TWENTY-FIVE
I spent an hour watching online tutorials on how to bleach hair at home. I’ve never bleached mine, and although it looks simple in theory, I just had to stumble across a couple of failed bleach attempt videos that made me feel anxious.
Arlo sits on the small stool in his bathroom, and I’m behind him, putting gloves on my hands. My fingers tremble as I grab the mixing bowl and start putting in the bleach and developer. I’m supposed to use a measuring scale, but Arlo just said to wing it, so I’m winging it.
Once I think it’s the right consistency, I take his hairbrush and comb through his hair, then slowly start applying the bleach to his roots only. It reeks, the chemicals burning my nose. Somehow, he seems unaffected. Most likely because he’s been bleaching his hair since he was ten years old.
He tilts his head back slightly, giving me better access to his front parts, the soft music of piano filling the otherwise silent bathroom. His eyes are closed, and I can see him visibly relax the more I touch his hair, trying my best to evenly distribute the product without frying off his hair.
He looks peaceful, and the smile forms on my face without me even realizing. His steady breathing causes my heart to flutter, and it’s weird. All of this is weird. I’ve finally decided to give in and trust him completely. It will either be my salvation or my doom, and somehow, I trust him enough to believe it’d be the former.
The soft recording of the piano lingers around us, and I recognize it as one of Arlo’s plays. Of course, the piece isn’t originally his, but somehow, I can immediately tell that it was his fingers gliding over the keys, playing the beautiful melody.
“When did you record this one?”
I ask, breaking the silence.
Arlo tilts his head back more, then opens his eyes. I can’t begin to describe how bright his eyes are and how the soft gaze makes me feel. Almost like I’m the only one to ever see it. He gives me a wolfish grin, that stupid gem on his tooth doing things to me that I don’t understand.
“A while ago,”
he murmurs. “I was going to send you this one, but you ended up leaving Long Grove, so I never got the chance to.”
“Why did you do that?”
I press. “I mean, amongst the clothes and jewelry you sent me and the letters, why the recordings?”
He shrugs, and I gently push his head forward, moving onto bleaching the backside of his head. I steal a few glances of him through the mirror, but his gaze never leaves mine. I don’t think he’s blinked much, either.
“I read somewhere that people with trauma find it soothing. So, I played around with different pieces, some being soft tunes, others being aggressive, until I figured out which ones you liked the most.”
“And how did you figure it out?”
I ask, then remember our history and snort. “Never mind, the entire house was filled with cameras.”
He smiles, sheepishly. “What did you think of the letters?”
I pause, and I can’t help but grin at the soft pink that dusts over his cheeks. He’s trying his best not to show he’s flustered, but it’s failing because the longer I stay quiet and just look at him through the mirror, the darker the shade gets.
“I never read them,”
I admit. “Back then, I had no idea who the hell was stalking me, so I was scared of the contents. Now that you’ve reminded me, I’ll read them soon.”
He immediately goes still, shoulders going rigid. I finish with the bleach and toss the bowl and the brush into the bathtub to wash it later. He immediately spins around, eyes wide and his entire face almost in a blazing shade of red.
“No!”
He stammers. “Don’t read them. Throw them out, or better yet, let me burn them for you.”
An amused smile is on my lips, and I suppress the urge to burst out laughing. “Why are you getting so flustered? What the hell did you write in those?”
“Nothing too bad!”
He buries his face in his hands. “The letters were just… admiring you, you know? Nothing creepy.”
“Yeah, because stalking me, massacring an entire prison for me, and killing men for me isn’t creepy at all.”
He lifts his head up, then shrugs, his face slowly returning to its normal color. “That was just… me expressing my admiration subtly.”
“You need to work on your subtlety.”
“No, I prefer surprising you.”
I snort.
My mind drifts back to my days in Long Grove. The restaurant I worked at, the owners, and my coworkers. I didn’t have any real friends, but I was very friendly with the staff. It wasn’t ideal, but it was somewhat peaceful, and back then, I could’ve imagined spending the rest of my life there. How did it all change so quickly?
