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“Pizza,” he replies immediately, making me chuckle. He grins, and it’s welcome after last night, even if I know it won’t last.
“I’ll see what I can do. I won’t be long.” I stand up and brush myself off before heading inside and grabbing my bag.
The area hasn’t changed much since I was last here. Some of the shops are different, and there are a few more coffee houses. Other than that, it’s still familiar, bringing on a wave of nostalgia. I make my way to the supermarket and shove a ball cap on my head and a pair of sunglasses over my eyes before heading inside.
I pick up a couple of frozen pizzas, a few beers, and a bunch of other things I think Calix might like, along with toiletries and coffee. Using the self-serve checkout, I scan the items and manage to make it back to the car without speaking to another soul. That doesn’t mean I’m not vigilant, though. I do a couple of loops around a nearby housing estate on my way back to the house, just in case I’m being followed.
I lug the bags inside when I get back, calling out to Calix that I’m back. I don’t get a response, so I put everything away and then go try to find him. With nothing much to do, I figure he’s taking a nap. When I find the bed we slept in empty, I head back downstairs, searching the rest of the house and the backyard before realizing he’s not here.
I didn’t set the alarm when I left because Calix was going to be here, but I do it now, feeling uncomfortable here alone. I’m also pissed. He’s supposed to be lying low, but instead, he’s off somewhere, doing God knows what? He didn’t even leave a note.
I stomp into the kitchen and make a salad for lunch, not in the mood for pizza any longer. I make huge bowl and serve myself a portion before putting the rest in the fridge. I take my bowl and bottle of Coke out to the backyard where it’s easier to breathe, the air feeling a little less oppressive.
I sit on the top step and eat my lunch, wondering if I even have the right to be pissed. I’m his wife, sure, but this isn’t exactly a conventional marriage. If he puts himself in danger, that’s on him, not me. So why does the thought of anything happening to him make me feel sick to my stomach?
I force myself to eat, even though it feels like a lead weight in my stomach. I shift my focus to something else.Someone else. Someone I’ve been desperately trying not to think about.
Rémy.
As if my thinking of him conjures him, my cell phone vibrates in my pocket, and I know before pulling it out that it’s him. It’s always him. I didn’t give him this number. I didn’t give it to anyone. It’s a burner I use as Sarah, but no matter how many times I’ve changed my number in the last few months, he always manages to find it.
My finger hovers over the answer button, but despite how much I want to answer it, I don’t. Hearing his voice right now will break the thin strands of my sanity, and I’m barely hanging on as it is.
What Rémy and I have—or had—is beyond complicated. Both of us are frequently hired to kill people. Where it’s just one of the services I offer, Rémy is a full-time assassin and one of the best in the world. I’ve known him years, but our interactions were fleeting until five years ago, when we were on the same job. Only I was hired to protect the person he was hired to kill. I managed to get the guy out, give him a new identity, and relocate him. The fact that I managed to do it all without Rémy knowing made him take more of a liking to me than before.
Now, I won’t lie, the first thing that drew me to him was his sexy French accent. The second was the fact that he was off-the-charts hot. Light-haired, green-eyed, and tanned from spending a lot of time outside, the man looks like he’d be at home on a beach in nothing but a pair of board shorts just as much as he’d be in a three-piece suit. Being good-looking, though, can be both a blessing and a curse when you’re an assassin. Being hot makes it easier to get a woman, in particular, to submit to you and make choices she perhaps wouldn’t have otherwise. The downside is that a good-looking man is going to draw attention, which is the exact opposite of what an assassin wants. But Rémy was somewhat of a chameleon. He had mastered the art of blending in, a skill I often struggled with myself.
Our mutual attraction only went as far as our libidos. For the most part, we are on opposite sides. Even if we weren’t, we knew all too well that in our line of work, we would always be each other’s weak spot. And we had too many enemies collectively to have weak spots.
