by Hanna Peach
Then I’d be chained to you, Carter. I’d just be swapping one prison for another. And Drake would remain unpunished. My body grew cold.
Carter, the coward, was studying my face. So I repressed my annoyance and I smiled as an idea formed. All wasn’t lost. “You’re right, darling. Of course, you’re right. What would I do without you? Come for me. Come take me away.
“Just let me know the next time he’s away on business.”
He moved in to kiss me again, but I stopped him with a hand on his lips. “But I don’t have any way to call you. Drake won’t let me have a cell and the only phone line in the house is in his office, which he keeps locked.”
“Here.” He pulled a small black mobile from his pocket. “Have mine.”
“But you−”
“I’ll buy another one and I’ll text you on this phone so you have my new number. Just don’t let him see it.”
“I won’t. Oh, Carter. Are you really going to come for me when I call?”
“Of course I’ll come for you.”
“Aren’t you scared of him? What if…what if one of his staff sees us?”
“Let me worry about that. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” I lied. “Now go. It’s late.”
I left one last kiss on his lips before pushing him out my door into the corridor for him to find his way out as he usually did at the end of our session.
As soon as my door shut I sagged against it, leaning my body and forehead on the cool smooth surface as the life drained from my limbs. I remained for a moment, repressing the urge to throw up as the memory of his body slid inside me.
I needed a shower. I pushed up off the door and walked to my bedroom. I opened my door and my eyes fell upon the man in my room.
I inhaled sharply. Keir sat on the edge of my bed watching me with his beautiful dark eyes, his hands folded in front of him, his elbows on his knees. I closed my bedroom door behind me, the icy breeze coming in from my open window making me shiver.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” I said. I never heard him come in anymore. “How long have you been here?”
“Not long. Aren’t you glad to see me?”
“Of course I am.”
He stood, his face stern and his gaze steady. “No hug for me? No kiss?”
“I just really need a shower.” I needed to wash Carter off me. I walked towards my bathroom. I didn’t hear Keir following me until it was too late.
Just inside my marble bathroom I spotted him behind me in the mirror. He grabbed me by the arm and spun me to face him. He bent down and inhaled deeply. My stomach dropped. I pushed him back and he let go of me.
His gaze narrowed in on me, pinning me to the spot. “You smell like sex.”
I swallowed. “You know I have a husband.”
“I know you haven’t slept with your husband in three months. And besides, Drake isn’t home during the day…” I saw the moment when he realized. “Carter.”
Shit.
“Why did you sleep with him?”
“I didn’t enjoy it.”
“Why did you do it?”
“He’s in love with me. You said so yourself. He can help me.”
“So you’re using him?”
“Don’t feel sorry for him. He’s not innocent in all of this. He’s the one in love with a married woman, fucking a married woman.” I gasped and snapped my mouth shut. I could have been describing Keir.
“What are you doing, Noriko?”
“I can get Carter to help me escape this marriage.”
“You can escape. Just leave. Walk out the side gate. You have the pin code.”
I shook my head. “It’s not enough. Drake needs to pay. Carter’s going to kill him for me.”
His face contorted with horror. “You can’t be serious.”
“Drake needs to pay for what he did to you, to us. His death will mean justice. And my freedom.”
“I don’t believe what I’m hearing.”
I slipped my arms around him, but he made no motion to hold me. “I’m doing this for us.”
“No.” He pulled himself from my grasp and I cried out. It was the first time that he had ever pulled away from me. “Don’t you dare say that you’re doing this for us.”
“But I am.”
“I don’t want you to do any of this.”
“When he dies then I’m freed forever. You can come back. We can be together. Always. You and me. You and me, Keir.”
“At what cost?”
“There’s no cost. I’m free. Drake gets what he deserves.”
“There’s always a cost.”
“Then I don’t care about the cost.”
“You will.”
The blood seemed to clot in my veins. I felt Keir slipping through my fingers. I was losing him. I needed to bring him back. I needed to bring him back to me.
I stepped closer to him and slipped my arms around his waist, his body warm like the sun. He was my sun. My only sun. “Please, we only have so little time together. I don’t want to fight.”
“I don’t want to fight either.”
“Then let’s not.”
“Promise me you won’t do go through with it.”
I can’t promise you that. I leaned up to kiss him, but he lifted his chin so his mouth was out of my reach.
“Promise me.”
I hated this. But he didn’t understand. He couldn’t free me. So I had to do it myself.
“I promise,” I lied. I pushed more guilt into this little box inside me. It was getting so full, it soon wouldn’t close. “I love you, Keir. I’ll never love anyone but you.”
“I know. I love you too.”
He brushed the hair from my cheeks and I leaned into him. His touch soothed me. It was the only thing that calmed this raging vortex inside.
He pressed a kiss to my forehead. “Now. Go have a shower.”
