AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It takes me a couple of hours to go over all the videos. I watch them on loop, in a trance, inking every single moment into memory. When I’m done, I save all of them to my Dropbox and remove the USB.
I wonder why, of all places, this thing has found its way to Paul’s. I guess the content of the package I received today was Paul’s little Grace shrine. Grace was in possession of this USB and decided to keep it somewhere I’d never find it. That couldn’t have been her apartment. I had the keys.
Why hadn’t she given it to me?
The answer is clear. She didn’t want me to have it because a part of her loathed me enough to deny me this peace of mind. My thinking Patrice was an awful monster worked to her advantage. The more broken I was, the less I expected of her. My expectations from the fairer sex were so low that I’d readily accepted a woman who tried to kill me when we were teenagers.
Grace never loved me. I always knew that, deep down, but this USB is the final blow.
The surprising part is that I never loved her either. As I sit here, in front of a mountain of evidence of her affair, it is clear to me that this asshole Christian was right.
I was obsessed with her.
I mistook fixation for affection. But wanting my stepsister had very little to do with Grace as a human and a lot to do with proving something to myself. That I’d won, after all. The endgame—the biggest game of all—wasn’t something I could afford to lose. Funny thing is, I lost it, anyway. And survived to tell the tale.
The only thing I ever wanted from Grace was her full and complete submission. Not her body. Not her love. Not her babies.
This explains everything. For instance, why I felt cheated and robbed more than heartbroken when Grace passed away. Like the universe had fucked me out of a perfectly good deal. My business sensibilities had been affronted. I’d invested time and resources in that woman, and it frustrated me when I didn’t see a return.
The proximity to Bumpkin didn’t make matters better. Seeing the woman turn inside out as she mourned her husband only highlighted the fact I really didn’t care all that much for my fiancée.
Hold up. Rewind. Shit, shit, shit.
Winnifred.
She knows that Grace was pregnant. How must she feel, after struggling with her own infertility?
Glancing at my watch, I see it’s already well past eleven. I call her anyway. She’s up till late, what with her show schedule. Still, she doesn’t pick up. I send a text message. Answer me.
Nada.
I call again. It occurs to me that something very bad could’ve happened between the last time we saw each other and now. Why did she send the package? Why not bring it over so we could both hate on Grace and Paul over a bottle of wine, like civilized people, before fucking each other’s brains out?
Sure, I told her not to, but since when does this woman listen to anything anyone has to say? Least of all me.
What if Bumpkin is in trouble?
The thought unsettles me more than it should. I grab my keys and head to the parking lot, taking the stairs three at a time. The elevator may take several minutes, and time is of the essence.
I try to call her as I drive toward her apartment. The call goes straight to voice mail. It’s like the time I went to identify Grace at the morgue all over again, but somehow, a thousand times worse. I’m appalled by my reaction to Winnifred not answering me, how out of proportion it is in comparison to the way I felt when I went to look at my fiancée’s dead body in the middle of the night, all calm and collected.
I park in front of her building and run up the stairs, convincing myself the entire time my sense of responsibility stems from everything we’ve been through together, and not, Science forbid, because I’ve developed those pesky things called feelings. I just want to be on the safe side. The woman is obviously distraught after hearing about her dead husband’s love child. I’m just being a Good Samaritan.
You? A Good Samaritan? Riggs’s voice chuckles in my head as I fling myself over the banister to save time. If the world depended on your good intentions, it’d have detonated a thousand times over.
When I get to her door, I pound on it with both fists. Hysterical is not my most attractive look, but I’m not here to chase tail.
“Bumpkin!” I roar. “Open the goddamn door before I kick it down.”
Tonight may or may not end in my arrest. I will never live it down if Christian releases me on bail.
