Chapter 16
16
JACOB
T his isn’t what arriving home after a series of near-death experiences is supposed to be like.
No, no, that’s not what I meant. I meant—this isn’t what arriving home after a series of near-death experiences is supposed to feel like.
The welcome we get from Catherine’s sisters and by extension all of the Hills is picture fucking perfect. As genuine as anything. They did think we were dead. They are happy to see us alive. They do fold me and Catherine into the sort of group hug that verges on dangerous, what with all the flying elbows and clinging hands.
It might as well be happening to someone else.
I can feel the hug, obviously. Gabriel has crushed the air out of my lungs and then some. Everyone’s happiness is palpable.
And I…
Watch it from a distance, groggy and ill and undeserving.
Any moment now, they’ll realize there’s no need for a show like this. Not for me. Elise and Lydia can’t stop touching Catherine’s face. They stroke her hair and look into her eyes and lean back to make sure that all of her has arrived.
I just don’t understand—can’t understand—why anyone would bother with me.
Or perhaps I think they shouldn’t bother with me.
Perhaps it’s only as we’re dragged bodily into the entryway of Gabriel’s townhouse and the nurses who have been sent along to prevent me from dying have to gently suggest moving to a larger room so that they can shut the door and stop letting the winter in that it dawns on me: this simply can’t be.
It can’t be home.
Home isn’t a place where you can show up disheveled and sick and out of your mind. Home is where the facade lives. Home is where your shirt should be pressed and your smile should be firmly affixed to your face and your sharpest words should be ready at a moment’s notice for when your father appears to tell you in exacting detail how disappointing you are.
I know perfectly well that my father won’t pop out of one of Gabriel’s guest rooms with a bullet-pointed list of my various disloyalties and treacheries against the Chambers name. I know perfectly well that my father is in prison.
My inadequacies haunt me regardless. I don’t feel well. I’m dressed in sweatpants and a crew-neck sweatshirt. Yes, they’re made of cashmere, but they remain sweatpants and a crew-neck sweatshirt, and I’m wearing them because I couldn’t bear anything else. My heart aches constantly.
I can’t hide any of those things.
I can’t hide what I’ve become, which is worse than a wreck. I’m not just a member of the moneyed elite having a breakdown. I’m having a breakdown because I’m a murderer who can’t handle the guilt.
How can these people—how can Gabriel —stand to look at me, much less have me inside the same house?
We end up in the living room. It’s very like Gabriel. He’s the kind of person who would renovate the house but insist on keeping the history intact, which is exactly what he’s done with his brownstone. He made something beautiful out of what was already there.
Gabriel is like his parents, who were the only good people in the consortium.
My parents were among the worst in the group.
My father didn’t hire the hitman directly. That was Bettencourt. But Catherine and her sisters had nothing to do with that. They suffered as much as any of the victims, if not more.
And what did I do?
I went to London. I hired Sophia Evans and went to society parties and handed off information without looking at it.
I was a greedy, selfish coward, just like my parents.
Which leaves me numb to the joy and relief in Gabriel’s living room and ridiculously sensitive to the wretched soreness all over my body and the fatigue that won’t let up and the constant background search for ways to avoid having to eat.
Everyone’s voices blur into one indistinguishable babble amid twinkling Christmas lights and pine garlands and all kinds of cheery red shit to remind us of the holiday we missed.
It went by without us.
There’s still a pile of presents under Gabriel’s tree.
Catherine’s hand slips out of mine. Elise and Lydia, her sisters, can’t stop touching her face and her hair. They hug her close, then lean back to make sure she’s all in one piece.
My wife drifts away, step by step, until her sisters have taken her across the hall.
Mason and Jameson, Gabriel’s brothers, come in for hugs that are far gentler than I deserve. Remy gets up on tiptoe to kiss my cheek and tell me she’s so glad we made it home, and Lily squeezes my hand. Charlotte kisses my cheek, too. Baby Robin bounces in her arms, pressing his face into her shoulder. Tired, I think.