I let go of him and he stepped back to lean against the wall. I unzipped my skirt and let it fall to the ground, conscious of his eyes on me. I felt myself heating up the way I always did when he was around.
“Maybe you want to join me?” I unbuttoned my blouse and shrugged it off.
I heard Keir inhale. I remembered too late that I had bruises across my body.
“What the hell happened to you?”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. Did Drake do this? Carter?”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s all part of the plan.”
He didn’t say anything. He just stood there. I tried to brush it off − the way he was looking at me.
I stepped into the shower and turned on the water. “So are you going to join me?”
“No.”
“Will you be here when I get out?” I asked him over my shoulder.
“Just…have a shower.” He started to back away towards the door. Even through the glass shower divider, which was starting to mist up from steam, I could see that his face was crumpled with disappointment.
My stomach twisted. “Where are you going?”
“I have to go.”
“Tell me you’re not mad at me.”
He paused at the door of my ensuite. “I don’t know who you are anymore.” Then he disappeared out of sight.
“Come back.” I stepped out of the shower, not bothering to turn it off. I grabbed my towel, cringing as I wrapped it around my bruised torso, and ran out after him.
But my bedroom was empty. He was already gone, the wind blowing my curtains into the room like a ghost. Gone.
I started to hyperventilate. The room spun around me.
Sunset.
Sun set.
I’ve lost him. I lost him. He’ll never come back.
No. No no no. I shoved all those thoughts away. Keir loves me. He loves me. He’ll always be here for me. He said so.
He said so.
I’ll make him understand. Once I’m free I’ll make him understand. He’ll realize that it was all worth it. He’ll forgive me
.
He’ll forgive me.
39
“Carter,” I whispered into the receiver.
“Hello, darling.”
“Drake is going out of town this evening. Can you come tonight?”
“Of course, I can.”
“The security guards change shifts at 1 a.m. You should have a time frame of a few minutes when the old and new guard stand around and talk. Neither of them should be watching the monitors. Come in through the staff gate then. But wear something hooded and keep your face down and away from the camera just in case. Even if they do see you they’ll just think you’re staff because you have a pin code. Make your way around the house and to the back terrace near the breakfast kitchen. You know the one?”
“Yes.”
“One a.m. I’ll be waiting there for you.”
I gave him Keir’s old staff pin code. Apparently nobody deemed it necessary to remove it from the gate security system.
Then I hung up.
40
My fingers shook as I made the familiar folds on the square of blood-red paper. I folded a face and beak. Then his tail appeared. Finally I gave him wings so he could fly.
Fly little bird, fly.
There. It was finished. One thousand paper cranes.
I placed my little bird in the very center of the other nine hundred and ninety-nine cranes. I closed my eyes and made my wish.
* * *
Drake and I didn’t eat together anymore. Even if he was home, he ate earlier or later than I did or took his meals in his room. I never saw him when I had dinner, but sometimes I could smell the lingering spice of his aftershave in the dining room, letting me know he had been there. He did it deliberately, I guessed, so he didn’t have to face me and his own guilt.
Tonight I waited in my living area in a chair by the door to the hallway. I wore a kimono, black with pale blue cranes on it, and thin black leggings on underneath. I sat very still. So still that if you saw me you could mistake me for dead; open lifeless staring eyes, hands folded in my lap, my chest barely moving as I breathed in and out automatically.
I had become very good at waiting. It was all I did these days.
I didn’t mind. In the silence I could go wherever I wanted. I let my mind fly away into happier times with Keir, his mouth on mine, his hands holding me to him, a complete dissolving of where I ended and where he began, and the exhilarating feeling that I was truly alive. Even though my body was trapped in Blackwell Manor, with Keir my soul had been free.
Now everything of me was stuck here, my soul, my heart, decaying, wasting away like a precious stargazer in a forgotten garden, vines and weeds growing around her, threatening to choke her and pull her down with the weight of them. Without her loving gardener to tend to her, no one loved her.
I could not let her die.
I heard footsteps, breaking me out of my head and snapping me back into my body. I stood quietly and pressed my ear to the door.
Drake was coming down the hallway from the stairs. I could tell it was him by the heaviness of his footsteps. None of the staff stomped around the manor so arrogantly like he did. I listened as he approached.
His footsteps stopped right outside my door. I held my breath and I stared at the door handle. There we were. Husband and wife standing on either side of this divider like we had been for so long.
He could open it. But I knew he wouldn’t. He stopped by my room every night. But he always walked past without coming in.
It could be my imagination, it was probably my imagination, but I swore I heard him sighing. His footsteps started up again and they faded as he continued on to his room. I heard the distant sound of his door opening. Then it shut.
I turned my head and watched the clock until it was quarter to 1 a.m.
Time to go. Time to fly.
Drake’s living room was dark and empty. But a dim light shone from under his bedroom door. He was still awake. I curled my bare toes into the soft carpet as I crept towards it.
