The car.
My hate for driving and being in anything on four wheels.
The “accident.”
If only he knew.
If only anyone knew.
“I’m fine.” Is all I say before retreating to my thoughts. I planned every aspect of the trip. I couldn’t not. And my first step is to let go. Opening my wallet, I take the pill I’ve secured in a plastic bag and pop it in my mouth with some water from the bottle I always carry around. It will take one hour to work its magic, and I can count on New York traffic to be on my side. It will just relax me before I can sleep on the plane and wake up another man in Virginia.
That’s what I hope every night when I go to sleep. To wake up someone else. Somewhere else. With Elaine by my side.
“So, what’s up with you?” I ask my friend, pretending I’m somewhat interested in what he has become. If I were, I would have come to his wedding or sent a gift when he became a dad. I never found it in me to keep in touch. That life was over the moment Elaine died.
“A much less interesting life than yours. Married, but you know that. Kids, but you know that. A job I love, but you know that. Now, if you want to tell me how the best guy at unmasking impostors became a single father and owner of a bar where celebrities hang out, I’m all ears.”
The Darling Devils.
The bane and the saviors of my existence.
The biggest rock band for the last twenty-five years. People I now call family when before my family was my unit, those guys, and everything we believed in. Remembering we used to have each other’s back, I tell him the story everyone knows if you’ve read anything about the band in the last three years or so.
How my sister met the lead singer of the band in a hotel bar in Montreal. How her assistant started something with the drummer of the same group. About my relationship with that girl and our friendship with benefits for years. All the ups, all the downs, all that made my life more complicated, more enjoyable, less like drowning. By the time we’re on the plane, I’m sleepy and glad I don’t have to make conversation while flying. We caught up enough for us to ignore each other for the hour and fifteen minutes of the flight duration.
Returning to Virginia is difficult enough, I don’t need to be conscious that the plane could crash, and we could die, flat on the ground like crêpes who didn’t get caught by the frying pan when flipped in the air. The thought makes me shiver, and I push it away quickly with images of Aito.
Anna’s words ring in my mind like an echo in the desert.
I need to go there for my son. To heal. To become the man I used to be. The fearless asshole who laughed in the face of danger. The guy who wasn’t a prisoner of his thoughts, his fears, his doubts, his dread, his uncertainty.
The man Elaine loved, and I came to hate.
Maybe I can find him again in Virginia.
Perhaps I’ll find peace.
Or perhaps it will shatter me to the bone, and I’ll end up locked up somewhere, alive on the outside but dead inside, the compulsions having won and no one being safe.
But that’s only one possibility.
I can’t think of others dying. I can’t fear death. I can fight it. And while I drift to sleep, I mentally go through everything I checked before leaving, like a lullaby to Aito, like a love song to Elaine, like a chant at the funeral.
And when I can’t count anymore, when my thoughts are too foggy for me to make sense of anything, when my head is heavier than my heart, I let go, and only then, I feel safe. If death catches you while you’re asleep, you don’t see it happening, you’re not the witness of any nightmares, you’re not the prey of its cruelty, and you’re not the one who killed a loved one.
Sleep is an ally, and pills are my best friend, especially thirty thousand feet in the air.
Chapter Four
TESSA
There is something exhilarating while breaking the rules.
From driving above the speed limit to reading a forbidden romance, there is something intangible that makes me do it. A desire to dance under the thunderstorm that life is and take the chance to be struck by lightning, to get aroused by taboo thoughts, to get caught by the police. Of course, when it happens, some consequences are more enjoyable than others.
The one I’m currently dealing with is somewhere in the middle between orgasm and death. A little pleasurable because the guy is very good looking but a bit deadly because of the repercussions being pulled over would create.
“Officer, can I go now? I’m late for an appointment.” Which is why I was speeding. Not dangerously speeding or driving like I would on the tracks, but just above speed-limit like we’ve all done.
“Tessa, it’s the third time this month.” Officer Jenkins and I are becoming fast buddies. I smile to try to appease him, but he just glares at me, unimpressed.
“Nope,” I argue, “the first two didn’t count. We agreed that your machine is too sensitive, and I was in the grey area of speeding the first two times.” He lets out a breath, and his gaze changes. Now he looks at me like everyone does around here, with a little annoyance and a lot of pity.
I’m the girl whose fiancé died and got shit in return. I’m the girl who was left with almost nothing and freaked. I’m the girl you need to be patient with while I find my way, even if I’m a pain in the ass. At least that’s what they say around here.
Oh, Tessa, King’s girl. The one who got rejected by his family. Poor thing.
Poor thing. Poor me.
I smile to keep my tears of anger at bay.
I never wanted to become the widow that wasn’t one. The dead guy’s fiancée. The poor girl. But as long as I live here, that’s what I’ll be.
Some days, I’m not even sure why I came back. Everything was so much easier when I was away. I didn’t have to tell my story. I didn’t have to see the compassion in the eyes of others. I didn’t have to hear the ’poor thing’, they’d whisper.
Jenkins sighs. “The grey area doesn’t exist. You’re speeding or not. If the speed limit is set at a certain mileage per hour, it’s not for you to think there is a ten-mph above it that allows you a free pass.” His blue eyes are shining with pride, and his face is stern. There is no way to get my way out of it. This time, I’m getting a ticket.
“So do your job, Officer.” I shrug, “I’ll pay. I don’t have an issue with it. But hurry, I can’t be late for my first day.”
He crosses his arms and smirks. “We wouldn’t want that… Dixon might get pissed.”
“Is anything private anymore?” I frown, wondering why one of the guys would blab this to Jenkins.
“Nope,” he says, smiling, “And you can be certain, Quinn will hear about our wonderful time together on the side of this little backroad.” With all his years whoring around in bars, my friend Quinn knows a lot of the hot men in town. Not that he was interested in them—Quinn loved the ladies—but King and I had this theory that Quinn and the other handsome guys had a secret club where they used to hang out to plan their search for one-night stands when they were single. They all hung out in the same bars and talked to the same girls. It was before they got hitched one after the other. Jenkins, Quinn, our friend Liam and a few more were all part of the club until they became devoted husbands and baby daddies.