The Farewell
Sullen
When I wake up, she is next to me, her spine pressed to my chest, my arm wrapped around her like I will never let her go, even in sleep.
It feels like everything I have ever wanted.
It feels unreal.
I expect to truly wake up at any moment until I hear her throaty voice, thick with sleep. Her sleepy voice. I want it every morning.
“What do you want to do with this house?”
I squeeze her close to me with my arm looped over her hips. I remember her bruises, the ones on her sternum. I do not want to hurt her more.
At least, not yet.
In my mind, I see her riding me in the bathtub, water sloshing over the sides, and neither of us cared. She looked perfect. I could not have crafted a woman like her in my wildest dreams, and if this is my reward for all I have suffered, it was worth it.
What do I want to do with the house?
I like the fact she did not start with small talk, or rehashing what has happened in the past forty-eight hours.
There will be time for it later, and if she needs to discuss it, I am here. I will never leave. But the fact she murdered two of my abusers is something I will spend the rest of my life making up to her. Thanking her for.
“Keep it,” I whisper, my breath along the back of her neck.
I am apprehensive. Scared she will say she is leaving.
I curl my fingers tighter against her hip. Do not leave me, Karia. Please. I will not survive it.
“If you want to?” I add, so she knows I will go where she decides we should go.
“It was my mother’s, really, in the beginning.
” I think of the library. Her room. Karia and I could spend so much time there, in the warmth.
The light, so strangely different from the stifling heat Stein liked.
“He might have had decades of it, but I want the rest.”
She turns on her side.
She is facing me, gripping my hands beneath the sheets.
Her sleepy face, her messy hair, scattered over cerulean eyes, it takes my breath.
“It will be yours too,” I tell her, aware that she will need stability. She is a pampered princess, no matter what she has done for me, and I want to turn her into a queen. “You will not have to work for anything.”
Stein had money and assets. He may have despised me, but there is no one else aside from Klein he might have left any of this too. If I had to bet, I imagine he never had a will, thinking he would be immortal after all.
That means it is all mine.
And it is all hers.
And even if we are left with nothing, I will claw our way to the surface. Karia will never have to do anything she does not wish to do, ever again.
She squeezes her slender fingers through mine.
Her pink lips rise upward. “Deal,” she says with a slight giggle. “As long as I can hire a gardener and drink pina coladas when I feel like it and fuck you whenever I want.”
“Marry me,” I say, and I am smiling, but I mean it, too.
“Yes,” she whispers.
And then she is on top of me again.
Cosmo de Actis is the first out of everyone to leave, three days after we burnt bodies together.
I cannot say it hurts me, and I watched carefully when she hugged him goodbye to see if it hurt her, but she let him go easily enough, one hand touching my chest all the while they embraced.
It is the only way I could stand it.
Maybe one day I will not feel this ache in my bones like she is going to walk out and never look back at me, never think of me again, but that day is not today.
And as the watery, thin sunlight streams in through the gaps in the partition to the library—the place I find I love the most in this house—Cosmo finds me again after telling Maude and the rest goodbye, too.
He stands in the doorway, black leather bag at his feet, varsity jacket in navy trim and black on his frame.
There is a lighter in his fist and he sparks it up only to watch it die, over and over again, like he cannot stop.
I wonder what he thinks of burning his father’s body, but I know enough to understand we will likely never be close enough for me to ask him a question like that.
“I was kind of a dick to you,” he says, without looking at me.
In my green velvet chair, Frankenstein between my fist—I will finish it, after all—I stare at him, and I feel heat rising to my chest. The bandana is not back around my throat, but in this moment, I wish it was.
With Karia, I feel safe.
Anyone else, I am just exposed.
“I was just… wrestling with everything. In some sick way, I felt fucking jealous.” He laughs on the last word, glancing up at me, as if to see how I’m taking it. “And this isn’t about Karia, by the way.”
I don’t laugh.
“You got attention. The worst kind.” He shrugs one shoulder. “But I’m not sure he even knew I existed.” He glances around the library, as if looking for proof. Then he adds, “I was here once. In this house.”