Was I really doing this?
I was really doing this.
My heart beat solidly in my ears as I lifted my hand up to press down the handle and push open the door. Drake was sitting up against the head of his large black king-sized bed. He froze when he saw me. I watched him struggle to swallow, the only sign of emotion on an otherwise cold face.
“Come to torture me again?” he said, his voice thick with bitterness.
“I don’t want to fight.”
He lowered the papers in his hands and pulled off his black-rimmed reading glasses, setting them on the bedside table. “What do you want then?”
“Just to talk.”
“Talk. Talk about what?”
“Anything. It’s been a long time since we just…talked.”
“You just want to talk?”
“Yes.” I lifted up my hands in surrender. “No tricks. I just want to talk.”
I watched him try to hide the feelings swirling around his features, feelings that I probably understood better than he did. In amidst the suspicion and the hurt I had caused him, lay a sea of guilt, and amongst that, a spark of hope. “Okay, let’s talk.”
“Can I sit?” I indicated the bed.
He nodded.
I walked over and he made room for me. I sat on the edge of the bed, tucking my knee up under my chin. The air between us trembled with tension, like a rubber band stretched tight.
Where would we even start?
I looked down at his papers covered with lines and lines of black ink, marked with red pen and his undeniable scrawl in the margins. “Is that work?” I asked.
“It’s always work.”
“Is it for that takeover you were working on?”
“No. That project was finalized a few weeks ago. I mean, there’s still a few minor ends to tie up, but I have people working on that.”
“Oh. Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
“What are you working on now?”
“It’s a big government contract we’re thinking of applying for. I’m just reading through the job terms and conditions now.”
“Sounds interesting.”
He settled back on his pillow, his body starting to relax. “It’s not really. Contracts are always over-written drivel by a bunch of stuffy-suited lawyers trying to cover their asses while using big words to show off how smart they are. ”
“Oh.”
“Luckily I have my own group of stuffy-suited lawyers, but I still like to read through the contracts. I am the one signing it, after all.”
“Drake, do you…like what you do?”
“Do I like…?” To my surprise, he began to laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“You know, in all my years, all the hundreds of interviews I’ve done, no one has ever asked me that question. They all want to know what is the secret to my success or how I feel about my success. They want to know what my tips are for other business-owners or what my plans for expansion are…but no one has ever asked me if I like what I do.”
“So, do you?”
“I…I don’t know.”
I made a humming noise under my breath. “If it was your father’s company and it was handed to you when he died, I guess you felt you had no choice but to continue.”
As he stared I saw his suspicion fall away and a new kind of hurt appeared. “You just see me so effortlessly, don’t you?”
“I guess.”
I saw him. I saw everyone. But no one really saw me back. No one except my father. And Keir.
“Oh, Riko,” he breathed, “I’ve missed you.”
“You’ve barely looked at me in months. You haven’t touched me since…” I was surprised to find my throat filling with the bitter taste of rejection.
“At first I was…angry. Hurt. Then Carter said I should leave you alone while he took you through therapy. He said that my being around you might cause you to regress.”
Carter never told me that. I thought Dr
ake was avoiding me to avoid his guilt.
Are we hiding things, Dr. Grayson? Keeping my husband and me apart so you could have me all to yourself? You’re not so innocent.
He let out a long sigh. “It feels good to tell you all these things. I used to be able to tell you everything.”
I could never tell you anything.
“The last few months have been hell for me,” he said. “Not being able to find my usual peace with you.”
“You poor thing,” I said, my voice laced with hatred. In true Drake fashion he didn’t notice.
“I need to talk to you about that night,” he said, his eyes taking on a tortured look. “About what happened.”
I glanced at the clock on his bedside table. It was almost 1 a.m. “Maybe another time.”
“Carter said that bringing Keir up would be too difficult for you. He said I shouldn’t talk to you about it until you were ready. But it’s like a weight around my neck.”
“I don’t want to hear it.” The familiar chilly hands of darkness began to claw at me.
Blood seeping out−
“You were my wife, my savior, the only one who knew me. I just…I lost control.”
“Enough.”
“I was just so angry. He was taking you away from me.”
Fly away, little bird.
He grabbed my arm before I could escape. “I just wanted him to see what he was doing was wrong.”
“Let go of me.”
His wild eyes bored into mine. “You have to forgive me.”
“Never. I’ll never forgive you.” Never. Never never.
“I never meant to shove him that hard.”
“Stop it.”
“When he hit his head−”
“Don’t say it!” I shrieked.
“I didn’t mean to kill him.”
41
I shook my head as the memory came flooding back, filling up all the truths I tried to ignore.
Red made a sunset.
A sunset.
Sunset.
Wake up, little bird. Wake up.
Little bird won’t wake.
My sun set.
