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Glancing at the closed door, he leaned closer across the table. “You know, Nerida, sometimes the people we love the most are the ones most capable of doing bad things.”
I froze. “What? Why are you saying that?”
“Because, in my experience, where there’s smoke there’s usually a fire. If you and Aslan have managed to hide your relationship from your parents until tonight, the real question is...what happened for him to throw all caution to the wind and attempt...sexual intercourse...on Christmas? Knowing the chances of being caught were extremely high? What would make him not care about that? What would drive him to do something so out of character?”
My eyes dropped to my bruised wrists. I circled the fresh discolouration with my fingers, cursing myself all over again for wrapping the cord of my hairdryer around and around, then yanking and pulling as hard as I had when Ethan had tied me up.
My heart fisted all over again at the memory of Aslan’s face as he’d noticed. At the sharp glisten of horror in his eyes. At the awful way he tripped forward as if I’d driven a dagger into his chest.
To tell the truth or not?
To share what pushed Aslan over the edge or hope that Wayne just let it go?
But if I can make him see how caring Aslan is...it will prove he’s so good and kind and incapable of doing what my father thinks he did.
Pressing on a self-inflicted bruise, I murmured, “I...hurt myself. Aslan noticed. He’s been trying to get me to talk to someone ever since it happened. When I shut down and he saw I’d damaged myself, he...got scared.” I looked up. “He let his worry for me overflow.”
I shrugged and smiled sadly, telling my dad’s friend far more than he should know. “We were only an hour away from telling them, you know. He was going to propose to me in front of my parents after we’d eaten Christmas dinner and were opening our presents.” I laughed under my breath, not that it was a laughing matter. “I have no idea why we’re the only family to open our presents at night, but that’s how it goes in our household. Think Dad made the rule just to annoy me. It’s freaky to think that none of this would’ve happened if we’d just opened our gifts like normal people the moment we all crawled out of bed. Dad and Mum would’ve known we were together. Aslan wouldn’t have been wound up and worried about me. And I probably would never have...”
Dropping my fingers from my bruises, I shivered in the cold, stark room. “Can I go now? I would really like to go.”
“Of course.” He gave me a fatherly smile. Standing, he waited for me to do the same before hugging my folder to his chest and saying, “The way you talk about him makes me grateful you have someone who cares so deeply for you, but also...scares me a little.”
I stiffened.
His eyes locked on mine. “Don’t you see, Nerida? You’ve just proven my point. I asked what would drive Aslan to do something so out of character, and it was you. You hurting yourself drove him to breaking point. Just like watching your dad hurt Aslan drove you to yours. I bet you didn’t think you could strike your father and I bet Jack didn’t think he could beat the son of his family friend. But you both hurt those you love to protect those you love. If you could do that to someone you care for, imagine what you could do to someone you hate.”
I tried to think up something to say. Some way of protecting Aslan from Wayne’s far-too-insightful evaluations, but I couldn’t. My brain was a gasping fish, flopping for air and utterly useless.
“You know...I watched a show on Netflix the other night called the Inside Man. My favourite actor, Stanley Tucci, plays a character on death row who helps out with criminal investigations, and you know what he said?”
I shook my head, not wanting to hear but knowing he’d tell me regardless.
“He said...‘Everyone is a murderer. You just need a good reason and a bad day.’”
I froze.
Wayne shrugged and patted my shoulder on the way to the door. “That line has really stuck with me, not because it’s morbid but because it’s true. Everyone has that switch inside them, Nerida. And if that switch gets pushed...we’re capable of monstrous things, regardless of the consequences.”
I followed him blindly out of the interrogation room and down the bleak linoleum-floored corridor to the waiting room where my parents paced anxiously for my return. With every step, what Wayne had said echoed in my heart.
It affected me.
It woke me.
And I knew without a shadow of a doubt, I was a murderer.
Just because I hadn’t spilled blood yet didn’t mean I wouldn’t. I’d kill Cem Kara, Aslan’s biological father, if he ever came for him. I’d kill any bureaucrats who tried to deport him. I’d kill any police who tried to arrest him.
Deep in my loving heart and gentle soul, a violence lurked, swimming in the depths of despair, snapping with jaws of fury. An entire brutal, black ocean existed within me, housing monsters of the deep, monsters ready to tear and claw and devour.
I just hoped I never had to unleash them.
* * * * *
“How did it go? Was Wayne nice to you?” Dad asked quietly, twisting in the front seat to stare at me.
I held his eyes, flinching at the tight, wary way he watched me.
