27. Carter
27
Carter
“S eriously, Carter,” Lizzie said. I could practically see her eyes rolling through the phone. “I’m fine. Mom’s fine. Everyone’s fine.”
I wanted to believe her, but being kidnapped by a maniacal fairy king and put under his enchantment for however long would fuck anyone up. She wouldn’t talk about it, only to say that she and Jon had spent the time in the same mental capacity, and she needed space to process it. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but Jon wouldn’t speak of it, either. I figured it probably wasn’t my business.
“You keep saying that word,” I teased, “but I’m starting to question if you know what it means.”
“I have to go.” She sounded…well… fine . “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“All right, Lizzie Bizzie.”
She chuckled softly. “Stop calling me that. Love you, big brother.”
“Love you.” I hung up and pursed my lips, staring out the window of the penthouse apartment we’d rented on the outskirts of DC. The lights from downtown twinkled in the distance, the monuments to Ivy’s ancestors bright against the night sky.
I listened to Weeds rumbling around in her office opposite our primary bedroom and hung my head, knowing I’d have to physically go get her to make her eat. How had Lex done this for so long—watched as she withered away, stood idly by while she worked herself to nothing?
She hadn’t wanted to go back to the house she’d shared with Lex, and I couldn’t blame her. There were too many memories there, too many long nights and longer mornings.
We’d stayed in Killwater for only a day after Miri left, but other than that one passage about the queen’s favor, we didn’t find anything helpful. Lex was gone. Miri was gone. And we were broken.
So we came home.
A few days after arriving in the States, I’d called my agent to announce the end of my filming career, and after everything I’d told her about my twisted, fucked-up backstory, she had agreed I needed some R & R. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever go back to the industry or if I ever wanted to.
Now, a full six weeks later, the entire world knew. We had disappeared for three months, only to come back without Lex Fairfax and no explanation as to what had happened. The media wanted answers, his family had threatened to press charges, and all we could say was no comment.
How were we supposed to tell the truth?
Ivy’s chief of staff, Giana, had advised us to keep our mouths shut until Lex returned, and that was what we did. Weeds agreed to a remote re-entry at Congress, I put my career on hiatus, and we hid here together, rarely venturing outside.
Trying to continue with life did not heal the huge hole in my heart where Lex and Miri used to be. She didn’t even say goodbye, and that broke me more than anything else she’d ever done.
She was my best friend, and this absence hurt more than the last.
Neither Ivy nor I could speak about it, so we didn’t.
We woke up. She went to her office for fourteen hours, and I played housewife until she eventually emerged to eat. We tried to fuck, decided we couldn’t, and ultimately passed out together in front of the television. Once, a long time ago, I’d imagined a life with her similar to this. I imagined our last names smushed together in matrimony, a white picket fence with a golden retriever barking in the yard, and two-point-five little Washington kids running around.
Four years ago, I thought I hadn’t been good enough for her. I thought I needed to prove myself. I’d been a fucking idiot. Fortunately, I had literal luck on my side or I might never have made it this far. And now that I was here, I didn’t even enjoy it.
Because the young man who had envisioned his life with Ivy had always imagined Lex and Miri in that scenario. Before things were romantic, they had been our neighbors, the ones that came over on the weekends for burgers and babysat our kids when we needed a date night. And after Midsummer, after we decided we all loved each other, I couldn’t stomach thinking about a future home without them in it.
Now I faced that reality every time I woke up, and nothing seemed worth it. What good was sliding inside Ivy without Lex there to comment on it? What pleasure was there in taking her mouth without Miri pressing sweet kisses into mine? What thrill was there in getting out of bed when Lex wouldn’t be downstairs with coffee or Miri wasn’t around to make breakfast or Ivy had no motivation to smile, much less go about her routine?
I missed both of them. I missed our nights together. And when I searched my heart, I even missed Poppy. She had become a surrogate daughter, almost a little sister, and now I’d never see her again. I’d never get to reconcile what she’d done or hear her apologies. She’d been a member of our family, and now she too left an aching chasm in my soul.
“Weeds,” I said one night at our dinner table, pouring her a glass of wine as she ate her chicken parmesan in silence. At her nickname, she glanced up at me with lifeless eyes. They were perpetually swollen these days, red with tears for all that we’d been through, all that we’d lost. “You need to stop this.”
She didn’t say anything, just stared at me and grabbed her glass to take a long drink. “You, too?” She scoffed and shook her head. “How can you both just give up on him…on us?”
