by Sienna Blake
I would lose her.
I couldn’t lose her. I couldn’t. My skin began to itch like ants were running around beneath the surface. My palms and the backs of my knees began to sweat, panic making my heart choke and splutter.
Damn you, Noriko, for showing me a glimpse of happiness with you. Damn you for stealing it away from me.
I wouldn’t tell her that her father had taken a turn for the worse. She didn’t need to know. It’d only hurt her. He’d get better. I’d make sure he got better.
Which meant she’d stay right here.
You promised her you’d tell her if anything changed. My uninjured hand gripped the arm of my chair and I shoved that voice down.
I was doing this for us. For the greater good.
She’ll get angry that you broke your word.
She can’t get angry, I argued with myself. She’s my wife, a good wife. This is why I made this investment. So there was no obligation on my part. She knew the deal when she agreed to marry you.
I didn’t want her to be with me out of obligation. Not anymore.
I loved her.
I needed her to breathe.
Your father loved your mother. Look where that got him.
I shook my head. I wasn’t my father. And Noriko wasn’t my mother.
Still, fear crept into my bones. A pounding tension started in my temple. My eyes flashed to the liquor cabinet hidden behind a panel of mahogany. I only kept a bottle of fifty-year-old single malt Highland Park whiskey that someone gifted me a few years ago. I’d barely touched it.
I could have a drink. Just one. To take the edge off. It didn’t mean I was a drunk. I’d never be a drunk. Just one.
I stood up and walked towards the cabinet.
44
____________
Noriko
It had been a day since Drake’s confrontation with me in the dining room. I heard his limo crunching gravel. I spotted the flash of his wide shoulders from my window before he ducked into the house. His footsteps never came down the hall.
He didn’t go to his bed last night.
He was avoiding me.
Well, I couldn’t avoid him any longer. I had to tell him I loved him. Now that Papa had given me permission, now that my heart was no longer torn in two, these words—I love you, too—grew swollen and ripe in my chest, desperate to be gifted, to be shared and consumed between us.
These words would fix our marriage. They would be the mortar between these broken pieces so we could create something whole and beautiful.
I wrapped myself up in a robe, my silk negligee underneath, and went looking for him. I’d search every room in the damn house if I had to.
On the ground floor, the door to the den was open a crack, a light shining from it.
“Drake?” I pushed the door open.
My heart squeezed when I saw him sitting in an armchair in the farthest corner. The only light on was the lamp beside him, casting him in an eerie glow and creating sharp shadows across his scowling face. God, I missed him.
“What do you want?” It came out slurred, more like whaddayawan?
I blinked, my purpose here momentarily forgotten. My eyes settled on the dried blood on the back of his hand that was wrapped around a glass. “Jesus, what did you do to your hand?”
He didn’t answer.
The glass was filled with amber liquid and there was a half-empty bottle on the side table at his elbow. “Are you…drinking?”
“And Mr. Blackwell Senior?”
“He started drinking. He would fly into the most furious rage. He’d start yelling at her, breaking furniture. Eventually, he hit her. His drinking got worse. Then he started to beat her regularly.”
I shook these thoughts out of my head. Drake Blackwell was not his father.
But the way his eyes narrowed at me, dark and so hateful, made me shiver.
“Come in, wife.”
I moved inside the door. Not all the way in. There was something unnerving about the way he was watching me. Something hard and cruel.
“Have you become frightened of me?”
“No.”
“Why are you trembling like a lamb by the door? Come in. I’m not the dangerous one.”
I stepped in farther, the sharp scent of alcohol wrinkling my nose. He never drank. Because of his father… Why was he drinking now? “How many have you had? Drake?”
What demons clouded his soul tonight?
He ignored my question, his dark eyes boring into mine. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as if he was about to share with me a secret. “You put on a good show, don’t you?”
“What?”
“You come across all innocent. So fresh-faced and open-hearted. Well,” he took a large gulp of his drink, “we both know better, don’t we?”
Shit. Had there been another newspaper article? Another accusation against me? “I already told you, nothing is going on between Jared Wright and me.”
He let out snort. “Jared Wright is a manipulative megalomaniac, but at least he doesn’t hide who he is.”
I stared at my husband, my head spinning, my breath going shallow. I had come here to confess my love. To promise that we could make our marriage work. To apologize for being distant.
How had this night gone so wrong?
Why was Drake being hateful? What’d happened? Had I pushed him away so much that our bond was broken? Was everything lost?
“Drake, please talk to me.”
“Let’s toast.” Drake thrust his glass in the air, liquid splashing out over the rim. “To our sham of a marriage.”
I gasped. “Drake—”
“To a wife who thinks she can fool her husband. And a husband who will never be good enough for her.” He threw back his drink, gulping it all down and finishing it off with a loud smack of his lips before wiping his mouth with the back of his uninjured hand.
Coldness sank into my bones. I couldn’t stay here. Not while he was like this. Not when every word he was saying tore pieces off me. When he refused to explain why his love had turned to hate.
