CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - CHRISTINE
The door rattles the frame as I slam it shut. I don’t look back, but I hope it knocks some of the precious shingles off the thatched roof.
Avoiding the slate pathway and marching straight through the garden, I step on and squash as many daffodils, or daisies, or pussy willows, or dandelions, or whatever as I can. I don’t know what I’m stomping on, exactly. I don’t fucking garden.
I trudge my way into a grove of trees just past the little stone wall and see the magical playhouse that I knew was there. Just beyond the playhouse is a proper guest house that looks like a larger version of the playhouse. The playhouse that looks like a miniature version of the main house.
This whole place makes me wanna puke.
From behind me I hear the door to the main house open and I turn, expecting to see Alec. Because Alec would come for me right now, right? After everything. After all we’ve gone through. After coming to rescue him, and admitting that we needed Eliza’s help, and facing her, and all that, and the past… he’d come out to make sure I’m OK, right?
Danny and Charlie call my name at the same time.
“Hey!”
“Oi, Christine!”
… I guess not.
Charlie spies me across the way and trots over first, taking my elbow as he arrives. “You OK, luv? Is there something—?”
Danny comes up behind him and puts his hand on Charlie’s shoulder, pulling him back. “Thanks, mate. We got it.”
There’s a moment.
Charlie spins on Danny, seemingly out of instinct at the sensation of being touched. It looks like they’re going to—as I’ve heard the Watson boys says in the past—“have a tussle.” If they do, I don’t want to be here to watch it. They’re well matched physically and neither one will ever back down, and I don’t have any desire to stand here and watch them kill each other.
But then Danny tips his head toward Charlie with a resolute and knowing look and repeats himself. Slowly. “We got it, man. Thanks.”
Charlie stares at him, looks at me for… I don’t know what. Something I don’t have to give. I look at the ground and Charlie huffs a breath, nods, and turns to head back inside.
Once Danny and I are alone, the sounds from Eliza’s property settle in my ears. Bees buzz. Birds chirp. I’m pretty sure I hear Snow White singing to a motherfucking blue jay somewhere in the distance. I rip a bunch of roses from a bush, tearing them free and cutting my hands on the thorns.
“Hey! Yo! What are you doing? Don’t do that. Stop.”
I keep ripping at them anyway.
“I said, stop!” Danny repeats, grabbing my hands and holding my arms at my sides.
“Let me go.”
“Not until you calm down. You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“Oh, I’m gonna hurt somebody all right. Let me. Fucking. Go.”
He does. He releases his grip and I rub my palms together to get the stinging to stop. The blood smears.
Danny sits on the stone wall. He plants his hands beside his thighs and lifts his shoulders. “What else aren’t you telling me?”
I cross my arms. I’m probably going to smear blood all over my clothes. I don’t give a shit. “What are you talking about?”
“I feel like I’ve been pretty fucking cool and understanding about the fact that I’m in the dark on what’s going on. I don’t know a whole lot of other motherfuckers who’d travel all the way around the world knowing as little as I did about what the hell was going to be waiting for me when I got here, and not make a thing out of it. And I know there’s still holes in your goddamn memory, but I also know there’s shit you’re just withholding from me, period. But y’know what?”
He lets that hang in the air for a second before he goes on.
“We’re here now. We’re here. And we did it. The whole fucking reason that we risked our lives—and are going to continue to risk our lives, it would appear—is so we could get Alec. When you left me, disappeared to I didn’t know where, and then came back to say that you had found him, I said, ‘Let’s fix this.’ Remember?
I nod.
“And that’s what I thought we were doing. Fixing it. But now that we’re here, shit still looks broken to me. So what’s left? What’s left to be fixed? Because I thought we were going to put our fuckin’ triangle back together, but right now we still feel like three broken lines. So what else aren’t you telling me?”
He lifts his hands and rubs his palms around and around each other. Like he’s soaping them up. Like he’s washing them. Like he’s been holding on to something dirty and now he wants to get clean.
I take a breath, look at him, step over, place my bloody palms around his fists—in effect, dirtying them up again—and say as softly as I can, “Not now, OK?”
“Not now what?” he asks with exasperation.
“I’ll get into everything. I will. I promise. I just… not now.”
“Is it just the kid? He had a kid with Eliza. So what?”
“Danny—”
“I know you a little, Christine. Y’know? I do. So, is it that her life looks like this?” He gestures around us. “That she gets to have this and we’re… where we’re at? Because we could have this too. Y’know? We could have all this shit too. I mean, to be fair, life in the Cook Islands was pretty fuckin’ plush. We could’ve just stayed there. So I’m saying, if it’s some kind of suburban-ass, tea-and-biscuits bullshit you want, we can fuckin’ have it. Just tell me and we’ll fuckin’ do it. Because we’ve been through way, way too much and paid way, way too high a price to not be a little bit happy.”
I stare into his eyes. There’s something urgent in them. Desperate. Wanting. I know that Danny loves me. I have always known. And I’ve known that he would do anything for me. But until this moment, here, now, I don’t know if I realized how much.
He did come all this way, asking almost no questions and just trusting what I was telling him. He found out that I had been with Alec, without him, for four years, and I know that hurt him, but he still let me back in. He let us both back in. The way I’ve seen him in this time that we’ve been alone together again—dark, angry, intense in a way he doesn’t show other people… there’s still so much pain inside him. And he knows he can show me that part of himself and I’ll still be here.
He trusts me. He loves me. And he came for me just now. He’s the one who followed me. Not Alec. I know that Alec van den Berg believes he has special powers. That he wields some kind of control over people. Over me. But I didn’t come for him because he’s got some magical ability to control my mind or my heart. I came for him because it was the right thing to do. And because Alec, Christine, and Danny are who we are meant to be. I can feel it as much as I can feel my heart pumping the blood that oozes from my hands. The sped-up heartbeat that reminds me that I love Danny with everything inside me and would do anything for him, and despite his best attempts to make me hate him… I love Alec the same way.
“Is that what you want, Christine? Is it? Because we can have that. We can.”
I stare into his beautiful, haunting eyes and I nod. “I do. I do think I want that.”
He claps his hands. “Fuckin’ A. Then let’s make it happen. You, me, and Alec. Yeah? Let’s make it happen.”
I don’t say anything. Just keep staring. Because… because… because that is what I want. That life I dreamed of once where I was an executive assistant or whatever and things were “normal.”
“Christine?”
That’s still what I want. Right? Me, Danny, and Alec. That’s what I want. Isn’t it?
“Christine? You, me, Alec. We’ll make a life. Somewhere. Yeah?”
Isn’t it?
“Christine?”
Isn’t it?
“Christine…?”