“Life is funny like that, isn’t it,” Leila says. “Good people rarely get the karma that they deserve. It’s the wicked who tend to persist.”
I don’t respond to that, because I’m not sure what to say. It is as close to an admission of her intentions as I’m going to get. Whatever Leila has started here, she intends to finish it.
“They think he’s not going to last too much longer,” she finally says. Her eyes are wide, flitting across my face as if in search of a reaction.
My heart thrums in my chest, and I get the eerie sensation that she can hear it, that she’s listening to my blood sloshing through my temples and knows exactly how terrified I am.
“Who is ‘they’?” I ask, trying to keep my voice even. “The neurosurgeon? His oncologist?”Or just you?
Leila circumvents my question like I didn’t ask it. Instead, she smooths a hand down Brandon’s sheets.
“I heard about you and Julian,” she says.
His name pierces like a javelin through my chest.
“Oh?” I manage. My hands are shaking again; I shove them into my pockets. “Well. Yeah. Breakups. They happen.”
“I was going to offer my condolences,” she continues. The smile she gives me is eerily cheerful, out of place in the dreary space. “Don’t take it personally. I’ve known Julian a long time; he likes to get lost in his little fantasies, but when he comes crashing back to Earth, and he always does…” She places a hand on my shoulder. “Well, let’s just say that it was only ever going to end badly.”
I stiffen. Hatred isn’t a feeling I have much experience with, but right now, I hate Leila. I hate her for descending into our lives and blowing us into pieces. I hate her for stealing Winona’s husband, and Sophie’s father, and my friend, when she could have anyone else.
Leila isn’t smiling anymore. She squints at me, and I’m not so addled as to not see that she can sense my hostility.
“Thank you for coming by, Sean,” she says. “But I’d like some time alone with my husband.”
I want to refuse her. To stand guard at Brandon’s side for the rest of the night, protect him from whatever else she has in store for him.
But I don’t. I can’t. There’s too much I don’t know, no way to weigh the potential consequences of defying her against the benefits. What I do know: I’m alone, Leila is a predator, and right now she is baring her teeth.
“Of course,” I say, walking backward to the door.
She gives me an indulgent smile.
“Goodbye, Sean. Be well.”
She sounds like someone who thinks they’ll never see me again. But I decide, in that moment, that she will, and soon.
Because something tells me that she’ll be attending Rose’s event. And trap or not, I’ll be there as well. To see this through to its end.
Twenty-Five
I take Onix to doggy daycare and board him for three days. It’s a precautionary measure, probably overkill, but I feel like I am going to war and I need to make sure that he won’t be left stranded in case I don’t make it back. I pack too much food, pay for him to get an extra walk and a peanut butter Kong every day, double-check that Winona’s still listed at his emergency contact, and smother his gigantic block head with kisses before I say goodbye. Onix seems to understand that this is no ordinary drop-off, because he whines and resists his favorite trainer when they come to take him to the back. When he’s safely stowed away, I get ready for the exhibit.
It may be my last night on Earth, and so I dress to kill. The black floor-length dress I find last minute at the nearby Saks skims down my body from the top of its mock neck down to the floor, the monotony broken by a mesh-covered slit that snakes scandalously up my thigh and across my chest. I brush my hair into glistening silver finger waves, follow a tutorial for makeup that transforms me into an almost unrecognizably glamorous version of myself.
I should be going crazy, but I’m strangely calm. The missing puzzle pieces are turning up, and I’m starting to make a picture out ofthis strange, macabre chaos. The dreams that have afflicted me since Julian first sat down next to me at the Edison Mansion? Well, that’s because he’s a creature who infiltrates dreams to seduce unsuspecting victims. My series of unexplained ailments? Withdrawal, from the intoxicating effect of his presence.
Julian breaking my heart in the most efficient, devastating way possible, erasing himself as thoroughly as he could from my life, then reappearing in my dreams to beg me for forgiveness?
I did it for you. To protect you.
He is the thing that makes the least sense here. An immortal spirit who listens to Tyler, the Creator and tries to convince me to ditch my iPhone for a Huawei, who tumbles around my living room with my dog and brings me coffee in bed. The one who kisses me like I’m the first gulp of oxygen after a deep dive, who refused to touch me for three months because the one time he did, he took a part of me with him.
He loves you, Rose’s note says, and I read the words over and over, as mystified by them as I am by their writer. I ignore the pang in my chest and focus on logic—and logically, they make sense. If Julian had meant to deceive me in order to siphon away my life, he would have ravished me nightly, not held me at a proverbial arm’s length. His hesitance, his hunger, the helplessness in his voice on our last night together…that had all been him holding back.
Because he loves me. Julian Conradloves me.
Maybe that love is worth enough that he’d be willing to stop Leila and save Brandon’s life.