“I won’t stand here and listen to you carry on until you say something you’ll regret. You’re drunk.”
“And you’re a cold-hearted bitch.”
His words pierced my heart, tearing holes in it. I tried not to react. I failed, tears already pricking the backs of my lids.
How did we get here? Was it only three weeks ago that we spent that perfect day in Monet’s garden? How did we get this hazy, bogged down in the chaos? Why couldn’t we raise ourselves up to see the bigger picture?
I turned, my movements wooden, my mind whirring, walking away before I crumbled to ash.
“That’s it,” he called after me, his voice as hard and bitter as underripe fruit. “Leave. You were going to anyway.”
I halted, gasping.
He knew.
He knew my secret.
I didn’t have the strength to turn around and defend myself. I had no excuse. I was going to leave him. Was.
Until today.
Now he’d never believe me.
I woke late the next morning with swollen eyes from crying myself to sleep. This rift between Drake and me was my fault. I had been taking those pills. I had been planning to leave Drake after one year.
I didn’t plan on falling in love with him.
By the afternoon the need to talk to my father again was like an itch I couldn’t scratch.
I needed to talk to someone about Drake. About how to fix things between us. Papa would know what to do. He always knew what to do.
This time my sister picked up the phone.
“Tatsumi, it’s me,” I said in Japanese.
“Oh, Noriko,” my sister said, her voice tight and strained.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
My sister broke the silence with a sob. “It’s Papa.”
“What happened?” I said, my voice getting louder. “Tell me.”
“His surgery…” she m
anaged out between cries. “There were…”
“He’s okay now, right? Right?”
By now my sister was crying so hard she couldn’t speak.
No. My father had to be fine. I’d know it in my heart if there was something wrong. Drake would have told me if there was something wrong. He promised.
“Where’s Papa? Put him on the phone.”
I heard a crackling and fumbling on the other end. My aunt’s voice came on. “Noriko? It’s Rumi. I’m sorry to have to tell you this…”
Stop it. Stop right there.
I heard my sister crying in the background, the noise reaching into my heart and slicing it into pieces with every sound.
“There were complications with your father’s surgery,” my aunt continued, her voice quiet and solemn. “I’m so sorry, little butterfly. He may not have long. You have to come home.”
45
____________
Drake
Tonight she was waiting for me in my bedroom. Before I had even closed the door behind me, her voice tremored over my name.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, my stomach already sinking under the weight of premonition.
“I need to go back to Japan.”
Fuck. “No,” I said, a little too quickly.
She bit her lip to keep it from trembling. I hated that she was close to tears. Her pain was my pain. I couldn’t let her emotions manipulate me. My mother used to use tears.
Only the weak allowed themselves to be manipulated. And Drake Blackwell was not a weak man.
I steeled myself, looking at something over her shoulder so she remained just out of focus.
“Drake, my father…my father is dying. I need to go back.”
She knew. It was over. A bomb detonated in my stomach, shrapnel and fire ripping through me. This would ruin everything. Everything.
“How do you know that?” I asked, deflecting, even as I felt the ground underneath my feet shaking.
She ignored my question. “You’ll let me go back, won’t you?”
“You called them behind my back even after I told you not to. How did you get hold of a phone?”
“My father is dying and all you can say−”
“My father is dead. Fathers die.”
The gasp that ripped from her mouth felt like it had torn off me. “You can’t be this cruel. Please, let me go. I need to say goodbye.”
She’s going to leave me. She wants to leave me.
“I told you I was keeping an eye on things back in Japan. I told you I’d take care of it.”
“You lied,” she yelled. “My father is dying and you said nothing to me.”
“I was trying to protect you!”
“By keeping it from me? When would you have told me? After the funeral?”
If I let her leave, she will never return.
If I lose her, I will die.
I. Will. Die.
Like he did. Just like him. You’re just like him. Like father, like son.
This all-too familiar voice rose unbidden this time, choking me, throbbing in my ears like my heartbeat, rattling in my brain until I thought I would go mad.
I felt my body ice up in defense until the blood froze over in my veins and my words came out like frost. “I was trying to figure out how to break the news to you.”
“You’re lying. You’re lying to me.” Her arms thrashed out in the air like she was trying to punch my shadow, her voice a mere screech. “You don’t want me to go anywhere or talk to anyone.”
“What garbage.”
“You won’t let me out of this house. You won’t let me have friends. I’m a prisoner here. A fucking prisoner.”
“Calm down, Noriko.”
“Calm down? Calm the fuck down?” She grabbed a vase and threw it at me, a scream tearing from her lungs. “Is this calm enough for you, you son of a bitch?”
It was a wild shot. I moved my head to the side and it flew right past me. It had zero chance of hitting me. But when the vase smashed against the wall, it buried the rest of the emotions left within me. I was now totally cold. I glared at Noriko shaking like a leaf, her mouth distorting into an ugly clownish sneer.
