“I’ve never said it before, Hannah. Never damn will again other than for you if you’ll let me. All I need is for you to acknowledge them. Make it real for yourself and it will be. I want to share my life with you. Live it with you.”
Still I stand motionless, clutching this coffee in my hands as if it’s able to help me somehow. It won’t. The only thing that will help is letting go and trying to find happiness in something that is fraught with problems and limitations. Or walk away to risk never finding someone like him again.
“You’re still married.”
“Not if you don’t want me to be. That’s easily remedied.”
For a second I don’t understand that, and then the unavoidability of the statement lands hard, as does the indifferent tone of his care for the issue.
Turn the machines off.
The coffee cup drops from my grasp, feet faltering backwards at the onslaught of emotions that wash over me. Pain. Outrage at the thought. Disgust even. But I also can’t reject the sense of elation that causes, too, the real and possible imagery that there is a way forward if I let it happen.
Tears spring, unwelcome, into my eyes, as guilt consumes what was once only confusion. It rakes through me, making me sink to the ground in search of answers that don’t involve the death of someone. “I can’t …” The words splutter out around sobs, all while I tremble and try to find another way. “There must be another way.”
Arms wrap me up into them. Strong arms. Strong arms and hands that sweep my hair from my face so that he can look at me again. “This isn’t your fault,” he says, holding my cheeks. “This is my fault. The car crash, the state she’s in. We argued. She drove off in her car and I chased her down in mine.” Oh god. His fault. “My fault, Hannah. Not yours. It’s me who holds the responsibility here – not you.”
My lips tremble, tear-filled eyes looking at his, as his fingers brush my hair back again. “God knows I don’t deserve love or happiness, but I’ll take it if you’ll let me. I’ll give you everything I can if you’ll let me. All of it.” His head drops, the weight of it resting on my chest. “All of me.”
Happiness? Where is it in this scenario? We’d be starting from death, having already lived the sex without knowing who we are in the beginning.
My fingers hang limply against his body, heart listening to nothing but the continued thuds of us so close. Connection was never the problem.
Truth was.
Still is.
Hours might go by as we stay here crunched into a ball on the floor, limbs entwined. I don’t know, as I stare into the distance and try processing. He moves me after a while so I’m resting on him, my head buried into his chest and tears staining his shirt. We’ve become a twisted mess of love versus guilt. Emotion versus culpability. And yet all that seems laced with future and hope and something that feels so real to me, so alive and honest, that I can’t bear the thought of it not evolving into the beauty it could be.
He eventually stands and lifts me from the floor, shrugging me closer and refusing to let an inch worth of space to come between us. His lips rest on my head the whole way, as walls pass by. Words mutter into my hair. Beautiful words. Words that make me remember all the things that make us special to each other.
Honest words.
Stairs take us downwards, then downwards again, as he continues murmuring and whispering. Love, honour. Regret for times past. Wishes that it could have been different than it is. Hope. God forgive him for the things he’s done and the things he’s going to do. And suddenly we’re in the lounge and he’s putting me on a chair and backing away.
I watch his dishevelment, unused to the state of it or him with such emotion engrained in his features. “I won’t do this to me or you anymore,” he says. “Can’t.” I blink, hands trying to swipe away tears that keep coming. “Stay. Sleep. I’ll be back tomorrow.” He turns at that and starts out of the corridor, purposeful strides echoing a death toll at me that will be my fault as much as his.
“Gray. Wait.” He stops. No looking back at me, but his head hangs.
“Don’t do this Hannah.”
My fingers tighten on the robe, unsure what I’m trying to convey but needing to convey something. “Don’t go. Stay.”
“And what? Talk more. Find answers where there aren’t any?” He turns slowly to look at me. “We both know what needs to happen here, and I’m not having you make that decision. It’s already been made as far as I’m concerned.”
“But-“
“No. Enough. You deserve more than that.”
My hand reaches forward, but he’s turned and gone before I can find more words to stop him. Part of me doesn’t even try to. It tells him to go, to finish something so we can start anew without anything in our way.
Anyone.
My legs pull up slowly, scrunching tight to pull me into a ball, and I let the tears come without trying to stop them. What happens when he gets back is unknown, because the guilt I feel as I hear the elevator close, the pain inside, the self-disgust and hatred, is too agonising to tolerate regardless of the love.
Chapter 21
Gray
H ere I am again, now staring at switches without the slightest personal remorse. All I can see is Hannah’s tears. I can see them etched into her face as if her sorrow and guilt for a life we could have, laid so heavy on her shoulders she couldn’t move forward until it was taken off them.
I’m not sure I understand that feeling. It’s never been in me. The only comparative sense of sentiment I have to Heather’s body comes from a place of anger and distrust. But, I suppose, given this formidable problem in front of me, I can at least understand the merits of blame.
And that is not for Hannah to carry.
