The Lies That Bind

32: The Queen Bee

Calla stared at the little blue house across the street, her mind a mess of memories and broken promises.

My part in this is you.

Don't ask me to choose.

I'm asking.

Cooper's ultimatum lingered, sour against her tongue. Petulant as it was, she didn't want to choose. She didn't want to—but she had to.

She could not have a life with Cooper—not if she chose to cling to the half-remembered past she'd had with Rachel. A hard truth to swallow. Bitter and wretched.

Calla glared at the blue house and inside that house, the man who lived there. The old case file stuffed inside her jacket, zipped tight against her chest, served as a constant reminder of why she'd come.

The urge to check the time needled at her every few minutes—or what she assumed had to be every few minutes, since she'd left her phone back at the apartment. Her reasons hadn't changed. It was too risky to have such a liability tucked there in her back pocket.

Seconds. Minutes. Hours. What did any of it matter now? She'd known how this would end for quite some time. And now that time was running short.

Calla massaged her temples. Forced a sharp breath through her teeth. She would wait here on this sidewalk for hours if need be, suspended in time as she waited for the coward within to leave the confines of his safe haven—for a grocery run, a trip to the pharmacy, anything, anything to get him out of that house.

She only wished she could do the waiting alone—without uncertainties haunting her every breath.

I ruin everything I touch. Including you.

If you've got any shot at a normal life, you've got to do it without me.

What if I don't want a normal life?

She closed her eyes tight, wishing away the memories and the choices unfurling before her like a black storm on the horizon.

You're no good for her. You make her weak.

To happiness. And to new mistakes.

I love you.

There was a buzzing in her head. A horrible, unbearable buzzing. It wasn't a storm on the horizon, but a swarm. And soon she would be overrun.

I can't keep holding onto her like this.

You deserve to be happy.

The pressure behind her eyes was unbearable. No one could survive this. She could not survive this.

Did she want to survive this?

I don't want to be invisible.

Are you scared of me now?

I've always known who you are, Calla. Even when I didn't want to know. I just wanted to see if you would lie to me.

Oh, and what a liar she was. Calla wanted to laugh at the irony of it, because she could not lie to him. Cooper tore the truth from her chest as if it were nothing, her mangled, shriveled soul cradled in the palm of his hand.

But to save him, she would have to lie. She would have to lie and lie well. Well enough for him to believe her. To trust her.

She could not do it.