Darker Than Night - Amelia Wilde Page 0,47
at her and my face doesn’t cooperate. “I can’t allow you to stay, knowing the risks.”
“The risks of what?” She’s gripping the arms of the chair now, her nails digging in.
“The risk of repeating the cycle of abuse, sweetheart. Cycles don’t just stop because a man has a few good deeds under his belt.”
“I don’t want this.”
I stand up.
“You can’t do this.”
I go around the desk and bend down to kiss her. Brigit is stiff, unresponsive, and I hate it, I hate every part of this so much that I wish the bomb had finished me where I stood. It would have hurt considerably less.
I offer her my hand to help her out of the chair and she pointedly avoids it. “This is a mistake.”
“I disagree.” Brigit goes along when I usher her to the office doors, but when she heads toward the stairs, I catch her by the elbow to redirect her. The color disappears from her face. “We’re going this way.”
“We’re going this way or I’m going this way?” She’s crying without noticing. Or maybe she doesn’t care. Her face only shows her horror at the situation. Her eyes are wide and disbelieving.
“I’ll walk you out.”
She snaps her lips closed, shoulders tensing.
I take her outside, into the morning sun.
A car waits by the curb. She doesn’t know this, but it’s been waiting there for more than an hour. I called for them as the sun rose.
We all have to make sacrifices.
Pain like a corkscrew burrows into my sternum and all the way through my body. Brigit walks to the street like she’s going to the gallows, her whole body trembling, steps out of sync. At the curb she whirls around, flattening her body against the door. She blocks it with both hands.
“I won’t make you get in.”
A flicker of hope. “You won’t?”
“No. You can walk if you want to.” I press a slip of paper into her hand. “This is the address. If you need to access your money, you can go into any bank branch in the city and give your name. They all have accounts for you.” I’ll be dead soon, I’m already a dying star, so I take her face in my hands one last time and kiss her forehead. “I love you. Don’t come back.”
If I touch her for a second longer I’ll never leave. My hands leave her skin and the loss of it is a fist to the face, a knee in the gut. It’s a whip. A cane. Glass through flesh.
I turn my back on her and walk to the house.
Behind me, a car door opens and closes, and the car pulls away.
At the door I steal a glance at the street and find it empty.
The burn in my eyes intensifies, my vision blurring, and I rush into the house and up the stairs. Where did I leave my phone? This tearing sensation in the vicinity of my heart has to be a medical emergency. It has to be the end of me. I’m choking on it. Dying. Dead already. My chest heaves, and the sound that comes out of my mouth is so alien I don’t recognize it as my voice at first. But then it happens again, and again, my lungs getting tangled, abs aching.
Something drips onto the hardwood outside the kitchen and I put a hand to my face—did she cut me?
My fingers don’t come away bloody.
They come away wet.
I don’t cry.
It’s happening anyway.
Warm salty tears running down my face.
Kitchen. Alcohol—glass. Yes. I find the bottle first, then the glass, and the glass falls from my hand and shatters on the floor. I step over its remains and sit down hard in the corner, my back against the cupboards, and open the bottle.
It burns. Not as much as the tears.
“Can a man drown in whiskey?” I ask the bottle.
I’m going to find out.
20
Zeus
The answer is yes, and no.
A man cannot actually drown in a bottle of whiskey, or even ten bottles of whiskey, unless he pours them all out into a bucket and sticks his head. I haven’t done that because I know my stubborn survival instincts would kick in and foil the plot. I have considered it.
A man can drown out the world quite successfully if he has ready access to unlimited sources of alcohol.
So I do.
For days.
Weeks?
Six of them go by, then eight. I sign papers and pretend to care about the construction at the former site of Olympus. I force James to drive me there