Poison

He told me about the New Age psychic crap she’d bought into when she’d wanted to believe their destiny was together, and it made me feel queasy just to think about it. Queasy to think that Hannah Ames really had been pregnant with Jamie, her eldest, and handed over her positive test to Maya to use for her games.

I had to say it, so I did, even though it made Lucas visibly flinch.

“Do you think you really had sex with her that night?”

“I can’t think about it,” he said. “Because if I even begin to think she lied about that too, I’ll never be able to be in the same room as her again. It’s bad enough already.”

“But she might have lied about it,” I pushed. “I mean, if she can lie about being pregnant with your child for the sake of psychic destiny, then surely she can lie about anything?”

He pulled onto the driveway and turned off the ignition, but he didn’t move from his seat, just stared out at the house across the garden.

“I was absolutely fucked that night,” he said. “I should never have been that fucked, and I should never have been in a state bad enough to end up in some random woman’s bed, regardless of what happened or not when I was in there.” He turned to face me. “I should never have been in a position where I could believe I’d make a mistake that bad, regardless of whether or not I actually made it or not.”

“But you might not have made it,” I said. “You might just have got so drunk, you stumbled out of a taxi and thought you were home.”

“Or I might have been so drunk, I stumbled out of a taxi into Maya Brook’s bed and thought she was you enough that I fucked her. I’ll never know.”

He was right on that front. She was sure as hell never going to admit it, whatever the case.

I sighed and leaned back in my seat, staring out at the house along with him.

“So this is where it starts again, is it?” I asked. “Our whole new life, a decade later.”

“This is where it starts again,” he said, and his hand was right back in mine. “It’s been one fuck of a road getting here, but we’re here. Jesus Christ, Anna. I’m so glad we are.”

I tried to imagine living in the house, with him and the dogs. I tried to imagine this being home now, and meeting his sweet little girl and being Daddy’s girlfriend.

The whole thing would be so bizarre.

So bizarre, but so right.

“Let’s get it going then,” I said, and I was smiling as I dropped down from the truck.

He cooked me dinner, and we moved the conversation back to the more positive sides of life and we were laughing by the end of it, staring at the ceiling in bed, hand in hand and throwing around our ideas for the year ahead. We talked about summer trips, and whether we should get a batch of chickens for the garden, and how maybe, just maybe, we could get ponies for our new countryside life.

Because that’s what this was. A countryside life. The life we’d contemplated having one day when we were living our regular lives in the city way back when.

And now we had it.

Now we really had it looming ahead.

I knew what was coming before the police turned up a few days later. I knew as soon as they sat down opposite me in Lucas’s living room and began the conversation.

My word against his, unfortunately not enough evidence to prosecute, and I managed to nod my way through it without crying, because I’d tried.

I’d been honest and at least I’d tried.

After they’d gone, he held me tight, and I let out the fears I’d been pushing away for days on end.

“What if he comes after me, Lucas? Because he might. He never lets things go, and he’ll be raging. Totally raging that I went to the police about him.”

“He won’t be thinking of coming after you for long, Anna, I promise you,” he said, and put his hands on my shoulders and pushed me back enough to look me straight in the eyes. “I never let things go, either, and he isn’t going to be capable of coming after you for very long. I’ve made sure of that.”

There was a flash of panic inside, because I knew whatever he was talking about would be serious, but his eyes were so steady and so true.

“Tell me,” I said. “Please, Lucas, just tell me.”

So he did.

He finished making dinner and we sat down at the table together, and he told me all about how Sebastian Maitland was a corrupt little prick who’d used his career position for fraud and bribery. He told me how Sebastian was arrogant, and over the years had become careless with his bullshit, and it had been so easy to piece together behind the scenes by checking out his communications activity from three different phone accounts.