I empathize with the feeling.
I don’t know what to say with the word home tolling in my head like a bell, so I just stand there, watching the Hills move around one another like a little solar system, bright and alive. One of the traveling nurses steps in and fusses over me. I’ve stopped paying attention to what they’re doing. Not because I’m ungrateful—although I still can’t fathom why people on a secret island base would be so invested in whether I live or die—but because if I think about it for longer than a minute or two I want to send them away and go gently into a good night.
A nightmare is probably more likely.
Images from the nightmare I had on the island come back to me in disjointed flashes. It went on forever, didn’t it? Days and days.
Maybe this is part of it. I can’t see Catherine, after all. I might never see her again.
“—home,” says Gabriel. He’s directly in front of me, and we’re alone in his living room. I didn’t notice everyone else stepping out. “Jacob?”
A long string of desperate apologies well up into my throat. I’ve apologized to him already, of course. For the things I did and the far more unforgivable things I didn’t do. I tried to keep apologizing through deeds and ended up getting myself and my wife trapped on an island with a murderer.
The difference between me and Gabriel Hill—one of many, many differences—is that the glow he has about him is real. He’s as good as he seems, and he of all people could be forgiven for spending the rest of his life angry and bitter and vengeful.
Instead, he’s engaged to Elise, and the two of them have guardianship of Lydia and Nate.
Right now, he’s waiting patiently for me to answer him.
“Yes?”
“I think we should sit down.”
Gabriel puts his hands on my arms and guides me across the living room to the sofa, then settles me on it like I recently celebrated my one hundredth birthday. Then he pushes the coffee table to the side, drags over an ottoman, and sits on it, facing me, our knees touching.
And then , because he is clearly on a mission to take me from wreck to disaster beyond salvaging, Gabriel Hill, the first person I ever fell in love with and the last person who should waste his kindness on me, takes both my hands in his and looks into my face.
It’s terrible. It’s worse than a nightmare. Because this is no passing glance. This is Gabriel Hill at his best—dark-haired, handsome, smudges setting off his green eyes—and I have no doubt he sees everything.
I can’t stand it.
I also don’t have the strength to flee, so I’m stuck there, looking back at him, his hands startlingly warm.
It’s possible my hands have been very, very cold.
After a few beats, he shakes his head a little, concerned creases in his forehead.
“Oh, honeybun. What happened?”
It’s not the first time he’s called me that outside of our teenage love affair.
It is the first time I understand what he’s doing, and what he means.
“You shouldn’t.” My voice is shot to hell. “You can’t.”
“Yes, I can.” He doesn’t look away, but my eyes fill with tears, blurring him just enough. “And I must.”
“ Must you?”
He makes a show of looking around the room. “I don’t see anybody else.”
“If I wanted someone to—to coddle me, I’d?—”
“Is that what you think this is? Coddling?”
“You’re holding my hands.”
“You look like shit,” Gabriel sings. “You look, conservatively, a thousand times worse than you did before your wedding.”
“I was?—”
“I’m willing to chalk some of it up to whatever the fuck happened on that plane—you can tell me later, it doesn’t have to be right now—but not all of it. I know something’s up. I’ve known it since before you came back for the wedding.”
“How would you have any idea?”
Gabriel raises his eyebrows as if the answer is simple and he thought I knew it already. “I don’t have to be in love with you to love you, you know. I don’t have to be in love with you to know when something’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong. I’m just tired.”
Gabriel nods. I don’t believe you, that nod says. I don’t believe you at all.
“ Well, you’re home now. You can sleep as much as you need.”
“You can’t mean that.”
“Mean what?”
“That I’m—” Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Every fucking saint who’s ever existed. “ Home .”
“Where are you getting these ideas?” Such sincere confusion on his face. “I can do whatever I want. That includes correcting mistakes I’ve made in the past.”
“Gabriel, please.”
“We’re your wife’s family. We are literally in-laws. And even if Catherine and Elise weren’t sisters, we belonged to you first.”
