Page 7 of Honey Cut
“Wonderful,” says Mark, and then he smiles at his gin. “It is lovely to have you together. My bodyguard and my bride. My two pretty things.”
He doesn’t touch us, doesn’t lift a finger, and yet I think I might bruise anyway. Broken blood vessels across my chest, hairline fractures along my ribs. He doesn’t know howtogetherIsolde and I have been, and the shame of it is going to kill me.
But he might know how she and I still ache to be his pretty things, no matter how he’s hurt us, lied to us, used us.
And the shame ofthatwill definitely kill me.
For her part, Isolde steps away from the window. “I’ll be in my room,” she says. “Just so you’re aware, I go back to work tomorrow.”
Mark takes a drink, still smiling. “Me too,” he says.
* * *
That evening,after I leave the penthouse to meet with Goran in his hotel room about the engagement party and security, I detour into Central Park to make a private phone call.
My fingers shake as I dial the unfamiliar number. It had been emailed to me by Ms. Lim, Lyonesse’s concierge, while I was on the yacht with Isolde. Someone had come to Lyonesse looking for me. Someone who had every right to hunt me down and demand my time.
I took a breath and pressed send. Anything for the sister of the man I killed.
The phone rings and rings and rings, and I’m a fucking coward because the longer it takes for her to pick up the phone, the more relief swells in my stomach. I owe the family of Aaron Sims a debt I can’t repay, and the debt feels tenfold because I know them, because I’m known to them, because Aaron loved me and I loved him and I still killed him. That it was necessary and inevitable does nothing to requite what I owe.
A call is the least of what I can do, but I’m practically panting in relief as I drop the phone and prepare to end the call. My excoriation is delayed for now?—
“Hello?” comes a woman’s voice. “Hello?”
Shit.I lift the phone, mouth dry. “Hello,” I say. “It’s—this is Tristan. Tristan Thomas.”
There’s a silence on the other end, and I think she must be readying everything she wants to tell me. She’s unfolding handwritten notes detailing all the ways she hates me, she’s gathering her breath for a litany of curses.
And then she says, “Oh, Tristan, thank God.”
I’m standing still in the middle of a path, staring at nothing, her words not making any sense. “Chloe, I?—”
“It’s Cara,” she says quickly. “And we need to meet.”
Cara? Even before he’d died, Cara wasn’t much a part of Sims’s life. There’d been a bad boyfriend—and then a string of bad boyfriends—and then she’d skipped from town to town, running just ahead of a job gone wrong or a shitty ex. That Cara has emerged from the vortex of her life to find me is as odd as it is worrying.
“Of course,” I say. I’m walking again now, close to the edge of the park and looking at Mark’s high-rise across the street, at the people milling along the sidewalk in front of it—people texting or arguing or stopping to tie their shoelaces. Funny how the world keeps moving even when you find yourself stuck in place. “Where are you? If you need a place, you can stay with me?—”
“I’m okay for now,” she says, “but I have to go. I’ll call you at the number you called me from when I can again. Okay?”
“Okay, but?—”
There’s silence, followed by a beep in my ear. Cara’s gone.
I look down at the screen and then across the street at the high-rise again, my mind a mess of memories and everything I should have said to the sister of Aaron Sims. But my vision clears, and I see someone kneeling to tie their shoe in front of the building.
The same person I saw just a moment ago doing the same thing.
He looks away from his shoe and at the front door, just for a beat. Glass glints in the evening light—a phone—and then he’s standing up and sliding the phone into his pocket. I think he just took a picture of the entrance.
By the time I get across the street, he’s too far away to pursue.
I call Goran on my way up to the penthouse.
“I’ve never been with Mark here in Manhattan. Does he have external security feeds on the penthouse?” I ask by way of greeting. I’m a little ashamed because this is something I should know, something I would normally have committed to memory if I hadn’t spent the last three weeks daydreaming about my boss’s fiancée.
“Sure, kid,” Goran says easily. “Not that we’ve ever needed them. I’ll make sure you have access through the security portal on your laptop. Anything I should be worried about?”
