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I pick up his slacks, wrinkle them into a ball, and shove them back in. “I’m not your pet.”
“Fia.” He puts his arms around my waist, pulls me close, kisses my forehead with his lips pulled back into a smile. “You don’t get it. He trusts me. He trusts you. This is it. Any hesitation he had about us is gone after what you did. Just play it safe and do whatever anyone tells you to. And if anyone asks, you don’t know where I am and you’re annoyed because I never tell you enough about what’s going on.”
“Gee, that will be hard to fake.” I glare at him, and he looks hurt. He does it to protect me—in case things go wrong, in case he messes up, he hopes maybe I’ll get out okay. But sometimes I wonder, if he spends all his time at work thinking that he doesn’t really care about me, that I’m just a tool he’s crafted . . .
How many lies can a brain tell itself before they become truths?
I soften my look and his shoulders relax from the tension nearly always written there. “We’re close,” he says. “Closer than we’ve ever been.”
Close. Closer. Rafael’s words bounce around in my skull, making my head hurt. I hate that he has space in my skull now. I don’t believe him about James—I don’t—but I can’t stop thinking it. Does Rafael have Annie, or does he just know she’s alive? If he’s Lerner, and Lerner are the good guys, is Rafael a good guy?
No.
James is my good. “Tell me,” I say. “Tell me what we’re going to do. Tell me what getting closer to your father has brought us. I want a timeline.”
He strokes my back. “Remember our deal? We don’t talk about it. We don’t think about it. We don’t plan it.”
“Of course I remember,” I snarl. I have been not thinking and not planning and not not not not for so long I don’t know if I could think and plan anymore if my life depended on it.
“It’s important.” The line appears between his eyebrows, and I smooth it away with my thumb. He is so beautiful, this fierce, manipulative, calculating boy of mine. He is a liar. I chose him, I love him, I couldn’t love him if it wasn’t right. He takes care of me. He saves me from myself.
“Have you ditched the Reader yet?”
I shrug, dropping my hand. I thought about killing her tonight. I saved her, instead. “I like her.”
“You can’t afford to like her. What if you thought the wrong thing? What if you thought about Annie?”
I rub my own forehead, tap tap tap tap against it. “I am so sick of hearing about Annie.”
“Where else did you hear about her?” His voice is sharp and tight with suspicion. He does not suspect enough. Never enough about me.
I should tell him about Rafael. If I trusted him, I would ask him about Rafael. I would bring him in on this problem, and I would let him help me fix it. Instead I smile. “In my head, all the time, I have to sing the I killed Annie song. It’s a very repetitive tune.”
Sometimes I forget it’s not true. Sometimes, like tonight, I wake up and see the blood on her hand, and I can’t remember whether or not I actually killed her. It scares me more than anything.
Maybe I did kill her.
No. I know I didn’t. I saved her. I killed for her.
“Do you have any way of contacting her?”
“Nope.” Annie is mine. My secret. My sister. Mine. I add this to the secrets I keep from James. I don’t even know why I keep the ones I do, why I hide the things I do. I can’t stop.
He slams his suitcase shut, zips it up. “Did you really have to leave her with Lerner?”
I roll my eyes. “The foster care system denied my application.” It was right to leave her there. I know it was. I remember what it felt like. I have to trust that, or I’ll lose my mind.
Well, lose it more.
He picks up his bag and leans in to kiss me, but I turn my face away. “Did I do the right thing?” I whisper.
He drops the bag, pulls me into his arms, tries to get me to look at him. “You always do. Which thing are we talking about?”
I am talking about so many things. So many things. I look him in the eyes, try to see myself reflected back, but I can’t. There’s nothing there. “Your father would have died. I stopped it.”
The lines around his eyes tighten, and without moving he’s gotten farther away from me.
“Doesn’t he deserve to die?” I ask.
