The Square (Shape of Love Book 2)

by JA Huss

  But fuck it.

  Alec’s kid, right?

  And we’re a team. So…

  I just know what it’s like to be left behind without a second thought and I made myself a promise many years ago that I’d never do that to a kid. Ever.

  That was the whole reason I took to Christine in the first place. Someone bailed on her just like someone bailed on me and it’s not right.

  “I’ll do that,” Russell murmurs.

  And when I reach for the door of the limo, I look back at the house. The seemingly perfect happily ever after that Eliza is living here. And I get it. I do.

  This is something Christine and I never had but always wanted.

  That has to be what’s eating at her. That has to be why she’s acting this way.

  I tell myself that as I open the car door to find Christine’s shattered emotions staring up at me.

  “Scoot over,” I say, motioning her to take the middle between Alec and me.

  But she doesn’t. And that’s how I know I’ve got it all wrong. I’m missing too many pieces. This puzzle hasn’t been solved.

  She gets up and takes the seat across from us.

  When I get in, we’re a triangle all right. Each of us taking one point in the shape of our love in the back seat of this limo. But it feels wrong in this moment. Feels false. Because there’s more to us now than there was before. A new shape has formed.

  Some kind of square that includes Eliza and her daughter.

  Three is hard enough to maintain in a relationship. Four… just doesn’t happen. And five?

  We’re fucking doomed.

  But that’s not it either. Not all of it, anyway.

  Christine is not missing her childhood or comparing it to the one Alec’s daughter is living out. She’s not worried about Eliza and Andra coming between us.

  It’s something worse.

  Something much, much worse.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT - CHRISTINE

  Never did I ever think that I’d have to confront these feelings again. I thought it was over. Convinced myself it was finished. That I’d moved on from that dark place I found myself in two and a half years ago. Gotten over it. Past it. Came out the other end stronger, more resilient, better than I was before.

  But it was all lies.

  I never got over it. I never moved past it.

  I’m stuck inside it still. Every raw emotion that kept me up at night, crying—no, sobbing—uncontrollably, is back.

  Like it just happened yesterday. Like it just happened today. I’m in that limo with Alec again as he took me home.

  Home.

  What fucking home?

  That place wasn’t my home. I have no goddamn home.

  I look up, but not at Danny. I look up to find Alec staring at me. His mouth a tight line. His eyes sad. He looks like shit. The fucking beard, for one. So unlike him. He’s pale too. Like he hasn’t seen the sun in decades. That golden-boy persona has gone missing.

  And you know what? This makes me happy.

  So I say, “You deserve this,” my voice low. So the words come out as a whisper.

  “What?” Danny says, thoroughly confused. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  But Alec doesn’t answer him. Doesn’t even look at him. He just stares at me with that sad, defeated face. That same face he wore when he drove me home. He nods and says, “I know.”

  “You know what?” Danny says, almost shouting. “Someone fill me in. Please.”

  “Christine was—”

  “Oh, fuck you,” I sneer, cutting him off. “You do not get to start this story with my fucking name.”

  Alec sighs. He looks weary and weak. So unlike him. But that was me, two and a half years ago. And once again I find myself feeling happy about that. We’ve switched places. I’m the strong one this time. I’m the one in control. I’m the one with the upper hand and he’s the one at my mercy.

  I don’t think I’ve ever hated Alec. Even back then when all this shit was going down I didn’t hate him. I loved him so much. So fucking much it hurt. The love I felt back then was killing me. Eating me up from the inside out.

  I never understood heartbreak until then. I never knew that love could hurt so much. Never thought that I, Christine Keene, would ever experience emotions so charged, so undeniable, so consuming that I couldn’t eat. Or talk. Or hell, even get out of bed.

  But I did. I felt those things.

  And then it was all ripped away in an instant. One minute I knew what love was and then the next… the next moment changed me forever.

  “Please,” Alec says, pleading with me. “Let me say something.”

  I turn away from him, shaking my head. “No. You just need to sit there and shut up.” And then I look at Danny. I look at Danny and a rush of air leaves me. The hate, and anger, and sadness all spill out with my breath. And I say… I say, “Just listen. Just let me tell it my way, OK? Give me that one chance, will you?”

  “Of course,” Danny says. He gets up, takes one step, and then he’s in the seat next to me, his arm around me. Being the rock—no, the mountain—he always has been.

  And I hate myself in this moment. Because I gave him up for us. This stupid fucking triangle. And why? For what?

  I lost.

  I thought we could work. I really did. I thought the three of us were indestructible. So when Alec and I decided to give Danny that ultimatum, we thought he’d cave. And when he didn’t, we thought it was temporary. He’d be back. And when that didn’t happen either, we mistook our infatuation for something else. We dared to dream without Danny. We dared to move on.

  And this is what happened…

  “Why are you smiling so big, nunu?” Alec is touching my face with both hands. His palms are cool and comforting, his amber eyes sparkling with mischief, like always. But with something else too. He loves me, I realize. And I love him back.

