Page 93 of The Devil Gets His Due

I go to my apartment and look around me, staring at the kitchen where he cooked and the couch where he’d cover my feet and it hits me that we really must have beennothing.

All the times he seemed to look at me a moment too long, all the times he laughed and let me hope I’d made him happy—perhaps not a single one of them was even real.

I search the counter but there’s no note, no apology.

I guess I thought he’d at least say,“I know you better now. I know you would never have gone along with it.”But he just walked out of here more concerned with his fucking files than me, so he probably doesn’t know it at all.

42

GRAHAM

Irefuse to tell Ben where I’m staying until he threatens to stop giving me updates on Keeley.

He shows up at the executive apartment I’m renting twenty minutes later. A week in, it’s a little worse for wear: the trash is overflowing, the desk is covered in files, boxes are stacked up to the walls.

“So this is how you’re living, huh?”

When Gemma broke up with him and he couldn’t get on the next flight to DC to see her, he chartered a private plane, so I’m not going to be lectured byhim.

“How quickly you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be dumped.”

“WhatIremember about being dumped is how quickly I tried to fix it,” he replies, sitting on the couch. “From what I’ve heard, you’ve made no such effort.”

I go to my desk and turn on my computer. “You can save the speech, Ben. It is what it is and I don’t need your help.”

“Fuck you, Graham. If nothing else, you owe me a goddamn explanation. My wife has been smashing things for a week because she’s so furious with you, and she’s spending more nights at Keeley’s place than our own. I mean…what the hell were you thinking?”

I run a hand over my face. I knew Keeley would tell Gemma, and Gemma would tell Ben…I just never really considered how bad it would sound. Every single person who hears about it, even my own mother, will tell me I’m a fucking asshole.

And I am. I’m a fucking asshole, and there’s no way to even apologize for it sufficiently.

“I messed up,” I tell him. “It was her worst fear, having someone fight her for custody, so she’s never going to forgive me. Just stay out of it.”

“Graham,” Ben says, leaning forward, his elbows pressed to his knees, “you need to tell Keeley why you did it.”

“She already knows why I did it,” I spit out. “She came across as someone who couldn’t raise a child and I made assumptions I shouldn’t have.”

He swallows, clasping his hands between his knees. “That’s not what I meant. You’ve got to tell her about all the shit that happened with Mom.”

I freeze. We do not speak about the months after my dad died. Colin and Simon don’t remember them, and it’s too hard for my mom to discuss. If I’m being honest…it’s too hard for me too. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Bullshit,” he says, not unkindly. “I know you remember it, and it’s why you’ve looked so goddamned haunted any time someone mentions the baby to you. We’ve both tried to keep it in the past for Mom’s sake, but you can’t tell me that it’s not what made you panic and get that agreement drawn up.”

“That was more than two decades ago,” I reply stiffly. “I’d have to be insane to let something that happened two decades ago still influence me.”

He shrugs. “Maybe you are a little insane. Maybe we both are. You think that whole thing hasn’t fucked me up a little too? What set Gemma apart for me is that the girl is made of steel. I’ve never, not once, worried she’d crumble under pressure.” He smiles for a moment. “I have, obviously, worried that she’dkillsomeone under pressure, but that’s a different sort of fear.”

If the whole fucking city fell into the San Andreas fault, Gemma would be the first person you’d find clawing herself out of the rubble. She’d step on your shoulders to get there too. But she’d make sure Keeley and my daughter got out, so I don’t mind.

“Keeley isn’t Gemma, though,” I tell him quietly. “She’s not Mom, but she’s fragile in her own way.”

“Everyoneis fragile in their own way. But when you find the right person, you don’t want to run from it. You want to take care of her and throw yourself on every grenade the world launches just to make sure she’s safe.”

I sink my head in my hands. Thatishow I feel, about Keeley, about the baby. It’s what’s made all this so hard—I did this to protect our child, and I’ve wound up hurting her and her mother in ways that might last forever.

“She isn’t going to forgive me,” I tell him. “I wasn’t what she wanted in the first place and she’s never going to forgive me.”

I’ll never forgive myself either, but I guess that’s nothing new.

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