CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Still Beating
SERENITY
My eyes slowly peel open. All I see through my hazy vision is the shoes and coats circling the cold, shut door. Half of my face is scrunched against the hardwood. I fell asleep here, next to the mat Lake and I dried our boots at.
The front door that sealed my fate makes me want to vomit.
He left me, and he never explained why. He just pulled himself away. Thousands of threads dangled and stretched between us, but he used the door to cut himself off from me. Each and every moment fell to the floor and vanished. So I ended up sinking to the floor, too.
I’m not going to venture out and search for him. I texted Brooks, so I did my job. Regardless of Lake’s issues, and how much this is killing me, he’s a grown man and I’m not responsible for him.
He’d be happy with that. He’s the one who taught me I’m only responsible for myself.
I told him I loved him. He didn’t say it back. Though the sorrow he showed said otherwise, but I am a stronger woman than that. I am a woman who deserves to be told she is loved. Lake knows that, and I know it, no matter how hard it is for me to believe. Regardless of what we know, he still cut open my chest and sucked every drop of blood my valves had to give. My heart dried up and shriveled right into his palm, dry and empty. He took my organ and then my air. And there is no longer enough oxygen to clean my blood.
To put it simply, I am heartbroken.
I roll away from the door. My expression stays blank and torn as I stare at my phone. Every thought revolves solely around this hollow sensation in my ribcage, and how much softer my mattress is compared to the floor.
I’m pretty sure I gave myself a concussion from sleeping here, but I lost the battle of climbing up my stairs, and I still don’t trust I can handle it. Going to work is another battle, so I’m calling in sick, because if I go in today, I’ll end up cutting off a limb while trying to insert an IV. All because I’d be non-stop bawling my eyes out.
Like when Delilah left, I was shattered and stagnant, but this is worse than that. I can feel rain drops splashing off of my back, pouring on me from a dark cloud, and drenching me until everything external feels heavy.
Hopefully Lake doesn’t frame me for murder, too. I’m already capsized.
I press my palms flat onto the ground and try to lift myself. My body, from my head to my toes, is sore and frail. I push against the force despite the brittleness in my bones, and I latch onto my phone, before crawling on my hands and knees to the stairs.
A pang ripples through my temple, and another throb hits my neck from the rough sleep. The pain is enough, but mixed with all these broken thoughts, I rip apart again. My tears clean my skin and the stairs with each minuscule move I make to get to the upper floor.
The faint scent of teakwood hits my nose.
Another step and I hear his fading voice, telling me he needs me. His hushed words send a fresh pang through my barren chest. Another step. I can taste syrup and homemade pancakes, and my eyes wring another wave of tears. I pray the suffering is almost over as I drag myself across the hallway floor, that I’ll get in my bed and forget, but then I catch sight of my healing, scratchy tattoo.
Breathe.
I can’t.
My bed isn’t as comforting as I wished. I cling onto the duvet Lake and I shared each time we had the chance, keeping the white fabric up against my nose and weeping. I don’t stop wailing out sadness and snot, even though I’ll be the one tossing the duvet cover in the laundry.
It’s all because I love someone.
As I cry, I don’t call out for my mother or even my sister. My voice reaches for Jimena.
I need to come clean to my best friend. My secrets have hurt one person, and I can’t keep hiding myself away from everyone. There are people who love me. It’s time I let them love me. No matter how scary that is. Sometimes the love I’ve given others has been twisted through their fingers, and sometimes I loved a little too desperately and it comes out all wrong. Sometimes, love isn’t distorted, but my worried mind just makes it seem that way.
I never grew up into a full person. The people alongside me, who were meant to love me, stole parts of me. I have been abandoned and bruised over and over again. So I can’t blame myself, or others, for sometimes looking through the wrong lense.
My mind keeps racing, and I grasp the duvet harder, clawing it between my fingers.
For some reason, this time, my soul remains despite the man I love taking my heart and escaping my home. I am more whole today, even with him gone, because he showed me love is not what I grew up thinking it was.
Love is not empty. It is returning. Fuller. It does not hold expectations that are the size of boulders. It is not dosed with generational eating disorders. Love can make mistakes, because sometimes it feels so fragile in our palms we drop it from the fear rattling through us, but love is not as easily broken as it appears to be.
Love is kind.
I hardly listened, and that amplifies the hurt a little more. I never understood how easy it was to love me, and now he’s gone, but I can love me. This is still me—whole and torn—I’ve always had me. I use my sleeve to clean my face. Somehow, I’ll need to let myself be enough, and somehow, I’ll need to let Lake be.
***
After I called into work, I left Jimena a voice message. I was still in my phase of wanting to reach out, so it was either that, or cry. Over and over. I did both. Over and over. I sent my cracked voice to Jimena’s phone, and I continued bawling until I fell asleep.
