46. LINC
FORTY-SIX
LINC
I would never consider myself lucky.
Not in this life.
But I have been given years of not having to face her. And the universe even gave me some extra days. Gave me a new small taste of her. I got to kiss her twice. She let me touch her —”Anywhere.”
Fuck me, I wish that moment would have just taken me for good. Taken me to the sky and left me on the moon.
I’ve imagined it so vividly, over and over on our drive back to the mountain—to Ellis.
Her touch—my hands on her— I was soaring. All it would have taken was flying a bit higher. I could have settled in and watched her from the moon forever. I’d live up there, not bothering anyone, watching the world like a movie with Paige on a constant reel.
But the shitty reality is, the world’s movie is a fucking disaster film.
And I could never help her from up there.
Not that it matters. It’s just a daydream. One I’ve conjured in various ways through the years—being in a place where I can see everyone, but I’m not in the room. No one’s looking at me, worrying about me, watching me.
As the big gate to the driveway opens, I pull in. Fiona Apple’s “Limp” plays quietly through the speakers as Paige’s hand stays on my knee—even after I’ve parked the car.
We didn’t taint the drive by talking or debating about what we were driving into—we just . . . took an hour-long drive. Her hand on my knee. Her head on my shoulder.
I thought about turning around multiple times.
Stopping this.
But that same feeling—the one I had before I left to go to her in Venice just a few hours ago, was starting to settle back into my bones.
Still, I can’t deny her closeness. Her.
I lean my cheek onto the top of her head, burrowing my nose just a bit in the soft blue strands of her hair.
Somehow— even after she crashed back into my life—I got to live on with the delusion for a little longer.
But just as I thought earlier —it was about to end.
She sighs, whispering, “It’s gonna be okay,” squeezing my knee, and I slot my hand over hers, holding it as I breathe her in again. The lemon scent is strong and I feel it tighten in my chest—somehow trying to lock it away.
Keep it.
I won’t tell her that I know it’s not going to be okay. I wouldn’t blame her if she finally called the cops on me after this . . . I mean —six hours?!
I’ve been warding the thought off since I heard it, but a roll of nausea twists in my gut just as she sits up, saying, “Linc,” and I immediately miss her weight on my shoulder. Her eyes meet mine in this soft way—reminding me of that day my dad left. The day we took a road trip in her driveway.
She squeezes my knee again, regaining my attention, pulling me back to now, and I blink.
She sighs. “This is going to be . . .” she shakes her head. “Well, it’s gonna be fucking awful. But let’s just go in. Talk to Ellis. After he tells us everything he knows —we will watch what he found.”
My eyes widen, ready to shove myself out of the car, and dive off the cliff.
She wants to fucking watch it?! Together?!
I shake my head, as my eyes clamp shut. No way. No fucking way. My mind crawls back to the inky corner it was in earlier—when Ellis first called.
I’ve seen a video of it. I’ve seen what I did to her. But I’ve only seen ten minutes, or so . . . I can’t watch that for six hours.
Something else thrums through my veins, though, something darker. Colder. Remembering she’s seen it too.
She has a copy.
My eyes squeeze tighter shut as another stab of anguish threatens to bleed me out—but I hear, “Linc,” and my eyes shoot open.
Paige’s gentle voice forces my focus back to the car, back to her in front of me. Her full rosy lips are frowning, as she holds my gaze like she’s holding my hand, then says, “This could be proof.”
I feel a smaller pinch in my chest at the hope I hear in her voice with the word proof. Because she’s right. Whatever nightmare exists with that footage is proof. It’s a deplorably long confirmation that I hurt her—violated her for a torturous amount of time.
But she refuses to believe it.
And sadly, there’s still a part of me—a small sliver that just . . . can’t believe it either. Then again, I wouldn’t have believed myself capable of hurting her in any capacity.
But I see the determination staring back at me in the way of fierce blue eyes, her hand still in mine on my knee.
And just like this morning, I find myself accepting my fate.
If this is what she wants, then it’s what I’ll do. It will likely kill me —hell, maybe she’ll kill me— but it’d be a fitting end to a fucking tragedy.
Ellis did us all a solid by pouring each of us a drink—but it’s straight bourbon this time. I’m not sure what it is about the beverage choice that adds to my unease, but it does.
My eyes have been hyper-focused on the amber liquid in the glass since we sat down in the living room . . .
A while ago. I think.
Something stops me from reaching out and taking mine off the coffee table. The color is just too . . .
Ellis clears his throat, knocking me from my wandering thoughts. I move my hand to my pocket, jingling the change a bit before I hold onto one of the coins.
He finally says, “The video was attached to one of the names on that old roster Wade found.” His eyes shift to Paige as he says, “The ones somehow connected to that website with the weird symbol.”
I have no idea what that means. Paige seems to though, as she asks, “Have you found the password yet?”
Ellis shakes his head. “No, but the account that the video was sent to appears to have a few aliases attached to it—Thomas Run, Dylan Mirth, Gregory Marquis.” He looks at his notes, then at me and asks, “You recognize any of those names?”
I can feel my mind backfiring —trying to think so quickly and so hard that all my thoughts shoot off like a bottle rocket and my throat clogs.
