He was meant to be, I think. I hesitate, but in the end I can feel it’s true.
As I leave, wiping down the knob after twisting and pulling it toward me, I smile at the click of my shoes and the sounds of the washer behind me. From this angle, looking in from the outside while pulling the door closed, I can just make out his legs hanging over the mattress. His clothes still strewn around the room—straps and folds and textures of it everywhere, all around.
The door clicks as it connects with the frame, and the sound sets off a lightness.
I hum down the sidewalk, not thinking about broken promises or risks, only focusing on the tune with notes becoming more intricate the more I walk. I bounce on the balls of my feet as the leisure of my pace carries me away, and my phone vibrates in my pocket, playing along a similar beat, but I ignore it. Nothing else matters right now.
Then
“You’re what’s wrong with me,” I yelled, knowing it was true.
My legs weren’t as long as Parker’s, so it took twice as many steps to keep up. But I chased him. I ran after him, both of us naked save for the red stains on our skin, through his hallway and toward his apartment door. He didn’t look back, didn’t see me closing the distance between us.
He never believed I could catch him, never thought I had it in me.
But he was wrong, again.
Parker didn’t get his fingers on the knob, he didn’t turn the handle and step over the threshold toward the sweet scent of fresh air. Instead my knife plunged into his shoulder and a loud gasp escaped his throat.
My eyes focused on the place where metal sunk into flesh, and I couldn’t really believe what I was seeing. The knife was still held by a shaking hand, my hand, and that was even less plausible.
I knew walking in there that I was angry, angrier than I ever had been before. But this…it was like my brain had disconnected from the rest of me and a personified rage had taken over. It scared me; it excited me.
I pulled the knife back out, hearing an odd sound—one I hadn’t expected—then used the thick handle to hit him over the head as he fell down in pain. I just didn’t want him to start screaming. He had hesitated for the moment, and I didn’t know how long it would last. I couldn’t risk waiting any longer.
So I hit him. Then I hit him again and again until he stopped making any noise at all. And then it was quiet, and I could think again as I dragged him back to the bed. Even his breath was silent as his chest rose and fell, his shallow breaths filling me up.
I waited for him to wake up, knowing I had to talk to him just once more. I didn’t want to do it while he slept. I needed him to look at me, see what he’d made before he went back to sleep.
Because he had made me into this. He broke me into pieces, and I’d never be the same.
“You should be sorry,” I repeated as his eyes finally flicked open. “And, really, you will be soon if you aren’t already.”
It was the last thing I thought I would say as I brought the knife to its resting place, to its home. But then he answered me. He said something I had to respond to, something I couldn’t leave unanswered. So I paused, and I pulled the metal back, away from his skin.
“I love you,” he croaked.
“No you don’t.”
Suddenly the knife was hidden again, buried beneath skin and muscle and the rotting lies he filled himself with. Then it was over, and it felt like time had sped up, like the world was pushing me forward before I was ready.
***
Parker wouldn’t have to deal with the ballooning ego that weighed down his choices anymore. He wouldn’t have to hear the nagging words rasped in his ear every day to take more of what he didn’t earn, more of what he didn’t deserve. He wouldn’t be pushed to tricking others. He could be happy now, a real person. And everyone else around him could be happy, too.
I’d thought I would be able to make him happy enough; I’d thought I’d be able to save him. And I guess I did, but not in the way I’d hoped. Not while he was still holding my hand, still breathing. This was so much worse for me, but it was better for him.
“Maybe I do love you,” I whispered as I raced around his apartment putting my clothes back on.
I looked away; no tears cascading down, no tremor in my breath. The absence was as obvious, even more so, than the presence of pain. But I still had to get out of there.
He had been special. Once.
He was the first, in so many ways, and he would be the last, the brightest, the best.
It wasn’t an accident; he begged me to do it. Why else had he lied so recklessly? Why else had he let me catch him with someone else? He’d been asking me to end it for him, asking me to take away his pain.
He let me charm him, seduce him, knowing that I could be the one to help him. I told myself it was what he wanted, and I was shocked to realize that I believed it, that it didn’t sound too outrageous.
My hands shook as I pulled my dress over my head and grabbed my jacked from the floor.
This all had been real, I had to remind myself.
Looking out the window, I could see fog as it rolled around the building, caressing the bricks and siding just beyond my reach, mixing with the inky sky. It left me with an eerie feeling, something unsaid, something walking right behind me but moving whenever I turned to get a glance.
It was unsettling, and I tripped a few times walking out of Parker’s bedroom and away from him forever.
My chest filled with something prickly and weird. I stopped mid-step and let my fingers move up to my face. It was dry, but I’d expected tears. I wasn’t even sure it felt like my face anymore. It was like I was wearing a mask of someone else, someone more detached. Someone who could do horrible things and not shed a tear.
The moment I knew that Parker wanted to die, that I would be the one to end it all for him, even if that had only been minutes ago, I accepted that they would come crashing down my face. There had been no doubt in my mind that I would cry. I anticipated it, but now nothing. I wasn’t sure why, and that was more upsetting than breaking down, harder to understand than sobbing and screaming.