  So much. I love him so much that I get this… this sick feeling inside my gut when he looks at me this way. Or when I just think about him. I love him so much my heart hurts every time I gaze up at his face. Or his fingers gently caress my arm.

  I don’t know what to do with this love. I don’t know how to process it.

  I love Danny this way too, but Danny is gone now. He’ll be back. I know that much. But my love for him, that all-encompassing passion that ruled my life ever since we met that day I poked the blue beetle… it’s died a little. Not died, maybe. It’s just been tempered by the new love I feel for Alec.

  I have some guilt about that, but not much. Because Danny is part of this love. He’s not here now but he will be once I call him and tell him.

  I almost did that yesterday when I got the news. I almost told him first but I stopped myself. Because there’s this rational part of me that knows how Danny would react.

  Oh, he’d get over it. I’m sure. But still.

  “I’m pregnant,” I say, still smiling up at Alec.

  And he does everything I expected. His reaction is everything I could’ve hoped for. Elation. Happiness. And a litany of rhetorical questions like, “What? No? Yes? Oh, my God! I’m gonna be a father? You’re having my baby?” And of course… “I love you, Christine.”

  We dressed up. We went out. We had dinner, and we danced.

  We celebrated.

  And of course, we talked about Danny. We would call him… eventually. Not tonight. Tonight was ours. But that call would happen, and he’d…

  Did we really think he’d be happy?

  That night we did. We really did.

  But everything is different the next morning, isn’t it?

  So we didn’t make that call even though Danny was the only other person I wanted to tell. He was the only thing missing in my life.

  “Let’s just wait, nunu,” was Alec’s reply the next day when I brought it up.

  “But Danny loves kids,” I said. “And he loves us.”

  “He loves you, yes,” Alec replied. “But… I’m not sure how he’d
feel about me as a father.”

  Which I acknowledged. Alec isn’t really father material. I was actually counting on that to win Danny over. I’d plead with him to come take care of me. Come be the perfect father that Alec never could be.

  And it’s not even like Alec objected. This was just a fact we all knew. Each of us fulfills a role in this triangle. Each of us has a place. We knew how to share.

  But as the weeks went on, I think we both realized that Danny was never going to buy into this idea. That Danny wanted me. And if there was a child, and if there was a relationship to be forged from it, then that relationship would be three people, yes. But not four.

  It was never going to work.

  I think this is why Alec continued his relationship with Eliza. I really do.

  Not to hurt me, though he did. Not to get her pregnant, though he did.

  This baby was his, but it wasn’t his, not really.

  It was mine and I belonged to Danny first, not him.

  So we didn’t call him.

  Sometimes it makes sense.

  It does.

  I get it.

  And then other times it’s insanity.

  It is insanity. The whole fucking thing from top to bottom is insane.

  But love does that to people. It makes them irrational, and stupid, and impulsive.

  I turn to look at Danny in the limo. He’s staring straight ahead. Processing. “But you… you don’t have a baby.”

  I shake my head, trying to stop the tears, but failing. “No, I don’t.”

  And there’s only three way this ends, right? He’s running this trio of possibilities through his head right now.

  One. I gave it up. But he discards that immediately because I would never do that to my child. Ever. Someone did that to me once. And him. And not in the loving way, either. Not at birth, but later. After years of neglect, and violence, and drugs, and foster homes.

  Two. I had an abortion. He thinks about this a little longer, but then finally says, “No. You didn’t get rid of it.”

  I start crying. Because no, I didn’t get rid of it.

  He doesn’t even think about the final option. Just reaches round with his other arm and hugs me tight. Then tighter. Then he buries his face into my hair and says, “Oh, Christine.”

  And I blurt, through tears and sobs, and snot running out of my nose, “I lost it, Danny. I lost it.”

  Nothing prepared me for the feelings that came after. Nothing could. I’d never lost something so wanted. Even when Danny walked out I always knew he’d be back. It was never final. It was just… a cooling-off period. Time to consider things and maybe learn a few things about ourselves and this new kind of love we were inventing. We needed space to remember who and what we were to each other. A few months to dream about what we could be if we tried hard enough.

  And then we’d be back together. Better than ever. Stronger, more committed, more in love.

  Except it didn’t happen that way.

  Alec and I grew apart in those weeks following my miscarriage. I was in bed. Recovering at first. I was in the second trimester. Almost five months when the miscarriage happened. So many hormones in my body at the time.

  Then… nothing. They were all gone.

  And we’d already bought a bassinet and a crib. We knew it was a girl. I’d had an ultrasound just one week prior to the miscarriage with no detected issues. ‘Incompetent cervix’ was the term they told me afterward.

  So crazy how fast things can go wrong.

  So we were decorating things in pink and white. Discussing names. All the things couples do when they’re expecting.

  And then we weren’t.

  It’s like… we went from having so much to say to having nothing to talk about at all.

  We were strangers. Which was something we never were before. We were never strangers. We were always Alec, Christine, and Danny.