I just needed to know, needed to tell her and feel her in my arms again so that I could make the decision that would, ultimately, take this body from Charlie’s life. He can use blame on me if he wants. He can grow here, live here, spend his time with both Beatrice and I should he choose guidance from me at some point in his life, and then, when he’s an adult and ready, he can press me for destroying her if need be.
That is my burden to carry.
I look over to the two doctors in the room that I called on the way, nodding to make sure they’re both ready and in agreement. More paperwork has already been signed confirming the legitimacy of the act. There will be no retaliation, no civil nor state action regarding this death or the other women who have been my subjects. Wealth makes that happen. Wealth, intelligence and the signed documents pertaining to life saving drugs that I handed over as free collateral to the government for their agreement in this farce years ago.
There isn’t any waiting this time. No quiver in my hand. No thought other than the constancy of Hannah and needing to be back with her.
Three strides. Two switches. And it’s done.
Gone.
The machines, for the first time in ten years, stop.
And a silence comes from that that I can barely remember before it happened.
The sigh that falls from my mouth, as I watch the doctors remove breathing apparatus from her and finish the procedure, is felt in my bones. I might be less than absorbed in the idea of her death, but what does strike me as worthy of analysis is the fact that I’m not remotely bothered about my truths any longer. They’re immaterial. Dispersed somehow.
I carry on watching the doctors signing more documentation and calling a time of death. It isn’t death, not for me. It’s life. A new one.
One I haven’t ever owned before Hannah.
Turning, I move swiftly through the halls and head for the car without a glance backwards. I’m done. This whole fucking place is done but for the benefit it will give Beatrice and Charlie should they choose to remain here. If they don’t want it, I’ll sell and find them somewhere else. Perhaps a new real would be better for them, too, rather than languishing in this desolate hole.
“Gray?” Beatrice calls. I look back, only half stopping myself from
getting out of this damn place and back to somewhere I do call home. “What about the others?”
“Pull them out of the trials.”
“It isn’t as simple as that and you know it. I need you here for that. I can’t do it without you.”
My eyes glance at the therapy centre, not giving a damn for the thought other than legal ramifications if they’re not rehabilitated correctly. “Alright. But not now. I’ll come back next week.”
She nods and puts her glasses in her pocket, gently pulling the white lab coat from her shoulders. “And Charlie?”
“I’ll talk to him again soon. I can’t now. I have to go and-”
“Okay, Gray. It’s okay.”
The sight of the doctors wheeling the trolley out into the fresh air, a now dead body on it, wasn’t something I was going to contend with, but it comes up behind Beatrice as she keeps looking at me.
My frown deepens at the vision, not because of the death, but because I can clearly remember the last time I saw her body outside. It was bruised then. Battered and torn because of the mangled wreck of a car she’d been in. No shroud over her back then. No cover to cloak a lifeless frame regardless of the near lifeless body she still held.
I look at my own hands, tracing the lines that have formed in the years since, and wonder where I’ve been in this last decade. Absent from life. Alone in it. Stubborn and persevering to get my truths, perhaps trying to get a revenge that was never achievable. Stupid.
“Gray?” I look up again, watching as Beatrice walks towards me and laughs. “Go get your girl. You don’t have to think anymore.”
My frown evaporates, a small smile replacing it, as they wheel the body towards the van.
“Go get my girl?”
“Yes. It’s what they say in the films. Romance?”
Romance.
I don’t give anymore thought to the space around me, as I spin for the car. I’ve got more things to say to the one woman who’s made this possible for me and a life to get on with living. Future. Dreams to find. Maybe I should take a vacation, see some of the world through eyes that give a damn for its existence rather than ones that neither cared for its presence nor thought beyond the realms of the walls I’d built.
The door slams around me, as if shutting myself inside this car is the beginning of starting again. I can still feel the sound resonating, as the car powers up the long drive and out onto open roads. Even the dull smell of heather filling the air around me seems to dissipate with her death, the scent replaced by something more potent calling me home.
Roads speed by, my smile growing with every further mile driven. Feels good to drive now I’m heading the right way again. Home. It’s a thought I haven’t processed for a long damn time. Nothing has been. Perhaps Malachi’s place in some ways. It was a haven, a place to just be alive in, regardless of the torment within it.
Malachi.
My brow furrows for the first time since I’ve been in this vehicle, mind whirling through the events that have led me to this moment. The way he pushed and pulled me around Hannah, telling me that I needed to realise how I felt. The slaps on my back, the smiles. Him fighting me about her going for her swim. Him hunting me down to tell me they were back. Her in my apartment. And then her near lifeless body when I found her at the cemetery, the drugs inside her ones that only he could have provided.
He knew how I’d treat her, didn’t he? He fucking knew and pushed that moment on us all so I would go through my own process in the only place I could take her to make her live.
His number is dialled before I’ve fully thought through what I’m about to say to him, and the phone line engages without any answer other than breath and the sound of a groan.
“Did you orchestrate this whole damn thing?” I grate out, unsure how I feel about it.
“It’s a bit fucking early for arguments, Gray. Let me get a drink first.”
“Did you?”
