Method(98)

“You can’t leave him because he’s protecting me!”

Maybe it should matter that it’s the first time he’s come close to breaking character, but it’s too late.

“Why not?” I fire back, lifting my chin to fight Blake’s ghost head on. “You did.”

Opening the door, I glance back at him and decide to draw the only weapon I have left. “Do me a favor, when you can, let my husband know I’m pregnant.” I don’t bother looking for his reaction because it will break what’s left of me, so I pull the door shut.

“Mila,” erupts from deep within him before his palm hits the closed door between us.





Mila



On my way up to the cottage in the hills, it all begins to make sense. Lucas must have been the one to go through Blake’s things before Amanda and I got there. He must’ve unearthed the truth and the reason for Blake’s demons. The more I scramble for clues, the more that strikes me of what had been apparent all along. The morning after Blake had committed suicide, I rose from sleep early and found Lucas fully dressed in the living room, shrouded in the dark. He didn’t speak, hardly a word that day or the day after. And since then, Lucas became more and more absent. He’d found the answers to why Blake took his life, and it had only spiraled him to put on the mask he now wore.

Lucas isn’t acting as Nikki Rayo.

Blake West is playing Nikki Rayo, and it’s damn near cost my husband his sanity. I’m at a loss, dumbfounded by both his audacity and his brilliance. The characteristics I recognized while Lucas was home were all Blake. Things I should have caught onto much faster. It wasn’t Nikki who bought me that necklace, it was a manic Blake.

All of it was Blake.

“Jesus, Lucas, what were you thinking?”

But he told me. It’s as simple as guilt. He said he owed Blake. He was too buried inside his grief to realize how positively crazy this idea was. Or maybe he thought utilizing Blake’s villainous traits while playing Rayo would help his process.

It’s genius and crazy and nothing less than what I should have expected. My husband is a risk-taker and has been since he set foot in Hollywood. He goes to great lengths to prove a point, and he’s demonstrated that time and time again. I should have known, I should have seen it, but as his wife, I feel violated and manipulated.

Maybe he thought if he could convince me, he could do a better job convincing everyone else. Whatever his reasoning is, it’s torn us apart. And I let it. I broke my own rule after ostracizing him for the same. We’re unrecognizable because I didn’t trust him. We’re unrecognizable because he broke my trust.

It’s. Too. Fucking. Much.

I’m thinking on the defensive, and I don’t want to hate Lucas. I don’t need any more reasons to be angry. Shifting my thoughts another way I try to reason with the side that harbors the guilt. We’d lived twenty minutes away from Blake. Twenty minutes. Could we have saved him? Could we have done more?

Absolutely.

Lucas needs closure for that guilt, that’s apparent. He’s waged war on himself because of it. How do you make it up to your best friend for the fact you weren’t there for both his downfall and ultimately his demise? How do you turn his tragedy into something you can make peace with?

Lucas had colored every part of himself in the insignia of Blake West.

Mind scattered, I pull up to my cottage as the weight settles. I may have broken my own rule but I’m pregnant, and I have more than myself to think about. So far, every part of this revelation has felt like a betrayal, but I will not subject the well-being of myself or that of our child for any part in this lunacy. I’m breaking apart piece by piece trying to sift through the ashes of three lives. My husband is sacrificing himself and our marriage in some sort of effort to redeem Blake. He’s gone much too far, and maybe he trusted me too much. But it isn’t Lucas I’m leaving, it’s Blake I’m abandoning. Or perhaps it’s both.

And what a performance.





Lucas



“Hey, man, you want another beer?”

“Yeah,” I say, sprawled on the large beach mat next to him looking across the water. It’s hot but the bleached sand is deflecting it nicely, and there’s just enough of a breeze where it’s comfortable. “This is beautiful.”

“Not bad,” Blake says, taking a sip of his beer. “Peaceful.” He pops the top of a Corona and hands it to me as he looks on at Mila and Amanda frolicking in the ocean. They’re wearing brilliant twin smiles and occasionally looking back at us. I bite my lip at the sight of my wife’s beautiful ass in her new bikini, the curve of her hips, the lines of her neck, the loose tendrils of hair that have escaped her sloppy bun. She’s in her element in the sparkling surf.

“You really do love her,” Blake says, eyeing me as I admire her. “Like soul-deep love.”

“I do. And you’re one to talk,” I nod toward them, “that redhead has you by the balls.”

“That she does. I didn’t like her at all when we met. She had those fucking judgy eyes. I thought no way in hell would she be the type I’d get along with. And back then, on the show, I don’t think she was. But meeting her the second time, she was the opposite, just so laid-back, with dancing skeletons in her own closet, and she was honest about it. Didn’t give two shits who knew about them, and I love that about her. She’s beautiful, and she’s brave. I admire her. I truly do. I just…I just, damn, I fell hard. There’s no going back.”