Chapter Thirty-Two #2
That still doesn’t account for the screams I heard or how strangely he acted. I gaze at him for a moment longer, wondering why he looks so conflicted.
He’s looking at me as if he can’t decide if he wants to kiss me or punch the wall.
After a moment, he breaks our held gazes to look at his hands. His voice low, he says, “I want to ask you a favor.”
“You’re in no position to be doing that.”
“It’s not just for me. It’s for us both.” He lifts his gaze to mine again, and now his eyes are tortured. “I want you to stay away from me, Maven. I want you to promise you’ll stay away.”
That’s so unexpected, I forget to be suspicious of him. “Why?”
He looks at my face as if it’s the last time he’ll ever see it, then says gruffly, “Because I’m not strong enough to stay away from you.”
The honesty and misery in that statement leaves me breathless. I’m uncertain what to say for a moment because I have the feeling we’re on the precipice of something important.
If only I can get him to admit what it is.
“Is this about your girlfriend?”
He closes his eyes and grits his teeth. “I don’t have a fucking girlfriend.”
“Does she know that?”
Opening his eyes, he glares at me. “Yes.”
“I find that hard to believe, considering how cozy the two of you looked the other night.”
He takes a moment to grind his molars before saying, “All right. Colette is my girlfriend. Happy now?”
“No, I’m not happy. I want you to be honest with me for once in your goddamn life and tell me what the hell is going on.
You told me you had private investigators search for me after I left Solstice, and they didn’t find anything, yet you requested access to the butterfly collection at the museum I work for.
Are you trying to tell me that’s a coincidence? ”
He glowers at me for a moment, then rises, turns his back to me, and threads his fingers behind his head.
If he thinks silence is going to dissuade me, he should know better.
“I read the article about all the animal studies, too. Tree frogs? Cuttlefish? Dinosaurs? Pretty esoteric stuff. Does that have anything to do with your sickness?”
He stands like that, tense and silent, then drops his arms and turns around again. His icy pale eyes meet mine.
“If I told you I’ve been in love with you for as long as I can remember, would you believe me?”
“No.”
“Then anything else I could say would be meaningless. Go home, Maven. Leave Solstice, and take Bea with you.”
There’s a big black hole in the center of my chest that’s quickly spreading to engulf the rest of my body. Leave? Where did that come from?
Baffled, I say, “You said you wouldn’t let us leave. You said you’d shut down the train station.”
“Things were different then.”
“What things?”
He glances at my mouth, then squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
I don’t understand this. Why is he acting so strangely? “Please look at me.”
He opens his eyes and stares at me warily. I can tell from his expression that I won’t get any more information about whatever “things” are different between us now, so I decide to go straight for the jugular instead.
Watching him carefully, I say, “Are you kidnapping people and conducting illegal human trials in the basement of your family church for a new medication you’re developing?”
He laughs but stops when he realizes I’m not joking.
“Seriously? That’s what you think?”
“I think you’re more shady than shade, and I wouldn’t put anything past you. So, are you?”
Bemused, he shakes his head. “Of course not.”
“Don’t say it like it’s beyond the realm of possibility.”
He gazes at me for a moment, then starts laughing again.
“This isn’t funny.”
“No, it’s hysterical. The look on your face! Where am I supposedly kidnapping these people from?”
“All over Solstice.”
“Sure. And nobody’s ever missed? People in a small town just vanish into thin air, and that’s it?”
“No, then you make sure the stories don’t get out to the public.”
“Ah, I see. And how do I do that, exactly? Brainwashing? A little bit of convenient mind control so everybody forgets George the barber ever existed? I must be really powerful.”
“Forget it.”
My glower makes him grin. “No, please continue. This is the most fascinating thing I’ve heard in years.”
He sits in the chair next to the bed, leans his forearms on his thighs, clasps his hands together, and tilts his head expectantly. He’s mocking me again, one of his top five favorite activities.
“Why do you have to be so insufferable?”
“I’ll assume that’s a rhetorical question.”
When I don’t reply, he muses, “What other heinous acts am I responsible for? I just want to know so I can make sure I tell the priest my sins next time I’m in a confessional.”
“Which will be never, but since you asked … grave robbing.”
He makes a face of disgust. “How working class of me. What am I doing that for, exactly?”
“It’s all part of the illegal human trials.”
“So I’m experimenting on cadavers, too.”
“Yes. Provided to you by Anderson’s Funeral Home.”
“And you really believe all this?”
“I don’t know what to believe. You won’t tell me anything.”
After a long pause where he examines my face closely, he nods. “All right. I’ll show you what’s in the basement of the church. Let’s go.”
He stands and walks out of the room.