20. TATE
TATE
Ihate coming here. If I have it my way, the estate will be burned to the ground by next week.
I have to see how much Luke wants it first. It’s his now—or it will be once Clarence gets his ass here.
All the gold, black marble, and opulence Jasper loved towers over me, pressing me down.
Water ripples all the way to a staircase built in shallow stone increments.
There was no sneaking out of the house at night, not when getting to the driveway required a rowboat.
Okay, so maybe I managed it a time or two, but it was really hard.
“Shall we?” Luke says, smiling.
His cheerfulness has perplexed me since he picked me up from campus, insisting we travel together.
Brotherly bonding, he said, but sickening guilt’s driving his actions.
Maybe that irritating smile, too. I may have gone a little too far, rubbing it in that he should have trusted me, rather than falling victim to another of Uncle Jasper’s games.
I don’t blame him—I know how conniving the man was—but it stung.
Mostly because I hate that Uncle Jasper’s still winning from the underworld.
But also, it lends some truth to Uncle Jasper’s words—his mission in life, other than torturing me, was to convince Luke that I’d turn on him given the chance.
If his plan had worked, I wouldn’t even know who to blame.
Uncle Jasper’s treachery?
Luke’s naivety?
Or my selfish personality?
Maybe it would have been all three. But we’ll never know.
I married Ryan, which isn’t an answer to the question.
I was going to marry him, have him, will or no will.
Luke might have been the catalyst, but marrying Ryan had nothing to do with Luke or Jasper in the end.
Luke doesn’t know, and I get to look like the good brother.
Jasper would have figured me out. He knew me better than I would have liked him to.
But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have done it for Luke if Ryan didn’t exist. I’d like to think I would have gone through with it, but how can I say for sure?
Dressed in my usual coaching attire—a track jacket, sweatpants, and no-name brand sneakers—it’s easy to hop into the rowboat.
It creaks, rocking side to side as Luke enters.
We must look like a couple of apes trying to squeeze into a Subaru, but it holds.
Luke rows as the water catches the gray light from the overcast day, trapping it within its watery confines. What surfaces is only a shadow of it.
Mood.
The monolithic building glares down at me as we approach. If a building could side-eye, that’s what it would be doing. Did Uncle Jasper’s devil soul transfer to it when he died?
“Can’t believe we grew up here,” he says.
Can’t believe we survived.
“Neither can I.” I try to match his cheerful tone, but I’ve been vacuumed into a tunnel to a tragic past. My childhood that never was is in that building.
I bet if I looked hard enough, I could find the melted remains of my doll.
It hasn’t even been that long since I was last here, but I tend to put this place out of my mind, burying it as far under as I do the memories contained within.
“What the fuck are you so happy about?”
“This is ours. I’m in love with the man of my dreams. You’re married. Uncle Jasper is rotting in the ground. We won.”
I touch my ring. Being married is my favorite part, even above Uncle Jasper being dead, which is saying something. My marriage is just … complicated. Luke’s gaze catches the way I massage the platinum ring. I can’t usually wear it, but it was important that I did today. My hands fall to my sides.
“Do you think my hand will still work?” Luke asks.
“Try.”
He places a VanCourt-sized palm on the black glass wall panel by the door. Blue light scans. The door clicks open. Luke steps in ahead of me. No one’s here to greet us; that motherfucker Clarence isn’t here yet, but the lights turn on, and the house wakes up.
“Guess the settings are still active,” Luke murmurs. “I promised Ace I’d bring him something old-timey.’” Old-timey is in air quotes. He heads up the spiral staircase to the east wing to—I assume—hunt for a gift for Ace, and I pull out my phone with the sudden and desperate urge to see Ryan’s name.
Dollface
I learned today that I only have the second-largest penis in the group. But I don’t feel that bad, Becks is the one who beat me out, and he’s related to giants or something.
What the …?
Me
Why the fuck are you looking at other men’s penises? You’re married. My cock is the only one you get.
The urge to abduct him rises up for the seventh time this morning. It’s constant now, especially the way he provokes me. It’s been too long since I’ve fucked him—claimed him. He needs my marks all over him, so he can remember who the fuck he belongs to. God, he drives me fucking crazy sometimes.
Dollface
Kind of unavoidable in the locker room.
Yeah. He needs a fucking lesson in who the fuck owns him.
