End of Eternity 2 Page 6

  “Ugh,” I say, lifting a hand to scrape the webs out of my face. “What the hell, Brad? Will you stop pushing me around? I’m not totally recovered and it hurts to walk.”

  “It’s just over here,” Brad says, dragging me into a section of the attic that is cordoned off by boxes. He pushes me forward until I stumble into the center of the room. “Look around, Carmen. This is just a little taste of the man you were married to. Meet the real Grayson Scott.”

  I find myself holding my stomach as I crouch on the ground. As I fell, I forgot for a moment that I was no longer pregnant. My natural instinct was still to shield my belly from harm. This brings tears to my eyes, and my face contorts in fury. I almost want to not look up at whatever Brad is choosing to show me, just to spite him. However, I am far too curious to prevent my head from moving on its own.

  Once I do look up, I am stunned by the pictures that cover every inch of the walls.

  My eyebrows knit together tightly, sending sharp pain shooting through my forehead. I swallow in stunned silence. It’s my sister. Photographs of her taken at various stages over the past few years. There are photographs from back when she was in college, on campus. In some of the photos, her eyes are closed and she is wearing dark glasses—she only did that on days when she felt shy or insecure, which wasn’t often. I always thought that she looked like a celebrity going incognito more than a blind woman when she did that. However, as I continue to scan over the images, I see more and more disturbing scenes from every aspect of Helen’s life. There are images of her naked in the shower. There are images of her sleeping. There are images of her drinking wine from crystal glasses.

  There are also recent photographs of her with Liam. Helen has her eyes open, and she’s laughing and looking happier than I have ever seen her. There are photographs of my sister kissing her boyfriend in various public locations, and even explicit photos of them making love. Oh god. These had to be taken in the past few months.

  Grayson was stalking Helen.

  Even while he was with me. Even while I was pregnant with his child, he was stalking my sister. It looks like he was having her followed, perhaps planting hidden cameras, and spending significant resources on fulfilling his sick obsession. I shake my head in amazement as I rise to my feet, moving around the room to examine the various photographs. The ones from long ago include innocent photos of Helen and me sitting at a café and having a cup of espresso. That must have been how Grayson came to know me: incidentally, as a result of his freakish stalking.

  The recent pictures depict Helen sitting and working at her computer in a hospital café, while chatting with an attractive young woman wearing a waitress outfit. It seems like Helen made a friend. I feel a little jealous, and wish that I could have gone for a coffee to sit and chat with my sister. It’s been so many years. I find myself getting lost in the photos, and the story that each one tells, instead of focusing on how deeply disturbing it is that Grayson had these.

  My attention is caught by a section of the wall that is covered in artistic sketches. Watercolors, pastels, and charcoal. I did not even realize that my husband could draw. The sketches are stunning, even if their content is sinister and eerie in nature. I assume that the woman he painted in most of them is Helen. There are variations in which she has intricate white angel wings sprouting from her back, and other variations where she is sitting or lying in obscenely erotic positions.

  I find that my throat has gone very dry. I need to look away, and I bite my lip as I gaze at the wooden floorboards. I don’t even want to imagine what my husband came up here to do, other than to draw out his graphic idealizations of Helen and fantasize about my sister. Nausea claws at my stomach, and I hate Brad for showing me this.

  “You stopped looking,” he says, moving next to me and grasping the hair at the back of my neck so that he can force me to stare at the worst of the images. These drawings seem to be a recreation of the day that Grayson raped my sister, and I gasp for breath as I feel bile rise in my throat.

  “I want you to see them all,” Brad says with a sneer. “Take a good, hard look, Carmen. This is the inside of the mind of the man you loved. The man you married. And you grieve for him? You grieve for your child? He was sick. He was insane. Your child would have been sick. This would have been the future of your little daughter, your darling Grace.”

  “No!” I say brokenly. “She would have only had the best parts of him.”

