Delusive (59 page)

I looked over my shoulder at Skylar, who didn't notice I was watching her. The look she had on her face while she observed Elias walking out of the bedroom wasn’t a look she should’ve had while calling herself my friend. Her actions made it easy to become privy to the ideas churning inside her mind.

In mere seconds, the discrepancies between the Skylar I knew and the Skylar Elias had warned me about were no longer competing versions of one another.
 

The reason Elias warned me against being friends with her was crystal clear. If he had kept someone like her as a close friend, I doubt he’d be able to enact the plans he had or continue to live the life he did.
 

I wondered why Skylar bothered to sleep with Natanael, and with the way she looked at Elias, I figured out what Kirsten had said about her to be true. I was sure she’d gotten close to me, being apologetic and endearing, because she wanted to worm her way back into Elias’s life. When I came here, I wasn’t a friend to her, I was competition. When she knew she couldn’t compete with me, she thought she could use me to be her minion and a way to get her closer to Elias.
 

Skylar held no allegiance to anyone. Her loyalty was on sale to the highest bidder.
 

She caught me staring at her and immediately threw a smile on her face. “That was fun. I’d do it again, as long as I can have some dick every now and then.” Kneeling on the bed, naked, she gestured with her hand for me.

“Whose dick would that be?” I asked, taking my time in coming back to the bed.

“Not your
husband’s
.” She took my hand, helping me to get back in bed. “I mean, unless you two chat about it and say it’s okay.”

Sitting opposite her, my stare turned impassive. “I’ve had a talk with Elias, and…” Fingering her manicured fingernails, I slipped my fingers between the spaces in her hand. “Look, I know you don’t have a passport and you’ve never gone to Paris, Rome, or all the places you mentioned visiting. I know it would be a dream for you to travel. I have a feeling you thought you’d be able to do that when you became friends with Elias. But after Carter, Elias wouldn’t let you travel with him.”

Her grin faded. She slipped her hand from mine and pulled up the sheet, folding it just above her breasts. She brought her arms down to keep the sheet in place.
 

She nodded to my unasked question, turning my wild guess into a factual statement.
 

“You probably miss the life you had when you were friends with Elias. It was your way to escape from this town and it was taken from you. You went from a friend to a tool. And he became cold toward you.”

“You know how he is,” she stated, breaking her silence. “He cuts people out of his life like”—she snapped her fingers in the air—“that.”

“Is that why you started being with Natanael? Did you think he would help you?”

She began to waver, and I knew I was seconds from convincing her to tell the truth.

“Elias can be so intense, he can make you angry enough to want to hurt him,” I continued. “I’ve been there. I know what you’re going through. I want to help you. I want to send you to Paris, like you’ve dreamed about, and let you live far away from the craziness.”

Her eyes watered. “You really mean it?”

“Haven’t I always been honest with you?”

With a heavy sob, her chin dropped to her chest. “You’re going to hate me.”

I slid next to her and reached up to smooth her hair. “After what we just did…?” Closing my hand into a fist, I propped it under her chin and tilted her head up to look at me. “I can’t hate you, Skylar. I never will.”

“I would love to go to Paris,” she admitted with solemn glee. “It was always my dream. Elias promised me he’d let me and Carter tag along with him and his model of the moment before Cabo happened. What’s better than the city of love to get a guy to notice you, right?
 

“But then, Carter was an asshole to me in Cabo. He said so many shitty things. I don’t know what happened. I blacked out, and when I snapped out of it, Carter was dead.”

I wondered about the identity of the man she wanted to notice her—it could’ve been Elias or Carter—but I knew asking would only result in a skewed truth.
 

“I guess….it’s too late for me to redeem myself, huh?”

“It’s never too late,” I reassured her. “After what happened to your mother, you deserve a second chance. My offer is your second chance. Go to Paris, find a man who is going to give you everything you want, everything you deserve. I know there is a good person with a kind heart hiding underneath all the lies. Show me that she’s there. Tell me the truth about you and Natanael.”

“I only had one mission for Natanael”—she brought her palm up to wipe her runny nose—“who isn’t my father. To tell the truth, I don’t know who the fuck my father is. My mother wasn’t a hairdresser. She’s never been much of anything. I wanted her to be something. I wanted to be something better than what I am, so I lied to you about a lot.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” I told her with a faux sweetness I could tell she believed was real. “The truth wouldn’t have made me think less of you.”

“It would have. I know it would. I’m a nobody, Natanael Cari’s fucking side piece when he gets horny. I believed him when he said if I did things for him, he would show me the world. He was so convincing. He has that way with the women he’s interested in, you know. There is a reason he has so many kids. I gave him my virginity, and it all went to shit after.”

When I first met Natanael, I could’ve understood. After facing off with him at the restaurant, I knew the charm wasn’t real…the man was a monster. “What did he make you do?”

“Like I told you at the mall, he wanted Elias away from you in the severest way.”

Thinking back to the worst thing she’d done, I had to know the truth. “The house on Fletcher…what was Milton really going to do?”

“It’s so gross. The sicko. You were going to OD and those fuckheads were going to perform some dead-girl fantasy on you. Make Elias see you like a whore. See, I didn't lie to you about all of it—just some of it.”

“I was supposed to die that night?”
 

“Yeah. And you would have if Elias hadn’t come around.”

“Would you have let it happen, Sky?”

Dropping her head, she began to sob again. She nodded her head, yes, unable to look me in the eye while she did. “But, I changed my mind. Didn’t you see that? I was outnumbered, so it didn’t matter. Fucking Natanael. He promised me so many things, and I believed that asshat.”