“I died and came back to life.” The experience had been harrowing, and I’d only just now started to peel back the layers on how that fucked me up. I couldn’t remember anything after being stabbed in the chest, and the philosophical implications of that sent me into an existential crisis every time I thought about it. But I knew one thing for certain, one thing that would guide the rest of my existence. “Life is too short to waste away in this house searching for someone who doesn’t want to be found.”
“I’m not wasting away. I’m trying to fix this.”
“Lex is gone,” I said, stammering while I spoke. “He’s on the other side of the realm, and there is no way to get to him, not unless the queen lets him out of his deal. There’s nothing to fix.”
She shook her head. “No, I refuse to believe that. Poppy must be able to help. Perhaps Siobhan could create a new ring or?—”
I cleared my throat, channeling my inner Lex when I said, “Poppy is gone. Siobhan is gone. We are still here.” I was still here, and I needed her.
“Carter, I can’t live without him. I—” She put her elbows on the table and dug her palms into her eyes. “—I cannot exist in a world that does not include him.”
Unable to resist her, I reached across the table to grab her hand, tugging it so she’d rise and come to me. When she settled in my lap, I wrapped my arms around her waist and leaned her against my chest, tucking her head under my chin.
“He’s my oldest friend in the world,” she sobbed. “We’ve been together since we were infants.”
“I know.” I kissed her forehead, the pain inside my chest expanding to include hers. At times like these, I wished we still had our gifts. I wished she could tunnel into my mind and give me this torture, give it all to me and I would bear it for both of us. I had long ago faced the reality that I wasn’t enough for Ivy Washington and I never would be. She needed the antagonism that Lex brought her. She needed Miri’s feminine softness. So did I.
I used to love that about our unconventional marriage, and now I hated it. If I could be enough for her, just this once, I’d do whatever I could to ease her torment.
“How could I have let this happen?” She cried into my chest, wrapping her fingers tightly around my shirt. “How could I have left him there?”
“You have to stop blaming yourself.” I twisted her so she was facing me, my hands on either side of her cheeks. “The king and queen did this to us. Lex didn’t have a choice. None of us did.”
“I could have fought harder.”
“You nearly died,” I said. “I did die. We gave it everything we had.”
She fell silent after that, and a few moments later, her soft snores told me she’d fallen asleep.
Thank fucking Lord. She hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since…well…Solstice, perhaps. Or maybe even before that. Honestly, neither had I.
Scooping my arms under her legs, I carried her down the hallway to our massive bed, burying her under the covers before grabbing the pack of cigarettes off the nightstand and walking to the balcony. Biting one between my teeth, I lit it and closed my eyes as I relished the taste and smell. It reminded me so much of him, it brought tears to my eyes.
I stared at the moon, inhaling the death stick while I prayed to whatever deity might take pity on me.
“Please help us,” I said. “If there’s a way to bring him back, to bring them both back, please tell me what I need to do.”
I waited to feel that churning in my gut, the one that told me which cards to pick in a poker game and which direction to go in the dark. I yearned to find that telltale luck that had saved my ass so many times. When nothing came, I made a sad laugh and sighed.
I used to hate the curse, and I would have done anything to get rid of it. I didn’t want to be marked, and I definitely didn’t want to be a part of some screwed-up fairy tale. But now that it was gone, I missed it. It had become a part of me, like my kidney or my liver, and I had a gaping hole where it used to be, not just because of Lex and Miri.
We had been changed and then changed back, and the return to normalcy sucked. I just didn’t understand. The last thing my luck ever told me was that there would be no sacrifice, that the queen had been messing with Lex. I had been so sure we’d end up together, that all four of us would grow old and gray just like Lex described.
I grieved my lost husband as much as both of my wives, and given the chance, I would trade all of this for one more day of what we had.
A familiar crack echoed through the night, and I turned to glance inside. Ivy still slept, too lost to the real world to have heard. But I did, and I’d recognize that noise anywhere. I walked out of the bedroom and down the hallway to the living room, glancing around.
“Poppy?” I called out, taking a slow, deep breath to calm my racing heart. She’d been in Faerie when the veil closed, but she had control over space and time. If she could teleport wherever she wanted, perhaps she could go in between the realms. “Is that you?”
No answer, but the churning in my gut said I wasn’t alone. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, goose bumps racing down my arms and the backs of my legs. I remembered the prophecy about her, the one Ashley told us about at Samhain.
“She would use this gift to bring peace to the realms and reunite the humans and fairies.”
Was this what they meant? Would she reunite us now after everything had gone to hell?
“Poppy?” I tried again, walking out into the dining room and kitchen. Still nothing. I froze, training my ears in the dark, and I could have sworn I heard a quiet inhale before another loud zap echoed into the night.
Then she was gone.