  “You don’t get to pick and choose which parts of a person go into their offspring,” Brad says angrily. “Come on, Carmen. You’re not that dumb. Good and bad are two sides of the same coin. Grayson was a brilliant man, a genius when it came to the market, and obviously a very gifted artist. He was an exceptional athlete, and vastly intelligent on so many levels. But he was stark raving mad, Carmen. That’s the other side of the coin.”

  “My daughter wouldn’t have grown up in the same dreadful conditions as Grayson did. She would have had a real chance. She wouldn’t have been like this. She would have been healthy.”

  “It’s true that there are environmental triggers to diseases like schizophrenia,” Brad says with a callous nod. “But you have to admit at some point that monsters aren’t only made. They’re born. They’re born wrong. You can give some people the best possible chance at being good, and they’ll still fuck it up and become the demons they’re meant to be.”

  “I don’t believe that,” I tell him defiantly. “I don’t believe that anyone is born evil.”

  Brad fixes me with a long, hard look. “I was.”

  I am taken aback by his statement. “No,” I tell him in confusion. “I know that you’re upset about what happened to Grayson, too. I know that you said that you guys had a rough time growing up, but you did what you needed to do in order to survive. I don’t believe you’re evil, Brad.”

  “I am,” he says, moving closer to me.

  Instinctively, I take a step back.

  “It must be nice to be you, Carmen,” he says quietly. He lifts a hand to place it against my jaw, rubbing his thumb over my cheek. “Even though all this cruelty and hardship has been dumped on your life, you are still able to believe in virtue. To think that humanity is inherently good? Only a spoiled rich girl who’s been sheltered all her life could be so inconceivably, unbelievably dumb. When are you going to wake up? Look around you. The people you cared about most didn’t even give a fuck about you.”

  My teeth are clenched tightly together, and I glare at Brad furiously, ripping his hand off my cheek. “You’re wrong. He did care. This?” I gesture around myself. “This was something he couldn’t control—but he fought against it. In fact, his final act was probably to fight against it. If I know my husband, he couldn’t live with the guilt of hurting someone. He couldn’t live with the thought that he might hurt her again. He probably killed himself to protect my sister. That doesn’t make him a monster, Bradford. That makes him a motherfucking hero. How many people can say that they have such dark urges, and were able to rise above it?”

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Brad asks me in amazement. “Jesus, Carmen. If I hadn’t just seen your dead child getting ripped out of your body, I would have believed that nothing bad has ever really happened to you. Are you so determined to be blind to what’s right in front of you?”

  “Yes,” I say with determination. “Sometimes, what we see isn’t real at all. The wisest person I know was blind, and she saw far more than I ever could. Grayson was not evil, Brad, and neither are you.”

  “You don’t know me,” he says angrily.

  “I know that you loved your friend,” I say softly. “I know that you took care of me. You even bought me my favorite flowers. I know that somehow, even though you’re being rough with me right now, you’re actually trying to help me. Maybe you’re just trying to piss me off so that the anger can pull me out of my funk. If so, it’s working, Brad. You’re not evil. Not even close.”

  He stares at me for a moment before closing the space
between us and crushing his lips against mine. He pushes me back against the wall that is covered in creepy photos of my sister, and pins my body up against the wooden panel. He kisses me passionately, and I find myself kissing back and wrapping my arms around his neck for better access. There are a few thumbtacks poking into my back in odd places, but I can mostly ignore this. It is only when Brad reaches down to slip a hand around my thigh and lift my leg up do I wince with pain.

  When he grinds his hips against me, I cry out and push him away roughly. Doubling over, I clutch my stomach and sore groin, panting from pain and exhaustion. “I’m not—” I say between deep gasping breaths, “—I’m not ready. Oh god, that hurts.”

  “I’m so sorry,” he says, moving to my side. He cradles my shoulders in his arms and helps me to straighten.

