Chapter 35 Gwen
GWEN
I couldn’t grasp it all. On a rational level, I understood everything that had happened in the last few hours. But it hadn’t settled in.
The only thing about killing David that made my stomach hurt was the fact that I didn’t feel anything. How could I be so cold? Why did I care so little about another human life? Shouldn’t I have had some empathy for him as well?
But Sebastian had the words for it. Words I’d said and thought but never seemed valid until they came from his lips.
I hated it. I didn’t do any of it because I liked it. I did it because it needed done. And I hated that it needed done.
There were few people alive who could understand, but he did. Sebastian understood it because he felt it. We had stood in the same shoes.
But they weren’t the same. Not really.
Sebastian was someone I’d chosen, someone I loved, because I saw normalcy in him. I saw stability and consistency. There was good, so much good, in him.
Until now, I couldn’t imagine Sebastian being a violent man. Until he had hit me, I couldn’t have imagined Troy a violent man either. But he was. Clearly, Sebastian could be as well.
To top it all off, he had aided in David’s murder at the start of our relationship. We’d gone on our first date only a day after, and he’d disguised it. Not only had he disguised his involvement, but he’d disguised a huge part of himself from me.
Of course, I had done the same thing.
But holy shit, Sebastian was good at it.
Then again, was he? When he’d told me I looked like shit in the café that day, he was referencing the fact that I’d been up all night after killing a man. Had he been giving me an opportunity to open up? Had he debated telling me about his involvement?
No, he couldn’t have. He’d already had the burner in his pocket. He’d texted me just after we’d exchanged that longing smile as he left the building.
Sebastian had premeditated tormenting me with those texts. He said he was just trying to help, he hadn’t intended to terrify me the way those texts had, but intent and impact were separate things.
Then again, he’d done this before. He’d refused to tell me details because that’s what had kept him safe after he’d killed Jason.
Holy shit, he’d killed Jason.
Not the way I had killed David. Not to defend himself. Sebastian had planned it for the right reasons, but he’d lost control. In a red doused rage, he’d beaten the man to death with his bare hands.
Then he’d chopped off half his face and hands. The hands and face of a man he’d once called a friend.
Was I supposed to pretend that didn’t terrify me?
Sebastian was a surgeon. If blood and guts disgusted him, he couldn’t do his job.
But he’d done that before becoming a surgeon, when he was just a college student.
I’d seen the man tear up at roadkill. He was not some lunatic who enjoyed the gory suffering of others.
It needed done. I hated that it needed done.
Did it change who he was? No. He was still exactly who he told me he was. He warned me about that damn pedestal, and I still held him up on it. That was my bad.
Knowing this fractured the sculpture I had molded of him in my mind. This was just a new lens to view him through.
Was I seeing him through a lens at all? Or was I looking in a mirror?
It was almost poetic that he’d lain David in the same grave as Jason. Like a way to say, “If you go down, I’m going with you.”
I’d been so afraid to fall for him because what if he learned what I’d done? What if it all came out, and I had to run? I’d believed he wouldn’t run with me.
But now I knew he would.
Now I knew why he hadn’t donated all the money he’d inherited. In case he had to leave the country and start over.
Putting David in that same grave was his way of saying, “If you need to run, we can run together.”
Those butterfly wings had razor blades on them again.
I was halfway home when I remembered why I had gone to his house in the first place. That deep ache in my chest returned.
When I got back to the ranch, I brought Honey inside and sat on the couch. It was almost 6 a.m.. I didn’t have work today, thankfully. Within a few hours, I would be exhausted.
So far, though, I wasn’t. My eyes were heavy, and my chest hurt, but I wasn’t tired. I was nothing. Everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours felt like a shot of Novocain over my entire body. Each finger, toe, and limb were numb.
Simone was probably at work by now. She worked early on Saturdays.
Rhiannon was up, I imagined, but I didn’t want to bother her with all this. I couldn’t tell her about Sebastian anyway.
