Page 111 of Take Her

The fact that I’d told her I’d always be there for her—and that that had been a lie.

Her expression crumpled. She started crying, then realized I could see her, and threw a pillow at the camera.

“I’ll see you on Monday, Lia,” I said, and then hung up.

The next morning, I realized I might have been more of an asshole than usual.

I knew Lia was more stable than her dad wanted to give her credit for, but it occurred to me that breaking things off with someone with a history of self-harm like I had was probably not the best way to handle things.

I didn’t know what was, though—but me being me, I had come up with precautions. Lia’s PI told me she hadn’t left her apartment building, but he’d been in contact with her, so I knew she was currently all right.

I had him text her to tell her that I was going out. And, just after noon, I had him send her the photo I’d had him take of me and Sable at the café weeks ago, looking intimate.

I figured it was better to look like a cheating asshole than a plain one. It was a bus Sable wouldn’t mind being thrown under, and hopefully Lia would figure out her shit by Monday and then both of us could somehow play nice.

On Sunday, I drove to the cemetery like I usually did. It was in a misting drizzle, so I opened up my umbrella as soon as I got out of my truck. There was no one else out; it was clear the weather was only going to get worse.

There was a time when I would’ve just walked around the cemetery in the rain, both looking and feeling lost, resembling something that’d crawled out of the earth by the time I was through, but over time I’d gotten better.

Now I used it more as meditation. I’d made a habit of circling the grounds, thinking to myself and appreciating the architecture. Isabelle’s parents had been the ones to pick it, but it’d been a good choice. It had presence, because it was one of the oldest in the nation. Back in the day, people had taken time to celebrate their losses, erecting massive crypts in any style that’d made them feel closer to God. There were intricately carved miniature gothic cathedrals, Egyptian revival pyramids, and more weeping angels and carved little lambs than you could shake a stick at. And while God hadn’t, as of yet, chosen to reveal himself and his reasons to me, walking around the cemetery still helped me to reset myself each Sunday, and this one was no different.

In fact, today it was even more useful than normal, because as I crested one of the slight hills it contained and looked around, it reminded me of the only thing that would happen if I’d chosen to continue on with Lia.

Death, death, and more death, as far as the eye could see.

Then I caught a flash of dark pink, out of the corner of my eye.

I turned to follow it—and saw a speeding Lamborghini, flying up the narrow roads paved between the crypts. The thing screeched to a stop, and I already knew who was driving.

“Fuck you!” Lia shouted at the top of her lungs, getting out of her car. She was wearing a black dress, as befit the location, and started stalking up the hill for me, her heels sinking into the wet dirt. She was as awkward as a newborn foal walking across the cemetery’s well-trimmed grass, until she took them off to walk without them.

“Hello to you too,” I told her—and I wondered why her PI hadn’t warned me she was coming.

That’s when I realized the jig was up.

“That picture was taken at least a week ago, Rhaim—it was sunny then, it’s not sunny now. And you making my guy send me that—means that you knew about him. I confronted him, he told me everything,” she said, stopping the length of a grave away from me, radiating anger.

No wonder her PI had found her every bit as frightening as he did me—with her here, her dress flapping behind her in the light breeze, and humidity making her hair look wild, she looked like a witch summoning her powers.

“And you snooping explains how you knew about my book account—which you took down!—and my psych history!” she proclaimed, shaking her heels at me.

I realized she wasn’t wearing long sleeves for once, even though the weather deserved it. “If it’s any consolation, you started stalking me first.”

“You don’t even know,” she said brashly. “So is that why you can’t be with me? Because I’m crazy and I read too much?”

She was crying now, but not because she was sad—because she was angry.

“Moth,” I said, in a low voice, stepping forward while she fiercely wiped tears or rain away from the cheeks beneath her eyes. “Take this,” I said, offering her my umbrella. She took it, and threw it aside, where the wind caught it and made it race off, tumbling back behind her.

Clearly, I wasn’t going to get off that easy. “I’m almost twice your age and your father will kill me if I betray him,” I said.

“So?” she asked, shaking her head. “None of that’s new. What changed?”

“Nothing did. I just found my common sense.”

“I refuse to believe that!”

I heaved a deep sigh. “It’s true, nonetheless.”