  There is sweat gathered on my brow, and I am feeling suddenly very drained. I am having difficulty standing, for my whole back and abdomen feel like they are on fire. The memory of the pain is almost as bad as the pain itself, and all my muscles are clenched as if in anticipation for a painful contraction.

  “Come on,” Brad says, brushing a bit of pale hair from my slick forehead. “Since I made you come all this way, I’m going to carry you back to bed.”

  I am too weak to protest, and truthfully, unable to get back downstairs on my own. I let Brad scoop me up in his arms, and I enjoy the feeling of weightlessness. I lay my head limply against his chest.

  I am not sure why, but after this semi-violent encounter, I feel closer to Brad and more affectionate toward him than I ever have. Is that weird? Is that a testament to how dumb I am? He’s just been so overwhelmingly nice and sickeningly sweet over the past few days that I mostly grew to ignore him. It felt like he was just acting. This was the first time he felt real to me. This was the first time I could see who he really was.

  And I liked it.

  He was so passionate. He reminds me a great deal of Grayson. It’s a bit frightening, because I don’t exactly want to go down that road again and end up with a deranged psychopath—but Brad is starting to feel like home.

  Chapter Nine

  I shift around as I stir from my sleep, and I find myself comfortably nestled in Brad’s arms. It’s a bit different now than when I slept beside him in the past. He’s not just here because I need any random person to be here. He’s here because I want him to be here. I am actually growing to enjoy his company. It is a nice feeling, and it has actually allowed me to get some of the deepest, most restful sleep that I’ve had in days. I’m not sure why, but our fight up in the attic really was necessary for me to begin to truly heal. Before that, I was caught in some kind of suspension, refusing to let my body get better and clinging to my suffering in order to punish myself.

  Now, as I wake up from my nap, I find myself with a real appetite for the first time in a while. I feel like I could eat a whole pasture’s worth of grazing horses. My stomach growls in agreement, and I turn to look at Brad. His face is strong and handsome in the dim lighting of my bedroom, and his sandy brown hair is thick and messy. I gaze at him for a moment. It’s still so weird not to wake up beside Grayson—it feels a little like waking up in a foreign country, where everyone speaks an exotic language. There is also that excitement of being in a place one doesn’t know very well, and being eager to get to know every detail of the new landscape.

  I lift my hand to gently trace his jaw, and his dark eyes snap open. He blinks in confusion, as if he is also surprised by being in this new foreign land with me. Then he remembers, and his face becomes remorseful.

  “I’m sorry for earlier. I don’t know what the fuck I was doing, dragging you up to the attic like that.”

  “It’s okay,” I tell him softly. “Actually, I needed it. I feel a lot better.”

  “Still, it was cruel of me. Grayson wouldn’t have been very happy about me pushing you around like that. I swear, that’s usually not me.”

  “Why was it so important to you?” I ask him as I snuggle closer. “Why did you want to show me that so badly?”

  Brad looks up at the ceiling thoughtfully. “I guess it hurt me when you refused to try to think of a single positive thing in your future. I took it personally. I figured that considering the man Grayson was, you shouldn’t feel like you have lost god’s gift to womankind. You’re young and beautiful, and you should be realistic. You can do much better than Grayson and have a much brighter future than you ever had with him.”

  “With you?” I ask him teasingly.

  “That’s definitely a valid possibility,” he says, and I think it’s the first time I’ve seen even a ghost of a smile touch his lips. “But even if not with me, with someone, anyone, who treats you better. Who treats you like a princess, like you deserve. I don’t like seeing you depressed, Carmen. Life is beautiful, and you can’t let a few bad moments drag you down into despair.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Besides,” Brad says. “How could you love a man who loved your sister more than he loved you? That’s just messed up.”

  “Oh, please. Do you have any siblings, Brad?”

  “No.”

  I smile to myself. “You have no idea what it was like growing up with Helen. Everyone loved her more than me! All our relatives. The help. My own parents. My friends. Myself! It only makes sense that my husband would, too.”