Sheets ruffle, followed by familiar footsteps walking over the carpet and a clinking glass. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he eventually says, chuckling. “I organise parties, nothing more. On that note, when’s the next delivery coming in?”
“You did, didn’t you?” Fucker.
I turn off the freeway, intent on going to knock some more sense into his head before I get to Hannah. “She could have died. Did you really think that was the best way to make me acknowledge this?”
“Yes. You’re an asshole most of the time. And she’s beautiful. You deserve each other. Did she die?” A woman giggles in the background, a sharp yelp coming out of her soon after.
“Hannah? No. Of course she’s not dead. I got there soon enough.”
“Hero status achieved, but I meant your wife.”
My lips twitch, a low rumble of laughter trying to counter the idiocy of this whole damn situation. “Yes. This morning.”
“Good. Maybe now we can get on with being friends again.” Friends? I half chuckle again at the imagery, as unsure about my involvement with a man who could do that sort of thing as I usually am out here in the real world. “My jaw still hurts, by the way.”
“You deserved it.”
“And you deserved a life. You should thank me.” I nod at that, at least recognizing the sentiment behind his ideas irrespective of the way he went around achieving it. “Good love story. I’ve enjoyed my part in it. I’ll expect a fifty percent reduction in costs on the next shipment. It should cover the mental aptitude I’ve had to exert to make you behave like a human instead of a calculator.”
I smile again, part infuriated by him, and part thankful for his intervention even it was a game to him. “I have to go.”
“Dinner next week? I’m still in Manhattan. And I hate my wife. I might need to talk it through.”
“Alright.”
Maybe. If everything keeps going according to his plan.
Cutting the call, I drive the last of the roads and all but abandon the car in the parking bay next to the Lincoln. There’s nothing else now. No other women. No time other than the time we can make together. We’ll find a path out of this, perhaps able to bury the past behind us where it deserves to be. Just us and a life we’ve still yet to begin.
The cart rides up swiftly, but it seems to take so damn long I find myself pacing the interior like a lone wolf in search of prey. It isn’t until the doors slide open that I get a chance to move forward again and lose the trepidation that’s haunting each step. I don’t even know if she’ll damn well be here. She could have run, chosen something different for herself. And as much as that stings, there’s a part of me that wouldn’t blame her at all.
Silence greets me other than the sound of my own feet. No Letti. Not surprising since I gave a few days off when I sent Hannah here, but no sign or sound of Jackson either. I frown and look around, checking each of the rooms for life. Nothing. I end up calling Jackson for answers, my gaze directed out over the park, and then turning and running back the way I’ve come when he’s told me where they are.
Hailing a cab rather than bother with the car, I spend the minutes it takes to get there considering why the fuck this place was necessary to her. She’s already done this. Finished it before we even started. Death isn’t relevant to us. We’re new now. Reborn from something that held both of us back.
The gates are upon me before I’ve found any correlations or parallels in my head to form logic. There’s no reason for this, just as there was, or is, no reason for me to weep over the grave of the woman I’ve just let go. He was a cunt. An adulterer. A man who had something precious and chose to disrespect it rather than harbour the very essence of her beauty.
The cab drives off and I’m left standing looking at the spot where I found her, still able to feel the anguish, the pain, and the fear that coursed through me when I picked her limp body up from the ground. Jackson was here within minutes and taking her to the one place she needed to get to. Beatrice was called immediately, and I left to deal with the man that caused i
t. Possibly wrongly now I can look back on the sequence of events.
The walk through the cold and desolate space feels as awkward to me as it probably should. It brings thoughts into my head that I don’t want to acknowledge any longer. Culpability. Blame. Guilt. I growl at it all, attempting to rid myself of every emotion as it passes through my skin and embeds itself further. This isn’t how it was supposed to be. I was going back to my apartment, asking her if she’d spend her life enjoying a new beginning, and now we’re here dealing with the past again rather than focussing on the future.
I eventually find her by a small mound of settling earth, the gravestone newly fitted and Jackson standing back from her. She’s dressed in her own clothes, a long green mac covering her skin but for stockinged legs and matching green heels. Make up perfected, hair scooped up into some sombre affair of elegance, as she holds a lone flower in her hand. She looks over briefly as I approach, not one hint of a smile on her features, and then looks back at the grave again.
“Sir,” Jackson says.
I nod at him and walk up to her side, eyes on her rather than anything around us.
“Why are you here?” I ask her.
“Saying goodbye,” she murmurs. “It felt like I needed to do it again. Last time was … messy. No truths here, though. Still. All lies. I’ll never get them from him. Never.”
A few minutes letting her look over the grave some more, and I reach for her. She moves away from me before I can get a hand to her skin, eyes slanting at mine with nothing but distrust in them. “Did you do it? Did you kill her?”
My hands slide into my pockets. “Yes, if you want to put it like that.”
“What other way is there to put it?” She stares so harshly, all those sinister lines of hers burying themselves inside me again. “You killed her for me.”
A Sorrow of Truths Page 15
