Page 10 of Vicarious

“I could have.”

“I know you, Bell. That’s not your style.”

“I left you for dead.”

“After I was going to kill you.” Then he says, “She says she wants to help us. But I’m going to take a guess and say that when you told her that we planned to take out Pray that you didn’t tell her we were planning to take over his empire.”

“Well, considering what she dedicated her life to, I didn’t think she’d take it well. Figured if you really wanted her to know, you’d clear it up. Did you?”

I don’t need him to answer to know that he didn’t. It’s in the way he clenches his jaw and says nothing.

Finally, I address the elephant in the room and say, “What are we going to do with her?

“Take her with us.”

“And then what? She’s going to find out that you’re trying to become the boss of this empire. She’s going to find out I’m a little crime lord in the making. She’s going to find out about us.”

Viper considers me for a moment before asking, “What about us?”

I look at Viper unimpressed. He knows exactly what about us.

“About the fact that I’ve been fucking her husband. I don’t imagine the woman who thought you were cheating on her with me would be very pleased by that idea.”

“Why does it matter? We thought she was dead.”

“And now she’s not which means she’s still your wife. And I’m…” I sigh. “I’m a homewrecker, I suppose.”

“Can’t wreck a home that’s already been wrecked.”

Before I can ask what he means by that, he comes over to me. Pulls me close to him. Cups my face in his hands. Leans his forehead against mine as he says.

“Do you think I lied when I called you my love?”

“That was before—”

“Do you think I lied?”

Maybe not on purpose. But it was easy to say that when he thought Phae was dead. But I know how this story plays out. It played out before.

I spent most of my teen years running to keep up with this man. Always circling around him and keeping myself in his orbit. Always vying for his attention. Always drawn to him. Always trying to pull him toward me. Like the moon pulling in the tide, trying to pull the ocean toward it. And if I were the moon, then Phae was the Sun. And whenever she was around, all returned to how it was supposed to be. Viper at her side. Me behind him or in the shadows.

But maybe…

“So are you saying you’re going to divorce your wife and send her into hiding away from us?”

He tries to hide it. But I know him. So I see when the resolve in his eyes falters.

“I can’t be that cruel.”

He can be. I’ve seen him be that cruel. He’s been that cruel to me before.

As though reading my mind he adds, “Not to Phae.”

“I wouldn’t want you to be,” I reply.

But that’s a lie.

I want him to tell Phae that he’s sorry for how everything ended, that because of him, Pray targeted her and forced her back into the life she’d been determined to get away from and take down. I want him to tell her that things have changed since she’s been gone and that she has no place in his life anymore.

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