Page 22 of Don't Leave Me
“He can’t,” she demanded. “Do you hear me? Hecan’tescape.”
Finally, I looked at her, and I could see the fear in her eyes, hear it in her voice. “You think he could hurt you? He doesn’t even believe you’re alive.”
“He’ll know where the evidence came from. He’ll wonder how you got it. I can’t take this chance if I can’t trust you’re going to do it right.”
My eyes popped open. “Are you saying you don’t trust me? Every fucking thing I’ve done for you, and you don’t trust me?”
She winced. “I just need you to understand how important this is. It’s bigger than—”
“Us,” I cut her off. “I know. You’ve said.”
“Marc, I know you’re hurt and angry. I know what my leaving did to you.”
“You didn’tleave, Ash. You fucking died. So, no, you don’t know shit about what that did to me.”
“I hoped you would mourn me,” she said quietly. “I thought, at least, it would give you some peace eventually. That you’d loved me as much as you could, lost me, and, eventually, you would move on until I was just a distant memory from your past.”
“Bullshit,” I said, rejecting the idea. “You were just passing time. You took my mother’s name. Marie Campbell. In Florida. You knew I would come looking for her eventually. You knew it would end this way.”
She shook her head. “I didn’tknow. Maybe I’d hoped…I don’t know. But not after what you said that day at the prison. It felt absolute to me. Final. But it was too late to change anything. Everything I’d done was done under her name. There was no turning back. You have to believe me, Marc. When I began all of this, I thought I was so clever, giving you all the clues you needed to come find me. Then things changed. In the end, I thought maybe it was better that you wouldn’t ever look for her and find me.”
“Better?” I asked, stunned. “How is this better?”
“Because, I wanted…want…you to be happy. As much as it killed me, I knew I was never going to be the person to give you that. Not after everything that had happened. I couldn’t be the one who would give you joy and happiness and an easy life. All those things you deserve. Everything about us was always going to be complicated. Riddled with a past filled with pain and hurt. You think you’re furious with me, but if you consider it, faking my death was the most generous thing I could give you. I gave you an out. A real escape. From me.”
“What if I didn’t want that?”
I could see the tears in her eyes. “It’s for the best. We suck together. We always have. It took me too long to see that, to let you go. If I had, maybe I could have spared you from what my father did to you. Think about it. Nothing was ever simple or fun.”
“Florida was fun,” I said, feeling this odd need to defend us. Ash was the hopeful one. I was the surly bastard. I was supposed to be berating her for doing what she did; instead, it felt like I was fighting for us.
That couldn’t be possible. Not when I was so damn angry with her. Not when I had no clue how to fightforus, when I’d spent years fighting against us.
“It was, and it wasn’t. Because we weren’t really free. We were just stealing time. My father’s presence was still there looming, even if we chose to ignore it. You were my secret boyfriend. And you were right back then. It sounds ridiculous. Because it is.”
Except now that threat was over. There was only one person left she feared. I looked at the thumb drive in my fingers. She was right. I had to do this thoughtfully, carefully.
“I have to go,” she said. She stood and waved to someone behind us. I turned to look at who she was waving at. It was the woman ambling around the park with the stroller. An older woman with gray hair and an easy gait. When the woman saw Ash’s wave, she started in our direction.
“Who is that?”
“Just one more reason why you’re going to hate me,” Ash said, wistfully. “I want you to remember that, Marc. I want you to think hard about how you swore you could never love me. You tried to make me believe it our whole short life together. Now you’re going to see how else I betrayed you, and I want you to hold on to the hatred whenever you start to believe we could change our future. Because we can’t.”
“Hi, Marie,” the older woman called out, bringing the stroller closer. “Delivered as promised.”
“Thanks, Sandra. How was he today?”
She shrugged. “A little fussy. Mostly, he’s so happy. Then, every so often, he just throws a fit of temper when he doesn’t get his way. It makes me laugh.”
I watched as Ash reached into the stroller and pulled out a baby. “Hi there, my little man. How is my darling boy? Are you giving Sandra a hard time?”
The baby, a year old maybe—I didn’t know kids’ ages—babbled and reached for her face, patting at it as if to suggest he was satisfied he was now in her arms.
Ash said something to Sandra. About taking the rest of the day off. Sandra smiled at me, obviously curious as to who I was, but she left without another word. And I watched Ash bounce the kid on her hip.
“This is what’s bigger than us,” she said, not looking at me, but, instead, at the baby. Her expression, so filled with love, was something I’d seen only when Ash looked at me.
“What are you…who is that…what’s happening right now?” I gulped.
