The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (The Devils #2)(62)
Moving as far away as I could and becoming the furthest thing from my father—it was my own, quiet fuck you to him. And now my mother is dying and I’m the one who’s fucked. I’m the one who’s going to be thousands of miles from her, unable to help.
I waited to confirm it until we were home, but I already knew. I knew it the moment I stepped into the Honolulu airport and saw that desperate look in her eyes. It said Let me have this last vacation with you all. Let me pretend.
And so we pretended. Now we’re here to face facts.
The oncologist comes in. He wants to cut out the diseased parts of her liver and put her in an experimental trial. She says yes to all of it. She knows she will die, but she simply wants more time to set us all straight before she goes.
Once again, I allow her to believe something that isn’t likely to happen.
“I was able to get a little more leave,” I tell her on the way home. “I can take you to get the port put in.”
She squeezes my hand. “I wish we were doing something slightly more fun, but thank you.”
My jaw grinds. I hate that I can’t stay.
“Have you heard from Drew?” she asks suddenly.
My tongue prods my cheek. Ever since New York, Drew and I have been texting a hundred times a day. It’s as if that was the moment we took the cork off the bottle, and I don’t see how it could ever go back on. I wake thinking of her, I run thinking of her, I eat thinking of her, I jerk off thinking of her.
I’ve never experienced anything like this obsession. And it isn’t just sex, though God knows when she video calls from an interview, whispering from the bathroom and wearing the thinnest possible tank top, those are the thoughts that come to the fore.
I want to know how her day is, I want to know why she looks so troubled at the thought of going on stage. I want to know why I hear her repeating numbers in her sleep every time we’re together. I want to unpeel her, layer by layer, until I get to her heart, and then put everything back together once I know it’s in good shape.
“Drew,” I repeat, doing my best to look blankly at my mother. “Why would I have heard from her?”
“You two got along so well by the end of the trip. I just thought…” She stops, shrugging, and for a moment I find that I’m hoping for a reprieve.
I just thought something might happen with you two, she could say. I just thought that maybe if she wasn’t dating Joel, the two of you might…you know.
“I hoped she might confide in you,” my mother says instead. “I still think she and Joel will get back together. She could be like the sister you never had.”
My hands grip the steering wheel. “Mom, I can assure you, that’s not going to happen.”
I would do almost anything for my mother, but I will not give her this. I just can’t.
36
DREW
I arrive in London on no sleep. It’s the middle of the night back home but here it’s a dreary gray morning and rush hour, and I just don’t feel ready to face the day ahead.
It’s not entirely the lack of sleep. Yesterday, Josh told me Beth’s cancer is back and that it doesn’t look good, which seems like doctor speak for definitely fatal. I can’t stop going over the trip in my head now, remembering Beth’s determination to do things she wasn’t up to, her tears when Six arrived and her obsession with seeing her sons paired off. It all makes sense now, but her selflessness just makes it hurt more. At a time when anyone else would be thinking about themselves, Beth was thinking of her sons, and she had enough love left over to extend it to me.
I fish sunglasses out of my purse and put them on, doing my best to surreptitiously wipe away tears before the driver sees.
Josh wants his mom to die secure in the knowledge that he and Joel still have each other to lean on. I want to give that to her, too, but the weird thing is that Beth is the one I want to talk to about Josh. When she texts to say she saw me on TV, or to wish me luck or to send pictures of their dogs—more than anything, I want to say I’m crazy about Josh. I think he’s the best man I’ve ever known and you did such a good job with him.
In another life, inexplicably, I think she’d be thrilled.
I dry my eyes and steel myself as the car pulls up to the Mandarin Oriental. Davis and Ashleigh are the first people I see when I walk inside. I’d prefer they were the last.
“I’ve got you an appointment with a colorist,” he says. “She’s up in your room.”
I blink at him. A part of me is ready to concede, the way I always do, but a newer part shouts Who the fuck do you think you are? The news about Beth puts things in perspective a bit. It’s a reminder that there are harder things to live through than Davis’s fury.
“Then you can tell her to leave,” I reply.
His jaw locks with rage, and he’s clearly itching to threaten me, but my hair color is not in our contract. There isn’t a doubt in my mind, however, that he’ll find a way to make me pay.
He is nothing if not consistent. To punish me for the grave sin of wanting my hair to be its natural color, Davis swamps me. He squeezes in extra interviews, an extra meet and greet. My head doesn’t hit the pillow until two in the morning, and at five AM, he’s got hair and wardrobe knocking on my door to ready me for more of the same.