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“That’s not true.”
“Well, you won, happy?” A sinister grin covers his face, and I sink further into despair. He plays him so well, how could I have missed it?
I was too close. I saw what I wanted to see, my grieving husband playing a madman.
“Am I happy?” I repeat, making my way toward the front door. “No, far from it.”
“Who’s breaking the rules now?” I snap my eyes to his.
Rule Number One: Don’t take the process personally.
Rule Number Two: Go with it and trust.
Rule Number Three: All parts belong to me.
Rule Number Four: Only in grief do we leave the other.
Does the grief that’s seized me count if it’s not literal? What about his, does his grief count? It may not be the exact definition of the rule we made but grief is most definitely the reason we are breaking it.
It’s then with our eyes locked I see the burden of our expectations, and just how miserably we failed each other.
Briefly, I see my husband’s emerging emotions running rampant in his eyes before he schools his features and the menace is back. “He’s been a good husband, hasn’t he?”
“Yes,” I sniff, sucking up the rest of my composure. “The best.”
“You can’t leave him because he’s protecting me!”
Maybe it should matter that it’s the first time he’s come close to breaking character, but it’s too late.
“Why not?” I fire back, lifting my chin to fight Blake’s ghost head on. “You did.”
Opening the door, I glance back at him and decide to draw the only weapon I have left. “Do me a favor, when you can, let my husband know I’m pregnant.” I don’t bother looking for his reaction because it will break what’s left of me, so I pull the door shut.
“Mila,” erupts from deep within him before his palm hits the closed door between us.
Mila
On my way up to the cottage in the hills, it all begins to make sense. Lucas must have been the one to go through Blake’s things before Amanda and I got there. He must’ve unearthed the truth and the reason for Blake’s demons. The more I scramble for clues, the more that strikes me of what had been apparent all along. The morning after Blake had committed suicide, I rose from sleep early and found Lucas fully dressed in the living room, shrouded in the dark. He didn’t speak, hardly a word that day or the day after. And since then, Lucas became more and more absent. He’d found the answers to why Blake took his life, and it had only spiraled him to put on the mask he now wore.
Lucas isn’t acting as Nikki Rayo.
Blake West is playing Nikki Rayo, and it’s damn near cost my husband his sanity. I’m at a loss, dumbfounded by both his audacity and his brilliance. The characteristics I recognized while Lucas was home were all Blake. Things I should have caught onto much faster. It wasn’t Nikki who bought me that necklace, it was a manic Blake.
All of it was Blake.
“Jesus, Lucas, what were you thinking?”
But he told me. It’s as simple as guilt. He said he owed Blake. He was too buried inside his grief to realize how positively crazy this idea was. Or maybe he thought utilizing Blake’s villainous traits while playing Rayo would help his process.
It’s genius and crazy and nothing less than what I should have expected. My husband is a risk-taker and has been since he set foot in Hollywood. He goes to great lengths to prove a point, and he’s demonstrated that time and time again. I should have known, I should have seen it, but as his wife, I feel violated and manipulated.
Maybe he thought if he could convince me, he could do a better job convincing everyone else. Whatever his reasoning is, it’s torn us apart. And I let it. I broke my own rule after ostracizing him for the same. We’re unrecognizable because I didn’t trust him. We’re unrecognizable because he broke my trust.
It’s. Too. Fucking. Much.
I’m thinking on the defensive, and I don’t want to hate Lucas. I don’t need any more reasons to be angry. Shifting my thoughts another way I try to reason with the side that harbors the guilt. We’d lived twenty minutes away from Blake. Twenty minutes. Could we have saved him? Could we have done more?
Absolutely.