Then, my thoughts get filled with all the questions I had for Arlo when he first revealed himself to me. Now that we’ve gotten closer, I’m more comfortable voicing them out, and since the bleach needs to sit on his hair for a while, I decide to ask everything.
“Hey, Arlo,”
I call out, and he turns to look at me after washing his hands in the sink. “I have a few questions.”
“Ask away.”
“Amy Marshall…all of that, how did you find her, and how did you choose her?”
He pulls me to sit on the edge of the tub, with him returning to sit on the small stool, eyes looking up at me. He takes my hands in his and strokes the back of my palms with his thumbs.
“Well, I’d been planning to get you out of prison for a long time before I actually did it. In the meantime, I’ve been looking into people and cities that are most compatible with you, where you won’t be recognized. So, I ran your picture through a few programs, trying to find a doppelganger.”
My brows narrow. “Wait, back up, a doppelganger?”
He nods. “The driver’s license, the ID, and everything in between – I just fabricated them because I couldn’t get my hands on Amy’s original ones. But the images on the documents? It’s Amy; it’s not you.”
I freeze. “What?”
My mind swirls with various thoughts.
“Yeah, and you did an amazing job memorizing the background I’ve sent you.”
That’s why no one batted an eye when I appeared as Amy. That’s why a lot of people used to stop me and chat with me, despite me not knowing them. Amy knew them. That’s why no one actually cared about me living in Amy’s childhood home – because they all believed I was Amy.
“How is it possible for the two of us to look exactly alike?”
I whisper.
Arlo sighs. “I’m not sure. Her parents were dead already, and by the time I set you free, Amy had been missing for a while. No one reported her disappearance because she left Long Grove and went to Los Angeles. But that’s where her traces end. No one used her cards; no one had even seen her. I assumed that she died, which was why I opted for her.”
My heart is hammering against my ribcage, the emotions overwhelming me. Mainly, it’s confusing. I’ve never met anyone with that many similarities and that they weren’t related. With a deep breath, I squeeze his hands.
“Are we related?”
“No,”
he says. “Your family history has no overlap with hers. There’s not a chance you two are related, unless it’s through your biological father.”
“And… we can’t tell for sure because we don’t know who my father is.”
Arlo halts for a moment, his grip on my hands tightening. He swallows harshly, his Adam's apple bobbing a few times.
“About that…”
“Arlo, if you tell me that you’ve known who my biological father was all along, I’ll lose my fucking shit.”
He shakes his head furiously. “No! Not all along, no.”
I take a deep breath, trying my best not to get pissed. “Speak.”
“Back when I took you to my place, my father and I went to this casino of sorts. It’s illegal and filled with wealthy people all the time. Adams was there, and as a warning that the De Santis’ are coming for him, I handed him a small USB drive with the recordings of the day he killed my aunt. While we were there, Dad spotted a man and ended up following him. Later on, he had his men tail him just because he looked awfully familiar and suspicious. The man ended up being your father.”
It feels like all air gets sucked out of my lungs. My ears are ringing a little, and I try my best to process the information. I never dared to know who my father was, and now, Arlo’s telling me that he found him, by accident no less.
“How…”
I start speaking, my throat dry. I swallow and force the words out. “How could you be so sure?”
He takes a deep breath. “There was no way of confirming it via DNA tests, because Dad didn’t want to risk getting too close to the man and end up doing something he’d regret. And you are quite literally his spitting image.”
“That’s not proof. As you can tell, Amy and I look the same but aren’t related.”
He nods. “Which is why Dad did something.”
“What did he do?”
“He found out about the man’s routine and one evening sat next to him at a bar. Dad kept buying him drinks until he was drunk enough to talk, because drunk people tend to overshare. The moment Dad mentioned your mother’s name, the man’s face fell.”
“What’s his name?”
“Alexander Hawke.”
As silly as it sounds, the last name just confirms it for me. Though, it’s not nearly enough. The more Arlo speaks, the more questions I seem to have. None of this makes any sense, and the more I try to realize how and why this twisted fate is against me, the fewer answers I have.
