The Lion's Den (Faraway Book 2) (28 page)

“I’m going to go.” For a split second, I thought she might let me pass. There was something so absent about her.

“He loves me,” she said again, and I stopped breathing. “I have proof. I have proof that he loves me.” She held the gun in her right hand and pulled her phone out with her other. She used her middle finger to swipe through items on the screen, the gun swinging in her hand as she moved it. She paused at something and a slow, horrible laugh shook her chest as she glared at me. “Look at this.”

Dharma stepped closer. She handed me the phone, but I didn’t take it. She rolled her eyes at me and held the phone up in front of my face. It was a video with the white triangle in the middle waiting to be pressed. Dharma used her gun hand to press it, and the video began to play while we both watched.

It was Dharma, sitting on a couch wearing only a garter belt and touching herself. I winced and tilted my face away from her phone.

She pointed the gun at my head and said, “Keep watching.”

I turned back as the wine in my stomach churned and threatened to come up. A man came and kneeled in front of Dharma on the screen and began having sex with her. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew it was Brad. I knew by the width of his shoulders, his naked ass, and the perfectly cut hair on the back of his head. The video repulsed me. How could he have had sex with this
girl
? Made a movie? Anger at both of them settled me. Dharma assumed she could come interrupt my dinner with her little show, and I would just disappear. She was a child with no idea of who I was. She’d only had Brad’s opinion to go on, and he didn’t know me either.

“Now do you believe that he loves me?” Dharma was smiling, but her expression was joyless.

With the gun to my head, I said, “That only proves that he fucked you.”

Immediately, I regretted the words leaving my mouth.

Dharma pressed the gun barrel to her temple and pulled the trigger, splattering blood all over the white roses on the wall behind her. I stood still and watched the blood run on the floor around her head, and my thoughts and emotions left me. Possibly forever. I no longer deserved to feel things in this life. I didn’t even jump at the noise. As if I knew it was coming. I knew it was going to be her and not me, and yet I still couldn’t let her think he loved her.

Maybe he did love her.

Maybe he wasn’t capable of love.

The knob on the door turned violently, and the silence in the room was replaced by the pounding against the wood door. It was forced open by the same waiter who’d filled my wine glass when we’d first arrived. He stopped abruptly at the sight of Dharma lying on the floor at my feet. She was on her side, her feet behind her knees. The gun was next to her. The blood was everywhere.

“She shot herself,” I said and waited for him to do something. I stood perfectly still, wishing the waiter could put me on a tray and carry me back to my table. Back to my husband who was as despicable as I was.

“Meredith!” Brad rushed into the bathroom and was pushed out by the waiter, who was yelling at the hostess to call 9–1-1.

I BECAME THE WITNESS TO
the end of Dharma’s life. I was placed on a barstool until the police arrived. There was an ambulance, but Dharma was already gone. I’d been there when she’d left. I was the last person she’d spoken to, the last one to hear her sad story.

It was easy to remain brief. There wasn’t much of me left. I stayed close to the truth. I was using the restroom, and she came in. She locked the door and pulled out a gun. She made me watch a video of her and a man having sex, and then she shot herself. It was all very bizarre.

My hands were swabbed for gunshot residue. It was procedure. My information was taken down, and I was offered a ride to the hospital, but I wanted to go home. I needed to see Liv and James. They would save me from whatever
this
was.

Brad practically carried me to his car. He was compassionate and kind, and no longer seemed to be trapped in a vise. When he opened the car door for me, he held me tight against his chest and whispered in my ear, “I couldn’t lose you.”

Brad paid the babysitter, and we put the kids to bed. They were exhausted, it was already well past their bedtime. I changed out of my beautiful dress, the one I’d worn to torment Brad’s young girlfriend that now had her blood splattered on the skirt. Brad was opening more wine when I entered the kitchen. Without a word, I lifted the glass to my lips with a shaking hand.

“Are you okay?” he asked, but nothing was ever going to be okay again.

“I’m in shock.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, and he wasn’t angry. He wasn’t being a dick.

“I want to talk about
all
of it.” Brad lowered his eyes in shame. “About Dharma and you and me, and how the hell we ended up here.”

“Would you believe me if I told you she never meant a thing to me?”

I longed for the time I’d felt nothing for Brad. Now, the sight of him evoked the urge to throw something at him. I couldn’t be far enough away from him. He actually repelled me. “Of course I would.” His head hung low toward the counter. “If you weren’t such a disgusting liar.”

