Chapter 10 #2
I heard Korrad in the kitchen running the water when there was a knock on the front door, followed by the ringing of the doorbell. Whoever it was, was impatient.
“I’ll get it,” I called over my shoulder, reaching for the knob.
I didn’t recognize the tall, serious-looking man standing there with an official-looking folder. “Ms. Briley?” he asked. “My name is Richard Smalls. I’m here as a representative of Northstar Lending Solutions.”
Oh god.
I sagged against the jamb as my knees went weak. The letter! The letter last night, the one I’d completely forgotten about because of that kiss which had led to so much more…
The letter from Northstar Lending Solutions, which proved they’d found me.
But how?
How? I’d walked away from my old life! I didn’t change my address, I didn’t tell anyone where I was going, I just cleaned out my meager savings and closed my accounts and left. How had they found me here on this tiny island?
Of course. “The marriage certificate,” I breathed, my eyes closing in dread.
“That’s right, Ms. Briley. You filed your marriage certificate under your legal name in order for it to be binding.
” His tone was curt, succinct, and I hated him.
“The letter we sent this week warned you I was in the area already—my sister has a place here on the island, small world—and would be here this afternoon. You thought you could steal from my employers and they wouldn’t find you, but you were wrong. ”
Steal.
The word was still ringing in my ears when I heard footsteps in the hall behind me.
I couldn’t make myself move. I was aware I was sagging against the doorjamb like a bad supporting structure, that Mr. Smalls was watching me coldly, already judging me as a deadbeat, and that I should say something, do something—but the best I had was the doorjamb, and I was using it.
You should’ve opened that letter.
I should’ve opened that letter.
Korrad appeared at my shoulder, still carrying a dish towel, and when I swung anguished eyes on him, I saw his darken as his face slid into a fierce scowl and he slung the towel over his shoulder.
He stepped in front of me, sliding his arm around me and pushing me behind him. Protecting me.
“What’s going on here?” His voice was dangerous.
Smalls straightened. He was trying not to look unsettled—Korrad wasn’t even doing anything, he was just standing there, and yet… “I have some business with your—”
“I can smell her fear,” Korrad growled. “You have the audacity to show up at my home and terrify my wife?”
Smalls took a small step back.
To his credit, he recovered. “You are Mr. Korrad? Ms. Briley’s husband?”
“Yes.”
The rumble under it could have stripped paint.
“Richard Smalls, representing Northstar Lending Solutions.” He opened his folder with the practiced motion of someone who was trying not to think too hard about his career choices.
“Your wife borrowed a significant sum from our organization before relocating. Under Texas law, as her spouse, that obligation has transferred to you.” He held out a sheet of paper.
Korrad took it.
I felt his back go still and knew what he was looking at.
It wasn’t a fortune. I knew the number—it had burrowed in my mind like a splinter for over a year, that figure I’d been trying not to look at directly. It wasn’t burn-your-life-down money.
But it was more than I’d ever saved. More than I’d come close to, even in my best year, even when I’d thought I was almost getting ahead.
I was shaking, mortified.
He’s going to turn around. And you’re going to see it on his face.
I knew what I’d see. The anger. Or worse—that careful blankness that meant he was containing something. I’d brought this here. I’d married him with this following me, carried it right through his front door, and—
“This is my wife’s debt?” Korrad asked.
“That’s correct.”
“Then yes.” He snapped the folder shut. “The debt is mine now.”
He turned to me, and there was no calculation on his face. No blankness. He just looked at me the way he always looked at me, and I wanted to cry. Wanted to make him yell at me, wanted him to tell me he was disappointed in me. Wanted him to say something to shame me.
Instead, he gently set me away from him, his hold not leaving my waist until he was sure I could stand on my own.
“Go get the boys,” he said gently. “Send them out to the car.”
“Korrad.” My voice came out wrong—too thin, too high. “You can’t just take this on, this is my—”
When he pressed his lips to my forehead, my voice cracked.
I cracked.
“I’m going to take the boys to Brak’s,” he said softly, “and then Mr. Smalls and I are going to the bank to discuss repayment. It’ll be okay, Kesha.”
He turned back to our unwanted guest, dish towel still over his shoulder, like this was just something that needed doing on a Friday afternoon.
I didn’t see how any of this could possibly be okay.
I stood in the hallway, holding up the wall, as my whole world filed past me. Both boys kissed me goodbye, and I was grateful they were both too excited to see how badly I was shaken.
The door clicked shut behind me.
I stood in the front hall and listened to them: the boys’ voices going down the front path, the sound of Korrad’s truck door, Richard Smalls’s sedan backing out onto the road.
Quieter. Quieter. Gone.
I had about forty-five seconds of trying to hold it together before I stopped trying.
The couch was right there. I made it.
And then I pressed my face into the cushion and let everything I’d been swallowing for the last twenty minutes come up at once—all the terror and the shame and the sick, free-falling certainty that I had just watched everything good in my life load into a truck and drive away.
You knew.
I’d known. That was the worst part. I’d known I was at fault here, I was the bad guy.
But I’d never let myself look at that fact directly, because looking at it directly meant acknowledging what I’d done, and acknowledging what I’d done meant acknowledging that I’d walked into this marriage with a secret.
Acknowledging that I’d let Korrad think he was getting a partner and handed him a liability instead.
Steal, Smalls had said.
I hadn’t stolen anything. I had borrowed, legally, with paperwork and interest rates that should’ve been criminal. I had borrowed because I’d had to, because there was no other option, because—
It didn’t matter. The word was in my head now, and it wasn’t leaving.
Steal.
Maybe the happiness was what I’d stolen.
Hadn’t I known, somewhere underneath the careful not-looking, that this was coming?
These last weeks—the beach, the drum lessons, the late nights in the kitchen, Jay saying thanks, Mom over lunch so easily—all of it borrowed against a debt I’d been hoping geography would make disappear.
Two months of real.
Two months of my tea water already being hot when I stumbled into the kitchen, and teaching Jay how to skate on rollerblades, and listening to Milo jamming in the sunroom with his new father.
Two months of Korrad.
The sob that came out of me wasn’t dignified. It was the full-body ugly kind, because I was thinking about an hour ago—one hour ago I had been standing in this same hallway, flushed and humming, and the biggest problem I had was that I’d accidentally moaned out loud thinking about my husband.
One hour ago, I had been so happy I hadn’t even identified it as happiness. That was how good it was. It didn’t register as a thing to protect.
I had been keeping score for weeks. I had known—I knew—that it wasn’t balanced, that I’d been taking more than I gave, that I was stealing from Korrad, that eventually the math would catch up. I’d told myself to stop, told myself Korrad didn’t see it that way, told myself to just let it be good.
Lies.
Here was the tally, final and official, delivered by a man in a suit on a Friday afternoon.
Korrad—my husband—was going to come home, and he was going to look at me, and for the first time in two months, he wasn’t going to see his wife.
He was going to see what I actually was: A woman who’d walked into his life trailing her own wreckage, who’d kissed him and shared his home and let herself fall, and hadn’t once told him the truth.
He was going to think about Sharra—beautiful, devastating Sharra, who he still loved, who he had never stopped loving, because orcs Mated for life—and he was going to understand exactly what he’d traded her for.
A headache with a loan shark.
I couldn’t bear it.
Twenty minutes ago, I had been thinking about this evening, about having him to myself, about finally, maybe, beginning to even up the score. I had been so goddamn sure I was about to start giving something back.
Now I wanted to disappear before he got home.
I curled up on my side and pulled my knees to my chest and held myself there, because there was no one else to do it, and sobbed.