27. Good as Drunk

N o. God, no. Please.

Pale skin. Bruises. Broken bones. That body on the pavement beside the dumpster. Wet, rained on. Weak, flickering light glistening across water droplets. The bag over his head.

Kellen startled awake. He was upright, trembling, arms extended at either side of him on the bed. That familiar feeling ripped through his body: sweeping instability. Like the entire bed was liquid.

For a sickening moment, he could feel the brine water in his throat. The taste. The burn of it running down his trachea.

And then the motion slowly stabilized. The room came back in around him. There was late daylight peeking in from the curtains drawn over the window.

Something moved from somewhere else in the room. Kellen shut his eyes against the pain in his head, then turned slowly, expecting to spot Wolf near her water bowl.

An electrocuting level of adrenaline struck Kellen in the chest when his eyes found the shape of a person standing in his motel room. Instant recognition left dread draining through his veins. His lips parted, too shocked to say a word.

She was at his bedside before he managed to say anything.

“L-Lila…What are you—doing here?”

“He knows my name again. That’s good news.” Lila’s fingers adjusted a small towel on the cold pack she was holding. She raised the back of her hand to Kellen’s forehead.

He jerked away, still staring at her like he was seeing an apparition. “H-How did you get in?” The possibility that the police department had a key to the motel room they were technically paying for darted through Kellen’s mind. But it disappeared the next moment under the pounding in his skull that suddenly wiped all his thoughts away. Unsteadily, he raised a hand to his head.

“You’re sick, Kellen.” Lila’s face was sober when he wincingly glanced at her. An unamused scoff escaped her throat. “I have never fucking seen you this bad.” She widened her eyes at the blanket between them. “You called me, remember? At the Urgent Care? After you got yourself seen by a medical professional—which I have never in my life known you to do of your own free will.”

She was lying. It was the first thing to dart across Kellen’s mind. No way he would’ve called her.

“You said on the phone you couldn’t drive,” Lila continued. “You were afraid your rental would get towed if we left it there, so you asked me to Uber. And then you were trying to pay me for the Uber and my ‘time’ like I’m some kind of escort.” She laughed softly. “And you did apologize for telling me to fuck off the last time we spoke, but you somehow still couldn’t manage a thank-you.” She extended her arm and held out the towel-wrapped cold pack.

It was beginning to sound more real. Kellen quietly passed his tongue across his dry lips. He accepted the cold pack from her and lifted it slowly to the side of his head. Instant relief sank in so sharply, it made him light-headed for several seconds.

“You got more incoherent after that,” Lila provided. “When I asked if I could come up with you, you were a bit ambiguous. So, to answer your question, you let me in. I told you I would run to the drug store for some Advil and Tylenol. You were asleep when I got back. Then you woke up about six times before now, and we talked every time, but I guess you don’t remember that.” Her eyes lowered. “You weren’t talking like you would remember it.”

Kellen’s eyes had shifted silently in her direction. He watched her wordlessly. The expressions of her eyes. Her small hand gestures.

“You still have a fever.” Her blue eyes flashed up at him. “It’s come down quite a bit, but not completely. I think it would be best if you had someone stay with you tonight, but you don’t have anyone, do you?”

“What did I talk about?” Kellen whispered.

“You were good as drunk,” Lila responded with a small grin. “For someone who never touches a lick of alcohol, it seemed like a rare opportunity.” There was silence for a few seconds. Lila’s hands parted lightly against the blanket. “So…I asked you about some things I’ve always wondered.”

A frown shot across Kellen’s face, immediately changing to a grimace under the sharpening pain in his head. He shifted the cold pack against the side of his face. “What? What things?”

“I asked you where you went the November after we lost our daughter. You were gone for a month and a half, and your contact-person guy didn’t know where you were either. And I thought maybe you were cheating on me with a man.”

“ What? ” Kellen’s eyes flickered up at her painfully.

Lila let out a long, slow breath. “But you were actually down at the Florida house trying to make yourself dream about Skyler. You thought maybe it was possible to make yourself dream about her, and that would help you find her before it was too late.”

Silence. The low hum of the mini fridge came through in the quiet.

“Fuck,” Kellen whispered. He shut his eyes again.

“You also told me that was the real reason you came back sick. It wasn’t a stomach flu. You’d made yourself sick doing stuff to yourself with water like your father used to do to you.”

