Page 77 of Honey Cut
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Mark doesn’t callIsolde that night or me the next morning, and it’s probably a good thing because I feel like my and Isolde’s new sleeping arrangement is something I’d inadvertently reveal. She wore shorts to sleep last night, thank God, but she’d turned in her sleep, her back to my chest, and I’d woken up with one hand cupping her breast and my dick wedged against her cheeks. Even after another self-care shower, it’s all I can think about.
And I can’t shake the feeling that Mark is going toknow, somehow, magically, just from the pitch of my voice alone.
Because Isolde’s day is meeting-free, she decides to go for a jog, and as a decent bodyguard, I go with her, enjoying the crisp October air and the pretty girl next to me, and for the hour we run, I pretend that she is my girlfriend or even my wife. That we’re together and that life is as simple as going out for runs together, as enjoying a new city and looking for new places to get coffee or some burek.
But if life were that simple, there’d be no Mark. I don’t think I’d want that either.
Isolde leads us on the same route we took to the Sava yesterday, through the trendy neighborhood down to the river walk. Even midmorning, the neighborhood still has the feeling of dragging itself out of bed. Sleepy-eyed young people with wireless headphones and coffee cups, nightclubs with their doors flung open for deliveries.
We do a couple of miles up the river walk and back when my phone rings. I glance at my watch, thinking it might be my dad—sigh—or Mark, which I wouldn’t mind—but it’s neither. It’s a number I don’t recognize with the name of a cheap hotel chain underneath it.
Weird.
“Sorry,” I pant to Isolde. “I want to see who this is.”
We both come to a stop as I answer the phone.
“Hello?” I ask.
“Tristan?” comes a voice I haven’t heard in months. My stomach swoops, sinks, rolls itself right into the river next to me.
It’s Cara Sims. Aaron Sims’s sister.
“Cara,” I say. I’ve dreaded this since our first call was cut short.
I’ve also wanted it, perversely.
Not only to put me out of my misery, but because I deserve whatever she wants to say to me. It can be true a hundred times over that I had no choice that day in the forest—and it can also be true that Cara should have her nosy, boisterous, affectionate older brother alive today.
Isolde is looking at me, and I cup my hand over the phone. “It’s Sims’s sister,” I say as quietly as I can. “I’m sorry.”
Don’t be sorry, she mouths, her eyes soft.I can run back on my own?
“No, Isolde—” Fuck. A good former lover and present-day…bed-sharer wouldn’t let her go back alone. Also Mark would kill me.
But it’s broad daylight and also it’s Isolde, who’s kicked my ass with nothing but a rubber knife. She’ll be safer than most men twice her size would be.
She’s waited politely, too well-bred to just jog off, even though I can see she wants to. “Okay,” I say, sotto voce. “I’ll be right behind you.”
She nods, gives me an encouraging smile, and then starts jogging ahead, her braid bouncing against her shoulder and her ass moving temptingly in her tight leggings.
“I’m sorry, are you still there? I was with someone, but she’s gone now.”
“I’m here,” Cara says. She sounds brittle, tired. “I’m sorry it took me so long to call. I’ve been trying to find a place to lie low.”
I start walking in the direction of the penthouse. Isolde’s already out of sight. “Are you okay? Do you need help?”
Cara’s laugh disturbs me. It’s caustic. Utterly devoid of hope. “I don’t think anyone can help me.”
“Cara, just tell me where you are and what’s going on.” I look at my watch. “I’m in Serbia now, but I can?—”
“Aaron spent so much time trying to save me,” she says, ignoring me. “And I didn’t need it then, not really. Yeah, I had shitty boyfriends and got in some trouble, but it was all… Well, I had control over it, you know? And now the one time I don’t have it under control, when I wish he would come save me, he’s not here. And it’s his fault.”
I don’t really understand what she’s saying, but I feel the need to tell her how much Aaron loved her and worried over her since he can’t do it himself. Since I killed him. “Cara, Aaron cared so much—and I’ll never be able to say I’m sorry enough for what happened?—”
“Tristan, you’re not the reason he’s dead.”
