“I’m sorry,” he said roughly.
“What for?”
All he could do was shake his head, his voice gone. The cold, calculating clarity he’d felt after the visions of the past had come to him was gone. In its place, he was a destination undefended, stripped of fortifications.
“Matthias? Are you all right?”
Somehow it happened: He stepped forward and put his hands on her waist…and then he was holding her close, putting his face in that hair she’d left loose.
“What happened?” she said softly as she started to rub his back.
“I don’t…” Ah, shit, he was out of his damn mind. “I can’t…”
“All right, it’s okay…”
They stood there together as thunder rumbled like the skies disapproved, and lightning flickered across the underside of the cloud cover.
Goddamn him, but he wanted to stay where they were forever: When he was against this relative stranger’s warm body, there was no past and no future, only the present, and that lack of landscape or horizon was a kind of shelter—
Rain started to fall in big drops, to the point where it was as if they were pelted with marbles.
“Come inside,” she said, taking his hand and using a pass card to enter the building.
A strange chemical perfume in the air tingled in his nose. But it wasn’t floor polish or window cleaner; it was ink from the presses.
“Here,” she said, going over to a maroon door, turning a handle, and pushing the way open with her hip.
The conference room beyond had mismatched chairs and a long table that was a cobbled-together mishmash of components, the Frankenstein of office furniture. There was a Poland Spring watercooler in the corner, though, and she went over and got him a paper cup full.
“Drink this.”
He did as he was told, and as he swallowed, he tried to pull it together.
Mels hopped her butt up on the table, her legs swinging back and forth slowly. “Talk to me.”
Ah, shit, how could he tell her what he remembered? For f**k’s sake, why had he even come here….
Well, at least he knew the answer to that one. He wanted to be honest with one person. Finally. He just had to make the connection with her, like he was in a free fall, she was a rope to catch, and the words he needed to speak were the grip he’d have on his lifeline.
“I killed my father.”
Her feet froze in midswing, her shoulders tensing.
“It was after years of him…” Say it. Say it. Fucking say it. “He was a violent man, and he drank. There were…things that happened that shouldn’t have and I…”
The light in her eyes gradually shifted back, compassion coming to the front once again.
But when it looked like she might hit her feet and try to hug him, he put both hands up. “No, I can’t—I’m not going to get through this if you touch me.”
“Okay,” she said slowly.
“I don’t even know why I’m telling you this.”
“There doesn’t have to be a reason.”
“It feels like there should be.”
“You know you can trust me, right? I may be a reporter, but I meant what I said—that’s my job, not who I am.”
“Yeah.” He rubbed at his hair and then took off the sunglasses. “I’m sorry, but I need to see you clearly.”
She frowned. “There’s no need to apologize.”
He turned her Ray-Bans over in his hand. “I thought you preferred these on me. You know, back at the diner—so you didn’t have to see my face.”
“That wasn’t why I told you to keep them. You’re not ugly to me, Matthias—not by any stretch. And you don’t have to hide yourself.”
Somehow, he knew that wasn’t going to last. He had a feeling the more that came to him, the worse the picture of who he was was going to get—like a paint-by-numbers where you thought you were making a pretty portrait, but it turned out the subject was Michael Myers.
“I boxed him in,” Matthias heard himself say. “I went to my homeroom teacher, and then the school nurse, and I told them everything, explained the absences, and the bruises, and the…other stuff. I was fifteen. I’d kept it all in up until that point—”
“Oh, God, Matthias—”
“—but then I let the cat out of the bag, and the system took over. He had a heart attack in front of me when I told him the secret was everywhere.”
“And that’s why you think you killed him? Matthias, you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Yeah, I did. I watched him die. I didn’t call nine-one-one, I didn’t run for help, I stood there and watched him as he went down to the floor in front of me.”
“You were a victim of abuse and in shock. It’s not your fault—”
“I did it on purpose.”
Now she frowned again. “I don’t understand.”
“I didn’t care what he did to me. That shit was more of an annoyance than anything.” He shrugged. “The whole thing about coming forward was just a mental exercise to me. See, I knew him.” He tapped his temple. “I knew the way he thought, the things that made him tick. He liked being mean and having power over me. He was a not-so-bright guy who worked with dumb animals and corn stalks all day long—it wasn’t until he had to deal with adults who were on his level that his inferiority complex came out. He used to threaten to kill me if I told anyone, and that was his tell. The secrecy was so important to him, and not just because it’s illegal to f**k with your kid. I knew it was going to get him, and more than stop the abuse…I just wanted to see what would happen.”
“Wait, let me ask you something. How long had you been with him?”
“My mother died in childbirth.”
“So your whole life.”
“I was somewhere else for a while, but then I came back to him.”
“When you were little.”
“Yeah.”
“And it doesn’t occur to you that you were just a young kid saving yourself?”
“That was the end result, but not my motivation. And that’s what’s rattled me so badly.”
Mels shook her head. “I think you need to be a little more forgiving of yourself.”
Ah, hell, she wasn’t going to get it. He could see it in her eyes—she had made up her mind about him, and nothing was going to change her opinion.
“Matthias isn’t my real name.”