“Please,” she threw herself at my feet. “Let me see him. Please, I’m begging you.”
“No.”
“You can’t do this.” She clawed at my pant leg, her voice filled with disbelief. “You have to let me say goodbye to my father.” The tears streaming down her cheeks were cutting through my shields.
I had to stay strong. I had to hold us together. If I gave in to her, we crumbled.
I crumbled.
I wrapped more steel around my heart until I was stiff and straight from it. My voice was harder to keep steady. “Stay.”
Her tears sparkled with fury, with hatred. She launched herself back onto her feet, backing away from me. “Fuck you. I’m going anyway.”
I’m going anyway.
Something inside me cracked beneath my fortress walls. Panic overtook all thought.
I could not let her leave me.
I grabbed her arm and yanked her flush against my body. Even furious at her, my body burst into flames at her nearness. My gaze dropped to her lips, parted and pink, breath heaving. God, it felt like forever since I’d kissed her lips. My wife. My lips. I leaned in to take them.
Her palm smacked against my cheek, sharp pain radiating through my face. “Let go of me, you monster.”
“Monster? Monster?” I grabbed her with both hands and shook her.
“You’re a selfish, heartless beast.” She beat my chest, emphasizing each hateful word.
The memory of her betrayal—her birth control pills—flooded my body with fury. “And you’re a lying, manipulative bitch. I guess we deserve each other.”
She screamed in my face and tried to push me away. I was much stronger than she was. I tightened my grip until she was wincing in pain.
A part of me was screaming, stop it, you’re hurting her!
Part of me wanted to hurt her for all the pain she had caused me. An eye for an eye. A strip of your heart for all of the pieces you have torn off mine.
The biggest part of me was terrified—so terrified I could barely think. All I could hear in my head was her threat.
I’m going anyway.
I’m going anyway.
I’m going anyway.
She was going to leave me. She couldn’t fucking leave me.
I pulled her across the floor, out of my room and towards her bedroom, ignoring her kicking and screaming for me to let go of her, ignoring her feeble attempts to grab onto the doorframe. Fear bubbled across my skin in a simmer, making my brain full of cotton.
She was going to leave me.
She couldn’t leave me. I wouldn’t let her. I just needed to keep her here until I could fix this.
I thrust her into her bedroom. She backed away from me, her eyes wild, glancing all around her.
I took the small key from the inside of her lock. “You give me no choice.” I shut the door behind me and locked it, my heart lurching into my throat as her little body slammed against the other side of it.
The door vibrated as I leaned my palm against it, clutching the door without purchase, a raw, silent sob scraping itself around the insides of my chest at her screams of anguish. Each heartbeat of mine alternated between two thoughts.
You hurt me, too, Noriko.
And,
I can’t lose you.
46
____________
Noriko
The sun sank beneath the edge of the Earth, sucking all its light back from between the bars of my prison.
It’d been three days since I’d been locked in my bedroom.
Loretta had been coming in daily with my meals on silver trays, taking away the previous untouched tray, chastising me for not eating.
I wasn’t hungry.
I wasn’t cold.
I wasn’t anything.
I stared blankly at the far wall as I lay i
n my sheets.
I hadn’t been able to cry all day.
There was so much pain in my body that I couldn’t tell the difference anymore between pain and no pain.
They say it’s a fine line between love and hate. I had no more lines, the two sides bled into each other.
I hated him
I loved him.
I hated that I loved him.
47
____________
Drake
I walked the lonely path from the top of the stairs to my bedroom. Every time I did I had to pass Noriko’s door. As I stepped closer, my heart rate heightened and my palms grew sweaty.
I couldn’t walk past without stopping. The space around her door was like quicksand, dragging at my heels and slowing my steps until I was forced to stop completely, staring at the pale decorative door.
I lifted up a hand and touched the cool surface. Somewhere behind this thin separation of wood was the chalice of my remorse. If I could see her. If I could talk to her…
What would I say?
I said nothing. Instead I grasped onto any sounds of life. Sometimes I heard the rustle of sheets as she shifted in bed. Sometimes I heard her crying. I ran the tips of my fingers along the painted wood and gripped the key in my other hand, leaving marks in my palm.
Eventually, I let my fingers fall and continued my journey, alone, except for all my guilt slung around my shoulders like chains of iron.
I was like a wraith. Functioning during the day, working myself longer hours than ever so I didn’t have to go home and face…her.
To face…what I’d done.
I couldn’t let her out yet.
Because I didn’t know how to force us back together. I didn’t trust her not to find a way to leave me, to disappear back to Japan.
She wasn’t theirs anymore. She was mine. I needed her more than they did. I couldn’t live without her.
If you save a life, you’re responsible for it.
She saved me. She was responsible for me.
Today as I stopped by her bedroom I heard two voices. I pressed my ear to the door, straining to hear.
“Did you make all these?” I recognized Loretta’s voice.
“Yes.” My heart tugged at the sound of Noriko’s voice.