Kellen’s eyes slowly opened and centered on the folds of the blanket. He let the lines and shapes blur in his vision.

“So…then I asked if you really ever thought you were in love with me.”

Quiet.

“Lila…” Kellen raised his head a little.

“You said yes.” Lila’s voice dropped to a whisper. “You said it was the closest thing you’ve ever felt to being in love. To being completely safe with someone.”

“Lila―”

“I asked if you’d slept with anyone since me. You said no. I asked if you ever cheated on me. You said no. I asked if you ever thought about cheating on me. You said no. And then I asked you if you knew, deep inside, before we separated, before we even met, that you were sexually attracted to men.” She fell silent.

Kellen’s fingers slipped across the side of his face. His eyes burned into the blanket.

“You said yes.”

Silence.

It felt like an entire minute before Kellen remembered to breathe, the pounding in his head fading to the background.

“You said you were fourteen the first time you knew it was real,” Lila whispered. “You said your father suspected it. And right after he asked you about it was when he started locking you in the church.”

“What?” Kellen’s head shot up. Pain. Pain radiated through his skull, sudden enough to render him unconscious. But he barely reacted to it. “I—I said that? What—What do you mean?” And suddenly, his heart was racing. Beating so fast, he could barely breathe.

Lila stared at him silently for a long moment. “Kellen…” Then silence.

Kellen sucked in a jagged breath and nearly choked on it. “What else did I say?”

“Well, you said a couple other things…” Lila cast an uncertain glance toward the kitchenette.

“What else did I say about the church?” Pounding. His head was pounding so hard, he couldn’t think. Still, his eyes were pinned on Lila.

“Nothing especially…about the church…” Lila responded hesitantly. She frowned. “Why, what else should you have said about the church?”

Kellen looked away. Nothing. Nothing at all. The ice pack in his hand lowered slowly to the blanket. “I was a kid, Lila. I had no idea what I was feeling. And I have no idea why the hell I would’ve told you about that.”

“Kellen, you’ve known since you were fourteen, ” Lila said sharply. “Why won’t you believe yourself? Why won’t you stop fighting it? What can be so damn wrong by a god who is ‘all love,’ about letting yourself— love? ”

It doesn’t work like that, Kellen heard in his head. She’s misinterpreting. You can’t pick one thing out of the Bible and take it out of context.

“I don’t know why the fuck you even feel this way when you told me you don’t believe in God, anyway.” She was staring at him. Staring, when Kellen turned a centimeter to catch sight of her. “Stop lugging around all this shit, Kellen. Drop it. Let it go. Let something happen between you and someone else. And if you’re damned to hell because of it—hey, I’ll be right there beside you.”

“You’re a good person, Lila,” Kellen whispered. No, she won’t.

Lila took his face suddenly in her hands. It was a feeling so familiar as their eyes met. Estranged with time. “ You are a good person, Kell.”

It felt like fifteen seconds before she slowly released him. Lila stood up. “I have to get ready for my shift. Call me if you start feeling worse.” She walked over to the kitchenette and picked up her purse from the counter, but paused to give him a backward stare. “You’re sick as fuck, Kellen. Stay in bed.” Her hand moved in a gesture indicating the space under the bed. “Also, your dog hates me.”

Advil. Tylenol. No wonder this headache hadn’t gone away. Kellen watched through the window as his ex-wife’s car pulled out of the motel parking lot and turned onto the road.

Abruptly, Kellen dropped the curtain. He walked to the door and sloppily pulled on the nearest pair of footwear—the combat boots he had worn to the house raid—then exited the motel room.

Glancing around the parking lot for any suspicious onlookers, Kellen made a straight line for the beaten blue Jeep Cherokee parked out of the way at the far side of the lot. He pressed a manual key into the driver’s side door and unlocked it, then pulled the door open with a familiar mechanical click.

And for a second or two, he hesitated: face-to-face with the little dream catcher hanging from the overhead handle.

Dream catchers.

And she had remembered the time an 18 -foot crocodile unexpectedly made an appearance near the back porch of the Everglades house. Lila had walked out there for her morning coffee. It was one of the rare times Kellen had heard that woman scream.

Kellen swatted aside the dream catcher and leaned into the cab. He reached open the far glove compartment and retrieved a bottle of extra strength aspirin. He hit the lock knob on the door, then shut the door and started back for the motel unit.

It was almost nightfall. Alexei would be at Exotix.