Hannah #2
‘Not badly, not badly. Don’t worry. I forgot my keys.
Or lost them … I don’t know. So I put my elbow through the glass in the front door.
I’m fine, it’s fine. But it’s throbbing a bit, and I took a couple of ibuprofen for that, and I’d already had a glass of wine …
I can’t drive. And I can’t leave the house until I get something done about the door in the morning.
Anyone can walk in. But I need to see you.
In person. I need to talk to you. Please. Please. Just come.’
Now she was having visions of a drunk and drugged Jason accidentally bleeding to death, and how she’d feel if she just hung up, turned over and sighed contentedly into her expensive sheets.
‘OK, fine. I’ll be there soon.’
When she pulled out of the underground car park, she was mad at him.
Somewhere around Donnybrook, she started feeling sorry for him.
By the time she got to Dundrum, she was just worried about him – and what was left of the glass in the front door, a bear trap of blood-tipped shards, only made her more so.
He greeted her with a towel wrapped tightly around his arm.
‘Let me see it,’ she said, reaching for it.
But he pulled back. ‘It’s fine. It’s stopped bleeding.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘Let’s sit down.’
He’d furnished the kitchen with two folding camp chairs and an upturned bucket.
‘I can’t leave her,’ he said, looking at the floor.
‘You can’t … What?’
‘I can’t leave her,’ he repeated. ‘I thought she’d get half of everything, but that’s actually the best-case scenario.
She doesn’t work. Her money started the business.
She could take everything. She’ll definitely take most of it.
I’ll lose everything. We’ll have nothing.
’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t do that to you. ’
Hannah rubbed at her eyes. She felt like she’d left half of herself back in her apartment, still asleep, and without it, she was struggling to put this together.
‘Are you breaking up with me?’ she asked.
‘I think you’re breaking up with me,’ Jason said miserably.
She noticed a bloom of blood on the towel, just visible between his fingers, and idly wondered if the injury could be making him insane.
‘We could just keep going,’ he said. ‘Like this. Nothing changes.’
‘No, we can’t. She’ll find out, eventually. I think she already has. I know you disagree, but—’
‘She doesn’t know. Trust me.’
She said, ‘But everyone else does,’ and let the trust me go.
‘Erin has nothing to do with the business.’
‘You just said her money was—’
‘I meant operationally. She’s not there. She doesn’t talk to the staff.’
‘She was in my shop, remember? Upset? Buying an anniversary gift she never gave you? Looking at a divorce card?’
‘That’s just a coincidence.’
‘That’s denial, Jason. The only question is whose? Hers or yours?’
‘I can’t do it,’ he said. He hung his head, and she saw his jaw working, as if he was trying to hold back a deeper upset. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’
The crimson bloom on the towel had grown. His fingers couldn’t cover it now.
‘Jason—’ she started, but she stopped when she saw his hand.
He looked up at her in question.
‘You’re wearing your ring,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Your wedding ring.’
She pointed, as if he needed the help, and he looked down at it in surprise, as if it was news to him that it was there.
And then she knew.
It hit her like a rock-solid wave of stone-cold certainty.
‘You don’t want to leave her, do you?’
He at least had the manners to look confused. ‘What?’
‘It’s not that you can’t. You don’t want to.’
‘Hannah, cop on. Of course I do.’
‘Oh my God.’ She started shaking her head, reality sinking in. ‘This was never … You were never going to leave her, were you? This was always just an affair.’
‘No, that’s not it at all.’
‘And you—’ She had to swallow back the lump that had suddenly and painfully formed in her throat. ‘You waited until everyone in my life knew about us to do this.’
‘What are you talking about? Why would I? Hannah, I love you. I’m trying to figure out a way to save us.’
She stood up. ‘I actually … I just can’t.’
‘Hannah, wait.’
She moved to go. ‘I can’t even—’
He stood up too. ‘Wait. Wait.’
‘No. I’m done. This is over.’
‘No!’
He roared it right into her ear, stunning her.
Then a hand was clamped on her arm, already hurting, preventing her forward motion. It pulled her back, into him.
Not so he could hold her until she felt what he felt for her, but to hold her in place.
To stop her from leaving.
To trap her here.
‘Jason,’ she said. ‘Stop. Let me go.’
He was hurting her and not listening to her, not responding to her attempts to pull away. And he wasn’t speaking, just staring at her, eyes black.
She pulled harder, twisting and turning.
‘Jason, what the fuck?’
His fingers dug deeper into the flesh of her arm.
And then the towel slipped off, revealing the long, angry gash of shredded skin, wet and gaping and bleeding still, and then the blood was on her, slipping between their sticky skin, smearing itself across her clothing, feeling warm as it dripped on to her chest, and she couldn’t—
Hannah screamed.
The words get the fuck off of me were supposed to be in there, but she didn’t hear them.
The sound itself was enough. It seemed to shock Jason to his senses, bringing him back from wherever he’d gone. His whole face changed, softening then falling. He looked down in horror at his arm, then at her, then up to her face.
‘Hannah—’ he started.
But she was already gone, turned around, running down the hall.