CHAPTER FORTY-TWO - CHRISTINE
How dare she.
How dare that bitch call my boyfriend at my fucking hotel room and interrupt my morning.
“What the hell does she want?” I ask.
I realize my rage is slightly unjustified because Eliza did help us get Alec back. However. I still hate that bitch and I was assuming I’d never have to see her face again after yesterday.
Naïve, perhaps. On my part. Since she and Alec have a child together. Which means that if Alec decides to take an active role in little mini-Alec’s life, she will be part of my life as well.
But it’s been one day. One goddamn day since all these feelings from the past came bubbling back up to the surface and you know what?
I think I deserve more than a fucking day to adjust.
I’m pissed that she’s calling. So what. Sue me.
Alec pauses to listen to something Eliza is saying, his eyes darting to mine. Then he sighs, lowers the phone from his ear, and presses the button for speaker.
“Good morning, Christine,” Eliza says.
My rage is not in check. “What do you want?”
“I’m fine, thanks. Yes, you’re welcome for yesterday. I know that you know that I didn’t have to help you, and yet I did. But let’s not dwell on who owes whom favors.”
I make that sound people make when they’re feeling amused and incredulous in the same moment. She has balls, I’ll give her that. But so do I. “Charlie told me he called in a favor. For me,” I add. Just to rub it in. “So let’s not pretend you did this for any other reason than you were forced, OK? Good.”
Danny sighs. Rubs a hand down his unshaven face. Closes his eyes. Then sighs again. “Hey, Eliza. Thanks for the help yesterday. We really appreciate it.”
“Oh, I can tell,” Eliza says.
I look at Alec, realize I’m glaring, and force myself to stop. I say, for the third time, through gritted teeth, “What. Do you. Want?”
There’s a brief pause as Mini-Alec says something in her sweet little-girl voice on the other end of the phone. Something about Danny. It might be about hopscotch. I stop my eye roll because I’m looking at Alec when all this happens, and he’s got an expression on his face I can only assume is… longing.
He has feelings for the child.
Of course he has feelings for the child. It’s his fucking child, Christine.
Danny gets up and walks over to me, pulling me into a hug. I lean against his chest and crumple. Let my rage fade, just a little.
I hate this. I can’t even describe how much I hate this. But I have to deal with it because like it or not, Alec and Eliza have a little girl called Andra. And even though, for all these years, I’ve been the child in this relationship, I’m not that kid anymore.
I have not been that kid for a very long time. Much longer than the six years it’s been since I turned eighteen.
It’s what I’ve always wanted, wasn’t it? To be taken seriously. To be seen as an adult. To be a woman in their eyes.
So I ravel all my unraveled parts back up and make a decision to grow in this moment.
And in that same moment Eliza says, “I know I’m disrupting things. I know”—she takes a deep breath—“that I’m just an additional line in the triangle called Alec, Christine, and Danny. And there’s no room for extra lines. There can only ever be three sides to a triangle. So I’m going to do my best not to remake this shape into something else… but I’m worried. And if I didn’t call, and something happened—”
“What happened?” Alec says.
“—then I’d hate myself after.”
“What happened?” Alec repeats. “Is everything OK?”
“Someone was here last night,” she says.
“What do you mean?” Danny asks. He’s still hugging me. Which I appreciate more than he’ll ever know.
“The perimeter alarm went off this morning. And while I admit the alarm goes off on occasion because of squirrels and the odd overzealous crow pecking at motion sensors, it was three AM and there’s no reality in which rodents and birds are responsible for this one.”
“Explain,” Alec says.
“I saw a shadow lurking in the back garden.”
“What kind of shadow?’
“The usual creepy, lurking shadow,” Eliza says, almost out of patience. “I don’t know exactly. But we did break into, and extract you, from a heavily guarded mansion yesterday. And all my brothers seem to think that we have a problem.”
“We do have a problem,” Russell says, butting in. “I don’t like this one bit. Eliza and Andra have been safe for more than two years. No thanks to you, van den Berg. And then you come back into their lives and suddenly we have alarms going off at three in the AM and no way to account for it.”
Alec, Danny, and I trade looks.
“In other words,” Russell continues, “there are loose ends that need to be tied up. And you need to tie ‘em.”
Well. There you have it. Russell Watson is calling to cash in his favor.
Didn’t take him long, did it?
“What do you propose we do?” Alec asks.
“We all saw your brother,” Charlie says.
“And we weren’t there to extract him,” Brenden adds.
“So what’s the fucking deal, Alec, mate?” Theo asks. “What the hell is going on?”
Apparently, the whole family is gathered round for this conversation.
Alec looks at me because I am the only one who can answer this question. Except I don’t really remember and that’s a lame excuse the Watson crew won’t accept the way Danny and Alec did.
Danny comes to my rescue. “We have a problem with Lars.”
“What kind of problem?” Russell asks.
“He tried to kill me,” Alec says. “Actually, he destroyed my house several months back. Came in with a tactical assault and then things got messy—”
“Then things got messy?” Russell says.
“—and we wound up tumbling over a waterfall. Then… I don’t know. I woke up some time later—maybe weeks later, maybe months, I’m not really sure—and I was at the estate. Being held… not quite prisoner, but unable to leave, either. So, that’s a bit of what’s that. If it helps, I was already planning to handle it. We were planning to.”
Silence from all eight of us. We make an octagon now, I realize. Then, like she planned it this way just to remind me that the shape of us has changed, Eliza says, “Andra, dear. Please stop jumping around. Mummy is having an important conversation.”
“But I want to talk to that man Danny…”
I think someone physically removes her from the room because her voice fades away.
I glance at Alec and find that same, pained expression on his face. It’s not simply feelings.
It’s love.
We so far away from the triangle right now, I might be sick.
We aren’t even a square.
We are… whatever the fuck it is you call a shape with nine sides. I have no idea, I just know… it’s complicated.