21. Carrie
— ? —
Carrie
The door explodes inward.
Tom stands in the frame, silhouetted against the parking lot lights. He looks half-dead, pale, sweating, his bandaged arm cradled against his chest, but his eyes are burning with a fierce and terrible thing.
“Get away from her.”
Ulises spins. He’s drunk, more drunk than before, the whiskey bottle on the nightstand half-empty now, and his face has gone wild, unmoored from sanity.
“Well, well.” The sound he makes is not quite a laugh. “The conquering hero arrives.”
“Carrie.” Tom’s eyes find mine. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay.” My voice shakes, but I force the words out. “The baby’s okay.”
“Good.” He steps into the room, his focus shifting to his brother. “Now get away from her.”
“Or what?” Ulises moves between us, blocking Tom’s path. “What are you going to do, little brother? You can barely stand. You should be in a hospital bed, not playing hero.”
“I’m done playing.” Tom’s voice is ice. “Move, Ulises. This is your last chance.”
“My last chance?” Ulises laughs again, wild and broken. “My last chance was years ago. Before you. Before her. Before everything went to shit.” He reaches for his pocket, and I see the glint of metal before I process what it is.
A gun.
“Tom!” I scramble backward on the bed, my heart slamming. “He has a gun!”
Ulises raises the weapon, his hand shaking. “See? Now we’re all paying attention.”
Tom doesn’t move. He’s so still he could be made of stone, only his eyes alive, tracking the gun in his brother’s hand.
“You’re not going to shoot me.”
“No?” Ulises’s smile is vicious. “I’ve already lost everything, Tom. My wife. My family. My reputation. What’s one more thing?”
“You’d spend the rest of your life in prison.”
“Maybe that’s what I want. Maybe I want everyone to know what you drove me to.” The gun waves between Tom and me. “Maybe I want to make sure that if I can’t have her, no one can.”
“Ulises.” Tom’s voice softens, just slightly. “This isn’t you. Whatever you’ve become, whatever Dad made you, this isn’t who you have to be.”
“Don’t talk to me about Dad.” The gun steadies, aimed directly at Tom’s chest. “Don’t pretend you understand anything about our family.”
“I understand more than you think. I grew up in the same house. I saw what he did to Mom. What he did to both of us.” Tom takes a step forward, slow and careful. “But you don’t have to be him, Ulises. You can stop this. Right now.”
“It’s too late.”
“It’s not. Put the gun down. Let Carrie go. We can work this out.”
“Work it out?” Ulises’s laugh is sharp, hysterical. “There’s nothing to work out. She’s pregnant with your child. My wife, my wife, is carrying your bastard, and you want me to just accept that?”
“She was never your wife. Not really. Not in any way that mattered.” Tom takes another step. “You never saw her. Never cared about what she wanted, what she needed. You just wanted something to own.”
“Shut up.”
“She’s a person, Ulises. Not a trophy. Not a possession. A person who deserved to be loved, and you couldn’t even give her that.”
“I said shut up!”
Ulises lunges forward, the gun swinging toward Tom, and that’s when I see my chance.
The lamp on the nightstand. Heavy ceramic base. Close enough to reach.
I do not let myself think. I move.
My hand closes around the lamp as I launch myself off the bed. Ulises starts to turn, his eyes widening, but he’s too slow, too drunk, too focused on Tom to see me coming.
The lamp connects with the side of his head with a sickening crack.
He goes down.
The gun skitters across the floor. I kick it under the bed, my heart pounding, my hands shaking, and then Tom is there, pulling me into his arms, holding me so tight I can barely breathe.
“I love you.” His voice breaks against my hair. “God, Carrie, I love you so much. I thought, when I saw that picture.”
“I know.” I’m crying now, tears streaming down my face. “I know, I know.”
“This was never just an arrangement to me.” He pulls back, cups my face in his hands, his good hand warm and steady, his burned hand trembling with pain. “It was never about revenge, or the deal, or any of that. It was you. It was always you.”
“I love you too.” The words come out broken, jagged with sobs. “I was so scared. He said he’d hurt the baby, and I didn’t know if you’d wake up, and...”
