Dani

No. No, no, no, no, no.

I knew something was wrong when I woke and Cavan wasn’t in bed. It was instinct; my gut telling me something. But I knew he wasn’t in the shower or gone to get coffee. I knew it was bad.

I got out of bed stark naked and left the bedroom. On the table were a piece of paper, the car keys, a stack of money, and a handwritten note.

No, no, no…

What had he done?

The piece of paper was our marriage certificate. I picked up the note.

Dani,

I’m sorry about this. I know that’s inadequate to say, but I am. If I had a choice, I would never leave you. Not for a day, not for a minute. This isn’t what I want. But we don’t always get what we want. We both know that, I think.

What matters to me is that you’re safe. The money is just a start—there will be more in your bank account before nightfall. The car is yours; I’ll get another. The room is paid for. Everything that’s mine is yours, even my name if you want it.

Go do the things you were meant to do. The things that will make you the person you’re born to be. Leave the old things behind, the things that don’t matter. Find Dani Farraday, and become her. That’s all I ask—that, and that you keep yourself safe. Don’t take risks for me.

I’m not gone. I’ll help you. And if anything happens to me, you know the drill. Go to Devon, or Max Reilly in San Francisco.

If you want a divorce, say the word, because I don’t own you and I never have. You own yourself. But until I hear that word from you, I consider myself married. To you.

You know what? Even if you divorce me, I’ll still consider myself married to you. Until I die.

Whatever there is of me—it’s yours. Even if you don’t want it, and even if it isn’t much. But that’s the deal, sorry. You asked what I wanted, and that’s the answer. For me, it’s never been any other way.

-Cavan

I called him. Of course I called him. On the new phone we’d bought me yesterday, before the wedding, before we were married, before we’d done all the things we’d done that made me a different person. I called him and he picked up.

“Dani,” he said. There was white noise behind him—a highway, maybe, or traffic.

“You’re going back to Arizona, aren’t you?” I said, my voice cracking.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said.

“It does!” I shouted. I gripped the edge of the table. Tears came in a rush, up the back of my throat. I couldn’t stop them. I started to cry. He was going back to McMurphy, alone. Because of me. “Don’t do it, Cav. Please.”

“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “And don’t cry, okay? I can’t take that.”

“If I cry, will you come back?” I said through a sob.

“No, baby, I don’t think I will. I’m not what you need right now. Not for a little while. So yeah, I’m going to Arizona. It’s the only thing to do.”

I pulled my knees up and hugged them as heartbreak hit me like a hammer. It hurt. I was still stark naked; his come was still inside me. It hurt.

“Please don’t,” I said. “I love you.” I’d never said that to him, I realized. Not once. If I’d said it, would he have stayed?

“You think you do,” Cavan said, and for the first time there was a slight crack in his voice, like he was feeling more than he let on. Only someone who knew him would be able to tell. “You feel a lot of things for me, Dani, but I’m not sure love is one of them. And we can’t be married if you’re not sure.”

“I am sure,” I said, mopping tears from my cheek with the back of my wrist. “I’ve loved you from the first, I think.”

“Ah, no. That was me,” he said. “It was over for me when you walked in that day. But for you, it’s different. You never had a chance to figure anything out on your own. You had McMurphy, and then me. You’re not in that equation anywhere, Dani. Just you. So I’m giving you that. I have to.”

“Why?” I said. I was crying again, trying to swallow it all back down. “Why are you doing this? Why did you do any of it? Leave with me, take on McMurphy, give me your money, marry me? Why me?”

He was quiet for a second, and I could hear the rush of traffic. Where was he? Had he gotten as far as Phoenix yet? “I never told you what happened with my mother,” he said.

I went quiet, waiting.

“It was my fault,” he said, that crack in his voice again. Just the sound of it wrenched my heart. “She had this boyfriend, Patrick. It was bad. The signs were there—all of them. He’d run her down, insult her, call her a cunt and a slut. He cut her off from her friends. He was always accusing her of cheating on him, fucking every man she saw. He was using drugs, dealing. He’d shout at her in public. It was fucking textbook. It was all there.”

I listened, but I had chills down my spine. I recognized all of those things. That had been my life.

“He hated Devon and me,” Cavan continued. “Devon was sixteen; I was eighteen. We’d run wild, like feral cats. We had too many years alone, too many years with her boyfriends coming and going. Mom was difficult; she wasn’t easy to like but she’d had a hard fucking life, and it made her cagey and vulnerable to a certain kind of man. There was a certain kind of man who could convince her he’d fix everything, at least at first, and she’d believe him. Patrick was that kind, but worse. The worst of all of them.”