“Continue,”
I whisper.
“To cut a very long story short, Alexander and your mother, Sabrina, were briefly involved after he graduated from university. From what he told Dad, it was an affair, and he apparently had a lot of those, which made his wife leave eventually when she found out. Anyway, when Sabrina told him about the pregnancy, she requested money for an abortion. He wasn’t exactly thrilled about being a father, especially to a child that didn’t come from his wife, so he complied with the request.”
“So she took the money and still kept me,”
I conclude, to which Arlo nods.
“Yes,”
he sighs. “Dad didn’t mention you to Alexander, in case you didn’t want him to know.”
“I’m an affair child,” I sigh.
“And from Alexander’s story, Sabrina firstly tried convincing him to leave his wife, but he refused, and afterward she came requesting the money for the abortion. And he let it slip that the affair with your mother wasn’t his first affair, either. Lord knows if he has any more children running around.”
I take a deep breath and close my eyes. It’s a lot to process, and my stomach is churning. I always thought my biological father never wanted anything to do with me and that he purposefully let Sabrina raise me alone. I’m not sure if it’s better or worse that he never knew about me, given the way I was conceived.
“Tell me everything you know about him.”
Arlo nods. “I’ve found more information by digging through his past. He divorced his wife around four years after you were born. Sabrina reappeared and told his wife, with evidence of their affair. I’m not sure why she did that, but you were never mentioned, so he still believed Sabrina had an abortion. That’s when Alexander confessed to numerous affairs that were before your mother. To my knowledge, the reason he stopped cheating was because of your mother’s pregnancy. It probably scared him shitless. Nevertheless, his wife left him.”
I nod. “Anything else?”
“He remarried and has a son with his current wife; he’s about fifteen now. He owns successful businesses all around, from restaurant chains to a large security company. Definitely loaded,”
he snorts. “He was born rich, too, so half of his wealth has been passed down through his parents. He has no siblings, and his father is in a nursing home; his mother passed away when he was in high school.”
“Does he cheat on this one as well?” I scoff.
“I wouldn’t know,”
he shrugs. “So far, there hasn’t been anything to indicate that.”
I take a deep breath, then glance at his hair. “You should wash the bleach off so I can put on the toner.”
He nods and stands up from the stool. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I’m just curious why you didn’t tell me sooner.”
He sighs. “I was going to, but after that, I got shot, and you faced Simmons. I didn’t want to overwhelm you, which I now realize was a mistake. I’m sorry. I should’ve told you sooner. I was just terrified of how it would affect you if I’d told you at the wrong moment.”
He turns the water on, adjusting the temperature. A few drops splash me, and I shiver. How he’s able to wash his hair with almost Antarctic temperature water is beyond me. As I glance at him, I see genuine remorse for keeping this away from me, and I just shake my head.
“Don’t apologize. You’re probably right. I wouldn’t have taken it well.”
I can’t even find it in me to be angry at him. He’s too good for me, and I’m only scared he’ll realize just how damaged I am and the weight of the burdens I’m carrying. I’m scared he’ll realize soon enough that he could find someone so much better than me.
He offers me a small smile, then kisses the tip of my nose before lowering his head over the tub and starting to wash out the bleach. This man has given me my life back and is about to help me execute the perfect revenge against those who’d wronged me. I won’t allow my insecurities to overwhelm me and ruin what he’s struggled to build for me.
As for my biological father, I’m more angry than anything else. Yes, he’s a serial cheater and a scumbag, but perhaps if he’d known about me, he wouldn’t have allowed the suffering I had to endure. Perhaps my life would’ve been different.
There’s no point in ‘what if’ questions. I can’t let myself fall down that rabbit hole because I can’t turn back time, I can’t turn my mother into a loving, caring mother, and I can’t undo what she’d done to me.
All I can do is focus on the more pressing matters. And when the time comes, I’ll figure out what to do with Alexander and whether or not to tell him of my existence.