23. Delphine #3
“Why not?” The question came out as a wail, high and broken.
“Why can’t you love me? What does she have that I don’t?
I’m prettier than her. I’m richer than her.
I know how to be a proper Fairchild wife, how to host parties and manage staff and navigate society.
I was raised for this life! She was raised in some tiny house in Boston with parents who didn’t even know which country club to join! ”
“None of that matters to me.”
“Then what does? Tell me what she has that I don’t have, and I’ll find a way to be that too. I can be anything you want, Heath. Anything at all.”
“You can’t be her.” His voice was gentle now, almost kind, even though I could see the fury burning in his eyes.
“And that’s not an insult, Kendall. It’s the truth.
Del is the woman I fell in love with. She’s the woman I chose to spend my life with.
She’s the mother of my child. You can’t become her, no matter how hard you try. You can only be yourself.”
“But you don’t want me for myself!”
“No. I don’t. I’m sorry. I know that hurts. But hurting Del isn’t going to change that. Hurting me isn’t going to change that. The only thing that’s going to change is you going to prison for kidnapping and assault.”
I felt Kendall’s grip loosen slightly. I felt her body trembling against mine. Behind her, I could see police officers creeping closer, their guns drawn, waiting for an opportunity.
“Just let her go,” Heath said. “Please. Whatever happens next, we can work it out. But not if you hurt her. Not if you hurt our baby.”
A wire snapped behind Kendall’s eyes. I saw the moment the madness crested and began to recede, replaced by what could almost pass for grief. The fanatical certainty wavered, crumbled, collapsed under the weight of Heath’s quiet rejection.
“I just wanted you to love me,” she whispered. “That’s all I ever wanted. For you to love me the way you love her.”
“I know. I’m sorry I can’t give you that.”
Her arm fell away from my throat.
The officers moved instantly. Two of them tackled Kendall from behind, bringing her down hard on the wooden planks of the pier. She screamed as they wrenched her arms behind her back, screamed as the handcuffs clicked around her wrists, screamed Heath’s name over and over as they dragged her away.
I stumbled forward, my legs giving out beneath me, and Heath caught me before I hit the ground. His arms wrapped around me, pulling me against his chest, and I buried my face in his shoulder and let everything I had been holding back come pouring out.
“I’ve got you,” he was saying, over and over, his voice breaking. “I’ve got you, Del. You’re safe now. You’re both safe.”
I was crying too hard to respond. Great heaving sobs that shook my whole body, releasing all the terror and grief and desperate hope I had been holding back. He held me through it all, his hands stroking my hair, his lips pressing kisses to my forehead.
“The baby,” I finally managed between sobs. “I don’t know if the baby is okay. They drugged me. I don’t know what it was. I don’t know if it hurt the baby.”
“We’ll find out.” He drew back to look at me, his eyes red and wet with tears. “We’ll go to the hospital right now. We’ll get you checked out. We’ll make sure everything is fine.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“I know.”
“Heath, your side...”
“It’s nothing.” He cupped my face in his hands, his thumbs wiping away my tears. “Just a scratch. As long as you’re safe, I’m fine. As long as both of you are safe, nothing else matters.”
I reached up and touched his face, feeling the stubble on his jaw, the wetness on his cheeks.
“I love you,” I said.
“I love you too.” He kissed me, soft and desperate, tasting of blood and tears. “God, Del, I love you so much. When I found out they had taken you, when I saw the empty bedroom and the open door at the end of the hall, I thought... I thought...”
“I know. I thought the same thing when I heard you scream.”
“I’m never letting you out of my sight again. I’m never going to let anyone hurt you. I swear it.”
I let him hold me, let his warmth seep into my frozen body, let myself believe that the worst was finally over.
But even as the relief washed through me, a question kept nagging at the back of my mind. A question I couldn’t ignore.
“Heath,” I said slowly, pulling back to look at him. “Kendall couldn’t have done this alone. She doesn’t have the resources or the connections. Someone helped her. Someone with money, someone with access to our security codes.”
His jaw tightened. His eyes went dark.
“I know.”
“Who? Who would do a thing like this?”
He was quiet for several seconds, his gaze fixed on a point over my shoulder. When he finally spoke, his voice was cold and hard, filled with a fury I had never heard from him before.
“I don’t know for certain,” he said. “But I have my suspicions. And I promise you, Del, I’m going to find out who was behind this.
And when I do, they’re going to regret ever coming near our family.
” I did not tell him, standing on that pier, that there was a fruit knife in a kitchen drawer at Fairhaven and a photograph under the lining of my suitcase.
I told him that night, in the hotel, with the water running.
He listened to all of it without moving, and in the morning he put both of them in Detective Mercer’s hands himself.