"So, you are telling that your husband spent the whole night here with his arms around you," Jas chirped, his eyes alight with a mischievous, almost frantic excitent. He was leaning across the marble kitchen counter, his chin propped in his hands, watching Lyse’s every move like a hawk.
"Ex-husband," Lyse answered with a deadpan expression. Her voice was flat, devoid of the spark Jas was clearly looking for. She carefully poured the dark liquid into a ceramic mug and slid it across the table toward him. Her hands, she noticed with a pang of irritation, were still trembling slightly.
Jas didn’t even look at the coffee. He waved a dismissive hand in the air. "First of all, you guys are just separated. There has been no formal dissolution of the marriage, no papers signed in blood, no decree from the high courts of heartbreak. Therefore, he is still very much your husband." He took a loud, theatrical sip of the coffee, winced at the heat, and continued. "I honestly don’t understand why you keep running away from soone who is so obviously dedicated to you. The man is like a gorgeous, wealthy bloodhound, Lyse. He’s obsessed."
"He lied to , Jas!" Lyse snapped, the words coming out through gritted teeth. She gripped the edge of the counter, her knuckles turning white. The mory of the betrayal, the layers of secrets Levi had woven around their life felt like a fresh wound every ti she allowed herself to think about it. "He didn’t just omit things; he orchestrated a reality that didn’t exist. How am I supposed to build a life on sand?"
Jas leaned back, sighing heavily as he watched her. "Don’t get an aneurysm, honey. I’m just saying. I understand that you feel betrayed by his... let’s call it ’creative truth-telling.’ But I’m sure he had his reasons for omitting to tell you that part of the story. n like Levi, n with that much power and that many enemies they don’t breathe without a strategy. Maybe the lie was a cage, but it was a gilded one ant to keep the wolves out."
Lyse didn’t answer. she turned away to stare out the window at the gray street below. She could still feel the phantom pressure of Levi’s arm around her waist, the steady, rhythmic thrum of his heart against her back. It had been the first ti in months she hadn’t felt like she was falling into an abyss. That was the most terrifying part: the fact that her body still recognized him as ’ho’ even when her mind shouted that he was a stranger.
Jas prodded even further, his voice softening. "Don’t you miss him? Even a little? Even in the middle of the night when the bed feels as wide as the sea?"
Lyse gave a non-committal shrug, her shoulders stiff. Jas rolled his eyes so hard it looked painful.
"He is at least better than Brandon," Jas muttered, his tone shifting to one of genuine distaste. "I don’t understand why that man keeps coming around you, and I bet he has not changed one bit. Actually, that’s a lie. He has changed. He’s gone from a garden-variety jerk to sothing much more ’Lifeti Movie Villain.’"
At that, Lyse finally turned back to look at Jas thoughtfully. The ntion of Brandon brought a cold chill to her skin that had nothing to do with the morning air.
"You know, I unfortunately agree," she whispered. "I had hoped that he ant it when he said that he was trying to be better. I really wanted to believe that people could evolve past their worst impulses. But I don’t think that is true anymore."
She had been deeply shaken by Brandon’s behavior the previous night. She recalled the way his face had contorted, the sudden, jagged edge to his voice when she told him she couldn’t et him. It hadn’t just been a disagreent; it had felt like an eruption. As much as she wanted to see the good in the boy she had grown up with, she was finally beginning to admit that the boy was dead. The man who replaced him was a volatile cocktail of obsession and resentnt.
He had beco so possessive, so aggressive, acting as if she were a piece of property he had temporarily misplaced.
Brandon had never been physically violent with her in the past. In the years they were together, he had been many things. Dismissive, cold, prone to taking her for granted, and occasionally cruel with his words but he had never yelled with that vein-popping rage, and he had certainly never raised a hand as if to strike her. Now, however, he seed to have a dangerous, predatory quality about him. It was as if the mask of the "charming Marlowe son" had finally cracked, revealing sothing dark and hollow beneath.
"There are not enough connections and contracts in the world for to keep allowing him in my space," Lyse said, her voice gaining a sudden, hard clarity. "I kept telling myself I needed his influence for the studio, that I had to play nice for the sake of the business. But what’s the point of a business if I’m too afraid to walk to my car at night? I fear that one day things will actually escalate, and I would find myself... battered. Or worse."
"You see? Levi is better than Brandon," Jas said, echoing her internal monologue with frightening accuracy. "Imagine if he had not been here when Brandon attacked you. Levi might be a liar, but he’d burn the world down before he let a hair on your head be hard. Brandon? Brandon would burn you down just to keep himself warm."
Lyse groaned and ran her hands through her hair, tugging at the roots. "Please, enough about Levi and Brandon. I can’t keep dissecting the n in my life like they’re biology projects. I have more important things to do, Jas. Are you going to help or not? We have a funeral to prepare for, and a mother in a coma."
Jas pouted, his expression souring instantly at the ntion of the tasks ahead. "Even though I think Brooke has gotten her due and deserves to be donated to so anatomy class... maybe they can dissect her and find out why she was such a nasty bitch."
Lyse stared at him, her expression sharp and reprimanding. "Jas! That’s not very nice. No matter what she did, no matter how much pain she caused, Brooke was still my sister. She was my blood. And it’s not right to speak evil of the dead, especially when she died alone in a place like that."
Jas stood up abruptly, his chair screeching against the floor. He took his mug to the sink, the clink of the ceramic against the stainless steel sounding like a gunshot in the quiet room. Without a backward glance, he spoke, his voice dropping the playful facade.
"I have agreed to go along with you, Lyse. I’ll help you with the arrangents, I’ll stand by you at the service, and I’ll help you navigate the sharks. But I have not agreed to forgive her." He turned around, his eyes brimming with a fierce, protective loyalty that brought tears to Lyse’s eyes. "I can’t just forget all that she did to you. I can’t forget the way she tried to dismantle your life piece by piece just because she was jealous. You have a big heart, Lyse. Too big, sotis. But I rember. I rember every tear she made you cry, and I’m not going to pretend she was a saint just because her heart stopped beating."
He walked back over to her and placed a firm hand on her shoulder. "I’m doing this for you. Only for you. Now, let’s go figure out how to bury a girl that nobody, except you is going to miss."
Lyse looked up at him, feeling the imnse weight of her grief and the terrifying uncertainty of her future. She knew Jas was right about Brandon, and she knew deep in her heart that he was right about Levi, too. But as she stood up to face the day, all she could think about was the sister she had lost.
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