Page 99 of Secrets (The Sins Trilogy 2)
Chapter Thirty-Six
Anthony
The weekend is awful. The air is charged with tension, anxiety and fear. Or maybe I’m the only one who feels it.
The Steinway remains silent. Iris doesn’t even glance at it. It’s as though her love of music—the one constant in her life—is gone. And I worry that her love for me is gone as well from the way she avoids eye contact.
She sits on a couch, hugging her legs until the knees touch her chest. An afghan is wrapped around her. She’s so pale, her eyes puffy from crying so much. Even now, tears trickle down her cheeks from time to time. It’s as though she isn’t even alive, not where it counts.
She doesn’t touch her food. I can’t eat either, not when my stomach is knotted so tight. She only drinks water if Bobbi brings it over and hands it to her. Bobbi says nothing as she watches over Iris.
Barely three words are spoken the entire weekend by anybody. I don’t touch Iris. Not that I don’t want to, but I’m too afraid. She looks ready to shatter, and I don’t know if I can put the pieces back together.
I text Elizabeth. Did anything unusual happen at the foundation? Did the project go bad or something?
Not that I know of. Why? Is Iris okay?
What the hell kind of question is that? Would I have contacted her if Iris were? I rein in my frustration. This isn’t Elizabeth’s fault. No. She hasn’t been well since Friday. I think it’s got something to do with what happened at work. It has to be.
Let me see what I can find out. I’ll be in touch. Also, I’ll assume Iris is too sick to come to work on Monday. Let her rest a bit. Maybe I made her work too hard. The project she’s on has gone through some upheaval over funding.
That’s Elizabeth. Always gracious, even though she and I both know I’m the reason the project had the “upheaval over funding.”
She doesn’t text me back. I know it takes time to figure stuff out, but my patience still wears thin. Every second that ticks by, Iris is drifting further away from me. It’s as horrible as watching little drips of acid eat away at you.
Monday morning, things aren’t any better. My eyes are gritty from a lack of sleep. A day’s worth of beard covers my jaw. My stomach burns from hunger.
Iris is curled up in bed. Her eyes are closed, but I know she isn’t sleeping. Her body’s too tense, her breathing too shallow and rapid. For the last two nights, she’s flinched and cried out in her dreams, her words too soft and fast for me to catch. What nightmares are driving you? She didn’t let bad dreams get to her after Sam tried to drown her. Whatever’s haunting her now has to be worse than her own possible death.
I pick up my phone and call Wei. “Cancel all my meetings. I’m not coming in today.”
“Of course, boss.” A beat. “Are you all right? You don’t sound good.”
“I’m—”
“You should go to work.”
I see Iris sitting up like an old woman with creaky bones. “But…”
“I’m going to work, too.” Her voice is rusty. She hasn’t spoken since Friday. “Go shave and get dressed.”
I take in her wan, pale face. Dark half-circles look like bruises under her eyes, and the sight hurts. “Elizabeth said you don’t have to go in if you don’t feel well.”
“I can’t stay here all day. We have things to do, Tony. And you don’t have to babysit me.”
I want to argue, tell her she’s wrong, that I’m going to stay with her and help her sort everything in her head until she realizes she’s worthy of every amazing thing life has to offer. That I’m the one who doesn’t deserve her, but is too selfish to let her go.
If she were showing even the slightest vulnerability, I’d push. But her lips are set in a firm, straight line.
“Boss?” Wei’s voice from the phone jerks me back to my assistant.
“Never mind. I’ll be in.” I end the call.
Iris drags herself out of bed and showers first. I don’t join her like I normally would. I go in after she’s out, then drag a razor carelessly over my face, cutting myself in three spots. I press them for a minute, trying to get the bleeding to stop. For some reason, when I pull my hand away, the sight of blood on my fingertips reminds me of the day Katherine died.
Some fucking poetic reminder of why my life went wrong. Just like a shirt that’s been buttoned wrong from the very beginning. Impossible to fix, unless I could go back in time and resurrect my sister.
Then I wouldn’t have been banished. Or spent so much time wallowing in guilt. I would’ve been able to fall in love with Ivy without Mother’s hatred hanging over us. I wouldn’t have turned my back on Ivy when she got the tattoo to express her love for me.
