it.

  “You’re not like him.” She shakes my shoulders.

  I brush her away. “Yes, I am!” I shout.

  I turn on her, and the look on her face—the one woman who is the only link I have left to the mother I lost twenty years ago.

  She has fear in her eyes, the kind I remember seeing on my mother’s face . . . when she looked at him.

  I collapse on the bench seat, away from her, and cover my face with my hands. “Go.”

  “Blake, I’m not afraid of you,” she says gently.

  “You should be.”

  A sympathy enters her eyes, not unlike what I saw from Daisy on this boat just yesterday—a lifetime ago. “I have no need to be afraid of you. You know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because you are not like him. You are your mother’s son. Not his.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  She brushes my cheek. “Yes, I do.” Her smile—my mother. She’s there. In the curve of her cheek, the bend of her lips and the softness in her eyes.

  I have the childish urge to hug her. She’d let me.

  But it doesn’t change the other urge that’s warring inside me. The one to get rid of her so I never have to see that soft look again, so the ache in my chest that never lessens will stop.

  I jerk back from her touch. “Leave.”

  “Blake . . .”

  “Go!” I stand away from her, refusing to look at her again.

  “You can’t scare me away.”

  “Oh yes, I fucking can!” I scream at her and let the full force of my fury flood my face. There’s nothing left for me. Love, compassion, those things do not belong in my life.

  And neither does she.

  This time it’s not fear that comes back at me from her expression. It’s resignation. She nods and walks across the deck.

  “You know where to find me,” she says.

  I ignore her. I don’t need her. I don’t need anyone.

  I’m half below deck when she calls to me. “The choice is yours, Blake. You are who you make yourself to be.”

  I start the engine to drown her out. There’s nothing else she or anyone can say to me that I want to hear. Once I sail away, I won’t have to see any of them.

  If only I hadn’t brought Daisy on the boat. Now I have to sail with the memories of her.

  * * *

  I laze about my apartment for days in a Netflix, take-out regimen.

  I feel sick.

  Like the stuffing has been ripped out of me. Like my insides were fileted, frozen, and fried. Like my heart is learning how to pump blood again, my brain unable to process thought at a normal rate.

  The world is a different place.

  It’s been less than a week since his garden party, and the sprinklers. Those damn sprinklers. I never should’ve set them off.

  That’s all it took to change my life.

  I’ve never been a crier. I’ve been doing my best this week to keep it that way. But there’s only so much a heart can break without leaking.

  Mom calls, and after days of only texting her, I answer. I haven’t been answering, not even for Penny. The idea of seeing her reminds me too much of him. And I was wrong about thinking I’d feel the boredom, no.

  I feel too much. I don’t want to move or do anything for how much I’m feeling—for all the things he made me feel that even without him I can’t stop. It’s like being flooded with the echoes of him all at once. Like my heart and skin are pulsing with what it meant to be with him. And it’s too overwhelming to endure all at once, but I can’t stop it any more than I can stop my lungs from taking in air.

  I agree to dinner at my parents’ house. I’ll have to talk to my father at some point about this mess and I will eventually need to go back to work.

  I arrive. When I step through the open front door, a familiar female voice mixes with my mother’s in the kitchen. It’s a soft-spoken voice, no one intimidating. I have to listen closely to hear her words, but it only takes one for me to know just who it is.

  “ . . . Blake . . .”

  She doe
sn’t say it like an accusation, but with frustration and no small amount of love.

  Penny Vandershall is in Mom’s kitchen.

  What the hell.

  I intend to storm in and demand answers about this scheme of Mom’s.

  But when I see Penny—I’d forgotten.

  “Hi, Daisy.” She’s so soft. Softer I think than any woman I’ve met. The opposite of her brother in more than just coloring—her hair blond, her eyes blue—she cools anyone’s temper with just her demeanor. There’s no possible way to be mad at her. “I’m here about the charity. Nothing else. So please be easy.”

  My shoulders give with relief and I lean against the marble countertop. “I’m glad.”

  She comes to me and offers a hug. I accept, lightly touching my cheek to hers.

  Mom hands me an iced tea, her hair coiffed and dyed as perfect as ever. I love her but have no aspirations to be like her. “Penny has been telling me about her new foundation.”

  Penny nods. “But I’m going to need your help. The fundraising is not going to be easy. I can give a big chunk myself.”

  “From your trust fund?” I ask.

  “Yes, but it won’t be enough.”

  My mother puts out a tray of cheese for us to munch on. “I’m sure we can convince Emmett to put forth something substantial.”

  “If we attach the Nowell & Nowell name to it somehow,” I add, “I bet the law firm could be persuaded as well.”

  “I do have a name planned for it already,” Penny says. “But I’m sure we could work out something.”

  “What name?” Mom asks.

  Penny stares into her glass like it will supply the answer. “I’d like to name it after my mother.”

  I put my hand over Penny’s. “Of course.”

  “Did Blake tell you?” she asks, with relief. “I wasn’t sure.”

  “Yeah,” I say with as much sincerity as I can without garnering questions from my mom. “He told me everything. I hope that’s okay.”

  “I don’t want it a secret.” Penny takes a deep breath. “I’ve talked about it with Aunt Maggie and Logan. We’d like to go public with it.”