“Santi?” she whispers, her eyes moving back to me. “What’s going on?”
I rise from my seat on rigid legs, steeled by my retreat back into numbness.
“You are dangerous,” I tell her. “And you have proven that I can’t trust you. Not in my home. Not in my life. And now, there is only one solution that can save you.”
Her eyes move to the figure again, widening with fear as she begins to shake her head. “No. You can’t send me away. You can’t!”
“It’s done.” I tear my gaze away from her, breathing fire into my lungs as I nod to Judge.
He steps forward from the shadows, and Mercedes scrambles from the bed, prepared to fight. To flee. But for one split second, her eyes connect with his, and she pauses, almost… relieved. It doesn’t last. She’s bolting for me when Judge intercepts her, capturing her around the waist. Within seconds, he has her arms pinned behind her back as she screams for me, her desperation clawing at the last shred of my sanity.
“Santi, please don’t do this!”
“Go,” Judge tells me. “Leave, Santiago. I will handle this.”
I look at him and then at my sister. Our eyes connect for one last fleeting glance. In mine, she can see the anguish I tried to avoid, and even now, after everything, she tries to exploit it.
“You won’t do this to me. I know you won’t.”
“It’s already done.”
My stomach sinks, and I walk out the door.
28
Ivy
I clean up in the bathroom attached to the study, then return to the now empty room and look around. I’m pretty sure that was Marco on the line, and I know I heard Mercedes’s name. It must be big given the urgency with which Santiago ran out of here.
It feels strange being in here without him. Feels like I’m not supposed to be here. And I guess I’m not. He did tell me to go to bed. And I will in a few minutes.
I close the door he’d left open and turn back to the large, ornate desk and the chair he’d been sitting in when I came in here. I think about how he looked, and again, there’s that feeling inside my chest. That tightness. A constriction.
I put a hand to my stomach.
Is it true that I could be pregnant? That I could get pregnant now? I look for a calendar on his desk. I don’t even know what day it is. Have I really been here for three months?
Taking a seat in his plush leather chair, I roll myself closer to the desk. I don’t see a calendar, and it feels wrong to open his drawers to search for one. A few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but now, it doesn’t feel right.
The bottle of scotch is still somehow on top of the desk after our lovemaking. I cork it, and I notice the book we knocked off the desk. I bend to pick it up and set it on the desk, the pencil marking his place still inside.
I glance at the door and bite my lip as I consider. It’s not an invasion of privacy really. Not if I let it fall open to the page he’d been looking at. The pencil is right there.
I’m not sure what I expect to find, but it’s not this.
On the page is an unfinished sketch, the lead of the pencil worn down. It’s his book. His sketches. I hadn’t realized it when I’d seen it briefly that night so long ago that it feels like another lifetime. On the page are two lovers in profile, and although they’re not close to finished, I know it’s us. I know it from the skull side of the face that I see.
My face is less clear. Mostly lines and shadows and the fingers of my hand are just grazing his cheek. There’s something hopeless about this image, and it matches what I saw on his face when I first walked in here. Something sad and too broken.
And I know this is an invasion. I know I should close the book and leave his private thoughts private. But I can’t.
I turn the page instead and work backward and what I see is pain. His pain. Poured into this book. Sketches of his sister. Sketches of the woman I’d seen the last time. On one page, there’s a photo stuck inside, and it’s Santiago, Mercedes, and another boy. They must be in their teens. Santiago wears the expression I’ve come to know even then on his young face. He’s too young to look like that. But the other boy is smiling wide, and he has one arm around Santiago and the other around a pre-teen Mercedes. She’s smiling too, and you can already see the beauty she will become.
The two of them are wearing swimsuits, but Santiago is fully dressed in a school uniform. His hair falls into his eyes, and it’s strange to see him like this, without the ink that is so much a part of him. That is the only way I really know him.