Wicked Liar by Faith Summers

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Candace

May 12th

Dear Candace,

Today was hard. Today makes eight weeks since I’ve been away. I’m still in rehab. Still here trying to get better. The doctors say I may be able to leave next month but I’m not so sure. I think they’re just giving me hope because they can see I need it. They can see reality has hit me hard that I was actually addicted to drugs, and it’s going to be hard to come off them.

I’ve been outside a lot. I like watching the landscape. It’s beautiful here in Holland. There are flowers the same color as your eyes. I keep trying to remember what you look like and smell like to get me through the day.

Today seems the worst so far, though, and not even thinking of you is helping. There's never been a time when the image of your face has come to me and I don't feel better. Right now, I feel like I’m dying. I don’t know how else to describe what I feel. It’s like the walls are closing in on me and I can’t push them away.

It made me think of how you must have felt when I shot you. I’m so ashamed to even write this because I don’t think you should have forgiven me. How could you?

I hurt you deeply and to add insult to injury, I’m not there. I’m here in this hospital and the shit they put me on makes me feel like hell. Although I’m not sure if maybe that might just be me.

I’m worse than what you saw. I didn’t realize I was in such a bad way until I nearly lost you.

I know you saw me using, but I’m so good at hiding things and the lies I told came so easy you probably never believed what you were seeing was real. Me taking drugs.

I can’t believe it myself. Everything I think of as an excuse doesn’t fit. Doesn’t feel like it's enough to explain why I did it.

And still, I crave it. I crave the escape and lie it makes me believe, if only for a few minutes. I almost feel normal then I don’t. The truth is, I feel helpless and weak.

I lost my father, and I was never able to tell him what he meant to me. For all my skills and I never knew Andreas would betray us. I never knew he would turn against us to kill our father. So what was the point of me? Me the guy who sees all. Me the guy who can do so much. I never saw it coming.

I can’t even think straight. The days and the nights blend into one and I don’t know who I am or what I am anymore.

The only thing I can be certain of is I love you.

Dominic

My hands still. That’s the third time I've read that letter. It held the most pain, and it’s the only one where he tells me he loves me.

I’ve sat here all morning going through all of the letters in the box. There are truly seven hundred and sixty letters. One for each day in the two years and one month Dominic was away. Most aren’t as long as that one. Others are longer and go on for pages talking about the landscape because he knew I’d like it. As I’ve read each letter, it feels like I was right there with him every day.

I’m still in shock and stunned by everything Dominic has told me and shown me.

I can’t believe how wrong I was, and for so many years.

I look at these letters and the paintings of myself surrounding me, and I think of the boy I loved.

He loved me too. He loved me back, and he saw me. He knew I was alive and how I felt about him. He knew, and he’s still the same guy.

Nobody has ever made me feel so important.

Learning the truth about what Papa did enrages me. I understand why he did it, but just like when he took that damn job, he didn’t know what the hell he was doing. Hearing he made Dominic promise to stay away from me cuts me deep because he took away my choice. What followed was misery.

It all makes sense now. I remember two years ago when Dominic first kissed me. The way he kissed me felt like he was dying to do it, and the night we had felt the same. Like we were both starving for each other. Now I know why.

Isabella was right when she said people do things for different reasons. Now I know why everything happened the way it did. It was because of Papa.

I look to the half-finished painting of myself and take note of the way Dominic did my eyes. There’s a distinct twinkle in them and they look like you could see into my soul. His mother used to paint the same way.

I look at that girl I was. In that painting, I was so broken. I don’t want to be that person anymore.

Living and moving on is what I need to do. I have some answers, but not all. It’s enough now to start healing. A smile lifts my face when I look at the letters again.

He did write to me.

Dominic didn’t forget me, and I was important to him.

I have enough now to open my heart and trust him completely.

I understand now why he had to go and why he couldn’t be here. The best doctors could be at his doorstep, but it was the act of leaving that set him on the road to recovery and redemption for all he’d done.

I have one more thing I have to do for him.

* * *

It’s nearly dark when I hear the front door open.

Cory stayed away from me today. I’m not even sure if he came in the apartment at all and if he did, it was at the times when I was upstairs.

So I know that’s not him walking around downstairs.

I head down just as Dominic was about to walk into the passageway to make his way up to me.

When he looks at me, I smile. It’s a smile I feel from deep inside me. One that comes from my heart.

I rush over to him, straight into his arms, and give him a warm kiss. He brushes his firm, full, sexy lips over mine and sweeps his tongue into my mouth to taste me. I taste him too and enjoy him the way I’ve always wanted to.

When we kiss, it’s never tame or sweet, I always want more and he always gives me more. So I pull out of the kiss before we get carried away. I have things he needs to hear too.

“I love you,” I tell him, and his eyes brighten with appreciation.

“I love you too. I’ve been in love with you my whole life. I’m sorry I left you.”

I shake my head. “Don’t be. I understand and I forgive you. I don’t want us to think about any of that anymore.”

“No?”

“No,” I rasp, running my fingers over his beard. “I want different memories with you.”

He smiles. “Here’s one I’ve always wanted to make with you.”

He tugs me into the living room, walks over to his music station, and switches it on. When Billie Holiday’s beautiful voice fills the room, I know exactly what he wants to do.

“It’s Friday night. Date night," he says. "I want to dance with my doll the way my father used to dance with his.”

Joy bubbles within me at the thought of such a sentiment and memory. It grips my heart in a way I can’t describe. When he puts his hand out to me to go to him, I do and slip into his arms.

As we dance, memories of his parents fill my mind and now I know how they must have felt. The ghosts of the past are still in love with each other. It’s the same way I feel now.

We dance until the song ends and then Dominic reclaims my lips for a kiss that’s as raw as it is unapologetic.

It sends us straight to his bed where he takes me over and over again relentlessly.

In the early hours of the morning, we sit in his bath together. Him with his arm around me and me between his legs, nestled against his chest.

We’re sitting in silence, enjoying each other.

I know he’s thinking though about everything else that exists outside us and I am too.

As I do, I realize there’s one more thing I need to do for myself to have my own redemption.

Turning to look at him, I pull in a breath, and he brushes over my cheek.

“You okay, Angel?”

“Yeah. Dominic… when you find my uncle. I want to see him.”

His brows knit together. I said when, because I know he’ll find him, wherever he is. It really is a matter of when.

There was death in his eyes when I told him the truth. It’s there now.

“Do you think that’s a good idea, Angel?”

I nod. “Yes.”