“Dylan Mirth. He was—” Paige says quietly, but stops and looks over at me, her eyes becoming cautious. “He was the director of that movie I got cast in right after graduation. The one . . .” she trails off for a second, as her gaze lifts and she finishes, “we were on our way to shoot.”
A cold wind blows through my chest, seemingly out of nowhere.
I stand abruptly as the thought practically cuts through my skull. The confusion and overwhelm swirl and mass in the center of my chest.
Bending at the waist, I hold my weight on my thighs, wobbling with a bout of dizziness. Suddenly, I feel a small soft hand on my lower back, making me gasp. “Breathe,” Paige orders quietly, and I do.
Or try to anyway.
I shake my head, blinking through the spots in my vision as she hands me a water bottle, keeping the other hand on my back with a steady balance of gentle and firm.
I take the water, gulping it down, as she asks Ellis, “What else have you found?”
Ellis’s eyes take on a color I’ve never seen —well, maybe once— but I swerve away from the thought.
The water and Paige’s hand are helping my heart rate settle, my lungs find some air, but I’m by no means calm, and the hunter green worry in my friend’s eyes isn’t helping.
They meet mine for a sustained moment before he shakes his head. “A few more videos. But it’s nothing more than disturbing footage without any information. I wish I had more for you guys, but this was like—one of the first things I found—I . . .” He shakes his head in a way I recognize. A nagging thought he just can’t shake.
I clear my throat. “What?”
He rubs the back of his neck. His chin tilts down for a moment before he swipes something off the coffee table, stands, and walks toward me. Us.
His eyes drift down to Paige for a second and seem to linger on her hand still holding steady on my back.
His mouth ticks up in the corner the smallest bit, but if I had blinked, I would have missed it.
His expression immediately returns to the graveness it’s had since we got home. He sighs again, and finally shrugs. “I really don’t know anything yet, man. I’m sorry. But as soon as I saw this, I had to . . . stop—for a second,” he says jaggedly, a small twitch in his shoulder as he hands me a flash drive. “I’m having Wade work on finding any and all copies that exist, but it’ll help the more information I can—” his voice cuts off as my stomach twists further. Shaking his head, he adds, “I don’t know what the fuck this is, but something tells me what happened to you guys . . . is just the tip of the iceberg.”
The word iceberg meets the stiff coldness tightening in my spine—the far away feeling calls to me, luring me to the dark edges of my awareness to escape, but then Paige takes my hand, clasping it over the flash drive still in my palm.
Her eyes are dark and cloudy—hiding something I can’t help but feel through every part of me.
“After he tells us everything he knows —we will watch what he found.”
Her words from the car find me now, and I hate them even more than I did then.
But it’s different. I suddenly feel . . . unsure of what I’m about to watch. What we’re about to watch.
I’ve never understood why I did it. Truthfully, I tried with everything in me to never think about it at all.
But there’s a video to prove it.
My desire, my need, my obsession with her was unhealthy—is unhealthy—and it reached a breaking point.
I tried to . . . fix it. Fix me. But I was too weak for that too.
Paige’s hand tethers me, though, squeezing in mine as she wraps her other arm around Ellis. “Thank you,” she whispers, I think, but I can’t really hear.
Sound is becoming tunnelly, but it’s not the same fight-or-flight as last night. No, this feels like . . . I’m already crashing.
I think Ellis says something else to her, but the blood whooshing through my ears is making me squeeze her hand tight. Tighter. I think I’m subconsciously trying to break the small device between the clammy hold of our palms.
“Too tight,” Paige says, quietly, and I release immediately, blinking back to now, as she seemingly finishes her conversation with Ellis.
Ellis looks over at me, then mutters, “Come and get me if you need anything. I’m gonna work through some of the other contacts . . . look for any . . . consistencies. ” His teeth run along his bottom lip, a silent warning to me that he’s about to ask me something I don’t want to answer. But he’s Ellis, so he does it anyway. “Did Harris introduce you to this Dylan person?”
The precarious state of my mind feels like it’s only capable of sweeping my memory at the moment, but I shake my head. “I-I don’t think so. I mean, th-they knew each other. I-I think?”
I really can’t remember. And not being able to access memories right now—when Paige and I are about to watch the biggest black hole of my existence—has me feeling like I’m a moment away from that residency on the moon.
“Okay,” Ellis says, with a nod of his chin. “That’s fine, man. Good.” Then he looks at Paige. “Remember, take breaks if you need to.”
I can see it. The management . He’s telling her because she won’t be the one to blackout.
But strangely I’m not worried about that kind of episode right now. Right now, the far away feeling has dissipated, and in its place is the sunken feeling. Too deep.
The one you feel in the movie when the iceberg inevitably comes into view.
Just as Ellis leaves, Paige looks up at me. The muscles in her face are tight. Her muted, denim-colored eyes have a light glaze, clearly working to hold back tears as she asks, “Ready?”
I swallow hard, my grip on her hand tightening. I don’t nod or say anything, I just start to walk toward her room. She carries her laptop.
My blinks slow down.
Sinking, sinking, sinking.
Seeing the iceberg in my mind again, just as we reach her doorway, my last thought is —the ship always sinks.