Disappointed that even now she wouldn’t tell me the complete truth, and that she masqueraded as my friend when she would’ve easily let me die, my heart sank.
 

She also refused to take the blame. Natanael wouldn’t have bothered to use her to get me away from Elias. Natanael didn’t care about the nature of my relationship with his favorite son until it was too late. He made it clear I was never really his concern, and it was his downfall. He was blindsided.

The only person who didn’t want Elias and me to be together was staring me in the face.

I slipped off the bed and walked over to the dresser. I opened the black decorative box and fingered what was inside. It was a syringe and I knew what filled it; it was the same exact hue and consistency of the drug Milton gave me.
 

“Sometimes things are too painful for us to remember,” I said, removing the syringe from the box. “We dream up a false version of reality and convince ourselves the version we dreamt up is the truth so well we begin to believe the truth is a lie. I don't believe that was the case with you. I think you are aware of your mendacity and don't have some delusion about what’s real and what isn’t.
 

"I saw something in you when we first met that made me want to get to know you, despite knowing you were a little fucked up. Maybe I saw me, or the woman I used to be—could’ve been. You were so carefree, doing what you wanted when you wanted to do it, and I envied you. I thought we could really be friends with a common goal. It hurts me”—I choked on the words and turned around to face her while holding the syringe behind my back—“that it never was the case. Never could’ve been the case.”
 

Panicked, she sat up rigidly straight and palmed her hair away from her face. “We can start over, can’t we? I’ll get help in Paris and when I come back, we can be friends again, right? I mean, I could’ve told Elias what you told me about your plans—how you were going to fuck up his world. I didn’t. That has to count for something, right?”

“If you had proof, or thought he would’ve believed you, would you have told him?”

She shrugged at me. “I…really don’t know, Hanley.”
 

My hand trembled as I held tightly to the syringe. I knew I couldn’t do it. My limit had been reached. While I knew she had to be dealt with, I couldn’t be the one to do it. I palmed the tears from my cheeks and gave her a smile. “I’m going to check on Elias and see what he can do about getting you to Paris. Stay here, okay?”
 

As I turned, I moved the syringe around my body, making sure she’d never catch a glimpse of it. I shut the door behind me and was met with Elias on the other side of the hall. He looked freshly showered and dressed as if he was going to the gym.
 

I shook my head, telling him no, I wasn’t able to do it, answering his not yet asked question.
 

He pulled his hand from behind his back and held up something for me to see. “She gave it to me when I spoke to her downstairs. Would you like to know what she said?”

Stepping forward, I snatched the packet from his fingers. Searching for Roth’s written words, I found them in the same exact spot I remembered them being written. The only thing that was different was the seal had been broken and haphazardly resealed.

Skylar had failed the test. It was the final damning piece that forced me to come to terms with what I wanted to deny, but I couldn’t help my nature to have an undying and almost blind loyalty to the people I cared about. “With what she said in the room, maybe she can change?”

Grabbing my shoulders, he shuffled me down the hall away from the bedroom. “People don’t change, especially not in less than an hour. Hanley…” Shaking his head, he sighed. “She told me you were going to poison me. She told me your motive was always to get what was mine—my money. She also tried to convince me you didn’t love me.
 

“I played along and made her think I believed her. She dug herself in a deeper hole by giving me options on how to kill you. A black tar heroin overdose was her first suggestion. The same method she used when she tried to kill you. The same thing she used to kill her mother.”

I clutched my neck, feeling a painful burn just under my skin.

He reached up to finger my neck. “I know you want to see the best in her, but it doesn’t exist. It never did.”

She said exactly what I expected—but hoped she wouldn’t. The only reason she would give Elias the packet and tell him I wanted to kill him was for one reason alone. She discounted that what Elias and I shared was real and unshakeable. It would serve as her final fatal mistake. “I still can’t—I know I should. My parents’ lives were ruined because they trusted people who just wanted to use them and destroy them. I won’t make the same mistake. But I can’t… I have enough death on my conscience because of what I was made to do. I can’t…do it anymore.” Through watering eyes, I looked up at him. “Are you disappointed in me?”

Taking one large step forward, he slipped his hands up to clasp either side of my cheeks and softly kissed my forehead. “Not at all. Don’t ever change.” Dropping his hands from my face, he took the syringe from my grip. “I’ll be enough bad for the both of us.” He remained close to me, his body pressing against mine. “No one is going to get in the way of what we want and what we have together.” He glanced down the hall for a split second. “It’s the first day of spring. The pool just opened. Why don’t you take advantage of it? I will finish our unfinished business.”

“I thought you didn’t conduct business in the bedroom,” I said with a solemn smile.

“I also had a rule amongst my men about violence against women. Under no circumstance do we kill, torture, or hurt women. As always, I break the rules when it comes to you.” He tilted down and kissed me again, slower and sweeter than before. “Your words rule my hands.” The air turned colder as he moved his lips away from me. He jerked his chin down the hall, directing me to leave.

AFTER A QUICK shower in one of the guest bathrooms, I loitered by the pool, laying out in a brand new red bikini, a floppy hat, and sunglasses that I retrieved from one of the bags I’d left in the foyer. I was shielded by the large canvas awning that protected the furniture from sun-fading.
 

From the open doorway, I listened to the commotion coming from inside the house as the minutes turned to hours. Ear buds were in my ear, but no music played.
 

An hour and a half passed before Elias joined my side. Looking at ease, he sat on the free space of the wicker chaise lounge. Lifting my legs, he positioned them to fold over his lap.
 

Sitting up, I pushed my knees up to my chest, allowing him to nearly sit underneath my behind. I removed my earbuds from my ears, clutching them in my fingers. “Is it done?”