“I broke up with you. With a text . I was?—”
“You were a teenager surrounded by adults who were total fuckups. On top of that, they had a lot of power to make your life miserable if you didn’t go along with what they said.”
“That was nothing in comparison to?—”
“I’ve found that those kinds of comparisons will kill you if you let them.” Gabriel squeezes my hands. “You did what you thought you had to do.”
“Are you doing this because it’s what you think you have to do?”
“No. I don’t think I have to do this. I know I have to do this.”
“Because—”
“Because this is what you do when someone in your family is hurt. You hold their hand until you find out what happened, and then you give them what they need to get better. So let’s do the first part. Tell me what happened.”
I tell him.
I tell him about writing the letter and making arrangements to disappear and finding Catherine on the plane after we’d already taken off.
I tell him about what happened when we landed, and the miracle of that cabin, and the man on the speedboat. Cancer—that can’t have been his real name, or anything close to it—swore us to secrecy, but I can’t help telling Gabriel. I have to swear him to secrecy, too.
“And I—” By the end of the story, I’m losing steam and feeling worse by the second. I thought I’d reached rock bottom on the island and hadn’t intended to go back. “I killed him. The pilot. I stabbed him with a steak knife and killed him. He tried to hurt Catherine, so I killed him.”
It’s all there in an instant. Breathless shock. Sickening horror. The ocean rolling up on the shore like I hadn’t just watched a man die. Like I hadn’t been the one to kill him.
“I didn’t want to.” My voice breaks. It hurts to talk, and my vision is getting all grey around the edges again, like I’m still on that beach. “I didn’t want to do it. Not even to him.”
“I know you didn’t. You’ve never been the type.”
“I feel terrible.” My lungs spasm around a gasp. It takes me by surprise. “I feel so bad, Gabriel. I’ve never felt this bad. Not since?—”
Not since I was twelve, and then thirteen, and then fourteen. Not since I kept getting taller and taller and taller, and I had explicit instructions not to burden my horses with more weight than absolutely necessary.
I open my mouth to apologize for this horrendously shameful display. “I feel like I might die. I’m so tired. Jesus, fuck, I don’t know what to do.”
And then I crumple into a sobbing fit that destroys several ribs at minimum. I can’t stop crying. I can’t even sit up straight. Gabriel, who has never done anything unforgivable in his life, prevents me from sliding to the floor by putting his arms around me and just?—
Waiting.
He just waits.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t—I can’t force this on Catherine. Not after all she’s been through. I can’t let her?—”
“You don’t need to worry about this right now,” says Gabriel. “Catherine’s with Lydia and Elise. She’s going to be okay, and so are you.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“You’ve done enough. You got home. All you need to do now is rest.”
“But that’s not?—”
“That’s not something you’re used to doing at home.” Somehow, I have ended up draped over Gabriel. He has to be uncomfortable. He doesn’t let it show. “You can do it here, with us. We’re going to make sure you’re okay.”
“Catherine—”
“We’re going to take care of Catherine, too.”
“What happens—but—” Ah. I’ve reached the final ledge of my sanity and tumbled off. “Afterward. I don’t think I can—Jesus, what am I supposed to?—”
“You don’t think you can be alone? I have wonderful news,” Gabriel sings. “You’re not going to be alone, because we won’t let you. Not here, not in London, nowhere. You’re going to be so coddled you won’t know what to do with yourself.”
It’s possible I might lose consciousness. “Do you swear?”
“I swear on brunch day.” Gabriel’s voice gets softer. That might be because I’m passing out. “Mase? Jamie?”
“What’s up, loverboy?” Jameson sounds like he’s at the opposite end of a long tunnel. “Oh, Jesus. Was he worse than me?”
“He didn’t break any dishes, so you’re still in first place.”
“Thank Christ.”
“Mase, do you think Scott can get the album from—yeah, that one.” I don’t hear Mason’s answer at all. “Thanks.”
“What’s the strategy here?” asks Jameson.
“Just help me get him on his feet. And be gentle, okay? I promised.”