Chapter Five
Harley
The first time Harley woke up, the world was blurry, her head throbbed like a finger with a splinter shoved beneath the nail, and her mouth was so dry she would have sold her soul for a drink of water. She blinked heavy lids as her head lolled first to the left—a large window with a view of palm trees and a smudge of ocean beyond—and then to the right—a man sitting on a couch.
An enormous man.
Harley swallowed, her bone-dry throat clutching at itself as she fought to focus. She made out sandy hair, a square jaw, and finally the finer details of his face. His face.
His face.
“Good to see you.” Her words were a cross between a mumble and a croak, but it didn’t matter. This was a dream, she realized with a pang of sadness. That was the only time she saw Clay, in dreams where little things like alive or dead didn’t matter.
Dream Clay leaned forward, his lips moving, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying. She was already being pulled back under, into a deeper, more fragmented sleep.
There she dreamed of staircases stretching into the sky with sweating glasses of water waiting at the top for her to drink them. But every time she reached the top and stretched her fingers out to close around the glistening tumbler, the stairs would flatten and she would slide down, down, down to where she’d started. She climbed the stairs again and again, her thirst growing until it was a screaming need clawing at her throat, until she wept and in her desperation smeared her own tears back into her mouth, sucking the salty wetness onto her tongue.
She woke with a moan and a shudder in her chest, her tears following her into the waking world.
“Water,” she croaked, her damp lashes sticking together as she opened her eyes. Her head didn’t hurt anymore, but the thirst was torturous. If this was how her captors meant to kill her, her death would be terrible, a slow descent into madness. “Please, water.”
“Here,” a deep voice said from beside her. “Just a sip.”
Harley’s head rolled to the right, her lips parting in a silent “oh.” If her throat weren’t so dry, she would have cried out with a sound equal to the shock of seeing a man risen from the dead.
It was Clay and this was no dream. He was here. Now. With her in this room.
He’d aged since the last time she’d seen him. His deeply tanned skin was lightly creased around his eyes and across his forehead and he had acquired a long, jagged scar above his left temple. It was where he had been bleeding the night of the crash, the night she had touched his cold face and been certain that he was dead.
“H-how,” she rasped, eyes wide as she scanned his face, searching for clues. There was something different about him, something more than the fine lines and the scar, but her fogged mind couldn’t figure out what it was. “I th-thought you were dead.”
“I have been,” he said, holding out a cup with a straw in it. “Do you want a drink or not?”
Blinking fast, she leaned over, closing her lips around the straw and sucking greedily until Clay grabbed the top and pulled it from her mouth.
“Not too much,” he said, setting the water back on the table by the bed. “You’ll make yourself sick.”
Harley lay back on the pillows, flexing and releasing her fingers as her thoughts raced.
Clay was alive.
Her arms were bound above her head.
Clay was alive.
She’d been kidnapped from her house.
Clay was alive.
There had been a needle in her throat and then the world had gone black.
And now she was here, wherever here was, and Clay was alive, sitting beside her bed, waiting for her to wake up.
“Wh-why….” She shook her head, trailing off as she swallowed hard, forcing the water trying to crawl up her throat back down again. “What—”
“I don’t remember you being this slow on the uptake.” Clay leaned in, his elbows resting on his knees. “Come on Harley, use that clever brain of yours. You know why. And you know what this is.”
Her eyes went wider until the muscles ached around the sockets.
This couldn’t be happening. Clay was the nicest man she’d ever met. He was laughter and thoughtfulness and long nights whispering beneath the covers like they were children breaking the rules to stay up late and tell ghost stories. He was the only man who had ever made her laugh and come at the same time, and his eyes were the first place she’d seen a reflection of herself that wasn’t twisted or wrong.
He’d shown her a glimpse of a woman who was lovable. And for the first time in her life she’d dared to believe that maybe—when her revenge was complete and the bodies lying still in their graves—she could be a person like Hannah. She could be worthy of love and happiness and long sleeps without any nightmares in them.
Now, she saw that worthy person in Jasper’s eyes. And now, when she looked at herself in the mirror, she saw a woman who kept her secrets close, but her son closer.
She wasn’t the selfish, destructive child she’d been the night she and Clay were run off the road on their way to get married in Niagara Falls. That girl had died, but she’d left wreckage behind and wounded people prepared to take up the torch of revenge and hold it to her bare feet.
She suddenly knew why Clay had brought her here and it made her heart stutter in her chest.
“I can explain,” she said, tongue slipping out to dampen her lips.
“You can explain why you framed Jackson for rape?” Clay said, the contempt in his voice making her cringe. “You can explain why you lied and convinced me that he beat you, destroying my relationship with a man who was like a brother to me?”
“It wasn’t about—”
“An innocent man,” Clay continued, before she could begin to explain, “who went to jail and lost everything—his career, his family, his good name—because of you. You destroyed his life, Harley. You took everything that mattered away from him. And why? To punish his father, who couldn’t give two shits about his son.”
