Elle
“?” Jaime whips around to face me, her hand flying over her heart. Then the shock slips away, replaced by a smile as she comes toward me with open arms that I spin away from.
I point at Jarrett. “What’s he doing here?”
She glances over her shoulder, drawn by the sloppy lapping noises. “Oh…well, Ellie, you’ll never believe what happened at the club tonight.”
But I can believe it.
Harod. The band. Jamie and Jarett’s band.
“That Night played,” she smiles weakly. “Harod told me Jarett had come in earlier that same evening when I saw you on the sidewalk.”
Of course, he did.
“He must’ve seen the poster, or maybe Harod told him. You know the night that we met, that band was playing — ”
“Are you slow?” I ask her curiously, genuinely.
“-”
“What is wrong with you? You're talking as if you two became estranged naturally over the years and you’ve just had a coincidental reunion. You’re…you’re smiling like it’s a happy reunion.”
She’s lost for words, but only for a second before she’s wringing her shirt and making up excuses. She can always create an excuse for Jarett at the drop of a hat.
“I know a lot’s happened, but despite the past, despite everything, it was a happy reunion.”
Before I can part my lips, she raises her hands as if begging me to let her finish.
“When your father — ”
“Jarett.”
“When Jarett saw me, he was elated, . It was like he’d been searching for me all along. And…I think he was.”
Relieved? He knew where we were this whole time.
Or was it that he couldn’t get to us this whole time?
I shake my head slowly. “He was just…there? Just at the bar, alone?”
“Harod said he came in with a friend. A young blonde one. I thought it was a woman. Harod could tell I was getting upset, but then he reassured me that it was a man no older than twenty. “
Bit young to be a friend. More like a nephew. Blond hair. Sylo.
If Sylo knows my father, then he knows I’m his daughter. He must’ve always known about me this entire time, but why? And how? His father hit me. Nearly killed me, and now Sylo’s hanging out with my father? His uncle?
Nothing makes sense. My head pounds, and the loud lapping and splashing of water alerts me to Jarett again.
“Why would you bring him here?”
“This was his home — ”
“And mine? Isn’t that why you gave me a key? For us,” I gesture between us, “to be a family?”
“When I gave you the key, I had no idea Jarett would pop up again.”
“And you don’t think it’s weird that he has? Why now?” I ask incredulously, my eyes darting to the parted curtain, but no one’s watching us through the window. Goosebumps tear up my skin, and I shake my head slowly as I watch him on all fours. “What…what’s wrong with him?”
“I think…he’s on some sort of substance. Someone must have given it to him at the club. The bathrooms can get full of that stuff when bands come to town. It draws a different crowd.”
I stare at him, licking at the tiles where he’d spilt the water, then at her because she’s entirely too calm.
“Why aren’t you freaking out?” I’ve seen Jarett high, but this…
“This isn’t the first time I’ve seen him like this. Two decades ago was a different time. With all the nostalgia, I think he got up to some old habits.”
“He’s acting like a…” I tilt my head to observe him. “A dog.”
“I’ve seen him behave like an ape.”
I look at her, my eyes ready to shoot from the sockets. “And you’re okay with this?”
“It’s just a bad spell.”
“That you’re trying to help him out of? Why?”
“Because he needs me, ! At the end of the day, I’m still his wife. We’re still family. I couldn’t just leave him like that, plus he’s not staying here indefinitely, just the night until he comes down off his high. What if this time it wasn’t his doing? What if whatever he took was laced without him knowing?”
“I don’t believe you,” I say slowly. “He’s here for tonight and every night after. You’ll never let him go.”
“He’s your father, . My husband. I can’t just throw him out when he’s vulnerable.”
I stab my sternum so hard it throbs dully beneath my finger. “I’m vulnerable. I was when I was nine, and he almost let me drown. I was when I was eleven, and he left me at the petrol station for anyone to do anything to me. And I was vulnerable when he came to my dance studio, the only place that was just mine, my safe if imperfect little haven and he infiltrated that too just to fuck Madame Auclair.”
“!”
“It’s true! He chose everyone over you, over us, and you chose him over me time and time again.”
“That’s not true!”
“Prove it.” I stomp back into the carpeted hallway, ignoring my throbbing feet and throw the front door wide open. I’m greeted with a frosty gust of wind that tickles my scalp and covers me with goosebumps. “Kick him out.”
“.”
“If he stays, I won’t.”
She looks at him, at the way he sickeningly licks the floor. “Just wait for him to come down first — ”
“If he stays, I won’t.” I reiterate. “Him, or me?”
“That’s not fair.”
“Anything could happen to him out there!”
“Anything could happen to me. I’m a woman, alone on the streets, in a corset and stockings.” Not that it mattered if I was wearing a sack. Nothing I did or wore would matter. The only thing that mattered was that I had a vagina and I was all alone in the dark.
She gasps at my outfit as if finally noticing it. As if finally noticing me and not her fucking new lapdog. “Where the hell have you been dressed like that, Eloisa?”
“I’ll tell you where the hell I’m going dressed like this if you don’t answer me.”
She tries to shut the door, but I stick my leg against it firmly, the cold night air making more goosebumps erupt beneath my stockings.
“, it’s not just the elements out there. It’s the Auclairs-”
“They’re somewhere lurking out there,” I say confidently because somehow the Auclairs are intertwined in this coincidence, too. “I know they are.” I know, like I know, like I know. “Me, or Jarett?”
Jarrett lifts his head at his name, and he stares at me, really stares at me, and one word leaves his lips. “?” he mutters. “. . .” Then his eyes slide back to the water that he dips his tongue into again.
I gaze back at Jaime. She won’t answer, but we both know who she’s chosen.
Swallowing the hard lump in my throat, I pivot into the dark, but not before I hear Jarett mumble.
“. The letter L. Double L. One L. E L. Isn’t that funny?”
I slam the door, my heart accelerating at the words, but it’s masked by something humming even louder the second I make it to the street. The heavy vroom of an engine.
The flash of white lights is like heaven’s gates opening. And as Gant emerges from the coupe, as pale as death itself, I swear they have.
And I… I run towards the light, toward my torturer’s arms that open wide for me. Cold fingers, ghostly white and shaking uncontrollably, slip around my waist and pull me off the ground just like the little doll he always says that I am.
One moment, we’re vertical, the next we’re collapsing onto the hood, and he’s pulling me tight against his thundering chest, his fingers tangling in my hair.
It’s only when his pounding tempo matches mine do I pull away to look up at him, and to my surprise, he isn’t looking at me at all. He’s staring at my old hellhole. There’s no way he saw me emerge from it. I was already five houses up and halfway across the pavement when I spotted the car.
But he knew. He always knows. He always wins.
For now.
I follow his glance, and there’s no one on the porch screaming, pleading for me to come back. There’s not even anyone in the window watching us. It’s just him and me. Good or bad. He’s always…always there, waiting, reaching, trapping us together. I need together right now.
I let my tears slide down his neck as I nuzzle into it. He peels us from the hood and places me in the car. Not on the passenger seat but on his lap behind the wheel.
His warm, wet tongue runs along my cheeks until they’ve stopped leaking and the engine’s started, and we’re racing toward…home?