The Devil Gets His Due (The Devils #4)(8)
Therefore, only one possible solution exists: to slide out of this bed, find a way back to California, and pretend it didn’t happen.
But, holy Lord, I’ve got to stop drinking.
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5
GRAHAM
I wake in a hotel room in Vegas, deeply hungover.
When my mother begged me to relax and have a little fun this weekend, I doubt this was what she had in mind.
The room is a disaster—somehow, we managed to knock over a barstool at the kitchen counter, tear down a curtain rod, and crack a framed picture on the wall. I couldn’t care less. And in spite of the night we just had, I’m already hard as a rock.
I roll over to greet my new wife and discover the bed is empty. I look toward the bathroom, but slowly realize there’s no trace of her: the trail of clothes she’d left around the room last night is gone.
The only surprise here is that I’m surprised. That I ever thought it could have worked out any other way.
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KEELEY
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APRIL
Every movie in which a woman is transformed involves a rock-bottom moment: her heel snaps and she blows the big pitch to a client through no fault of her own. She’s fired immediately and the skies open as she walks outside, drenching her as the cabs blow past, refusing to stop.
My rock-bottom moment, waking up married to the odious Graham Tate four months ago was a little seedier and a lot less blameless. I’ve tried to come up with a way that it isn’t entirely my fault, but I haven’t, just yet.
When a movie is eventually made about my life (Keeley Connolly: The Doctor in Dior), we’ll have to finesse this whole situation so I come across a little more sympathetic. And why not? The movie will bear little resemblance to reality anyway. I will be played by a sixteen-year-old, for instance, which is twenty-nine for women in Hollywood years, and Graham will be played by an actor in his late fifties, which is a Hollywood thirty-four for men. The National Institutes of Health—where I just completed my three-month observership—will be ivy-covered and idyllic rather than a soulless concrete jungle in the middle of DC’s blandest suburb.
I’m sure they can find a way to make my rock-bottom moment sympathetic to the masses in much the same manner.
I still can’t believe it happened, but the one silver lining to this mess is that it provided me the kick in the ass I clearly needed; I haven’t had a single drink since that night. Initially, this was because I was horrified I’d married Graham. Then it was because I was exhausted— something about the long hours and DC’s endless gray winter have sapped my will to live. Thank God I’m finally back in LA.
I drag my bags to the curb at LAX where Gemma now stands, waving.
Her smile fades as I approach. “My God, Keeley, you’re skin and bones.”
Yet my jeans wouldn’t button this morning. I don’t want to think about that now.
I sling my suitcase into her trunk. “DC sucked. The weather was miserable, the food made me sick, even the smell of the air made me sick.”
She raises a brow. “I grew up in DC and I’ve never once noticed a difference in the food or the smell of the air.”
She’s wrong. The smell is revolting. And the smell of the damp paper towels in the hospital bathroom will haunt me the rest of my days. I nearly passed out every time I peed, trying to hold my breath.
“I was busy,” I tell her. “Too busy to eat. And now I need tacos. The Tex-Mex there left much to be desired.”
We go to my favorite restaurant, where I want one of everything on the menu but don’t have the stomach for more than a few bites.
I push the plate away. “I guess DC is still in my blood.” I yawn. All I want in the whole damn world is to sleep.
“Keeley, you look green right now. Has this been going on a while?”
It’s the precise conversation my mother had with her best friend, at our kitchen table. I was fourteen at the time, and I can still recall the way my stomach began to sink, how I went from thinking everything was okay to realizing I could lose my mom, too, just like my cousins lost theirs the winter before.
“I’m just tired. It’s been a long few months.”
Gemma stares at me. “You’re not pregnant, right?”
I roll my eyes…she should know me better than that. “My IUD is ninety-nine percent effective, and condoms are ninety-eight percent effective…which leaves me a hundred and ninety-seven percent unable to get pregnant. I’m pretty sure that means it could reverse an existing pregnancy.”
Gemma’s laugh is muted. “I don’t think that’s what it means. If you’re not pregnant…I mean, given your family history, don’t you think you should get checked out?”
I wince. I’ve tried very hard not to put it all together—the unexplained fatigue, the nausea—but when my pants wouldn’t button this morning, my first thought was of my mom. She’d barely gotten her diagnosis before the build-up of fluid in her stomach began, a sign her cancer was far more advanced than we knew.
“I’m too busy to worry about this now,” I insist, willfully ignoring that I once heard my mom say the exact same thing. “My job starts Monday, and once I get settled here, I’ll be fine.”