Page 35 of Trust my Heart

I took a swallow instead of answering and let him think he’d found the soft place. Then I took the copies of the pictures out of my coat and set them on the table. My hand wasn’t steady, and I didn’t try to make it be.

“Somebody put these under our door in the night,” I said. “While we were asleep twenty feet away. You know what’s in them.”

He looked at them for a long moment. He didn’t touch it. His face did the surprise, then the sorrow, both of them clean, neither of them real.

“I didn’t send you those.”

“I didn’t say you did.”

“Then why carry them with you?”

“Because it pissed me off. Because I wanted to shove them in your face.” My voice broke on the word. “It’s you with your mouth on him. I’ve been carrying them around for days. I take them into the bathroom at work so he won’t catch me looking.”

He started to tell me it wasn’t what it looked like. I didn’t let him finish. My hand came down flat on the table hard enough that the owner glanced up, and I let the sound of it pull my voice up after it.

“Don’t you sit there and tell me what it is! I have looked at it until I can see it with my eyes shut! Every version of it! Him leaning in. Him not pulling away.” The breath went then, for real, and I let it take me the rest of the way down.

Wright lifted two fingers toward the bar, an easy little motion, he’s all right, I’ve got him, and the owner went back to his paper like he’d been asked to. A stranger shouting in the back booth, and one gesture from Wright settled the room.

“All right,” he said, gentle again. “You’ve looked at them long enough. So ask me.”

That was the whole morning, right there. If he decided I was too composed under it, too clever, I’d walk out with nothing and he’d know I’d come for something. So I didn’t argue. I did the worse thing. I broke the rest of the way, in front of him, on purpose, and it came easier than it had any right to, because all I had to do was stand in the parts that were true. I put my face down into my hands and let him hear my breathing go wrong, and I stayed there, out in the open, where he could have all of it.

“There’s nobody else I can ask.” It came out wet and I left it that way. “Everyone I’d take it to is already yours. You saw to that. I say your name out loud and I’m the jealous one who lost it on the floor. So, it’s you. That’s what I’ve got left. The only person who’ll tell me the truth about my own life is the one who did this to it.”

He watched it happen, and he believed it, because it was true, only not the way he was hearing it. He decided I was no threat to him, and I watched him decide it. He slid a paper napkin across the table with one finger, and I took it and wiped my face with the thing his hand had just touched, and I’d have done a great deal worse than that for the hour it bought me.

“How long.” I made it ugly. “How long has he been going to you behind my back?”

“He hasn’t. It was one kiss and a goodbye, and he’d tell you so himself, if you could stand to ask him.”

“Don’t tell me what he’d say.” It climbed and I let it climb. “You don’t get to be the one who knows him. Was he happy with you? Back then. Happier than he is with me. Say it, whatever it is.”

“I’ll tell you what you’re up against,” he said. “You’ve been decent about the asking, which is more than I expected. It might even do you some good to hear it plainly, the once.”

“Then say it.”

“I had Luke for four years, and I handed him back.” He said it like it had cost him nothing. “Then I watched, from across the city, what he made of himself without me. He was worth having when I had him. He’s worth a great deal more now.” Something moved in him as he said it, quick and hungry, and he caught it and took a breath and it was gone, and he’d settled back. “I’ve thought about it more than I’ve thought about anything in years. I decided I’d have it back.”

“Luke,” I said, echoing it back at him, not asking. I’d seen the thing under the ease, and I put it with the rest.

“Him, and everything he turned into while I was gone. I don’t pull those two apart.” The easy smile came back. “And I’ll spare you the question you’re working up to. Yes. He kissed me back. Look at the picture as long as you like. It won’t change the second it caught.”

He wasn’t done. He said the next part slowly, to make sure I kept it.

“And here’s what I’m not asking you, Detective, because you and I both already know it. I’m not asking whether he told you about that kiss. He didn’t. I know the man better than you ever will. He came home to you, and my name never once left his mouth. He decided you couldn’t be trusted with it.” He leaned back. “You’ll lie there on that tonight. I know I would.”

Wright was right that Luke had never told me, and he knew what that secret would do to me.

The anger came up under all of it, and I didn’t stop it.

“You don’t even love him.” Low and shaking. “That’s the part I can’t get past. You’d take him apart, and you don’t even want him. You never loved him.”

“No.” He said it like he was agreeing the coffee had gone cold. “I don’t think I’ve loved anything in my life, if that’s the word you’re reaching for. He was attentive. Caring. Good in bed, which was always a bonus. Whether that adds up to love, I couldn’t tell you, and I’ve never needed to.”

He listed Luke off the way you’d list a car you were thinking of buying back, and I sat there thinking of the way Luke read at night with one foot tucked up under him, how he wouldn’t hear his own name the first three times and then pretended he had. Wright had had him for four years and never once met that man. He’d had something that answered to the name.

“You want me wrecked over him,” he went on, watching me. “Jealous. Some version of you. I’m not, and that’s the thing you can’t beat. You love him and it’s killing you. I don’t, and I’ll have him anyway.”