Total pages in book: 209
Estimated words: 196141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 981(@200wpm)___ 785(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 196141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 981(@200wpm)___ 785(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
I will go myself. Tristan moves away from the bed, stops, turns back to her. You have done me such favors tonight, Wendy. More than I will ever be able to repay you for.
“It is my duty. The contract.”
You remind me of that so often lately, I noticed.
“Because it is the final year.”
Tristan is struck by that information. Nearly as struck as he’s been by everything else she’s reported tonight. He swallows as he observes her. We have … been by one another’s side for so long … like companions in crime. I suppose I forgot our friendship had an expiration.
“It is one reason I remind you constantly we are not friends.”
Of course. Tristan tries to be strong. So much about tonight. Markadian upon the brink of death. Kaleb’s face bloodied by the lion. Kyle’s last words. Raya’s last words. Yes, we are … not friends, he agrees, as if uttering the words himself gives him some kind of power over them. Upon taking his next breath, his throat tightens, choking back a tear. We are business partners, of a sort. Bound by the terms of … of a contract.
“I detect your emotional state collapsing.”
Excellent observation, I shall note it in your monthly employee eval.
“If you prefer I call our contractual relationship a ‘friendship’ instead, then I will oblige, as it is my duty.” She pauses. “Is it better that I say: our ‘friendship’ will end?”
No, Tristan decides, that is not better, not at all.
In the blink of an eye, Wendy stands before him in her sweet, human-girl-like shape, wearing a hooded cloak, soft-eyed, a hint of a smile upon her thin lips. “I am your friend, Tristan.”
He meets her eyes. The eyes she’s created for him. The eyes she has perfected to put humans at ease over the years.
He smiles wistfully. Your eyes have improved. Your emulation of human emotion, nearly indistinguishable from … from the real stuff.
Wendy smiles back. The smile looks wholeheartedly, utterly, fully, unquestionably genuine. Even if Tristan knows with one-hundred percent certainty that it is not.
Less than twenty minutes later, Tristan stands in front of the door to the Hastings suite. The door isn’t closed.
He moves inside, closes the door behind him. A dark room. The shutters left wide open, exposing the starry sky, the night, the glow of the moon. He follows a trail of bloodied clothes to the bathroom, where he comes to an abrupt stop at the opened door.
He hears nothing. No breath. No whispering. No droplets of water. Nothing at all.
Tristan steps inside. In the bathtub sits Brock. Water to his chest, just beneath his nipples. Arms resting on either side. Staring ahead, yet not seeing a thing. Eyes totally blank. Dry. Reddened. In his hair, bits of blood, thin trails of watery red spidering down his ears, his neck, pooling in spots upon his muscular shoulders.
Then Brock turns his face.
Sees Tristan.
Says nothing at all.
Tristan suspects this is the first time in over an hour, maybe two, that Brock has moved at all. Or is it presumptuous, to think that he is special enough to be the one and only thing in the world to draw Brock’s attention?
I’m sorry, he says.
Brock says nothing back.
His dry, reddened eyes trapped upon Tristan’s, crusted with clots of blood and dirt that never quite wiped away. Never once blinking. Never once flinching. As still as glass.
Even now, Tristan thinks on Brock’s handsomeness, and how he’s always looked so sweet beneath the brawn. A sleeping face on Tristan’s lap in the hallway of a Texas high school, vulnerable.
The man sitting in that tub is anything but vulnerable. He is deadly. Yet his eyes tell another story, a story Tristan sees.
It’s to those eyes that Tristan speaks. It’s my fault, everything, all of it. For what’s happened to you. For your wife. Your son. All of it.
Brock continues to stare. Silent as death. Vacant.
You were right, says Tristan, slowly approaching the bath. All those years ago. You did right by trying to protect Kyle from me. I am … I am bad. I am a bad person. You deserve … Tristan stops. His eyes are full of tears, all of them clinging to his lashes, refusing to fall. You deserve a better existence. You deserved a better death, far, far from now, when you’re old and grey … I don’t even know if this is another chance at life you’ve been given … or just a living hell.
There is no change in Brock’s face. It is like talking to a wax model, to a mannequin in a store. Tristan’s words, filling a room, falling upon a dead man’s ears, falling upon the silent walls.
Tristan bows his head, unable to look at Brock anymore. He drops to his knees, hands on the floor. He can’t bear to breathe.
He barely hears the water stir.