26. Stay Away
Stay Away
Melody
He stared at me, confused, as though I hadn’t heard it all myself. He looked hurt, but that was all a lie. He had no right to feel hurt. I was the one betrayed. I was the one hurt. And he…he was just like everyone else.
“How much, VD?” The nickname was said to hurt him, and I was gratified—yes, fucking gratified—when the pain crossed his eyes. But it wasn’t enough. Nowhere near enough. “How much was he paying you to sleep with me?”
Because that was what it all was, wasn’t it?
Get me to sleep with him, so I became everything everyone said I was.
I’d let down my guard. Change my story. Incriminate myself, somehow.
Then all that stuff—because that’s all it was!
It was just stuff! It was money, and houses.
It was just absolute junk!—all the things we were supposed to inherit would go back to them.
Why was I even fighting? Why was I bothering to keep Marc and Miriam?
I was twelve the first time it happened. The first time he touched me, and I did nothing. I knew I couldn’t stop it.
I didn’t fight then, so why was I bothering to fight now? I’d just lose in the end.
Looking at Greg, standing in the rain, acting like he was as broken as I was…I wanted to believe him, despite what I had seen and heard. Despite what had happened right in front of my face. I still wanted to believe him. He was just that good of an actor. Or maybe I was just that desperate…
“Let me explain,” His pleading green eyes, eyes I had loved, tore my heart in two.
The earnestness I’d misread, the desperation I’d thought matched my own, was just his need for a paycheck. Or maybe a desire to get into the good graces of the Grays.
He waited for a response I didn’t give. He could explain all he wanted. I would let him say whatever he needed so that I could walk away. I wouldn’t fall for the soft words of another handsome man.
Because in the end, it was over. The dream was over. The delusion of something between us evaporated like dust.
He stared at me, his jaw clenched, and I almost believed that the glassiness of his eyes were tears and not just illusion caused by the rain that soaked me to the bone. Seconds turned to minutes, and his fingers twitched, like he wanted to reach out to me.
I refused to let him touch me, though. Because if he did, I’d crumple. I’d fall into him.
I shrugged. He could talk if he wanted to. I couldn’t stop him.
“I was hired as a PI to find out what happened to Luke Gray.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” My voice came out a grimaced scream, because there was nothing that could make any of this better. There was nothing he could say that wouldn’t make me an absolute fool.
“Baby, I swear to you, I would never hurt you!” He reached for me. When I recoiled, he said, “God damn it!”
“Yes, it must be soooo upsetting. Me, finding out that all your little games were bullshit.” I was sobbing, unable to breathe.
I couldn’t do this.
It was too much.
There was too much going on, and not enough fucking bandwidth for any of it.
It had been one hit after another, and the moment I felt any relief, it was all ripped out from under me. I couldn’t do this anymore. I couldn’t keep taking on the pain. How many hits did I have to take before it was enough? Before nothing was worth anything anymore?
“Baby, if I could kill the man who hurt you, I fucking would,” he said through clenched teeth, his hair plastered to his face with the rain.
“There’s no one to kill.” I laughed like a crazy woman in a fit of hysterics.
“I know!” He slapped himself in the chest, like he was angry that he hadn’t been the one to do. Like he wanted to be the one to have done the killing. “Because you already killed him.”
I froze.
He knew.
Greg stepped forward, and I stood my ground even though I wanted to fall apart and die. I wanted to crumble. He knew. It was over. This…was it. The end of life as I knew it.
I could already feel the handcuffs digging into my wrists. The rain hid my tears as I tasted the salt on my lips that pulled back in a grimace.
His face was so close to mine. I wanted to push him away, but I couldn’t move. I was a frozen deer in headlights, too stupid to run for my own good.
“If I could have been here, if I could have stopped him. God, baby.” He grabbed his hair, tearing at it until the locks tumbled from the hair tie and fell to his shoulders. “If I would have known. If I could have been here…If I could have come a year sooner.”
He spoke like he could have stopped it. Like he would have tried.
As if anyone would have tried.
But everyone knew. Everyone saw something at some point and kept quiet.
Denied it. Turned away and pushed it into the recesses of their minds, because the lauded, holy Grays could not possibly have done anything that went against their precious image.
Everyone knew that anyone who dared to see what the Grays did would be ruined and ostracized in a campaign designed by that family to run them out of this stupid, small town.
Ethanuel Gray built this town for his descendants, and they had done a remarkable job keeping the rest of us peasants in line.
They let it happen to me in order to protect themselves from the single big fish in this tiny fucking pond.
