Page 56 of I Need You to Read This
“Well, soon you’ll be able to clear it up,” Lucy says, a small smile quivering on her lips.
“What are you talking about?” Alex asks as the room starts to spin.
Lucy gives her a last wolfish smile, the same one as her brother’s. How had Alex not seen it sooner?
“When he gets here.” She breaks into a full grin as Alex’s heart turns to sludge.
Now it is too late. Without another word, Lucy turns on her heel and leaves Alex alone on the cold tile.
FORTY-EIGHT
Alex doesn’t know how long she’s been slumped on the floor of Francis Keen’s kitchen. She can hear the faint ticking of a clock somewhere. The night has turned deep and black, covering the room, removing its contours, and erasing the visible signs of her injuries. She squints up, trying to make out the outline of the window, and winces, the slight motion of her head giving her a dizzy feeling. The bleeding seems to have stopped. She can feel the sticky mess forming on the back of her head, the dried blood tugging uncomfortably at her hair.
Alex can’t believe that she has been so naive about Lucy. Looking back, it all makes total sense that her assistant was a fraud. The way she skittered through the halls afraid to be seen, avoiding the elevator; the alarm on her face at every mention of Howard Demetri. There were so many obvious warning signs that Lucy was not to be trusted, and yet, after all this time running from the slightest shadow, Alex had given in to her completely, had trusted her.
A door opens and shuts somewhere far away in the house. Alex’s wrists throb at the scars, where they push painfully against the zip tie. There are two voices now. Lucy’s, higher-pitched than normal, frantic like it is explaining something. Alex’s ears prick nervously as someone replies. The voice is a murmur that she can’t make out, but she recognizes the timbre. He is here. She struggles to move, to escape, rollingherself onto her knees and lifting herself partway off the ground, but the ties tear at her wrists and she loses her balance, falling onto her stomach and knocking the wind out of her.
They are coming toward her. She can make out the patter of Lucy’s steps, light and eager, and others, his, plodding and deliberate. There is nowhere for Alex to go, no more time to escape. The door opens and a beam of light scurries around the floor, finding her there. She tries to raise her head. To see.
“There she is.” Lucy’s voice is proud, like Alex is something she’s brought to show-and-tell. “I didn’t want to have to tie her up. But she would have left.”
From her position on the floor, Alex can only see his feet, clad in dark work boots. They come closer to her. She can see a spray of paint on their soles. They are the same kind he wore to jobsites even back then. She remembers how he brought her with him once to his big project, the factory he’d been converting. He’d worn a pair just like these, coated in the red dust from the brick. He was so attractive to her that day, showing her around. Just months later she’d listen, her heart in her throat, to the sound of those boots clunking up the stairs of his condo. She’d watch on high alert as he silently and slowly untied the laces, trying to read his body’s cues to see if he was mad at her or not.
“Why is she on her stomach?” His voice sends a vibration of fear through her entire body.
“She must have tipped over,” Lucy says. “She wasn’t that way when I left her.”
“Sloppy, Lulu,” he admonishes, kneeling next to Alex. A hand brushes hers and she quivers. His hands are on her shoulders now, lifting her from the floor. She is helpless to stop herself.
“Stop squirming or I’ll drop you on your face,” he says. Brian, the man who left her for dead. There is a grit to his voice that wasn’t there before. He sits her upright, propping her against the cabinets. Alex watches, horrified, as the man she has hidden from for eight years rotates into view before her. He is thicker than before; his once taut andmuscular body has filled out into something more solid and terrifying. His muscles contract as he crouches in front of her. His eyes narrow as he examines her, scanning her body, her face. He brings his face close to hers and her throat constricts. A scar. She hadn’t expected it. An ugly rope of raised tissue that runs from his forehead to the bridge of his nose and picks up again on his cheek. Despite the years, it is red and angry-looking. Making his once beautiful face something that no one could help but flinch at the way she does now.
She smells something acrid as he comes closer. He’s taken up smoking, she realizes, her stomach roiling from the sour smell as he leans in close enough that she can feel the vibrations of his voice next to her ear. “I was always going to find you.” Without her even meaning to, her body jerks away from him, her shoulder coming to her ear trying to block him out.
He draws back quickly. “Lulu, what is this?” He must see the blood in her hair.
“I didn’t hurt her, she fell,” Lucy whines.
“Oh, but you’ve messed up Bess’s head, haven’t you? That’s no good at all,” he says, pulling his hand away from Alex, disgusted. “Or should I sayAlex?” He smirks. “What a funny choice for a pseudonym. It took me a long minute to understand why you chose it. Then I went and paid a visit to your old friend. Saw the name of the place across the street, all boarded up. Alexander’s Market. Alex Marks. Pretty clever.”
“Sam?” Alex’s heart thumps. “You, you didn’t hurt him?”
He cranes his neck, looking down at her. “You really do think I’m some sort of monster.”
Alex doesn’t say anything. She knows better than to say yes but doesn’t have the strength to deny it.
“It didn’t help that the old man told the whole town I was the reason you disappeared.” He spits out the words. “He couldn’t leave anything alone.”
Sam had never trusted Brian. He’d always had a good sense for people. Alex should have listened to him, she thinks.
“You tried to ruin my career. Telling Sam all those lies about me.And then I think maybe you died, but imagine my surprise when I find out you lived. They wouldn’t let me see you in the hospital. Wouldn’t even confirm you were there, but I knew you had to be. Do you know how hard that was for me? To have you just disappear. To never see my girlfriend again, the love of my life.”
“It devastated him,” Lucy interjects, shaking her head back and forth, stepping forward from where she’s been watching in the shadows. “You were gone, so you didn’t see the way he was forced to leave his beautiful apartment. He lost everything. He had to come back to grieve at our parents’ house. He cried.”
Brian raises a hand, silencing his sister. Alex remembers the tears Brian was so fond of producing, how well they worked to sway people. To manipulate her. “You completely fucked my life up,” Brian agrees. He was always good at feeling sorry for himself, and she can see it hasn’t changed. His face has gotten puffy, his stubble fuller now, with flecks of gray in it. His lips twitch. “It was terrible. A horrible time. But I got help, I healed myself. I did the work, Alex. More than you can say.”
Did the work? Healed himself?She’d spent so much time hiding from Brian that she’d forgotten what he really was, an unbelievable, pathological narcissist. She isn’t going to get anywhere by accusing him of anything, Alex thinks, reminding herself of how to stay safe. She has to go along with it.
“That’s really great, I am so glad you found something—”