I rested my head on my knees, the tears coming slower now. I was starting to understand. This was me, all me. “Did he hit her?” I asked.

“She never admitted it,” Cavan answered me. “That’s what I mean when I say she was cagey. She knew Devon and I would probably pick a fight with him, the cops would come—it would be a big fucking mess. She wanted it all quiet, because she thought she could handle it. She thought she had it under control.”

I closed my eyes. Oh, yes, I knew that feeling so well. “What happened?” I asked.

“I had an argument with her,” Cavan said. “That last day. Devon wasn’t there. Patrick had done something, I don’t remember what, and I got pissed off and lost it. I told her she needed to kick him out, and if he wouldn’t go, she needed to pack her bags and get the hell out. Whatever got her away from him for good. I told her it would only get worse, that someday he’d hurt her. I told her to save herself. I even told her that if she wouldn’t do it, I’d pack her bags for her and haul her out of there. I’d shove her in the fucking car and start driving.” His voice cracked again. “That’s what I said.”

“Cavan,” I said, my voice laced with pain.

“She said no,” he said. “She said she’d try and kick him out, but she wasn’t leaving. She said that she knew him, she knew how to handle him, that she could make things work. She had all the excuses—he just needed time, and caring, and if he could just get a job. The whole script. I knew all of it was a lie, but you know what I did? I backed off. I accepted it. I told her she was crazy, but I didn’t push. I walked out. My last words to her were, ‘Don’t blame me when you end up in the hospital.’ Can you fucking believe that, Dani? I was an eighteen-year-old selfish asshole. That’s what I fucking said.”

“It isn’t your fault,” I said.

“No? She was dead four hours later. He must have come home, and she must have tried to kick him out. He strangled her, then stabbed her with a pair of scissors.” He took a breath. “If I’d just done it, Dani. If I’d just thrown her over my shoulder and put her in the car and hit the gas, it wouldn’t have happened. I fucking knew, and I didn’t push hard enough. I didn’t fight hard enough. I didn’t do enough. That’s on me—it will always be on me. I couldn’t look Devon in the eye anymore; I couldn’t be around him. So I did yet another heroic act—I bailed on him. I walked away and left my sixteen-year-old brother alone, because I couldn’t stand to look at him. That’s the great fucking guy you married, Dani. That’s the deal you made.”

“You were eighteen,” I said. God, I had done so many stupid things at eighteen. Tried stupid drugs, taken stupid dares, let stupid boys put their hands down my pants. “You were eighteen, and you had no parents, no guardian, no help. Your mother was murdered. How were you supposed to know what to do? It was over ten years ago, Cavan. You’re not an eighteen-year-old boy anymore.”

“I ditched everything,” Cavan said. “I gave up. I hitchhiked for a while, and I ended up in a tattoo shop, and the guy there let me learn. And then one day, one of the Black Dogs walked in. The rest was history. I was no one for ten years. I was nobody. I had no life, no ambition, no purpose. And then you walked in and asked me to save you. And I looked at you, and I looked at McMurphy, and I could see the fucking future. I could see it like a fucking map.”

I remembered it with perfect detail, that moment when I’d sat in his chair. Cavan’s careful expression, the way he’d looked at McMurphy. The way he’d looked at me.

Always, the way he’d looked at me. Seeing everything. Seeing me.

“It turned out I had one purpose in life,” Cavan said. “Exactly one. I was born to do one thing, and that was get you the fuck away from him. So that’s what I did. It’s what I’m still doing, Dani, and I’m not going to leave the job undone this time.”

I closed my eyes. The tears were easing, though the hurt wasn’t. “I love you so much,” I said.

“That wasn’t part of the plan,” my husband said. “I was just supposed to put you in the car and hit the gas, like I should have done when I was eighteen. Just go. But I love you more than anything, do you understand? More than fucking anything. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you. You need to be safe, I’ll make you safe. You need to erase him, I’ll try my fucking best. I can’t stop it, Dani. I never could.”

He loved me. He loved me. Then why did this hurt so much? “Please don’t get hurt,” I told him. “I’m your wife. I want to be married to you for more than one night.”

“You’re insane,” he said. “I have to go.”

When we hung up I still sat there for a long minute. I was still naked, and I was shaking. My thoughts were wild, scrambling.

I could go after him—there was that. I had a car, the keys, money. He was right, he wasn’t the boss of me. That meant I could go to Arizona, just like he could.

But suddenly, I had a better idea.

There were two of us in this marriage. And despite its less than stellar beginning—and the fact that my husband had just left me—it was a marriage. Or it would be. Cavan had no idea how determined I could be.

Maybe I needed saving, but so did he.

And I knew exactly how to do it.