Page 110 of Cruel Kiss

Not me.

Not my babies.

Not any of us.

I put the toast plates in the sink and busy myself with cleaning them. I don't turn around when I hear the two of them come down the hall, Hayden in his dinosaur pajamas with his hair wet and combed flat, Ronan a step behind with the towel slung over his shoulder. Hayden approaches and leans against my side for a second, just like he used to when he was smaller.

I cup my wet hand on the back of his damp head and hold it there.

"Bedtime, superstar," I say.

"Okay. Love you, Mom."

As simple as that, he shuffles away.

I finish tidying up the kitchen and go upstairs, but even after I've wiped off my makeup and changed into pajamas, sleep proves hard to come by.

Ronan isn't sleeping, though we both pretend to for the sake of the other. We lie there being liars about the one thing we're allowed to lie about, which is whether either of us is okay.

Around midnight, I feel him drift for real, finally, worn down past the pretending. His arm is heavy over my waist. I ease out from under it an inch at a time. He doesn't wake, which tells me exactly how far gone he is, because Ronan Akov wakes if the house so much as sighs wrong.

When I'm sure he hasn't stirred, I slip downstairs.

The kitchen's still full of casseroles. The moon is coming through the window over the sink, illuminating the spot where my laptop sits shut on the island.

Next to it is my phone.

I've known there was a voicemail for six days. I've been carrying it around, this little unheard thing, terrified of what it might contain. I told myself I wasn't ready and that I'd know when the right time came.

But there's no right time to hear a dead man's voice, so there's no wrong one, either. Now, it's one in the morning and I'm alone and the house is quiet and there's no reason not to listen.

I sit down at the island. I open the phone. I find the voicemail, the one from DO NOT ANSWER, the little red dot next to it that means unheard.

I press play and hold it to my ear.

"Cal." Todd's voice. A small, shrunken-down version of it. "Hey. It's me. I know you're not gonna pick up. That's fair. Honestly, I wouldn't pick up for me, either, and I'm the guy stuck being me."

There's a sound behind him. A television, maybe, crackling in a carpeted room. It's a motel outside Harrisburg, I know now, though I wouldn't have known if I answered then.

"So. Listen. I gotta tell somebody this, and you're the only person left who'd know the difference between me lying and me telling the truth—" He stops. Breathes. "The guy came back. The one from before. The old one. Russian. He came back tonight."

My hand goes cold around the phone.

"He wanted me to sign something. A statement. Sworn thing, notary and everything, real official. Basically, it said that Akov leaned on me, swore he'd hurt me if I talked. The guy wanted me to swear it was him." He coughs. "It's not true, Cal. Akov never threatened me. He looked at me like something he scraped off his shoe, which—yeah that's exactly what I was. But he never threatened me. This guy, though… Well, he didn't have to actually say the threat for me to understand what would happen if I don't cooperate, you know?"

The television murmurs behind him. I can hear him swallow.

"I said no this time."

I choke up.

"I don't even know why," he goes on. "It's not like it does me any good. God knows I've never picked the option that doesn't. But I've done so much. To you. To the kids. I stole from you and I lied and I—I know what I am, Cal. I told you that on your steps. And I figured, okay, this one thing, thisonething, I could not do. I could choose to not help them hang it on a guy who never did it. Even if he's—even if he's got you now."

I'm crying. Silent, my hand over my mouth, bathing in the moonlight.

"So." Todd clears his throat. "If something happens to me—and I do think something's gonna happen to me, Cal; I'm dumb but I'm not that dumb—but if something happens… Just know that, one time in his whole life, when it counted, our children's father did the right thing. Thebravething. That's the whole ask. That's all I want them to have. Just that one."

The television. His breathing. Silence. More.