“I wish I could have added him into the hundreds already etched into my body count, Melody. I wish I could take that from you, but I can’t. I can’t!” He fell to his knees, the water splashing around him. “I would if I could. Protecting you now is what I can do. It’s what I’m doing.”
I scoffed.
Because I had once hoped someone would help me. I’d hoped someone would see, acknowledge, reach out.
How fucked was it that when I finally heard the words I’d always longed to hear, they came from yet another man on a Gray’s payroll?
Of course, this would happen to me. I found the perfect man…but it was all a lie.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.
” I put on the absolute biggest smile despite the tears that mixed with rain on my cheeks.
I let the salty taste of my own misery spill into my mouth, and tongue.
I felt the bitterness down to my soul as I put on my final performance.
“I went for a walk, and when I got home, the truck and the boat were gone. I waited three days to file a missing person’s report because I assumed he went back to his family’s manor. ”
“Baby…” Greg looked up at me, head tilting to the side, then shaking, pleading for me to not say the lie my life depended on.
But it wasn’t just my life. It was Marc and Miriam’s as well. I had almost nothing to live for. Nothing to lie for. Just those two.
And when they were out of high school, and on their own two feet, then maybe I would let the Grays take me to the lake, to the same spot where I’d poured twenty-five year old single malt whiskey down to the depths that swallowed Luke whole.
They could have their way with me there, until I begged for death.
But not a single day before it.
“Baby, please…”
The rain made Greg shine like a martyr. But I knew now he was a traitor.
“Don’t call me that. Don’t you dare call me that. I’m not your Sweetheart, Darling, Baby, or whatever bullshit name you—” I wanted to yell at him, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t pretend to be outraged.
I wasn’t.
I was hurting. Broken open, shattered.
“I know that!” he snapped. “Because that’s what he called you, right?”
Ice went through my veins.
“He called you baby. That’s why you hate it.”
It was a lucky guess. He didn’t know me. Not like a person who cares. I was just a job.
He was so full of shit.
“He took you with him to the lake that morning,” Greg said. I turned away, but he grabbed my arm and pulled me into him. He kept me upright even when I almost slipped on the ice. He lowered his voice, placing his lips to my ear.
Anyone looking would think we were lovers reconciling after a fight.
But we were neither lovers nor reconciling.
“You went. He got drunk. He went overboard. Maybe you didn’t kill him, but you didn’t save him, either.
” His breath on my ear did things to my body that my mind rebelled against. The comfort I had learned to find in him was still there, even as I fought to shut it out.
“You were the last to see him, and you’ve kept that secret ever since.
You’re never going to face murder, but the concealment—”
I pulled my arm out of his grasp, forcing myself to come to my senses.
“Melody…”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I dug my heels in. I was entrenched; I would not budge.
“Old Man Smithy saw it.”
Shit.
The look on my face must have given me away, because he stared at me with absolute pity. Like I was pathetic. Because I was.
“He would never—”
“I don’t know what he thinks he saw. He’s old. His eyes have been going for a while.” I would die on this hill. “I went for a walk. I came home. He was gone.”
I would lie again and again until it was believed. I would play dumb. I had no pride. I didn’t care.
“Melody…”
Greg was good. So good, I almost wanted to melt into him.
I wanted to forgive him. If I could have turned back the clock and walked away without having heard what they’d said, I would have.
I would have chosen the ignorance of a few minutes ago, because I’d been happy.
He had made me feel wanted, seen, and…respected.
He did it so masterfully. And it was so cruel of him.
“Tell Turner Gray whatever you want. But stay away from me and stay away from my family.”
“Melody, please, let me explain.” He was such a good actor.
Fucking Oscar-worthy.
His pretense made everything so much worse. I wanted to scream, cry, and die all at the same time. But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.
I stepped away from him. One foot in front of the other.
“Melody.” He rose to his feet, his hands reaching out for me. To hold me.
I knew that if he held me, I would believe him.
I was stupid like that. Stupid enough to fall back into his arms and forgive him; I’d force myself to see things his way, because I was weak, lonely, and pathetic.
It was why I’d forgiven Luke over and over again.
Why I’d forced myself to let that monster back every time. Why I’d accepted what he’d done.
Because I was just that isolated, alone, and desperate.
“Melody…” His shoulders hunched in an impressive display of remorse. His hands were out, palms up, as he pleaded. “Please, give me a chance to explain. Let me…”
He kept talking. And talking. And talking.
It was too much.
The storm, the cold, his friends, the Grays, his lies…they were burying me alive.
“Tea.”