Now I’m listening to tiny stones being flung at my window. I don’t blame her for showing up, because she texted me six times and called me five more, but I never responded. I just can’t bring myself to unlock my phone to answer her messages or come face-to-face with Maggie’s worried texts. Not to mention Brooks’ reply, blaring in my notifications. I’m avoiding that like the black plague. I don’t even know what it says.
Being heartbroken, mixed with self-realization, is not fun. I need some support, but I’m terrified to talk to Jimena. If I lose her over this, or even cause a smidge of hurt, I don’t know how I’m going to handle it. I’ve lost enough, including most of my mind.
I can’t tell if I’m the idiot, the victim, or the villain, and yet I also cannot continue struggling on my own, but my body won’t move.
My chemistry papers were always handed in with crinkles. After school, I’d come home to my father, ignoring me, but he worked hard, so I let it go. My mother would ask where my sister was when I’d stroll through the kitchen. Delilah was usually with her friends before coming home from school. She’d refuse to return to her helicopter parents. Then, Mum would instruct me to go study.
I’d cry on my chem papers, because each night Delilah came home, I’d hear my dad turn down the TV, so he could ask her about her day. If it was a horrible day, she’d have two shoulders to cry on and countless hugs.
My involuntary silence has muted my brain. I force myself to handle my problems because I assume that’s best for everyone. Until last night, I thought I was showing kindness and compassion—that worrying for others over myself was good, but I came across as harmful and deceitful instead.
Jimena throws another pebble. “Serenity!”
I close my eyes, rolling to where I can’t view my window. I’m searching for any energy I have within myself to do this. Another pebble hits the glass, pinging off of it. “Serenity!” she repeats, but I don’t answer. There’s no energy to find.
“Fine! I’ll just find my way inside.”
There’s silence for a few minutes, but then I hear a noise downstairs. It sounds like my kitchen window being forced open, and that’s confirmed when there’s a loud crash and clanking dishes.
She slams the window shut. I hope I’m just dreaming all of this, but her voice shouts from downstairs, repeating my name, and gradually getting closer. Then I hear her thump her strong legs into each of my steps, and swing my door open with her toned arms.
I groan. “You could’ve just used the front door. It’s not locked.”
She throws her hands up in the air and ignores me, instantly speeding through her speech. “What are you doing sending me a voice message of you crying, and then not answering anything I send you?”
“You sound like me when I confront you about being hungover,” I mutter.
“Are you hungover?” She plops next to me on my bed, brushing her hand on my forehead. “You weren’t making any sense on the phone. You said something about your sister framing you.”
My mouth stays shut.
She sighs out a length of concern. She’s only seen me like this once, a little over a year ago when Delilah left, and again, a couple days later, when she died. Jimena sat with me in this spot, trying to comfort me. This isn’t like me, and she knows it.
“Jimena.” I sit up. “I’m really sorry.”
She studies me, noticing a change in my face before I even feel it. She reaches around me and she drags me closer to her, hugging me the same way she did at Maggie’s, with me secured under her arm.
“What are you talking about?”
“Lake left.” My voice splits. “Because I’m a liar, and I lied to you, too.”
I want a lobotomy. This would be much easier if I couldn’t process anything. None of this would’ve happened if I got a lobotomy long ago, before Delilah had the chance to unravel my anxiety into constant fear and avoidance.
Jimena stays deep in thought for a moment, before asking, “what did you lie about?”
“I’m sorry,” I repeat.
“Serenity. You have nothing to be sorry for.”
But I do. I must’ve done something horribly wrong. Maybe not this life, perhaps in a prior one, but I can’t bear the unknowing of it all. I just want to feel free from these shackles I’ve been bound to. I want to go back to living a normal life as a normal woman.
Before I end up vomiting all over her, I spit out my secret. “I was framed for murder.” I keep the truth watered down, using past tense, because those simple five words are already enough to pierce my lungs.
“Well.” She doesn’t pull away from me. If anything, she hugs me tighter. “Did you murder someone?”
“No. Somehow Delilah was involved. She framed me before she died.” I rock my head. “Every time you’ve tried to check on me, I’ve lied. I married Lake because he could help me.”
I sniffle. “It’s a long story.”
Her fingers curl into a light fist, and she curses to herself in Spanish for an entire twenty seconds. There’s a lot of hushed insults and words I can’t grasp.
My shoulders fall, along with any fight I have left in me. “Please don’t be angry with me. I don’t know if I can take it.”
She draws from our hug and inspects my features. “Serenity, why in the world are you sorry? You didn’t frame me for murder, did you?”
After everything that’s happened, I wouldn’t wish this crazy scenario on my worst enemy. Everything about this sucks. All the life I’ve lived through this storm is full of agony. I was doing the best I could, but it wasn’t enough.
I’m no closer to finding out the truth about Mancini, and the one man I didn’t want to bring harm to has been hurt by my hands, anyway.
