28. A Price Was Paid
A Price Was Paid
Melody
I was crashing. I was on a rollercoaster ride I didn’t want to be on, and no one would let me off. There was only so much a human body could contain. Only so much a person could face before we broke. Before we fell apart.
And I was there. Ready to burst like an overfilled balloon.
My shoes were soaked, my jeans were like fucking weights slapping against my skin as I walked, and the stupid cold…the stupid jacket that I’d left behind. His stupid fucking jacket.
And the stupid fucking clothes still at my house.
I’ll go home and rip every single one of them to shreds! Damn it!
No, I wouldn’t. I’d just give them back.
Pass them to someone else to return to him.
I gasped for breath as pain crashed into me again, the memory of him pressing against my chest.
Those last, insidious words.“No one loves you more than I do. No one will want you more than me…”
I hated that he was right. That it had been true. No one had or will.
No one could love a broken thing. No one cared about things already discarded.
A car zoomed by, and I dipped into the road’s muddy shoulder as the dirty splash from their wheels hit me.
It wasn’t like I could get any wetter, though.
I hugged my arms closer to my body, continuing the long trek home.
I had tried! I had tried so hard. I’d tried to date when I was at Columbia, then later at Yale. Tried to find a connection, but none had ever formed. I was too much. Too much baggage, too many sharp edges, too many timid moments when I should have been brave. Terrified when I should have felt free.
My body reacted badly to everything. Reacted wrong to everything. Everything always swirled and spun like the water in a rushing flood.
The storm raged overhead, and the river that paralleled the road roared as it headed into town. The water at my feet rose inch by inch, my socks squishing in my shoes. I shivered even as pain and hate made my skin fever-hot.
But I didn’t hate Greg. How could I?
Even if he hadn’t meant every kind word he’d said to me, none of this was his fault.
It was mine. Mine, because I thought there was a chance. Mine, because I believed I could actually be happy. That I could feel less lonely. Mine, because…I thought someone could love me as much as the man I’d drowned in the lake.
The knowledge of what I had done was my burden to bear, and the resulting curse was that I would never be anything to anyone ever again.
A car honked as it passed me. Another tidal wave. Another splash of dirty water blurred my vision as it ran down my head and face, replacing my salted tears with the acrid taste of mud.
Maybe things would be better if I just slipped and fell into the raging river. Maybe I should just let myself get swept into the raging water, and tossed to the Hudson, and finally out to sea.
Miriam and Marcus would be fine…right?
No. I couldn’t be sure. Miriam was only fourteen, and I knew enough about my uncle that I couldn’t trust she’d be safe. Even as their blood relation, I didn’t trust them. Not him, not his sons, not the cousins. No one.
But once she was eighteen, maybe.
Maybe I would float out into the water until my legs went numb and the cramps kept me from moving. Maybe I’d slip under. Let myself go the way I let him go…
Thunder clapped and lightning cracked, its light burning into my vision long after it disappeared. It hit somewhere in the woods, the sound of falling trees joining the loud cacophony of pouring rain on concrete, on leaves, on grass.
This was real life. Cold, indifferent, dangerous. It didn’t care about me. No one did.
I was stupid enough to believe someone could, and I hated myself for it.
Another car, another honk. But this time, it didn’t pass me by in a flurry of water and waves. It stopped and parked in front of me.
The door slid open.
Ian? What the hell was he doing here?
Why wasn’t he doing volunteer fireman things? This rain was fucking biblical, and likely coming with its own flash flood, so why the hell wasn’t he helping Captain Riley with sandbagging the town’s barriers?
No, of course, he didn’t do anything like that. Grays were too good for such physical labor, right? They were there to look good and bless us with their presence, and that was it.
“Melody!” His voice squeaked; a teenager barely past his pimples. “Lemme give you a ride home. It’s pouring out here!”
What did he want? He’d never even spoken to me before. What could he want with me now?
I scoffed and crossed my arms, shivering against the cold.
“Come on, Mel.” He smiled, but it was fake. Just like the rest of them. “We’re family!”
We were not.
Never had been. Not to them, and not to me.
“What do you want, Ian?” I asked, giving him a wide berth as I started walking around his car, almost slipping where the shoulder ended and just avoiding a tumble into the carved edges of the creek.
“I’m just trying to be nice. I saw you fighting with that out-of-towner. Thought I’d lend a hand.”
Next, he probably had a bridge he’d like to sell me.
I had almost walked past him, but he stepped out of the car and stopped in front of me. My foot slipped again, kicking dirt down the embankment and into the water.
“Gosh! It’s dangerous out here. Come on. I’ll belt Marc is worried about you.”
But something niggled at the back of my mind. This was about money, wasn’t it? He didn’t want to help me. This was somehow connected to the inheritance. Everything with the Grays was about money. It always had been.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “This is about the inheritance, isn’t it? Your daddy can’t get his hands on what Luke left behind because it was ruled an accident?”
I wanted to laugh. Was I experiencing hysteria? The laughing at the absurdity of everything! How was it possible for all these things to happen right now? What else could go wrong? I wanted to ask the sky, to ask what deity could possibly exist above this chaotic, nonsensical world.
“Get in the car, Mel!” Ian said.
Lightning lit the sky, revealing his pale hand holding a Glock. His elbow bent at his waist, aiming from the hip like an idiot.
I couldn’t take him seriously.
“Go home, Ian.” I walked on.
“Hey! Hey! Mel!” he called. “Stop!”
Lightning. Thunder. Gunshot.
I stopped.
“Get in the car, Mel!”
I turned and stared at him. He’d actually fired. I had no idea where it landed, because the kid couldn’t aim, but he’d fired the gun. In that sense, he was dangerous.
I got in the car. The overpriced, black Lexus!
“Why do you always have to make things hard, huh? We warned you!” He slammed his fist on the steering wheel. “I fucking warned you!”
“Text?” I asked, unable to stop the bubbling giggles. “That was you?”
It had been him all along. Even if I had reported the harassment, nothing would have been done. The Grays were untouchable. And I was not a Gray…