22. Reid
REID
PLAYLIST: DREAM ON – AEROSMITH
She slips into my car not a minute later after we hung up.
“Drive,” she says very efficiently.
Um…
“Where?” I ask.
“79th,” she says.
“It’s out of your radius,” I say.
“Yes, but I am with you, and you will want me to go there.”
“Do I?” I ask because I am done with surprises for a lifetime.
“Stop here,” she tells me in front of a monumental house
“I can’t park here,” I say, “It’s a bus stop.”
“You’re FBI, you can park on the fucking moon if you want,” she says, leans over, and turns on the switch for the grille lights.
This woman!
I park the car half on the road, half on the sidewalk.
“What are we doing here?”
“Just get out,” she says.
We both get out of the car, and when I walk around, she stands in front of the massive four-story house with its black fence. She sighs heavily.
And then she opens the gate.
She walks inside, opens the door, and I can’t believe what I am walking into.
This house must cost a fortune.
An entrance worthy of royalty opens up with massive stairs leading upstairs. But she doesn’t lead me upstairs. She opens a wooden door that leads to a salon with a massive chimney, several couches, and built-in bookshelves.
A massive rug decorates it. A rug that has blood stains on it.
“What happened here?” I ask in a whisper.
She squats down and brushes her hand over the largest bloodstain.
“She died here,” Avery says. “Emily. She was my first love. The person I trusted. She died here in my arms. They almost killed me, too. We were after the crown, Napoleon’s crown.”
Goosebumps spread over my arm.
Suddenly, it all makes sense.
The reason why she went to the lengths of working with Hedda to get to the crown.
She did it for love.
Out of grief.
“I’m so sorry,” I say.
“I buried her. Cried at her casket. Bought this house. Worked with the woman I was trying to get away from to get the two things we promised each other to stop after. The crown and the hat,” she says and gets up.
“And then we were supposed to live our lives in peace, in freedom. Two last jobs, and a life in freedom.”
A tear fights its way down her cheek.
She feels.
I smile weakly at her, but she wipes it away angrily.
“Turns out, Emily didn’t die after all,” she says, her face hardened. “Her grave is empty. The hat is gone. And I have been lied to the entire time.”
I have a million questions, and yet, I ask none. Avery is trying to tell me something, and it's my time to listen.
She walks up to me.
Holds out her hand with a golden bracelet in it for me to take.
Cleopatra’s bracelet.
“It was me. I lied. I used you for all the wrong reasons, legitimized by the love for a woman who betrayed me the entire time. I feel horrible, and I am trying to hold it together, but I am scared that the moment I let myself feel that anger, that I am going to burn down the world and pull you with me into the flames.”
I take the bracelet.
“Thank you for telling me,” I say, and nothing else. I am not even mad. I knew she'd taken it; I knew I’d have to cover it up and risk everything for her.
“You should arrest me,” she says and holds up her wrists.
“No,” I say.
“Stop trying to save me,” she says, raising her voice. “Your entire life, you try to fix people, save them from themselves, but you can’t save everyone!”
“I can save you,” I say and brush through her hair to push it behind her ear.
“And sacrifice yourself for it,” she says. “I won’t let you.”
She knows me too well. I was aware she does, but at this point, I am certain she knows more about me than I know about her.
“Nothing you could do would have changed what happened with your sister,” she says, and my heart stumbles several beats. “You can stop trying to fix everyone else. It doesn’t change what happened with her.”
“But—“
“No,” she says. “You listen to me now. You convinced yourself that you can set things right when you stick to your morals and rules, when you bury yourself in work, and, most of all, when you try to save everyone by giving everything you have, including yourself. But it will never be enough. You cannot save someone who either can’t or doesn’t want to be saved. ”
Tears fight their way down my cheeks.
Because it hurts.
It hurts because she is telling the truth.
A truth I can’t acknowledge, because if I do, I’d have to acknowledge I have spent years wasting my life for something that got me nowhere. And the thought of it is unbearable to me.
“No,” I say and shake my head, taking a step back, but she doesn’t let me.
She grasps my face.
“Asher Tolliver died because your sister is mad. She has severe psychosis because she was abused and raped, and had to go through things no human should go through. But you are not responsible for her. Tolliver was responsible for what he did. And your parents for taking care of your sister. Not you.”
“But I am her sister!” I shout. “I should have noticed, should have seen, should have protected her—
A horrible feeling surges through me, as I am back when I found her after she didn’t come home for a week. Him, dead on the floor of that basement, her shaking and crouching next to him, naked, bruises and scratches all over her body—
My stomach turns.
I can’t feel the guilt.
Of not being able to help her—
“It’s all my fault,” I breathe out.
“No,” I say. “It’s Asher Tolliver’s fault. Just as Emily’s death wasn’t my fault, but her staging.”
I stare into her eyes, trying to understand her words, but my body won’t let me. I feel like falling into a depth without a ground.
“I’m here,” she says, and with her second hand cups my face. “I’m holding you. And I’m not going anywhere.”
My hands start trembling.
Tears flood my cheeks.
My chest feels as if it were ripped apart.
My mind is filled with the images of what I have done.
I can’t—
She pulls me into her.
“You cling to your rules because it’s the only thing that separates you from the drowning emotions of what you have done. You feel so drawn to me because I represent a part of you, a part you deny, so you don’t have to feel. So feel it all, and then you can be free. We can be free.”
It was this one, single word.
We.
I look up at her.
It was the one thing I always wanted.
The we.
The us.
The one person.
Who holds me when I break.
Who catches me when I fall.
Who loves me when I can’t love myself.
And I found her.
In the most messed-up circumstances, there are.
The most selfish, most arrogant, and entitled person there is, and she didn’t say I. She said we.
“I love you,” I say. It comes out as a whisper, a whisper scared of its own echo.
“I love you too,” she says.
And then her lips meet mine.
She loves me, knowing what I have done.
Loves me, not caring about it.
Loves me.