Page 85 of Forbidden Dark Vows

My brain is soaking up the words—more than he has ever said to me in one conversation before—and forming them into something I can make sense of. Is he buying him and Celia some time to turn me and Ruby against each other? Or is he truly hopeful that we’ll realize what a huge mistake we’re making?

“No. Ruby isn’t like that. She doesn’t want the big white wedding; she’d rather keep it simple.”It’s not about the wedding, it’s about the person you’re marrying, that’s what she said.

“So, promise her whatever she fucking wants then.” He swallows, looks away, like he’s searching for the ace card on the wet sidewalk. “If she loves you, she’ll wait.”

“But I don’t want to wait. Life’s too short…”

A vision of glaring headlamps pops into my head, screeching tires, the volcanic sounds of metal-on-metal.

His shoulders slump inside his heavy coat, and he bows his head. “Maybe not as short as you think.” He keeps walking, and I jog to catch up with him, my carry-on dragging behind me.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He doesn’t look at me.

“Dad! Talk to me. What the hell is going on here?”

“Go home, son.” He crosses the road in front of an oncoming vehicle, and the driver hits the brakes, tires slipping across wet tarmac.

I raise a hand, yell, “Sorry!” to the driver, and chase after my dad.

He hears my footsteps, turns around, and grinds out between clenched jaws, “I said, go home, Harry. Go on. Fuck off!”

“Yeah, I know what you said, but I can be a stubborn bastard too.”

He shakes his head, a half-smile tugging one corner of his mouth. “I got something right then.”

My brain has been playing catch-up since he woke me up in the hospital, and now the reason I was there in the first place comesflooding back, sucking the air from my lungs. My dad and Celia Jackson. She called him from the telephone booth, and he came.

He came.

He wasn’t there to visit Graham or Ruby; he was there because of Celia.

How long would you wait for Ruby?

“Thirteen years,” I mumble under my breath, the truth crawling under my skin and squeezing my chest.

“Fucking bingo.” His voice is thick with emotion.

“Celia Jackson?”

It doesn’t sound right, the name on my tongue, not when I’m facing my dad. Talia Pagan said this one was different—not a case of the cheating wife. She’d seen something else, and she was trained to know what she was looking for.

“How long…?” Stupid question, I already know the answer. “I mean how did you… When did it start?”

My dad rubs the rain from his face with his hands and tilts his head towards the sky. “Wrong tense.”

“What do you mean?”

He sighs heavily. “The question isn’t,when did it start? The question is,will it ever happen?”

He walks away, and this time I let him go.

29

RUBY

After Karl leaves,my mom doesn’t move for a long while like she’s frozen in place by the window, something binding her there in case he comes back.

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