Chapter Forty
For ten years, I’ve been with exactly one person.
Sure, I had opportunity to cheat—most people do—but I married Brian knowing what I was signing up for, and I felt it only right to stay true to that. Besides, I liked him. Like, present tense. Or…maybe not, not anymore.
I’m lying to myself, but that’s fine. If he’s cheating on me, then why wouldn’t I cheat on him? An eye for an eye and all. Why wouldn’t I indulge in a distraction, especially if that distraction is Ian?
His hand grips my hip, holds me in place beneath him as sand scrapes against my skin. Ian is bigger than Brian, heavier, a tantalizing combination of muscles and excitement, of the familiar yet unfamiliar. His mouth pauses over mine, then he kisses me softly, slowly, teasing…
When I open my eyes, he’s got a wicked grin, a gleam in his eye.
Like maybe he’s thought about this before.
It’s possible he’s wanted me for a long time.
Wondered what it might be like to be together.
With Ian, I might learn to control myself.
Her. Maybe it will be even easier, or he’ll show me how to become one with her, or whatever it was he did.
This could work.
“I’ll stay,” he breathes into my ear. “As long as you want.”
My hand digs into his flesh until he growls out a groan of pain—or is it pleasure? Is there a word that combines the two? Because there should be.
He pulls back, I look into his eyes, and they are molten, that unique amber color, bottomless depths of some emotion that feels at odds with the coldness of the killer I know, and it’s like dousing myself in freezing water.
A thousand shards of ice.
It singes down into my heart, every bit of my being.
They are not Brian’s warm, guileless eyes, and that’s shocking to some piece of me I would have never guessed existed.
Ian, handsome as he is, caring as he might be, and perhaps the puzzle piece I want and need, is not the man I’ve spent the last decade building my life with.
He is not my daughters’ father, he is not who I chose our house with or adopted Bear beside or…
“Fuck.” I shove him off.
He lands in the sand and sputters a laugh. “Yes, that is what we are trying to do here.”
“No. I mean—I can’t do this. At least—not like this. Not here, not until I…” I lick my lips, look out over the water. The light from a passing ship has disappeared.
I’ve woken up and chosen Brian every single day for the last ten years. I can’t choose someone else—not yet. So for one more day, I’m choosing Brian.
Ian reaches out, gives me a playful push. “I get it. We have time.”
I look at him. Wonder if even after I finish this, I’ll be ready. If I’ll have it in me to offer my heart to another person. Or maybe with Ian, we can skip all that. Maybe we can appreciate what we have in the moment without worrying about the bigger picture.
Gran would be horrified. An assassin, Nadia? What were you thinking?
“Booze?” He holds out the bottle from wherever he put it and I nod, grateful the darkness hides the tears welling in my eyes.
I don’t cry. About anything, ever.
But I’m crying now, thinking of Brian, who is not actually Brian at all.
—
Ian returns to the hotel room.
I wander the beach alone until I find myself outside Brian’s seaside hotel.
He’s on the third floor, in the corner room, the one nearest me.
It’s all I can do to stand there, stare at the siding on the building, and try to imagine what’s going on inside.
Maybe it’s better I don’t know, because everything I come up with makes me mad.
More than that, my teeth are clenched, hands balled into fists—I’m not just upset, I’m pissed.
Furious that he would do this to us, to me, to the girls.
Even if the Brian I know is only a tiny piece of who he actually is, I know that small part of him, and standing here, glaring, tears still scalding my cheeks, I feel hatred like I never have before.
Generally, emotions like hate are not useful and I appreciate that I don’t have them, that I can stay calm and removed in moments when most people let their feelings overtake them, control how they act.
Now I get it.
—
When I wake, the sun is just coming up. It melts over the beach like butter, soaking me and a handful of joggers in light. It should be beautiful, but it’s not. It’s harsh, glaring. It pulls me from sleep and reminds me of reality, and right now, reality sucks.
“Nadia.” A voice commands me to wake, to not lie back down and escape the world.
“What?” I manage.
“Come on. He’s going to see you. Or someone’s going to think you’re dead and call the cops.” Ian’s mouth is close to my ear. I’m lying in the sand—did I fall asleep out here, watching Brian’s room?—and Ian’s pulling on my arm, trying to get me up and down the boardwalk and back to our room.
I want to argue about how dumb that is—what kind of killer would leave a body on a popular beach to be found? Instead, I wobble to my feet and say, “I want to go home.”
“Home?”
“To Texas.”
He pauses. “Are you sure? You don’t want to—you said you wanted to—”
Kill Brian. That’s what he won’t say out loud as a group of sixtysomething speed walkers hurries by us.
I wipe sleep from my eyes, blink at him through the early golden hour. There’s a chill to the air. It creeps over my skin and I shiver, wishing I had a strong cup of coffee. “No,” I decide. “I just want to go home.”
He pauses, then says, “Okay. I’ll sort out flights.”
—
“You need to be at the airport in two hours,” Ian says when I emerge from the bathroom. “I’ll drop you off.”
“Aren’t you coming?”
He cocks his head at me, smiles. “I have to go home. But call me when you need me.”
“Okay.” I nod, busy myself with packing up my hairbrush, my gun.
But his words rattle me. Last night, he’d said he’d come with me.
He’d stay, he’d help. Of course, now he’s telling me to call when I need him—maybe that means when I’m ready.
He’s giving me space, understanding that this is not easy, that it’s not as simple as taking a shot and moving on.
The room is small and suddenly claustrophobic.
I sit on the edge of the bed, rolling up my phone cord, staring at Ian, who has his back to me as he does assassin things—checking his gun (he prefers a Sig Sauer to a Glock), the sharpness of his knives—busywork as common as staring at a cell phone for anyone else.
But I’m thinking of what it felt like to be with him, even briefly, last night.
I suspect if I’d let it happen, it would have felt good. A fuck you to my husband.
I’m also thinking it would be bad, that it could ruin our friendship, this connection of two like minds in a world where everyone else is different.
And then I have a moment of realization: I have to talk to Brian.
As I stared at his hotel room last night, something didn’t feel right. Didn’t feel like the man I knew. Of course, he’d probably say the same thing about me—My perfect wife, Nadia, killing people? No way!
But I have to know. I have to talk to him, have to understand what he’s doing, and know he’s really doing it. Then I can kill him, collect the contract money, get my job back.
And then maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll be able to move on.