Karia told me, but I don’t react. He does not want me to speak, I understand that much. He is unburdening. I will allow it, because the sooner he’s done, the sooner he’s out of my house. Our house.
“I didn’t know, who he was then.” He is staring at me now, blinking fast. “Or you.”
The implication makes my jaw clench. Shame starts to bubble up. I am gripping the book so tightly, it bends and warps.
“I wish I had done something, but at the same time, I know I couldn’t have stopped this.”
I grit what is left of my teeth.
“But she did. And you make her happy.” He is not smiling or laughing now.
“Happier than I have ever seen her.” A softness in his words.
“She loves you.” The second time he has told me.
Now, on the other side of it all, it carries more weight.
“I don’t.” He grins. “But you are good for her.” He nods once, bends a little to snatch up his bag by the two leather handles.
“Will you take care of her?” he asks, looking at the ceiling. There is a hoarse quality to his voice.
You fucking won’t. “She is my life.” I’ve never meant anything more.
I watch his throat roll as he swallows, still not looking at me.
Then he just nods, as if reluctantly accepting it, and says, “Writhe will probably be a problem.” He looks at me again, now that we are onto more practical matters.
“But, despite the fact Karia can’t stand her within twelve inches of you, Maude’s note taking should help.
The facts, or some version of them, from Sanford’s testimony and confessions might not hurt.
And Karia.” He says her name with gentleness.
“She’ll make sure she gets her way. And that’s you. ”
His words echo something similar Sanford said to me before, about her wanting me.
I don’t speak.
“Whatever you do, don’t threaten Writhe or, you know, start dissecting them with your scalpels. You might actually have a chance.” Then he turns away.
“You should sleep,” I say quietly, because I need to say something. We will never be close, but we share a pain that will never leave.
He pauses just under the curtain.
“I know you haven’t been.” I clear my throat. “It’s not… good.” I would know.
He glances over his shoulder and meets my eye. “Thank you,” he says.
Then he’s gone.
Maude, Fleet, Elliot, and Alivia find Karia and I in the library just as the sun is sinking down from the sky. We have lamps on this time, she is in my lap, her head on my shoulder, watching me read. We have not spoken much, and it is the best way I could imagine spending any amount of time.
I look up as the Emporium dinner party stands awkwardly in the room, but Karia does not. It makes my dick hard, her fierce jealousy over anyone daring to steal a scrap of my attention.
No one has ever cared for me like that. No one has ever loved me the way she has.
I will do nothing to ruin it.
As I look at Maude with her dark hair and red lips and black lace dress, I see a self-assured woman whose papers and recordings she made copies of—this house is full of useful supplies—might set Karia and I free from Writhe.
I see the woman who was there for me in the forum when everyday was hard to breathe.
When it felt impossible to keep going. To survive.
But that is all.
Nothing else.
I suppose Maude is pretty, in her way, but, with my hand firmly on Karia’s ass in my lap, she does nothing for me. Briefly, I remember thinking I should gain more experience with another woman just to use it on Karia.
Now I know better. Karia’s thighs shake with my head between her legs and her fingers in my hair and she is sopping wet when I fuck her after, and besides that, if I dared mention the idea I once had, she would give me more scars than Stein could have ever dreamed of inflicting.
I will keep that errant, past thought to myself.
I do not wish to die. Not anymore.
“Well, this has been fun,” Fleet says, his eyes bleary as he grins at us while he shifts from foot to foot. “Really, a blast. I’m down anytime you want it again?”
I curl my fingers into Karia’s backside. “Noted,” I say coolly.
Elliot runs his hand over his tight, black curls.
“Exactly what I needed before Harvard.” He drops his arm by his side, glancing wistfully over the library, as if he wishes he could stay.
Of all of them, he would be the more likely candidate.
“And,” he says, hand over heart, “all of your secrets will go to the grave.”
I imagine they will. Isadora and Von would have taken care of the threats for that. They are upstairs somewhere. I swore I heard a knocking up there, and at first I thought Stein’s ghost had come back to haunt me.
But I’m fairly certain it is only the brunette and the redhead fucking.
I cannot wait until everyone is out of my house.