I stood in front of his door, frozen and numb.
The numbness was worse.
And now, now with oblivion and home, safety, on my mind, and this absence filling me up, I felt time and reality catching up. My heart beat faster and my breath didn’t seem to fill my lungs quite right.
I had to get out of there.
Moving to the hallway, I tried to escape quickly. But I didn’t want to run, didn’t want to draw any attention. The lights were too bright, and every breath of my own sounded like shouting.
I had screamed back in the apartment, at least I thought I had, and as I walked toward the elevator again I realized someone may have heard. They could have called nine-one-one. There could be cops on their way.
I jumped, sucking too much air into my chest, as a sound filled my head and the hallway. The elevator arrived on the fifth floor to meet me, making me dizzy with terror. I knew the doors would open in less than a second. I should have been moving, running toward the stairs, using every last moment to my advantage, to save myself.
Instead the panic engulfed me, dousing out my fire and turning my legs to stone.
“Oh god,” I whispered.
Now
My phone skips across my desk, the sound of it sending my heart into my throat and my stomach to the floor, a race away from each other.
It vibrates again, and I roll my eyes at myself.
I’d been so sucked into my writing, the words flowing so easily, I’d lost track of the time, lost track of the outside world. I’d lost track of everything but me and the words oozing from my fingertips, bringing a dark scene to life.
Looking to my phone, half buried beneath research articles on serial killers and a stack of travel books, I see part of Aidan’s face, goofy and smashed into mine. Grabbing it, I answer and pull the phone to my ear.
“Hey, baby,” I say, all smiles and calm.
But there’s a pause, and in that moment, in that lack of answer, I can feel Aidan’s tension. It crackles down the phone line and starts my ear on fire, sending sparks into the rest of my body and lighting me up.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. “Is it about work?” I check the time on my computer; he should still have an hour or two left, and the man never leaves early.
My blood pressure rises along with my anxiety.
Answer me, I will him.
“I was at work,” he rushes the words out, and I can picture his eyebrows pulling together. I can almost hear him running his hand through his hair, tugging it in frustration and worry. “I left.”
Then he stops talking, and I want to scream. I want to throw the phone and shout that he needs to get on with his story and tell me what the hell is going on, so I can stop jumping to the worst ideas.
He sounds frantic.
He breathes down the line, but I keep waiting as the bursts of air get just a little closer together each time.
Aidan sounds like he did months ago, when everything was spiraling out of control, when he was worried he’d be caught for the murders, when he knew that someone knew, he just didn’t know it was someone like him.
“Slow down,” I finally say when he sounds near to hyperventilating, still not talking.
I swear I can hear, can see, him nod. But he agrees with a grunt, and after a few moments I do hear the exhales slow down.
“Okay. Now tell me; we’ll fix it.”
“I’m on my way,” he says, still not an answer.
“Good. But tell me anyway; tell me now,” I plead. I try not to sound like I’m pleading, but my voice breaks a little on the last word as my façade cracks down the center. I hate waiting, and all I can think is that he’s on the run, away from cops and not taking me with him.
My brain goes to the worst-case scenario, to the thing I fear the most. And once I think it, I can see it—envisioning it happening and worrying that suddenly I’m willing it into existence.
Aidan breathes again, calmed down totally now. Then he opens his mouth, I can hear the pop of his lips separating for it, and begins. “That stupid fucking detective from Eva’s case,” he says.
“Harwell,” I interrupt, because I know he’s blanking on his name. But then I stop, because I realize I don’t even know his first name. I can picture his dark hair, his impossibly dark eyes, his deep voice, his scruffy face, and his looming height. But a first name…did I even get it?
“Yeah, fucking Mark. Fucking detective Mark Harwell,” he agrees. And now I know. “He ‘asked’ me to come in for some routine follow-up.” I can hear his air quotes around what was obviously a demand. “At the police station,” he adds.
“Shit.” The word escapes on a breath of air, and immediately I wish I could suck it back in.
“Fuck. I know. He’s never pushed to speak at the station. What do you think this means?” I can hear Aidan pulling into my driveway, and sure enough when I peek between the curtains there he is.
But he doesn’t open the car door after turning the key. He sits there, one hand on his head, the other holding the phone to keep talking to me—through a wall, several walls, through a barrier.
I want to do a million things. I want to tell him to come inside, to make this right, to go into the station, to run away, to turn back time, to do every contradictory thing imaginable, just to make it better. But with so many answers bartering with each other to be the one chosen, none come out. I say nothing.
Aidan goes on, and honestly I’m not even sure he noticed the empty pause. He’s so in his head, he can’t even see me in the window. So I let him get it all out; I’m his sounding board. “He’s always talked to me at work, at home, anywhere but the station. This feels bad. Do you think it’s bad? You know I never called him back, after we talked about it the other day.” No, I didn’t know that. “I still haven’t. So maybe this is all my fault. I’m sorry.” He takes a shaky breath, almost choking on the air.
“Stop,” I say. One word to encompass a thousand.
Stop freaking out.
Stop apologizing.
