Page 68 of A Light in the Darkness
I sigh, trying to ease the pressure in my skull by pressing my fingers over my eyes. It does nothing to alleviate the ache, so I throw my hands to my sides.
“I didn’t abandon you. You were in Florida with your fucktoy, trying to pretend you aren’t pining over your brother’s fucking security guard.” Rhea’s mouth falls open again—I’ve never seen her with her mouth open so often, but I know this isn’t new for her. She’s on Eli’s dick every chance she gets.
At any rate, I’m not done. “And let’s not pretend like I left you in some back alley drunk to get your kidney cut out of you. You were perfectly safe.”
“Oh, my, God.” She says the words slowly, punctuating each one with a shake of her head. “You stupid fucking bitch. You’re completely missing the point! You can’t just run away from people you care about!”
My face burns at the insult, and rage unlike anything I’ve ever felt bursts through my veins. And fuck, it feels good. It’s a different kind of burn, a fire that warms me from the inside out.
“I’m the stupid bitch?” I laugh. “You’re the one picking a fight because you need to sate your victim complex.”
The words aren’t my own. I don’t know where they come from, but they tumble freely from my mouth, and they feel so good.
“Victim complex?” She laughs, incredulous. “You’renotokay, Claire. I don’t know what the fuck he did to you, but you’re taking your pain out on the wrong people.”
It doesn’t feel wrong, but I don’t tell her that. I keep my mouth shut as she stares at me, tears welling in her eyes. I saw tears inRemy’s eyes yesterday, when I told him I couldn’t ever love him, when he told me about his wife, his son…
We’ve never fought before. Rhea is the one person I could never tire of, and even when we would have a difference of opinion, we never let it turn into anything. Our friendship was unshakeable. But I wasn’t… I’m not.
My entire world got shaken as if I just exist in a snow globe, just an inconsequential little figurine in a glass cage that someone could upend on a whim. And now, those old pieces won’t just settle back into where they were—they’ve been rattled too hard, fell down in all the wrong places.
I cross my arms, not dignifying that with a response, and I see the hurt well in her eyes. She turns sharply, like she can’t get away from me fast enough. It’s when she’s already at the door, her hand hovering on the knob, that she glances back at me.
“You never asked why we were in Florida.”
I narrow my eyes on her, confused. “You said we needed a vacation—one last gathering.”
“Yeah, well that was a cover. I didn’t get a chance to give you your birthday present that night.” She laughs, taking something from her purse and dropping it on the kitchen counter. “Happy fucking birthday.”
She is gone before I can say anything more, and I’m actually a little glad. My throat is throbbing with the effort it took to speak, and even though I picked the fight with her, I don’t want it to go any further. Everything that just happened was exhausting, and I have half a mind to just sit still in this chair until sleep comes to claim me.
But curiosity gets the better of me, so I force myself to stand and cross to the kitchen.
A green file folder sits there, with papers peeking out of the covers. A rubber band secures them from falling out, so I slide that off, letting it loop around my wrist as I prop the folder open and get a look at the packet of papers inside.
Warranty deed for acquisition of property.
My eyes dart down to the block of text below, sorting through the legal mumbo jumbo until I see the address. 1432 Marine Way, Miami Florida.
I blink at the papers, not sure what I’m supposed to be seeing, and then flip through them ‘til I land on the last page. There are two names listed under the buyers.
Rhea Boudreaux, on the left, and on the right, with an X just waiting for a signature below it… Claire Monroe.
Chapter forty
Remy
“Remington!” The fast series of raps on the door turns heavy with impatience, and I pull the pillow tight over my face.
Everybody wants something from me right now… everybody except for her.
They all need me to fix things for them, to assure them, to tell them what to do. It’s maddening, especially because my attempts to shut them all out are largely futile, and not for lack of trying. Rhea fucking swindled the receptionist into a copy of the key and burst in here of her own volition.
I gathered from the slammed door across the apartment suite that things didn’t go well when she tried to talk to Claire, and a vicious, pathetic part of me was mildly pleased. I wanted her to be able to pull Claire out of her funk, but a very tiny part of me would have been wounded if Rhea had succeeded where I failed.
That didn’t stop me from having the senator visit, though I forbid him from saying anything to her about her mother or Addie or the fact that he was almost indisputably her father.
No, indisputably now. The results of the second test, the one I personally witnessed the doctor collect his hair for, came back positive. It’s probably why he’s beating down my door right now.