Delilah was someone I would’ve liked to go to with this. I could be vague enough in my descriptions. I wouldn’t have needed to go into every detail. But she would give me advice. She would smile, and she would make me do the same, and I would make us breakfast, and we would laugh while we ate it.
That wouldn’t happen anymore. That would never happen again.
In the past, if I had thought of her while I was home, I would shoot her a text and ask what she was up to.
She would say she was getting ready for the day and ask if I wanted to walk with her to the cafeteria, or the rec center, or somewhere else in town.
I would say of course, then walk down Main Street, up to her apartment, and wait for her to finish her makeup before we headed out.
Maybe if I did that, if I walked to her apartment, if I sat inside that silent living room where she usually sat at the mirror in the corner, dusting on her blush, it would feel real. Maybe if I was there, while she wasn’t, it would sink in.
So that was what I did.
I left Honey at the cabin and walked down Main Street.
As I made it to her apartment building and climbed the steps to the fourth floor, I detached from the world. Like I had last night. This was just the average day. I was walking to my friend’s apartment, and we would laugh while she got ready and everything would be okay.
As I made it to her door, for a split second, I thought that the last twenty-four hours had been a dream.
Now, I was waking up. Everything looked a bit brighter.
Beams of sunlight glowed out the cracks of the apartment door.
Because on the other side of it, the shuffle of feet sounded.
Someone was walking around in there, and it had to be her.
Delilah wasn’t dead. She was right there, on the other side of the door, and everything that had happened in the last day was the dream.
I walked in, and the warm beams of sunlight vanished. A dark cloud fell over the studio apartment.
Standing at the window was not Delilah. It was Rhiannon.
She jumped at my entry. One hand, she pressed over her heart. The other, she wiped her face with. A practical, not at all legitimate laugh escaped her. “Acting like I have the right to be startled when I’m standing in somebody else’s living room.”
Rhiannon had the right to do anything she wanted in this place. It was hers, after all.
But why was she here?
She spoke before I could ask.
“How you doing, kid?” She wiped her glistening cheeks, forcing a smile. “Did you go to Sebastian’s last night?”
Squinting, I cocked my head to the side. “How’d you know?”
“Basic deduction skills. I saw your key card was used to leave. That’s good. Relying on him a little bit for support when you’re struggling with something.”
All I could manage was a nod. Maybe if I didn’t say much else, she wouldn’t ask why I was back so early.
“How are you handling it?” Rhiannon asked. “It’s fresh, so I understand if you don’t know how you feel, but if you are feeling something, if you need help working through it, I’m here.”
“I’m sad. And I’m angry.” I didn’t realize I was speaking until the words left me.
My voice quivered, not with anxiety, but because of the lump forming in my throat.
“Mostly, I’m sad I’m never going to see her again.
I’m sad that she wasn’t here when I opened the door just now.
I’m sad we’re not going to breakfast together.
I’m sad she’s gone. But I’m angry. All night, I’ve been trying to figure out why my chest feels so tight and aches like this, and it’s because I’m angry. ”
Her lips trembled, and she pressed them together. She gave a short nod. “That’s normal. Anger is a part of grief.”
This was different. But I didn’t want to get into that. Clearly, Rhiannon was struggling too.
Clicking the door shut behind me, I took a step into the room. That put us half a dozen feet apart. Rhiannon was in the corner before the closet, right next to that mirror where Delilah sat on the floor and did her makeup.
I considered heading for the sofa, but I leaned against the kitchen counter instead. “How are you handling it?”
Rhiannon glanced around and let out a half laugh. “About the same as you. Sad and angry.”
“I guess that’s to be expected.”
“But confused, too.” She rubbed a hand down her face and gestured to some photos taped to the wall.
“This one, I’m assuming it’s her mom. She looks like Delilah.
The rest though? Every photo is of you guys.
” Rhiannon pointed at each one as she spoke.
“You and Delilah. Delilah and Simone. Delilah and Lori, from the nursery. Junie and Simone. Even a picture of Honey.”