Harley bit her bottom lip, fighting to think past the fear surging inside of her. She knew what was different about Clay now. His eyes didn’t reflect anything anymore. They were flat, hard, and utterly lacking in empathy. She had a barren place inside of her where their love had once lived, but Clay had a hellscape, a nightmare world inhabited by demons born from the special breed of hatred one can only feel for a person he or she once loved.
“And I believed you for years,” he continued in a softer voice. “I believed you loved me and that you’d died an innocent woman who’d had her life, and her chance at happiness, stolen away from her. Stolen away from me.”
Her throat ached. “Please, Clay, let me at least try to explain.”
“But I know the truth now. And I have enough evidence to put you in jail for the rest of your life.” He placed a hand on her forehead with enough pressure to send a fresh rush of fear washing through her. “I know you’ve been helping Marlowe Reynolds smuggle drugs inside your sculptures. I have pictures, audio, and your fingerprints on the bags you sealed inside the plaster. All I have to do is press send on an email to my department head and I’ll have a warrant to take you in.”
“No, you can’t,” she said, knowing it was a stupid thing to say the moment the words left her mouth.
But she wasn’t thinking clearly. All she could think about was Jasper out in the world alone and her behind bars unable to see her son ever again.
Clay’s hand slid into her hair, fisting in the strands at the top of her scalp as he leaned closer, growling his next words into her face, “You don’t tell me what I can or can’t do. You don’t manipulate people or make up the rules to the game. Not anymore.”
He released her and sat back, continuing in a more controlled voice, “From now on, your job is to give me what I want when I want it. That’s your purpose and the quicker you get used to it, the sooner this will be over.”
“So what do you want?” she said, anger rising inside of her. “To punish me, hurt me? Go ahead. I know I deserve it for the things I did, but I’m not that person anymore. I swear I’m not. And I have people depending on me, innocent people who need me to stay out of jail.”
“Like our son,” he said, knocking the wind out of her. “I know about Jasper. I saw him get onto the plane with your friend. I hope you said a meaningful goodbye because that was the last time you’re ever going to see him.”
“No!” For the first time since she woke up, her voice was strong. “You can’t. He needs me!”
Clay’s lip curled. “He doesn’t need you. I wouldn’t wish you on my worst enemy, let alone my son.”
“He does need me,” she insisted, anger and fear pumping through her, making her tremble. “Jasper loves me and I love him. We’re a family. I swear to you, Clay, I love him more than anything in the world. Everything I’ve done since the day he was born has been for him.”
“For him.” Clay smiled, an ugly smile that made her feel smaller than she had in a long time. “You’ve been smuggling drugs for one of the most dangerous men in the world for your son? Surely even you realize that doesn’t sound like something a real mother would do. Real mothers go out of their way to protect their children from danger. They don’t offer it an engraved invitation.”
“I never told Marlowe about Jasper. He doesn’t even know I have a son,” she said, tears rising in her eyes. “I’ve done my best to protect him. If I’d had a choice, I would have been out a long time ago. I didn’t know the way Marlowe worked when it started. I was only planning to work for him for a year, maybe two, just until I could make enough money to—”
“You had money. I know who your father is.” He shook his head, a sharp burst of laughter escaping his lips. “Did you have fun that summer, pretending to be a cocktail waitress and slumming with Jackson and me? Fucking both of us while you turned the men who loved you against each other?”
“This isn’t about you,” she said with a sob, sending the tears in her eyes spilling down her cheeks. “Or Jackson. Or me. Or the ugliness in the past. This is about a smart, sweet, amazing little boy who loves and needs his mother. You can’t take me away from him. You can’t, Clay, or you’ll be as terrible a person as I was back then.”
His eyes flashed with cold rage, but Harley couldn’t seem to stop words from streaming out of her mouth.
“No, you’ll be worse,” she said, sniffing hard. “Because you weren’t raised by a mother who couldn’t stand the sight of you and a father who encouraged you to be a vicious piece of shit. You had parents who loved you and laughed with you and told you how wonderful you were. You were whole to start with, Clay, you didn’t have to learn—”
Before she realized he was moving, he was on the bed, looming over her with his hand around her neck.
“And then you destroyed me!” he shouted, the hatred in his eyes making her tears flow faster as his grip tightened, wrenching a gagging sound from her throat. “You killed the person I was, you poisonous cunt! You are toxic and if you think I’m going to let you so much as speak to Jasper through the bars of a prison cell, you’re out of your fucking mind.”
Harley squirmed beneath him, her body writhing as her vision grayed around the edges and the backs of her eyes began to pulse.
Years ago, she could never have imagined herself and Clay in a position like this. No matter how angry he might have been, Clay wasn’t the kind of person to take out his rage on another person, especially a woman tied to a bed, helpless to defend herself. But he wasn’t that man anymore. He was a monster, a monster she had created and now he was back from the dead, crawled out of his grave to take retribution.
They said karma was a bitch, but at that moment Harley knew karma was a devil with the face of the man you loved, slowly choking the life from your body as the world went dark.