“I wish you told me this sooner. Of course I would’ve wanted that, but it’s not a very common situation, is it?” She takes her hand to my chin. “You are human.”
If I had more tears to cry, I would, but my tear ducts are deserted. Maybe she’s right. The best I could do wasn’t enough, but it was all I had learned.
“Why the hell did Lake leave?”
Her mind doesn’t travel to where mine does. If I were her, my first question would be; “Is he going to relapse?” But Jimena is worried about me. She doesn’t care if Lake is about to throw himself off a cliff. He left me, and that’s enough for her to be livid. She’s pissed at him, not at me.
I still can’t manage a smile, or anything that isn’t halfway-monotone. “He says it’s because I lied to him, and he thinks I was using him as a charity case.”
Her eyebrows sink. “Excuse me?”
“Since I couldn’t save Delilah, but I saved him.” I scratch my head.
“Okay, idiot,” she mutters to herself. Then she presses her hands together. “So let me get this straight. Delilah framed you for a murder and you needed help from Lake. Why?”
“My parents refused to help me.” I take a painful inhale. “You know how little support I got from them once I took in Delilah.”
This is a disaster. I don’t know how I’m still here, somehow navigating each day on my own two feet. The moment a little dove eases the weight on my shoulders, something else is thrown right back down.
“I needed a lawyer. I did everything I could at first.” I swallow down the anguish threatening to explode out of me. “So, I sold my car, cut down on food. Everything, but my lawyer is expensive.”
She bows her head. “I see. Okay. So then Lake could help you, but how?”
“I only ever told him I was financially stressed, and Brooks had a secret inheritance to give to Lake.” I babble all the details. “If I used my insurance to cover part of Lake’s rehab and his hospital bills, which meant we had to get married anyway, then Brooks would consider giving Lake his inheritance. In the meantime, he gave Lake—”
She interrupts me. “An allowance to keep you both above water.”
I slowly nod.
Goosebumps pop up all over Jimena’s skin, and she stares into the distance. I finally carry the capacity to take her in. Her hair is frizzy and wavy. Like she straightened her natural waves, but the rain outside ruined her efforts. She’s not wearing any makeup, and her outfit is a plain black Pilates set, but the black top is a different brand.
A tiny, bittersweet smile grows on my lips, because she ran out of her apartment for me. And her done-up priority vanished, because I needed her.
She sighs. “This is a lot to take in.”
“I know, and I’m sorry.”
“Serenity.” She lifts both of her legs onto my bed and crosses them. “I’ve been keeping a secret from you, too.”
Oh no. She’s pregnant.
She seizes my hands into hers. "It’s not in the same realm as yours, but it’s something I wasn’t sure I’d be able to confess.”
She’s definitely pregnant.
We stare at one another for so long, I would screech at her if I could, but before I attempt to, she opens her mouth. “Brooks and I have been seeing each other under everyone’s noses,” she says it so fast I barely understand her.
“Wait.” I raise my eyebrows. “Wait. Huh?”
“I don’t even know.” She tilts her head. “Anyway, it started, well, that’s a long story. We were together the night of your wedding, though.”
The truck. He was asking so many questions about her rental truck because he likes her. That’s not too shocking. What is shocking is that Jimena seems to like him.
“So I kind of knew about Lake’s inheritance, but not really.” She takes a deep, slow blink. “Brooks doesn’t talk much. He likes to stare at me instead.”
I try to understand everything she just said. I was prepared to become a godmother, but she’s simply seeing Lake’s brother. My husband’s brother. My fake, turned real, ran-for-the-hills husband.
Her head shakes, and she tightens her grip on my hands. “We both kept secrets. Now it’s all out on the table.”
That sounds like such an understatement, almost like her way of shielding me from seeing the table at all. But when I think about everything, from the secret lawyer to the mountain of documents, the fraud marriage and the possible killer sister—well, the table is about to break.
“And, goodness, Serenity.” She chuckles. “If you told me five minutes ago you killed a guy, I wouldn’t care. You’re my best friend. Not the dead person.”
I swaddle my arms around her with everything I have left to give, but the warmth from her skin unfreezes my tear ducts, and I pop like a balloon filled with water. Tears spill out of my eyes, down my face, and sink into Jimena’s shoulder.
“I’m so sorry,” I plead.
“Oh, Serenity.” She runs her hand up my spine, attempting to soothe me. “Everything’s fine now.”
It really isn’t.
I squeeze her and shut my eyes as the room starts spinning. My inhales are getting caught in my lungs, and I don’t want to have another panic attack, because I cannot stand how close to death they make me feel, but each time I try to breathe, all I hear is Lake’s voice. I cannot breathe like he’s telling me to.
“Jimena?” I shudder. “I’m panicking.”
She grips her hand around my head, gently rocking us from side to side. I don’t think she’s aware that we’re swaying, or how relaxing it feels.
“Why are you panicking?”
I bury my face in her coconut perfume. “I’m still in trouble.”