Page 90 of We Are the Match
“Paris,” she says finally. “You should take this speedboat and go.”
I reach for her without thinking, and she steps farther into the water, holding out her hand between us.
“No,” she says. “No. I am—I am sorry. You should be far away from me. Everyone I love—everything I love. He will take it from me.” Her face is streaked with tears, eyes red and puffy and desperate.
“Helen, wait. Listen to me. We should go upstairs, get you a shower, a change of clothes.”
“Everything I touch—” Helen’s chest heaves. “I—I can’t stop it. Paris. I can’t make it—I can’t make it stop.”
Helen is trembling in the water beside me.
“Helen of the gods,” I say softly. “I am not afraid of you.”
She is shaking violently now, her makeup running in rivers down her face, sweat beaded along the crease of her forehead. “Please, Paris.”
“I always thought you would be begging me under very different circumstances,” I tell her, but there is no mockery in my tone.
“Go.”
“Youaredangerous, Helen.” I reach out and close my hand over her arm. Loving her is dangerous, yes, that much was always true, but it cannot dissuade me. So I hold on to her. “But so am I.”
Helen stops mid-sob, the shock of my hand touching her enough, apparently, to jar her back into her body. “Paris,” she whispers. “Paris.”
We are both trembling.
“Are you done?” I ask her.
Helen laughs, only half mirth, and more sob. “I am sorry,” she says. “I am—oh, Paris. Will it always be like this?”
Helen’s shoulders sag, the last of the fight going out of her before I am able to answer, and then I wade forward into the water and catch her as she falls.
Chapter 32
Helen
I lean my head against Paris’s chest, and she wraps her arms around me tightly.
“Stay with me,” she says tenderly. “It was like this, after Troy. For so long. But it won’t always be, Helen.”
Promise?
Promise.“I miss him,” I whisper against Paris’s hair.
“I know,” she whispers back. “He deserved better.”
He did.
My Tommy. Too gentle, despite it all.
Finally, Paris and I climb back up the long, winding stairs to my room, and it is wrong, wrong,wrongto be doing this without Tommy.
Promise?I keep asking and asking and asking. But he is cold and silent in the sea.
When we reach my room, I show Paris to the bathroom, where she strips and steps into the shower, Tommy’s blood running down off her into the drain below.
I leave her there and call for Erin, who brushes my hair and offers me a cloth for my face. After Erin leaves to retrieve some food, Paris emerges from the shower and dresses in some of my clothes—the only jeans I had, and a tank top, both of which are too big for her, and thenher worn leather jacket. Then she steps forward without a word and pushes me against the wall,hard, and kisses me breathless.
“I am sorry,” she says between kisses. “I am sorry.”
