“Do you love her?” she asks simply, like nothing I’ve said matters.
Sighing heavily, I tell her, “That’s frankly irrelevant at this point.”
“I don’t think it is. Anyway, you didn’t let me finish. Instead of choosing hatred, you can choose love.”
“Love is a feeling, not a choice. Go sing Kumbaya in the woods with some hippies if you want to hang out with people who buy that shit,” I mutter.
“No,” she says firmly. “Don’t tell me I don’t know love. I know love like you assholes know mob politics. Believe me when I tell you, love is a choice. It’s a choice you make over and over again. You say it’s not a choice because it isn’t always the easy thing to do, and you don’t want to pull someone else’s heavy load. You call it strength, but it’s fear. You dismiss real love and call it weakness because it’s not something you can
understand in your stingy, egotistical heart, but that doesn’t make you right. It makes you sad and lonely, and you blame everyone else, but it’s your own damn fault. You life won’t change until you start making different choices, Rafe. Until you let love in.”
Some of what she’s saying lands in a logical place. I even agree with some of it. I do appreciate emotionally strong women, women who love with the unrelenting strength of a warrior, but I guess I don’t enforce the same requirements on myself. Virginia has offered me her love on countless occasions, even knowing I might crush her, and despite the abundance of her love, I couldn’t even commit to a relationship. I asked her for vulnerability, but I kept her at a comfortable distance.
Mia is still riled up, and she doesn’t know I agree with her in any capacity, so she keeps lecturing me. “Sometimes love requires forgiveness. Do you really think Virginia has never had to forgive you? I know who you are, I know that’s not even possible. She has made that choice for you, probably more times than you can even imagine. Have you ever had to forgive her before?”
No. She’s pretty fucking perfect—evidence-gathering rat business aside.
I must have shaken my head, I can’t remember, but Mia nods like I did. “See? So now it’s your turn. I’m sure in the long haul, you’ll require much more forgiveness than she ever will, but you have to be willing to bend once in a while, to fight for her when she really needs it. You’re a fool if you kill the love she has for you, Rafe. A hopeless fool.”
I let her words marinate for a moment, then I glance up at her. “I told her I was going to kill her, Mia.”
“She knows who you are,” Mia says, shaking her head like that’s not a dealbreaker. “Clearly Virginia doesn’t hold grudges, or she wouldn’t have been with you in the first place after watching you whore around right in front of her for years.”
“That’s true,” I allow.
“She is hurt, but she still loves you. I bet you anything that woman loves you so much, you could ask her forgiveness before pulling the trigger, and she’d give it to you. Virginia has a good heart, and it belongs to you. She is not a rat. She is not a traitor. She has what it takes to love you, and she does not deserve to die because you’re afraid of what she might do with information she cannot help storing in her mind. There’s always another way, Rafe, it’s just less convenient. Isn’t she worth a little inconvenience? She thinks you are. Her life is in your hands. Be merciful with the woman you love. You don’t have to be merciful with the rest of the world, but for her… Find another way.”
35
Virginia
The door opens and Rafe stumbles into his bedroom. The stumbling alarms me. Rafe is a graceful man, not prone to stumbling, but he definitely misses a step on his way in.
“You can go,” he tells Adrian. His words run together, like it’s too much effort to keep them apart.
He is drunk. His shirt is halfway buttoned, but now he carelessly yanks it open, probably popping a button or two, then shoving it down his shoulders. I swallow and scoot back on the bed as his eyes narrow on me. He’s aggressive tonight. Of course he’s aggressive. I don’t know what’s going to happen now. I wait for him to turn off the light for bed, or yank me off the bed and drag me out of here to kill me. Would he change his shirt to kill me? Maybe.
He probably won’t do it himself, though. Too personal. Maybe he’ll send me for a ride with Sin, and I won’t come back.
His tone cool, he asks, “Should I fuck you one last time, Virginia?”
My heart stutters, but I keep my face calm. “If you do, I’d wear a condom and put me in the shower afterward. Don’t want to leave your DNA on my body.”
His lips curve up faintly. “You’re fucking crazy, you know that?” He points at me, nodding as he uses his other hand to unbuckle his belt. “That’s good advice, though. You’re probably right. We should skip the last fuck. Safer that way.”
Since he’s openly referring to my death as an impending thing, I make a request. “I know you’re mad at me, so it might be fun to torment me with uncertainty, but if it’s all the same to you, I’d just like to know what’s coming. Will you kill me tonight, or wait until tomorrow? Will you do it yourself, or will Sin do it?”
Nodding slowly as he kicks off his pants, Rafe says, “I’d probably want to know, too. Of course, I’d want to know so I had time to get out of it. In case that’s your motivation—”
“It’s not,” I assure him.
He continues as if I didn’t speak, “In case that’s your motivation, I figured why beat around the bush, right? We all know what happens next. Why delay the inevitable?”
That’s not at all what I wanted to hear. My heart seems to be lodged in my throat. Such a thick obstruction. I can’t seem to swallow it down, but I nod. At least he answered my question, I guess. “Will you make it look like an accident? Can I… can I call my mom first?” I ask, tears burning behind my eyes.
“No. Too risky. Even if you didn’t try to alert her that something is wrong, she’d hear it in your tone.” He glances back at me as he approaches his dresser. “I’ll let you write her something, though. Do you send cards?”
I try again to swallow, nodding my head. “For holidays.”