Page 66 of It's One of Us
His brows arch. “Okay. Yes. She told me what’s happening. The miscarriages. I’m sorry, Liv. If I’d known...”
“It’s not exactly something I’d post online.”
A flicker in those gray eyes. She’s hurt him. She is so good at that.
“It sounds like you’ve been going through hell.”
“Thank you,” she musters, with as much dignity as she has left.
“I hate that you’ve been suffering. I really am sorry. I didn’t know. I’ve been...absent, for a while.”
She can’t take this. Even being in the same room with him feels like cheating, though they are appropriately distanced and both on their best behavior. He smells the same. Good. Of the outdoors. Of man and cedar and lime and tea. Of a simpler time. Aphrodisiacs. But the olfactory delights are overwhelmed by the memories flooding back. Him walking away. Their fight at the airport. The clinic. His rough palms on her thighs. All of it.
The secrets she’s kept her entire adult life.
She cannot separate Perry from her past, and she absolutely can’t allow him in now. She is a strong woman, but everyone has their breaking point. She needs to get away from the Bender boys.
He is watching her. Of the two boys, Perry is still the quieter one. Park always jumps in, runs the conversation, fills the room with hearty jokes and love and laughs. Perry simply is.
She sets down the tea. “Why have you come? Why are you here now, of all times?”
He leans back in the chair, the two front feet coming off the ground. His legs are long enough to balance him perfectly. “Instinct, maybe? I had a chance at an earlier flight. I’ve wanted to see y’all for a while, and I had some time between shoots. Lo and behold, I come home to find my family is in trouble. Who knows? Maybe the universe thought now was the right time to set things straight. At the very least, I’m here if you need me.”
She picks at the side of the cup, her nail making a soft ticking noise. “That’s very...nice of you.”
He stares at her. “When did you get so cold?”
That rage, that incandescent rage, courses through her. “What?”
“You didn’t used to be so contained. So remote. The girl I knew—”
“I’ve grown up,” she snaps. “Some of us didn’t run away. Some of us stayed and gutted it out. You have no idea what you did to me, leaving like that. You have no idea what it did to Park. You drove us together, and we’ve been doing just fine. Suddenly you’re back in town and our world is exploding. Coincidence? I think not. I... I have to go.”
He catches her hand as she flees. She halts, and for a moment, it seems he will apologize, that she will accept and sit down again, but the moment ends. She rips her fingers free and walks away.
In the Jeep, she moves on instinct. Start, Reverse, Drive, steer, brake. She aims the car toward her house. This is her refuge and her punishment, this life she’s chosen. She will not think about the hurt in Perry’s eyes, she will not think about the cramps in her belly, she will not think of Beverly Cooke’s dead body, bloated and peeling skin. She will not think about the police, about this new missing woman. She will not think about the children, real and wished for. She will not think about the gap-toothed smile of a little blond stranger. She will go home, she will confront her husband, she will find them a path through this.
She might not be able to bear him a child, but she sure as hell can be his rock right now. She chose Park back then. She should choose Park now. Perry might be a part of her past, but Park is her future. Park is her husband, for better or worse. She’s always taken their vows seriously, thinks he does, too. He might be a liar, but together, they can weather the storm. Together, they can fight for their marriage, their lives, their very souls. She will be righteous, and virtuous. He will be apologetic, and gallant. He will want to fix things between them; he always does, he always has. She will be rewarded for her loyalty in some way, she knows.
This is what Perry’s attentions have always done to her. Her guilt drives her right back to Park like a snapping rubber band.
She blocks Perry’s soft gray eyes, hurt and confused, from her mind. She cannot allow him to wreck everything she’s built. Not now. Not when things are at their most tenuous.
The setting sun is bright and reflective, and a glance at the rear view shows a van following her, too close. A moment of panic—is that him? The van from this morning? Griffin White?
She slows, thinking he’ll go past, and doesn’t see the deer until it is too late. The buck darts in front of the Jeep, and she only has time to swerve before the sickening crunch of impact. The airbags explode, cushioning her, but the windshield cracks wide, the huge antlers breaking through the glass with such force that one branch impales her shoulder, pinning her to the seat. The deer is not dead, it is thrashing and screaming, and the pain is too much, and she feels the faint coming on and fights to stay awake, stay focused. The crash hasn’t hurt her badly, but the convulsing deer will, she knows this instinctively, even through the fog of shock and pain. She must get unpinned.
Glass smashes near her ear, and hands reach in to help. She can’t turn her head to see this angel who has stopped to save her, but listens to the faraway voice patter, lets it soothe and calm.
“Stay steady, stay relaxed, it’s okay, I’m going to free you.”
A wrenching pain in her shoulder, then an overwhelming sense of freedom. She takes a breath and cries out at the pain. The buck runs off the side of the road, streaming blood—her blood, she realizes; the damn thing seems to be unhurt despite barreling through her windshield antlers first.
A piece of antler protrudes from her body like a narwhal’s horn. There is warmth, and wet, and her right arm tingles. She’s fading, shock setting in, overpowering the adrenaline. The voice, it is a man’s voice, familiar in an unfamiliar way, speaks again, urgent and calm.
“I’m calling an ambulance. Hold tight. You’re going to be okay, Olivia. I’m so sorry you’re hurt. You’re so beautiful. Oh, my darling. You don’t deserve this.”
And she is gone.