Brad’s eyes met mine. They were tired and kind, and for some reason, I smiled. I was in shock and unable to control or predict my reactions. “Do you think they’re going to connect me to her?” He was a coward.

“I don’t think they’ll investigate much further. Suicide’s not a crime. It’s a tragedy.” Brad took another sip of his wine. “I guess there’s always a chance of a civil suit. Or some consequences at your office. Is there any evidence of your and Dharma’s—” I could barely say it. I hated him. I wished I’d never met him. “Relationship?”

Brad shook his head defiantly. “No. No pictures. No notes. No cards.”

“I saw the video. I know it was you. I’m guessing that wasn’t the first time you were an idiot.”

Brad took another sip of his wine. How could he drink? How could he live with himself? His mouth twisted in disgust. He didn’t like being caught. “You couldn’t see my face. There were some texts. And one of her friend’s joined us once.” I let the hatred linger in my glare. “A few times.”

“You’re quite the ladies’ man.”

“Don’t be an asshole.”

“Right, I’m the asshole.”

Brad shook his head and drank more wine.

“How did this happen?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

I needed to know. “Why don’t we try being honest . . . just this once.”

“Fine. Let’s start with you. When did you find out about her? Because I sure as fuck know you didn’t just all of a sudden enjoy sharing our
love
on Facebook.”

“That little scene at the holiday party told me everything I needed to know. Although Liv picked up on it when she went to your office. So I’m guessing if an eight-year-old could figure it out, one of your adept coworkers was probably able to decipher the subtleties as well.”

“So you
were
fucking with her on Facebook?”

“I didn’t hate Dharma.” I yelled at the idiot I’d married. “At least, I didn’t think so until I saw that video.” The anger tried to break through my numbed mind, but I was through with emotions. “Then I realized I wasn’t as ready to be replaced as I’d thought.”

“Does that mean you’re staying?” Brad was quiet, mild again.

“Not a chance. Why were you fucking her in the first place?”

Brad stood up straight, and I braced myself for his words. “Because when we moved here, I thought we were going to live happily ever after. That I would work, you would take care of the house and the kids, and we would ride off into the sunset.” Brad walked around the counter and stood in front of me. “But every day that we were here, you withered away a little more and hated me in the process.”

“I was so alone here. You’d come home from work smelling of beer and reeking of pride and satisfaction, and I had throw up in my hair.” Brad rolled his eyes, still not caring what I was saying. “I was isolated.” Brad looked away, dismissing my words as usual. “But I never felt as alone as when I was standing next to you.”

“I couldn’t make you love it here. I couldn’t even get you to like it here,” he said, and I felt his frustration. On my own, I couldn’t make myself love it here either.

“So how does that equate to you fucking a twenty-six-year-old at your office?”

“She didn’t hate me.” That should have been his first hint she was unstable. I could have screamed at him that he was pathetic, but the conversation was already filled with hypocrisy. “Meredith—”

“I’m going to bed.”

Brad placed his glass on the island and pulled me to his chest. It was as if he’d never hugged me before. The familiarity of his body was gone. He wasn’t the man I’d walked down the aisle to. He wasn’t the man who’d saved me in a bar the first night he spoke to me.

“Alone. I want to go to bed alone.”

He held me at arm’s length and searched my eyes for some shred of kindness toward him, but I hated us both. “Mer, we’ll get through this. We’ll have a fresh start.”

“You are insane. I’m never going to get through this, and we are completely done.”

He stepped back. “You’ll feel better in the morning. Go. Get some sleep.”

Brad didn’t care about a word I’d said.

I WAS STILL LYING AWAKE
in my bed, alone and distraught, when Brad walked into the room shortly after sunrise.

“I want us to go to church today.”

“I’m done with what you want,” I said and rolled back toward the window. I felt each of his footsteps as he walked across the room. He sat on the edge of my bed, touching me. A chill slid over my skin where his arm rested. Repulsion followed in its wake. He rolled me onto my back and leaned over my waist, facing me.

“I know you’re angry.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“And probably a million other things, but we have to pull this together for James and Liv.”

His words met me one at a time. I couldn’t process them any faster. I was physically and emotionally exhausted, and all I wanted to do was lay in my bed and sleep, but sleep wouldn’t come. Dharma had taken it with her when she’d shot herself, and like her, I feared sleep was never coming back.

I sat up and leaned back against our headboard. “Okay. I’ll shower.”