  “Well, if I were your husband,” Brad says seriously, “I promise that if I died, you would find a creepy shrine to you with tons of stalker-ish nude photos. You are the kind of woman who deserves to be the center of a man’s attention.”

  “That’s really sweet,” I say with a smile. “At least, I think it’s sweet. You don’t already have a creepy shrine to me, do you? Because I demand to know that sort of thing beforehand.”

  “Before what?” Brad asks me suggestively.

  “Before everything,” I respond, running my hands over his arms. “I’m going to start making it a practice to look before I leap. And by look, I mean look hard.”

  “But what if you’re too busy falling hard to look hard?” Brad asks.

  “Well, someone’s cocky,” I tease.

  “Yes. That’s hard too.”

  I giggle at this, and wonder if it’s the first time Brad has ever made me laugh. For a moment there, he reminded me of Owen. Thinking of Owen still brings a pang of pain to my chest, even though it makes absolutely no sense. I barely knew the guy. I have no clue why I feel like I lost an old friend when I deleted his number. Oh well. I have bigger issues to deal with at the moment. With the loss of my unborn child and my husband, I hardly have time to fuss over losing strangers that could have been friends. Besides, I am sure that I will see Owen again, someday. Maybe at Helen’s wedding to Liam, if that ends up happening like everyone says it will. For now, I need to focus on myself.

  “How long will it be until I can have you again?” Brad asks as he runs his hands over my sides hungrily.

  “It should be a few weeks,” I inform him. “But even if my body wasn’t destroyed, I don’t think it’s a good idea to rush things.”

  “Maybe not,” he says, leaning down to kiss my neck, “but it’s hard to keep my hands off you. I don’t know how Grayson ever did. If you were mine, I’d have trouble getting out of bed to go to work in the morning.”

  “Oh, please,” I tell him with a roll of my eyes. “You seem more obsessed with your job than my husband was with my sister. I bet you have a creepy shrine with sexy pictures of your law firm’s corner offices taped up to the walls.”

  “Actually, I do,” Brad says in surprise. “It’s called a vision board.”

  “It’s called get a life!” I tease, hitting him lightly in the arm.

  He answers with a smile, and pulls me closer for a kiss. I begin kissing back and I am enjoying the taste of him when I hear noises from downstairs. We separate and look toward the door.

  “Is that my father?” I ask nervously.

  “I’ll go check,” Brad says, tossing the comforter of
f his legs and getting up. He is halfway to the door before he turns back to me with a sheepish look on his face. “I suppose I should put on pants first.”

  A smile breaks out on my face as I gaze down at his red Calvin Klein briefs. “Or not,” I suggest. “My dad might like the view.”

  “Very funny,” he says as he quickly gets dressed. He moves toward my bedroom door and out into the corridor, clearing his throat in preparation for conversation with my father.

  I stretch out languidly in bed, wishing that I could remain here and not have to move. I am still sleepy, and I feel like I could stay in bed for a week. However, I haven’t seen my father in days and I am worried about his health. It’s probably best if I’m the one to break the news to him about losing my baby. That way, he can see that I’m okay and not have to deal with even the few seconds of panic that might result from Brad telling him slowly enough to let him imagine that I was also hurt in the process.

  Rising to my feet, I move over to the mirror to examine my appearance and make sure that I look healthy. I grab a hairbrush and run it through my hair. My hand pauses in mid-stroke. I remember that the last time I brushed my hair was shortly before I lost Grace. Yes, it’s been days since I brushed my hair. I haven’t had a chance to care about such petty things in the wake of all the disaster.

  Putting the hairbrush down, I figure that it’s still not that important. My father has seen me looking like crap before, and he is possibly the only man on earth who wouldn’t love me less for it. Grabbing a soft robe that is lying nearby, I throw it on over my nightgown. Pushing my shoulders back to improve my posture and make myself look better, I move toward my bedroom door and head down the stairs. Brad is already talking to my father, and I can see the worry painted over the older man’s face.