“I woke up for you.” He presses his forehead to mine. “I will always wake up for you.”
On the floor, Ulises groans. Tom turns, putting himself between me and his brother, but Ulises doesn’t move. He’s barely conscious, blood seeping from the wound on his head.
Somewhere out on the road, sirens rise, closer with every second.
“The cops,” I whisper.
“I called them before I came. And Reyes tracked his phone.” Tom’s arm tightens around me. “It’s over, Carrie. It’s really over.”
The motel room fills with red and blue light. Car doors slam. Footsteps, shouts, the sounds of authority arriving too late to do anything but clean up the mess.
Cops burst through the shattered door, guns drawn.
“Police! Everyone on the ground!”
“She’s the victim,” Tom says, his voice calm despite everything. “He kidnapped her. There’s a gun under the bed. He set a fire two nights ago that nearly killed us both.”
They take Ulises away in handcuffs, still groggy from the blow to his head. He tries to say a word, my name, maybe, or a threat, or a plea, but the words don’t come. He just stares at me with those empty eyes as they drag him toward the patrol car.
I feel nothing.
One of the officers murmurs into his radio, and the name carries. Donnelly. It crackles back in a rush of voices, because of course it does. By now the whole city knows the name. By now the name is the story.
“There are reporters at the mouth of the lot,” another officer says, almost apologetic. “Word travels fast on a night like this.”
Of course they are here. They have been circling the Donnelly name since the photographs got out this afternoon, since the headlines started, since his own grandmother shut the family door in his face.
A respected family. A golden son. A wife he abused, a sister he ruined, a brother he left burning in a cabin in the woods.
No one could write a better story than the one Ulises has handed them.
He sees the cameras at the edge of the lot.
I watch him find the lights, the lenses already trained on him, and for the first time tonight the fury drains out of his face and leaves only fear.
Prison he could have survived. Losing me he could have survived.
He cannot survive the whole city watching the great Ulises Donnelly dragged out of a roadside motel in handcuffs, drunk and bleeding and done.
“Eleanor is handling the rest,” Tom says quietly beside me, following my gaze. “She called while I was driving. The family is closing ranks. Against him, this time.” His good hand finds mine. “He has the name for one more night. Tomorrow he is just the man in the photograph.”
I watch them fold him into the back of the patrol car. I watch the cameras swallow him whole.
And then it lands, at last, quieter than I expect. There is no triumph in it, only a clean and final stillness, the door of a six-year nightmare swinging shut for good.
No satisfaction. No relief. Just an exhausted, bone-deep emptiness where the fear used to be.
Tom sways on his feet.
“Tom?” I grab his arm, his good arm, as his knees buckle. “Tom!”
“I’m okay.” But he’s not. His face has gone gray, his eyes unfocused. “I’m just.”
He collapses.
“I need a medic!” I’m screaming now, cradling his head in my lap. “Someone help him! He just had surgery, he shouldn’t be here, he...”
Paramedics rush in. They load him onto a stretcher, check his vitals, bark instructions to each other in that clipped medical shorthand I don’t understand. Someone tries to pull me away, but I won’t let go of his hand.
“Ma’am, you need to let us work.”
“I’m not leaving him.”
“Ma’am.”
“She stays.” Tom’s voice is barely a whisper, but his grip on my hand tightens. “She stays with me.”
The paramedic looks at me, then at Tom, then sighs. “Fine. But stay out of the way.”
They wheel him toward the ambulance. I walk beside the stretcher, my hand in his, watching his face for any sign of consciousness.
“Tom? Stay with me. Please.”
His eyes flutter open. Just for a moment.
“Marry me.”
“What?”
“When this is over.” His voice is fading, his eyes closing again. “When the divorce is final. When our baby is born.” A ghost of a smile crosses his lips. “Marry me, Carrie.”
I lean down and press my lips to his forehead.
“Yes.”
His hand goes slack in mine as unconsciousness takes him. But he’s still breathing. Still fighting.
And I’m still here.
We’re both still here.