Liar Liar

‘There was an accident,’ he says.

‘Up at the house?’ The door slams behind me, and I realise I haven’t brought my key.

‘With Amélie? Was he there this evening?’

‘No!’ My head rears back at his suggestion, almost as though he’d dealt me a slap. ‘The other house. The one up in the mountains.’ I wave in the vague direction that the house may or may not be. ‘I don’t really know where the hell it is. But tell me, what happened?’

We pause at the elevator, and Rhett pokes the call button. ‘All I know is I got a call from the crew of Le Loup to say he was dragged out of the water at the marina at one thirty this morning. They said he was unconscious and that he was in an ambulance on the way to the hospital.’

The elevator doors slide open and almost close again as I try to process what he’s saying. It’s like I understand the words, but the whole moment feels surreal. Like I’m here but not really part of it.

‘But he’s okay? You said.’ And also because he has to be.

‘I’ve seen him.’ The words seem to leave his chest in a whoosh of air. ‘He’s alive and he’s talking, but he looks like death.’

I nod as though I understand, but I so don’t. What I do know is that looking like death is something I can deal with. But being dead . . . no.

A shiver runs through my entire body. Someone isn’t walking across my grave so much as breakdancing on it.

‘What was he doing at the marina?’

‘He didn’t tell you?’ I wonder if anyone has ever told him his frowning system seems to be a whole other language on its own.

‘Tell me what?’ I ask.

‘That he was staying there.’

My attention is pulled as the elevator door jerks, trying to close against the bulk of his shoulder, but I don’t have the bandwidth to comment.

‘At the marina?’

‘On the yacht.’

I knew he had a yacht. I think. I guess he has a lot of things he hasn’t spoken of. Like houses.

‘I wonder why?’ I realise I’ve spoken aloud, but Rhett doesn’t offer any response. It strikes me as strange because, tonight aside, Remy hasn’t exactly gone out of his way to give me any space since we broke up. His “win her back” strategy has been a full-on frontal attack. Apart from setting up Charles. He wouldn’t have moved out of the building, deferring to my wounded sensibilities. Not when he was calling me into his office multiple times a day. I guess that’s why he insisted I go home alone, not because he couldn’t trust himself but because he wasn’t going the same way.

‘But he’s okay, isn’t he?’ I ask again, sending out a plea to the heavens, please, please, please let him be okay as my stomach clenches, unease stirring like the silt from the bottom of a river.

‘He came around.’ He nods grimly. ‘And he looks like shit, but he asked for you.’

‘Who’s with him now?’

‘Come on, stop that.’ In an uncharacteristically tender action, he reaches out, obliterating a fallen tear with his thumb. ‘He was being sent for a CT scan when I left.’ I step into the elevator at his urging. ‘How can I put this?’ He eyes the panel before selecting the button for the subterranean parking lot. ‘As he left, he impressed upon me very strongly the idea that he’d like you near.’

‘That’s crazy formal,’ I reply through a bubbling, wet-sounding laugh. I use my sleeves to wipe away more tears.

‘You got the crazy part right, at least.’

At any other time, I might’ve made some retort, some quip about bats and exiting hell when Rhett begins weaving the black Range Rover in and out of the sparse traffic at some speed. If it weren’t for the thought of Remy being in the hospital alone, I might even have managed, but I don’t speak, my fingers gripping the sides of the seat as Rhett gets us to the hospital in the shortest time possible. We’re shown to a waiting room shortly after, the kind they put families in when they have something terrible to tell them.

‘How long had he been in the water?’

The chairs make the back of my thighs itch through my jeans. I try not to squirm, but as I raise my head, I’m struck by the full force of Rhett’s gaze. I’d never really noticed before, but his eyes are grey, a potent mixture of gunpowder and broken glass.

‘We don’t know. What we do know is Hénri took him to the marina a little before one a.m., and that he was found floating face down by one of the deckhands around twenty minutes later.’

Oh, God. I think I’m going to be sick. People die from being in the water for that kind of time, or suffer life-altering brain injuries. What if he—