  So I knew that was why. Because everything had to have a reason. There had to be a reason for this, right?

  And there was. It was because we didn’t include Danny. We let him walk out. We kept this secret from him when he deserved to be there.

  I didn’t get out of bed for almost a week. And then I stopped eating. And then I just gave up. I wanted to call Danny, tell him everything. Beg him to come get me and take me back. Take me home. My real home. Which was anywhere he was. With him, I guess. That was all I wanted. To be with Danny.

  Alec didn’t know what to do.

  He came back less. He stayed out later. He was gone more.

  And then… so was I.

  We were different. For now. And I was OK with that. At least I thought I was.

  I went back to work. Took assignments—hell, started making my own assignments. Started running my own jobs.

  The space we needed turned into distance over the next couple months.

  But I was not in bed, I was sort of eating. And I was killing people.

  I was almost normal again, I rationalized.

  This was just who I was now. Christine, the assassin.

  I was fine. Or at least, I was alive.

  I was OK until I found out Eliza got pregnant.

  And then I wasn’t.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE - ALEC

  As I sit here, watching Danny hold Christine, a few things occur to me.

  I should be pissed. She tried to kill me. She took up with my little brother, and for God knows how long plotted to bring my universe to an end.

  Not only that, she did all this while still professing her love for me and standing by my side, and working with me, and doing terrible, violent things on my behalf even though I could have had anyone else do them instead. Because she said she wanted to. She is a very, very good liar, indeed. I have taught her exceedingly well.

  Also, in the process of doing all those things to plot her revenge on me, something went horribly wrong and she was very nearly killed. But my girl is hard to kill and so instead, her fall just killed the parts of her memory that reminded her she hated me. Or so it would seem.

  I continue to have many unanswered questions, but all roads lead back to my baby brother, who must be held to account for upending all of our lives so. And as soon as I can get a shave and some proper clothes, I’m going to visit with him and see to it that he is properly reprimanded. For what will be the last time.

  But… I also consider that Christine came looking for me. Christine did. Not Danny. Not anyone else. Christine. And in so seeking, she conscripted the service of the one person on the planet I know she would least wish to ask help of. And she succeeded. She got me free.

  And then I met my daughter for the first time. A tiny, female, 3-D printing of myself. Well, not only myself, of course. But in the brief moment I had with the child, there could be no mistake that she is a van den Berg. There is something resolute in her even now and even on just a brief glance.

  Eish. It’s been a fokken day, man.

  And all those tumbling, rumbling thoughts lead me to one logical realization:

  It’s my fault.

  It’s not Lars’. Or Christine’s. Or Eliza’s. Or Danny’s. Or anyone else’s culpability that has created this mess. It is my own set of defects that has caused this to be. It is my passel of imperfections that has resulted in the woman I love sitting in the back of a car, being held by the man I love, and mourning the loss of something so much greater than the sum of its parts.

  I am responsible.

  Responsibility is the burden of power. I have worked hard to possess power my whole life, and it is fitting that I must now bear the burden. Pride and ego are not in short supply for me, but neither is the tug I feel in my heart when I look at them. And that tug is strong enough to rip the pride and ego that would otherwise prevent me from speaking, right out of my chest.

  “Christine…”

  She buries her face into Danny and shakes her head. A muffled, “Leave me alone,” makes its way to my ear. Danny looks at me with a be fucking careful look. I will
be, Danny. I am.

  “I will. I will leave you alone, if that’s what you want. But as long as we’re in this car together, I feel like I should say a couple of things. And then, when we get where we’re headed, I can disappear and be gone for good. If that’s what you want.”

  “I don’t know if that’s what I want,” she mumbles out. “I don’t fucking know.”

  “I understand. I very much understand not knowing what you want. You know… when I woke up this last time—in that place—I actually did think I was dead. You know how I feel about death—”

  “Like you can’t be killed because you are death or some stupid bullshit.” Her head remains buried in Danny’s chest.

  I smile. I can’t help it. “That’s right. It is stupid bullshit. But I know that. You know I know that, right?” She pulls her face up just enough to regard me. I raise my brows and nod. “I do. I know it’s something I tell myself so that I won’t have to feel… whatever it is people feel. Because, believe it or not, I am also aware that I am a person.”

  “I don’t believe it. People don’t act like you do.”

  “No, good people don’t act like I do. But that’s not the point. The point is that I know that a lot of what I do and say is affect. But it serves a purpose. And for most of the last decade, that purpose has been to make sure that you… that both of you… are protected.”

  That seems to have gathered their attention. I hope I can keep it.

  I go on.

  “And the simple truth is that I failed in that. I failed you. Not only did I not protect you, I am responsible for just about the worst thing a person can do to another person in their time of need… I thought about myself instead.”

  They don’t look shocked or anything as common as that. But they certainly appear perplexed. I can only imagine what this must sound like to them, coming out of my mouth. Eish, man. I can barely understand it and I’m the one speaking.

  I go on.

  “I don’t know if you can recall, but after… what happened, I started doing more work without you.”