Stop spilling all of this to me. Take care of it, take care of me.
Stop worrying; stop making it worse by worrying.
Stop placating to Harwell, and make a move. Think ahead. This is a chess game and we are losing.
Stop losing.
Stop.
“I made the mistake. It was stupid; I’m sorry. I put myself in jeopardy because I put off calling him back. Both of us, actually. Probably.” I mean, he’s right. But I’m not going to say that. And I’m not going to argue. So again, I wait. And again he doesn’t notice my waiting.
I sit back down in my chair, no longer watching the anguish build on his face. I can’t watch it pack on layer after layer, bringing my anxiety with it.
“The detective,” he says.
“Harwell,” I correct, and I’m not even sure why. He wasn’t wrong.
“Detective Mark Harwell,” Aidan starts again, formally, and with an icy edge to his voice, “was trying to be nonchalant. I could tell. But when I hesitated, there was a serious bite to the guy’s tone. It was hard to miss. He was cold and immovable.” I can hear the steel melt out of Aidan’s voice as he talks about Harwell, like it’s transferring from the present to the very recent past, from one man to a monster. “I said I’d come in,” he adds.
I can hear the phone shaking in his fingers, against his ear.
My heart picks up the pace, matching the click, click, click, of the glass against skin. The room feels hot, way too hot, and I stand up to pace my office. My computer abandoned, Adam’s story completely forgotten, I feel beads of sweat start to gather along my spine.
“So, you need to go in.” My words sound alarmingly calm to my own ears, so different from the feelings brewing in my stomach, in my chest, in my hands and my feet—apparently everywhere but my vocal cords. Standing still, for a moment, my foot taps on the carpet, and I slow my own breath, hoping Aidan will do the same unconsciously.
And it works.
He breathes calmly, exhaling the fear and the unnecessary thoughts. Inhaling what I give him, the relaxation and confidence I breathe into him.
“Okay. You sure?”
The hesitation, the questions, sends red spots to my vision.
Of course I’m not sure. This could all be a huge mistake.
“I’m sure,” I say.
“Okay, okay. I can do that.”
You have to. Whether you can or not, you will.
My chest heaves, but I keep it quiet. I will not trip over my words. Walking over to the window, I smile so he can see. Aidan looks up, and my fingers go to the glass. I will not let him see the shaking in my legs, the pink of worry creeping up my chest.
Once he smiles back, I turn away, hoping it was enough.
“You need to go in, and you need to act normal. Be nonchalant, like he was. Be calm, collected, confident. Whatever he asks, whatever he says, you do not get ruffled. You do not act worried. In fact, you don’t even worry. You’ve got this. We’ve been smart. We’ve even been good lately. We have this. There is nothing to worry about.”
I build him up.
It doesn’t matter if I’m not convinced. I can convince him. I can put the power behind my words and feed them to him, the power becoming real once inside Aidan.
“Okay. Yeah. We got this. It will be quick and easy. No worry. I got this,” he echoes.
I nod and his car starts back up behind me. I don’t hear him moving out of the driveway, but when I look he’s gone. And I finally feel a bit of relief from the crushing tension. Maybe it’ll be fine. Maybe he does have this.
“And,” I add so he doesn’t hang up yet. The buzz of an open line still hums vaguely in my ear, so I know he hasn’t. I continue, “you need to give all of the exact same answers you have before. Don’t change anything up. Don’t give more answer than you need to, either. Duplicate, and don’t elaborate.”
“Duplicate, don’t elaborate.” He’s reminding himself, and I can hear him whisper it a few more times before I go on.
“It’ll look a lot better if you cooperate.”
“And if I’m not pissing my pants, throwing punches, or mixing my story up,” he says.
I laugh. It’s empty and short, but Aidan still gets me to bark out a burst of laughter.
“Yeah, it’ll look best if you’re helpful, but not nervous,” I say.
If.
My feet can’t carry me fast enough. They’re going even faster than my racing heart.
If I looked like a cat, a ballerina, the other night getting ready to go out, then today, right now while Aidan heads to the police station, I look like a cheetah, like a cornered lioness.
This isn’t good.
The longer he’s gone, and it’s been a while, every moment that passes I feel worse. The worry has been building, and now it’s boiling over, filling the room and making everything unbearably hot. Throwing clothes into my duffle, I run from the closet to the dresser. It’s overflowing now, and I overshoot several times, sending jeans into the hall. I scramble to grab them, then trip over the bag coming back into the room.
I want to swear, want to mash every four-letter word together and spew them out of my mouth like chewed gum all at once. But nothing comes out. I open my mouth to yell, to scream, but my jaw hangs open, limp, with nothing to show for it.
Panic.
This is what panic feels like.
Getting up, I rush to the bathroom and swipe my toiletries into a towel with one swift movement. Glass bottles crash into each other, but nothing breaks. That would have been my luck, but I don’t dwell on the relief.
Aidan could be caught.
He may be detained, arrested, done for. And if he’s being taken down…I’m horrible, I know, but the terror inside me is telling me that somehow I may be taken down with him.
Terrified.
Deeper into Darkness Page 11
