Page 93 of Rainshadow Road

Lucy nodded, wearing a smile that looked like it had been tacked on with pins. He stepped forward to embrace her, and she let him for just a moment, but all her muscles were knotted and stiff. It was like putting his arms around a cold marble statue.

“I couldn’t turn it down,” she said against his shoulder. “A chance like this…”

“Yeah.” Sam let go of her. “You should do it. Definitely.”

He continued to stare at her, trying to wrap his brain around the fact that Lucy was leaving him. Lucy was leaving. The phrase filled him with a numb, blank sensation that he guessed was relief.

Yes. It was time. Their relationship had started to get tricky. Always best to cut things off when they were still good.

“If you need me to help you put your stuff in storage—” he began.

“No, everything’s under control.” Lucy’s eyes had turned wet even though she was still smiling. She stunned him by saying, “It’s easier if I don’t see you or talk to you from now on. I need a clean break.”

“Alice’s wedding—”

“I don’t think there’ll be a wedding. Which is good, for Alice’s sake. Marriage is hard enough for people who actually love each other. I don’t think she and Kevin had a chance. I don’t think—” She broke off and let out a shivering breath.

As Lucy stood there with tears glittering in her eyes, Sam was gripped by an unfamiliar feeling, the worst feeling he’d had in his adult life. Sharper than fear, more painful than grief, emptier than loneliness. It was what he imagined an ice pick in the chest might feel like.

“I don’t love you,” Lucy said with a wobbly smile. At his silence, she said, “Tell me you feel the same way.”

Their familiar ritual. Sam had to clear his throat before he could bring himself to speak. “I don’t love you too.”

Lucy continued to smile and gave a satisfied nod. “I kept my promise. No one’s been hurt. Good-bye, Sam.” She turned and went down the front steps, favoring her right leg.

Sam stood on the front porch, watching as Lucy drove away. Equal parts of panic and angry wonderment engulfed him.

What the hell had just happened?

Slowly he made his way back inside the house. Alex was sitting at the bottom of the main staircase, patting Renfield, who was at his feet.

“What’s going on?” Alex asked.

Sam sat beside him and told him everything, hearing his own voice as if it came from outside himself. “Not sure what to do now,” he said gruffly.

“Forget her and move on,” Alec said prosaically. “That’s what you always do, right?”

“Yeah. But it never feels like this.” Sam dragged his hand through his hair until it stood in wild tufts. He felt physically ill, nauseous. Like his veins were filled with poison. He ached in every muscle. “I think I’m coming down with something.”

“Maybe you need a drink.”

“If I start that right now,” Sam said roughly, “I may never stop. So do me a favor and don’t say that again.”

A short silence followed. “Since you’re already in a shitty mood,” Alex ventured, “I have something to tell you.”

“What?” Sam asked irritably.

“I need to move in with you next week.”

“What?”Sam asked again, in an entirely different tone.

“Just for a couple of months. I’m low on cash, and Darcy got the house as part of the settlement. She wants me out of there while she tries to sell it.”

“Christ,” Sam muttered. “I just got rid of Mark.”

Alex gave him a disquieting glance, a troubling shadow in his eyes. “I have to stay here, Sam. I don’t think it’ll be long. I can’t explain the reason why.” He hesitated, and managed to say the word he’d used only a handful of times in his entire life. “Please.”

Sam nodded, chilled by the thought that the last time he’d seen that exact look in someone’s eyes, the pupils black as midnight, the wide staring bleakness of a lost soul, was when he’d seen his father just before he died.

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