“This isn’t about him. It’s about you.”
“It’s all about him! He’s evil, Cait, I swear to it—he’s—”
“Evil? What do you call lying about the fact that you have a son?”
“Tony’s not mine. He’s G.B.’s.”
Cait opened her mouth. Closed it. Felt a pounding in her temples that suggested very soon, maybe in the next ten minutes, she was going to need to lie down in a dark room for several hours.
“You know what,” she said slowly. “I think it would be best if I don’t see either one of you again. Please just get in your truck and go—I’ve got enough to worry about in this life. I don’t need this drama.”
Stepping back, she was about to close the door on him when he caught the thing and held it wide. “Just let me explain. You don’t have to do anything but listen, and if at the end of it, you still think I’m full of shit? Throw me out. Hell, I’ll throw myself out. But, Cait, please. Don’t let him do this to me again.”
She frowned, thinking that was a weird phrasing.
Oddly, she remembered the janitor.
Talk it out. You need to talk it out.
“Please, Cait.” God, there was such anguish in that voice of his. “Just hear me out.”
After a long moment, she inched back enough to let him through. Closing the door, she went over to the bay window that faced the street and sat with one hip on its ledge. She didn’t want him getting any ideas that either one of them was going to get comfortable.
Duke walked around her little living room, dragging his hand through his hair, shaking his head, looking like he was about to explode from some inner conflict. Whatever. She wasn’t going to prompt him or make this easy on him in any way: As the light drained fully out of the sky, and the lamps that were on in the room became the only source of illumination, she just sat and watched him suffer.
Kind of gratifying, considering how she’d felt since she’d been to that goddamn mall.
“When you asked me whether or not I had family,” he said abruptly, “I told you I didn’t, because short of sharing some DNA with G.B.? He and I are strangers—and I want to keep it that way. I need to keep it that way.” He closed his eyes and cursed. “We grew up at Our Lady’s, and he started killing things then—”
Cait felt her eyes bug.
“G.B. exhibited all the classic signs of serious pathology. Setting fires, stealing, wetting his bed, setting traps for other kids. He was removed from the place and sent to a juvie facility by the time he was ten, and he never forgave me for the fact that I was the one they kept. He hated me—although, honestly, he hated everyone and everything, it seemed. After he left? I didn’t see him for years. But eventually, he found me at Union. Didn’t know it, though. I had no clue where he’d been or what he’d become.”
He stopped and looked at her. “I was dating a woman, had been for a while. It was my senior year and I had all kinds of plans, you know, med school—she was going to go, too. We were all about the future. But you know, premed? Hard major. And I wanted to be ahead of everyone else. I was busy busting my ass in the library—while my brother, who’d been watching me, tracking my patterns, infiltrating my life … was starting to talk to her. He’s a great one for cover-ups—a liar right out of the history books. And he got through to her, in ways I couldn’t.”
Cait blinked, the plausibility of the story increasing a little with every word he spoke—even though she wished it didn’t.
“He, ah, well, let’s just say he started sleeping with her behind my back. I found out about it all because she got pregnant. And I’m sure Tony’s not my son as I hadn’t been with her for two months before that because—to be honest, because I was focused on my work and not her.” He cursed again. “I spent a lot of time blaming myself, thinking that if I’d paid more attention to the relationship, maybe it wouldn’t have happened—but ultimately, I believe G.B. would have gotten through. He wanted to ruin me that badly. And he did—and it worked. I left school, shut down, backed out of everything. It was incredibly successful, and what he’d set out to do to me.” He dragged that hand back into his hair. “I can’t explain why the whole thing castrated me like it did. I just … the world didn’t feel safe at all, anymore. And I guess I figured, fuck it and fuck everybody. I’m out.”
As shades of her own story filled in the picture he was painting … she felt a commiseration she hadn’t expected, and probably should have fought.
The trouble was, his affect was spot on, the confusion, the pain, the anger … everything she knew from having walked that path herself ringing true.
And yet … G.B. had seemed equally credible—
From out of nowhere, she thought of the way that man had looked behind the wheel of his car as he’d driven off from St. Patrick’s.
That expression … what if it revealed who he really was?
“I don’t know what to say,” she blurted.
“I told you, all you need to do is listen.” Duke sat on the couch, and braced his elbows on his knees, his eyes nothing but straight-shooter as he stared up at her. “And here’s the part I’m not proud of—well, actually, I’m not proud of a lot, but this … this is the part that involves you. When I saw you at that café? I knew you’d been to see him—you had that … hypnotized look on your face as you walked out. See, our roles got reversed after the Nicole thing. I started to track him at that point—and I went there that night to … I don’t know. I was pissed off because I’d just covered the child support he was supposed to be paying for, like, the hundredth month in a row. But when you looked at me, and I got out … there was something between you and me. Later, I went to that theater hoping that you were just there to hear him sing, but then you said he’d asked you to meet him.”
“So you wanted to see me because he wanted me, too.”
His eyes didn’t blink, didn’t move … didn’t lie. “That’s right. I asked you to the Iron Mask because I wanted to take something he wanted—but Cait, that didn’t last. Listen, I swear on … well, I don’t have anything of any value to swear on … but everything changed for me. I’ve been head fucked over the whole thing between you and me, because I knew things had started wrong, and I didn’t know how to tell you. It just never occurred to me that he’d get to you before I could, to be honest. He hasn’t shown any interest in me since what happened with Nicole.”
Cait looked down at her Poland Spring bottle. Picked the corner of the label. Chewed on her lip.
For some reason, the image of G.B. and that receptionist fighting together dogged her. The woman had been viciously mad, out of her mind, totally rude—and G.B. had handled it so smoothly, like he seemed to handle everything.
But then behind that wheel of his car, his face … that beautiful, handsome face … had been so twisted.
Which was the real one? That was the question.
She cleared her throat. “This is a lot to take in.”
“I know. I’ve had to live with it all my life, and I still can’t understand it. Not fully.” He laughed harshly. “You want to know how weird it is? I’ve been going to a psychic for years, down on Trade Street. None of this seems real, so I thought maybe someone who deals in the unreal could help … protect me or some shit. I don’t know.”
“Has it worked?”
“No. She’s just been calling me nonstop about a dream she’s been having about some brunette.”
Cait touched her hair. “What kind of dream?”
“She just wants me to stay away from—” He stopped. “But listen, you’re a blond now, right. Although honestly, if she was talking about you? She was probably right. You don’t need this shit.”