Our first meeting after years of going backward and forward with each other didn’t end with us rolling around in the sheets together. It was more of a fistfight than anything else. By the time we called a temporary truce, both of us were bruised and bloody—and, let’s not forget, horny as fuck. I tried not to read too much into it. Adrenaline can do strange things to people. But every time our paths crossed, we ended right back where we started, fighting with each other. Fighting eventually led to fucking, and despite promising myself that each time would be the last time, Rémy was impossible to walk away from.
Until now.
Coming here, knowing what I was going to have to do to put my plans in motion, I had to quit whatever fucked-up thing me and Rémy had going on. I told myself it was for the best. I could feel myself slipping into territory I had no business being in.
We promised to keep things casual. Frenemies with benefits, neither of us putting any kind of expectation on the other. It was the perfect arrangement. Until it wasn’t. Walking away should have been easy, feelings aside. When I called Rémy to tell him I was done, that should have been the end of it. It seems something shifted for him, too, because he’s done nothing but call me since.
I’ve blocked his number, and he gets a new one. I change my number, and he finds it within days. I never answer. All his messages go to voicemail, which I delete without listening to. He never texts me—a habit that spills over from his job. No texts and only short calls are made from untraceable burner phones.
My cell rings again. Number withheld this time, but I know it’s still him. I watch the screen light up and sigh wistfully, wanting to hear the sound of his voice more than anything right now. But I don’t trust myself with the man, and Calix deserves better than that.
Powering it off, I finish the last of my food, which now tastes like sawdust. I sit and stare aimlessly out at the yard until I become restless. Standing up, I shove my cell phone back in my pocket and take my bowl inside, placing it in the sink.
With nothing else to do, I wander around the house and feel an acute sense of loneliness set in. It makes my stomach cramp and my palms sweat as the walls feel like they’re closing in on me. I find myself moving quicker, jogging up the stairs two at a time before hesitating at the end of the long hallway. Last night we slept in the guest room to my left. I was too tired and too preoccupied with Calix to take on the emotional tsunami that will drag me down when dealing with the bedrooms. But now that Calix is gone, I don’t have an excuse to put it off any longer.
I walk slowly down the hall, as excited as someone taking their final steps down death row. I hesitate at the next door I reach before turning the knob and pushing it open. When I take a deep breath and smell nothing but musty, stale air, I find myself blinking back unexpected tears. It’s stupid, of course. No scent will linger after twenty years. For a moment there, I almost expected to be hit with the subtle notes of my mother’s favorite perfume and the comforting warmth of my father’s aftershave.
Instead, there is nothing.
I step inside the room and find it tidy like it always was. Everything packed neatly away as if someday they might return. I don’t open the closed doors. The scab that had healed over already feels like it’s bleeding. I glance around and feel the absence of life here. Yet, if I close my eyes, I can see the specters of my parents as they get ready for one of their nights out.
My mother sits at her vanity, slipping in her pearl earrings, a gift given to her on her wedding day. I watch my father move behind her, a soft smile on his lips before he bends and kisses the bare skin of her shoulder. I blink and look away. The haunting images disappear as I hurry from the room and close the door, trapping the bittersweet memories inside.
Despite the urge to run, I keep going, moving to the next room. My hand shakes as I push it open and walk inside. I swallow hard as nausea surges up inside me. The room is exactly as I remember it. It’s clean—cleaner than it was kept when it was occupied, but that’s what I pay my ladies for. They keep the place tidy, but they never move the items laid out in the bedrooms. They clean around them as best they can. I’m sure they think I’m insane, especially since they have no idea that this house has always been mine. To me, tiny pieces of my family are preserved in these mementos, and if I move them, the memories will fade away.
I walk over to the vanity table. Unlike my mother’s, this one is covered haphazardly with lipsticks and makeup brushes. Photos of teenagers in pretty beaded frames line the wall above it. Friends who all grew up and carried on living as the memory of my family faded from their minds, and we became nothing more than a cautionary tale people told their daughters about.
In the world I grew up, women were merely pretty accessories for the men who stood beside them. Cattle to be traded and sold between families in hopes of making allegiances and producing heirs. Pretty little rich broodmares who had no worth beyond what was between their legs.
