11
How’s the patient?” Bianca asks when Sydney wanders into the kitchen.
“Crabby.” Sydney smiles. “He’s pretty uncomfortable, but he’ll be fine.”
“He should rest,” Bianca says. “Damian can work on his own. He’s a machine.”
“I’m sure he is.” Syd grabs a dishcloth, focuses on wiping the counter.
“We both feel so badly that we told Curtis it was safe to go in the water,” Bianca apologizes. “Damian and I assumed the jellyfish were the same species we have back home. Clearly not.”
“You didn’t know,” Syd replies. “Are you a diver, too?”
“I’ve got my open-water diving certificate, but I don’t dive much. Damian spends so much time underwater at work that he prefers to have fun on dry land.”
“Understandable.”
“I’m just glad we knew how to treat the stings after,” Bianca says. “It would have been a lot worse if we didn’t get the stingers out.”
“Thank God you were there,” Sydney says. She’s a city slicker, an indoor girl. She wouldn’t have known how to handle her husband’s injuries.
“Should we start on the painting?” Bianca offers. “Or at least the prep work?”
“I think I’m going to lie down for an hour,” Syd says, a little sheepish. “I’m still getting used to this heat.”
“It gets a lot hotter back home,” Bianca chuckles. “You go rest. I’ll start moving boxes and furniture away from the walls. If you’ve got a screwdriver, I’ll take off the outlet panels.”
“There’s no rush,” Syd says. “Go for a swim. Or have a siesta, too.” But when Bianca insists, Sydney finds a flathead in the kitchen junk drawer and hands it to her. Bianca rumbles down the stairs, seemingly eager to attack the chaos.
Retreating to her bedroom, Syd closes the door and climbs into the queen-size bed.
She wonders if Curtis will join her there.
He shouldn’t be working in this heat, especially when he’s in pain and not feeling well.
But Curtis has never listened to her when he’s in one of his moods.
And she can tell he feels competitive with the physically bigger, stronger, more alpha male in their home.
Curtis is smart, fit, and attractive in his bookish way. Damian is Thor.
As she nestles under the silk duvet, her body relaxes and her mind drifts.
In the cocoon of privacy her thoughts slip back to the hike, that moment when she’d nearly fallen on the trail.
Damian’s hands, strong yet gentle, had caught her.
They’d continued down the path, his hand hovering at the small of her back.
Curtis had been so intent on getting to the bottom, he hadn’t even noticed she’d stumbled.
Let them go ahead. We can take it slow.
She’d felt something then—a tremor, a tingle, a warmth—and she feels it now.
She’d ignored it, shunted it away as they joined their partners on the beach, but it revisits her.
It’s a harmless little… nothing. She’s lonely, that’s all.
There’s such a distance between Sydney and her husband.
Maybe she’s even a little horny. It’s not like Syd and Curtis are having sex…
well, once, when they were tipsy, and it had not gone well.
Curtis had seemed so hungry for her, so full of passion and desire.
But ultimately, he couldn’t get aroused.
He’d blamed the pressure of the moment, but Sydney worried that wasn’t the truth.
She wasn’t as hot or sexy as Collette. She was comfortable and boring, and Curtis couldn’t perform.
Sleepily, she allows her hand to travel between her thighs as she imagines Damian’s strong body, his undeniable manliness.
She feels his rough hands on her, moving over her skin, through her hair.
Guilt flickers around the edges, but she doesn’t need to feel badly about this.
This is just a fantasy. She would never act on it. She’s not like Curtis.
Her husband appears in her imagination then, his features contorted with passion and desire.
Sydney has always found Curtis sexy, and she eases into the familiarity of him.
Suddenly, his lover Collette enters the scene, those long earrings dangling as she snakes her way up Curtis’s body.
Sydney had avoided the details of their liaison, but her imagination fills in the blanks.
And her body shuts down, any trace of arousal snuffed out by the mental image of the affair.
Annoyed, she rolls over and eventually falls asleep.
Her phone buzzes about an hour later. Afternoon naps have become routine, but she often wakes groggy and confused, lingering in that liminal space between her old life and her new one.
Is she in New York or Spain? Is it day or night?
Did her husband cheat on her, or is their marriage solid and happy?
She reaches for the phone, thinking it’s her alarm, but she never sets it anymore.
Why would she? She has nothing to do, nowhere to be.
And the ringtone is different. It’s a phone call.
They’re rare these days. It will be her brother, Reid, or maybe one of her girlfriends back in New York.
Propping herself up on an elbow, she reads the name on the display: Brian Hale.
He was a colleague from the public defender’s office.
They’d been pals—not exactly close, but there was an undeniable camaraderie.
They didn’t socialize outside of work, but they’d regularly grab a gyro on the sidewalk or go for a drink after a day in court.
Brian was one of the good ones. Like Sydney, he’d been lured to the PD’s office because he truly wanted to help the disadvantaged.
The loan forgiveness inherent in a public service job didn’t hurt either.
“Hey, Syd,” Brian says. “How’s life in Spain?”
“It’s good. Great.” Brian doesn’t know about the troubles in her marriage. He’d assumed, like most people, that Syd had simply burned out on the intense workload. “How are things in the office?”
“Nuts. Crazy. Same old.”
Sydney reads the news from back home, monitors the cases that will require a public defender. She knows how hectic Brian’s life must be. “Sorry to abandon you.”
“Every man for himself.” He chuckles, then his jovial tone darkens. “There’s something I thought you should know.” He clears his throat. “It’s about Jameson Drew.”
A damp coldness prickles Sydney’s skin at the sound of the name.
Drew was her last client before she left the PD’s office and fled to Spain.
After her mom died, while her marriage was falling apart, she’d been tasked with one of the most violent cases of her career.
Jameson Drew had murdered his lover, choking him to death with his bare hands.
The two men had met on a dating app, had spent several days together drinking, doing drugs, and having sex. And then something had gone wrong.
Jameson Drew claimed his victim had attacked him in a drug-fueled rage, that he’d killed him in self-defense.
He’d panicked. There were illegal drugs and a corpse in his apartment!
He knew how it would look to the police.
So Drew had wrapped the body in plastic, driven to a forested area in New Jersey, and buried it.
It had not been Sydney’s job to decide guilt or innocence.
Her role was to represent her client at arraignment, to ensure he understood his legal options.
When the DA offered a plea deal—twenty years to life—she counseled Drew to take it.
There was no way he’d win at trial. The crime was too violent.
The video footage of Drew dragging the lifeless body to his car too chilling.
The DA would fight for first degree, make her client out to be a cold-blooded killer, a predator.
If a jury bought it, Drew would get life without parole.
He’d never be free again. Jameson Drew had wept like a child when he was sentenced, but it was the right choice. Sydney stood by it.
“What about him?” Syd asks.
“He’s dead.”
“Oh no,” Syd says, but she isn’t surprised. Prison often has a shortening effect on a life.
“There’s more, Sydney…” Brian says, and his tone is solemn. “It’s about you.”
Syd’s chest tightens, narrowing her airway. She struggles to get a deep breath, her anxiety raising its ugly head.
Because she knows, even dead, Jameson Drew can hurt her.