Page 50 of Freaks
A good-natured frown of concern creased his brow. “I’m a hitman. I murder people for money.”
“Oh! Oh, goodness!” Sandra said, laughing. “So you’re aware of Julia’s manic delusions.”
Fix laughed, though I couldn’t quite manage to do the same. I was still reeling from the shock of what he’d just said to a professional health care worker. He’d been true to form, though. The night of the storm, when I’d asked him the very same question, he’d given me the very same answer: the disarming truth.
“Yes, sadly Julia didn’t like me spending time with Sera. Over the past few months, she began to invent this bizarre story that I was a priest or something. That she’d tried to pay me to kill Sera, and…” He shook his head, incredulity written all over him. He may have been a firm advocate for honesty, but it turned out he was a very convincing liar when he needed to be. “I just don’t know where any of it came from. She’d be fine one minute, then sending weird, random emails the next. None of it made any sense.”
“No, well I’m sure it wouldn’t. Hyperreligiosity is quite common amongst our patients here. We have no idea why, but the Church, religion, God…all seem to be triggers for people who suffer from bi-polar disorder and a number of other disorders, too. It’s not surprising that Julia assigned you this role, Daniel. The role of a negative figure head, who has power over her.” She turned to Sera. “Julia’s admitted a number of times that she wishes to kill you, Sera. She also admitted to killing your dog, though sometimes these violent fantasies bleed through into a patient’s mind, and we can never really tell—”
I cleared my throat. “Ahh, yeah. She did actually kill him.”
Sandra gave me doleful, sympathetic eyes from behind the thick rims of her glasses. “I’m terribly sorry to hear that.” She scribbled something down on a notepad. “As I was saying, I don’t think it would be advantageous to you or to Julia if you were to see one another today. Her emotional state’s currently very erratic. I’m sorry to say I think she might try to harm you if you were to sit in a room together.”
“Right. Okay. If you think it isn’t a good idea…” Relief. Holy fuck, the relief. I’d forced myself to come, it had felt like the right thing to do, but the relief that came over me now felt like warm sunlight thawing out the ice that had formed in my veins.
Sandra smiled in a benevolent, saintly way. “You know, you don’t need to feel bad about Julia being here, Sera. This is the best place for her. This is one hundred percent where she needs to be.”
I drove us home. About ten miles from the apartment, Fix began toying with the back of my neck, stroking his fingers up and down, weaving them through my hair. His touch was like live electricity, but instead of causing me pain, as it had Zeth when he’d run that current through him in the bathtub back in New York, the electricity that sparked from his fingertips now made my head dance and spin with pleasure. I still couldn’t believe that he was mine, and I was his. That the constant fear of death was no longer hanging over our heads, and we could simply…be.
“I’ve been thinking about what that shrink said,” Fix rumbled. His voice was so ridiculously sexy—deep but carrying a playful warmth that made me want to blush.
“And?”
“And Julia’s where she needs to be now. But…what about us? Where shouldwebe?”
That was a monumentally huge question. I’d been trying to figure that out myself, but I hadn’t wanted to ask him. I hadn’t wanted to assume…
“I don’t believe in the church anymore. I’m never going to go to Mass, or Confession again. But I would like to go back to church one last time, if you’ll come with me.”
“What for?”
Fix untangled his hand from my hair. He used it to rub at his stubble, his gaze pointed out of the window—I sensed that he wasn’t actually seeing any of the buildings or the houses that streaked by as we grew closer and closer to my place. After a moment’s thought, he shifted in his seat, repositioning his whole body so that he was facing me. He rubbed at his jaw again, wincing as if he were in pain.
“Jesus,” I laughed. “If whatever you want to say is causing you this much trouble, then might I suggest you don’t say it?”
“It’s not causing me trouble. I’m just…I’m gonna ask you something, and I’m weighing up how badly I’m going to want to hurl myself off a bridge if you say no.”
Oh fuck.
Nooooooo.
He wasn’t. He was not going to ask me what I thought he was going to ask me. I shot him a wide-eyed look, daring to take my gaze off the road for a split second in order to deliver it properly. “Don’t do it,” I whispered.
He looked very serious. The joking twitch at the corner of his mouth was nowhere to be seen. “Why not?”
“Because. If you ask, I’m going to say yes. And if I say yes, then everything will change.”
“Like what?”
I wrung my hands over the steering wheel, trying to settle the jittering bounce in my right knee that had just started up. “We’ll have to make plans. We’ll have to decide where to live. We’ll have to figure out if I’m going to sell my business. You’ll have to stop killing people—”
“I’ve already stopped killing people.” He winked.
“No, you haven’t!”
“I didn’t kill Julia. And Monica’s shut down all of our accounts on the dark web. We’re officially offline.”
“Until you need money.”
