Chris stares at me with wide eyes, and I realize that saying the words out loud is the final nail in the coffin.
“He told you that?” he asks incredulously.
“No, I… found out.”
“How?”
More tears spill over. I can’t even focus long enough to concentrate on his question. “I was so sure, Chris. So stupidly sure he didn’t do it.”
“Why?” he asks, looking at me with a searching expression. “You saw him kill a man right in front of you. Is ‘wife-killer’ really such a stretch from that?”
The opening to confess is right there. But I can’t bring myself to admit that I’ve watched him kill more than once.
“That was different. They were both dangerous men in dangerous situations.”
“What does that even mean?”
I shrug. “It’s the underworld.”
The words leave my lips naturally. Only after I say them do I realize that I just mimicked him. The beautiful man with the intense gray eyes and the ability to destroy me without even trying.
He’s miles away and corrupting me still.
“It’s the underworld?” Chris repeats incredulously. “Jessa, you need to go to the cops.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?” he argues.
“Because it won’t make a difference. He’s too powerful, too connected, too… everything.” I pause, then add, “And anyway, even if I could go to the cops, I wouldn’t.”
Chris looks ready to strangle me. “Why the hell not?”
“Because… I love him.”
I didn’t mean for it to be a big declaration. I didn’t mean to say it at all. I’ve barely come to the realization myself, so I shouldn’t be making grand announcements.
The moment I say it, though, it feels like the air gets sucked out of the room. Chris goes deathly silent.
The clock on the wall ticks.
Ticks.
Ticks.
“Are you gonna say something?” I ask when I can’t take his silence any longer.
“I will. As soon as I figure out what the fuck to say.”
“It wasn’t something I could control.”
“Actually, it was,” he says, sounding angrier than I’ve heard in quite some time. “It was the very fucking definition of something you could control, Jessa. If you’d returned his fucking phone at the beginning, this could have been avoided. In fact, if you’d just declined his offer to work on his boat like a normal girl would have, we wouldn’t be here at all.”
I sit up a little. “A ‘normal girl’?”
He doesn’t back down. In fact, he doubles down. “You’d just discovered that your fiancé was cheating on you. On your wedding day, no less. And instead of dealing with your emotions, you decided to avoid them completely and rebound with the most dangerous man you could find.”
“It wasn’t a rebound—”