Me:
You’d better start showering alone, or whoever sees you gets their eyes plucked out with a lobster fork.
Dollface
Showering alone isn’t possible.
Me
Make it possible.
He’s usually pretty quick to answer me, but he doesn’t this time.
It’s possible he’s gone off to do one of the many things North Point keeps its students busy with, but I know he’s ignoring me, needling me.
I can’t even be mad. Correction—I am mad, but I don’t have a right to be with how much I ignore him.
It’s not like I want to ignore him. Does that count?
Ryan!!!
My forehead finds the wall. The eerie silence mixes with scents of expensive wood and leather, churning my stomach. Pulling myself away, I find the nearest window to stick my head out of before I choke to death on those terrifyingly familiar aromas. This place is infested with them.
The fresh air clears my head enough for me to remember why I was triggered in the first place.
My husband. Mis-fucking-behaving. Whipping his dick out in the locker room.
The problem is, I don’t have the control over Ryan I need to quell the way my insides burn when he does shit like that.
And I can’t control him and make him happy at the same time.
I care about him.
But I also can’t live in a state of rage.
Sucking in lungfuls of air helps to keep me upright, but not from the invasion of memories.
Uncle Jasper would drag me home if he felt any pushback from me or if he wanted me to reaffirm my allegiance. He’d hand me a knife, tell me to remove my shirt, and get on my knees.
“Do it,” he’d say. “Make it deep.”
He never wanted the cut in a new place; he wanted me to cut open the same scar, lips twisting with victory as the hooked edge of the blade tore through the shiny pink skin.
The gut-squirming sensation of cutting through nerves, almost scraping bone, made me fight to stay conscious.
I screamed and bled until he decided I could get fucking stitches.
My thumb finds where the raised, diagonal line sits under my jacket.
I use all my mental capacity to push hard against the memory flood and lock that shit down tight again.
It’s not that I was afraid of him, well, okay, maybe a little, but in a lot of ways, I admired the man’s cunning.
Watching Uncle Jasper negotiate a business deal, especially with those who thought they held all the power, only to find themselves stripped of everything, was nothing short of awe-inspiring.
He unraveled them, thread by thread, until they begged for his mercy. I wanted that skill.
But I had to survive him first. That meant keeping up personas, appearances, jobs, roles. Being who he expected me to be, learning what he expected me to learn. It wasn’t easy, and without artfully constructed control, survival wouldn’t have been possible.
Ryan doesn’t respond, and neither do I. I want to fight with him about as much as I want to be here. I’ll cool down, and then I’ll tell him how it is. I’m his fucking husband now. He can do what the fuck I tell him to do.
Luke’s in his old room. It’s still intact as if he never left it. He’s staring at an old picture. It’s me on crutches, smiling like it’s the best day of my life, dying on the inside. Luke’s got his arm around me, proud.
“Fuck, your knee when you twisted it,” he says.
“Mangled it, you mean.” Uncle Jasper made sure I’d never play professionally again. Or, more accurately, he made sure that I made sure I’d never play professionally again.
“Yeah, I’ll never forget the way you went down.”
Yeah. Accidentally on purpose. Something hockey players learn how to do to avoid penalties. I did it to bury my hockey career because Uncle Jasper ordered it.
“Yep. You think I would have made the draft?” I ask. Do I want to talk about this? No. But it’s what he’ll expect me to say. And this is Luke’s day. I don’t want anything to ruin it for him. Definitely not worrying about me.
“For sure you would have,” he says with a sparkle in his eyes, pride pouring off him.
“Knock, knock, gentlemen,” Clarence says. He’s dressed in a suit, ready to play lawyer for the next hour.
Luke may not know the extent of Clarence’s treachery, but he’s never warmed to him. He doesn’t offer his hand.
“Thanks for meeting us on short notice.” Luke’s voice carries all the warmth of polished marble.
Fucking short notice, my ass. Clarence practically forced this meeting.
“Of course. How exciting. I hear congratulations are in order, Tatum,” he says as if he’s just learned about my recent nuptials.
That’s it. Clarence can live in the cell next to Kline. I smile thinking about it. “Thank you, Clarence. Let’s hurry through this. I have to get back to work.”
“Sure, sure,” Clarence says, making himself at home in Uncle Jasper’s office chair. He thinks he has the right to do that. He closes his eyes briefly, exhaling.