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He shrugs.
“Fine,” I acquiesce. He pours, and I take the glass, keeping my eyes on him as I swallow it all down.
“That’s the spirit, I guess,” he says, clearly disappointed. He’s alone too. I know this. But I can’t deal with that right now.
“There.” I hand him the glass and go to my study where I’ll spend the next few hours. Lois has left a note propped up against the stack of mail that dinner is in the kitchen and instructions how to warm it up, but I throw it away. I’m not hungry. I sit down and go through the letters, mostly unimportant, until I come up to a box without a return label. It only has my name on it, Lawson Montgomery, but no address. It must have been hand-delivered. Using the letter opener, I cut the tape away. It’s stuffed with tissue paper, and my heartbeat quickens as I push it away because I swear I smell the subtle but distinct scent of her. Mercedes’s signature perfume made just for her. And I inhale deeply, that ache in my chest throbbing. Alive. But when I see the box within the box, it’s like having a knife slice through the muscle there. A sharp, smooth blade that slides easily into the tender, beating mass of it.
Because inside is the necklace. One of the few gifts I gave her. The one that meant more than I realized at the time. I take the box out, search the tissue paper for more, a note, something she wrote me. Anything. But I find nothing. Perhaps inside the rich velvet jeweler’s box. I take the lid off, open the folded layers that protect the diamonds, and the throbbing in my chest quiets. Because it’s just the necklace returned to me. No note. No need. Its absence speaks volumes.
I push back from the desk and take the bottle of scotch because maybe tonight I need the numbing. I pour myself a generous glass and drink it all down as I stand at a safe distance from the glinting diamond in the open box. I remember what she said when I gave it to her. That it wasn’t a gift because she’d earned it. More than earned it.
I pour a second glass.
How can the recent past become so distant so quickly? How can things change so fast they leave you unable to breathe? Unable to believe they really happened to you. Because Mercedes having been here, touching her, feeling her beside me, beneath me. Being inside her. Smelling her hair. Watching her sleep. Holding her. It’s as though it never happened. Or like it happened to someone else. How can she be gone so completely, all evidence of her erased from my house? How could I have let Santiago take her away from me?
I drink three more glasses as the drizzle that had begun just a little while ago turns to an angry rain lashing the windows. It’s then I snatch the necklace out of its box and shove it into my pocket. I stalk back out of the house to my car, and I drive back to her house, where the IVI guards are still sitting in their goddamned Rolls Royce watching her door like two hulking machines.
When I climb out of my vehicle, one of them opens his door but must recognize me and nods. He gets back into his car. I guess Santiago didn’t give them a shoot-to-kill picture of me. I leave the car parked half in the street, half in a spot because honestly, I probably shouldn’t have driven tonight. I stalk up to her door. I have a key, but I ring the bell. Well, I more lay my weight against the damn thing until a light turns on, and I see her in the narrow, rectangular window beside the door. When she sees me, she comes to an abrupt stop. I’m fucking getting soaked as lightning electrifies the sky, so I lean against the doorbell again before she finally opens the door, and we stand face-to-face for the first time since that terrible day I lost everything.
13
Judge
Mercedes’s eyes move over me, a small line forming between her eyebrows at what she sees.
“What do you want?” she asks, tone cold. She blocks the entrance, glancing over my shoulder at her personal bodyguards.
“In,” I say when she looks at me.
“Why?”
Thunder crashes, and lightning charges the sky. “It’s fucking pouring, Mercedes.”
“Then maybe you should have brought an umbrella. Or better yet, maybe you shouldn’t have come at all.” She starts to close the door, but I stop it with the toe of my shoe.
“Really? You expected me not to come after this?” I pull the necklace out of my pocket and wave it in front of her face.
“All I have to do is raise one finger, and those two will be on you before you can—”
I wrap one arm around her waist so it looks to the guards like I’m hugging her and move her back into the house, then close the door.
“Jesus!” She pushes me off, and we both look down at her nightie, an emerald-green silk gown that is soaked at her chest. Water drips off my head, my clothes sticking to me. I didn’t put on a jacket in my haste. “What the hell, Judge?”
“This was a gift,” I say, backing her into the wall when she tries to get around me.
“I don’t want your gift. Just like I don’t want you stalking me every night. Take a fucking hint.” She pivots around me, but I grab her arm and pull her back.
“You will wear it. Every fucking day.”
“News flash,” she says, tugging free. “I don’t belong to you!”
I block her with my body as I secure the necklace around her neck.
“What are you doing? Are you drunk? Jesus? I can smell the liquor!”
Again, she tries to slip past me, but this time, I take hold of her jaw, fingers digging into soft skin. I make her look at me, and in this dim light at this insane hour, I search her face, memorize her dark eyes, the scattering of gold specks. I smell her smell, that familiar mix of amber, citrus, and warm spices that I’ve missed too much. And I kiss her. I hold her in place, and I kiss her even as her hands come to my chest to push me away, even as she doesn’t kiss me back and groans her protest against my lips instead.
I don’t care. I can’t. I need this too much. I need her.
