25. The Girl Who Looked Like Her

25. The Girl Who Looked Like Her

Tania had fallen asleep in the car by the time Caleb pulled into the driveway. When he tried to wake her, she kept her eyes shut and let him carry her inside instead, unwilling to admit how nice it felt to be carried.

The moment they were through the door, she opened her eyes and slipped straight off toward the bathroom for a shower.

“Weren’t you asleep a second ago?” Caleb called after her, unimpressed.

“I was tired,” she said simply. “And then I felt gross.”

“Any discomfort? In your stomach?”

“No.”

She caught herself smiling once the bathroom door closed behind her, quietly aware that he’d asked at all.

She joined him on the balcony afterward, where he was hunched over his laptop, ignoring her for a solid ten minutes before finally glancing up.

“What.”

“I want something sour.”

He stared at her flatly. “I’m not your servant, Tania.”

He was already grabbing his car keys by the time he finished the sentence.

 

• • •

 

Caleb came back well past midnight with a carton of fresh strawberries, only to find Tania fast asleep, curled on her side.

She woke a while later to the sound of a blender, and found him in the kitchen making her strawberry juice, sleeves pushed up, focused on it like it was any other task on his schedule.

One sip in, nausea hit her hard and fast. She barely made it to the bathroom.

Blood swirled faintly through the sink when she rinsed her mouth after. A tear slid down her cheek, and then, strangely, she smiled through it.

Caleb knocked. “You alright in there?”

She opened the door and looped her arms around his neck instead of answering directly. “Carry me. I want to cuddle.”

“I just made you juice you didn’t even drink.”

“Cuddle first. Juice later.”

He sighed like it cost him something, and picked her up anyway.

 

• • •

 

Sophia got discharged the next morning and called Caleb a dozen times before giving up and showing up at his office in person.

“Where is Kelvin,” she demanded, not bothering to sit.

“Dead,” Caleb said, not looking up from his desk.

Sophia’s jaw tightened. “You need to get rid of her, Caleb. Tania. Every day you keep the enemy’s daughter under your roof, you’re spitting on your own mother’s memory.”

He didn’t answer. He picked up the phone instead and told security to escort her out.

Once she was gone, he stood at the window for a long time, lighting a cigarette he hadn’t touched in years.

 

• • •

 

Marcus hurried in a few minutes later, coughing dramatically at the smoke. “Sir, the ceremony’s coming up. I need your signature on the transfer papers.”

“Make sure Sophia never sets foot in this building again,” Caleb said, ignoring the papers entirely.

Marcus left. Caleb’s phone rang almost immediately after.

“She’s dead,” the voice on the other end said.

Caleb went very still for a long moment before his shoulders loosened, some tension draining out of him that Marcus, watching from the doorway, couldn’t begin to understand.

“Did she leave anything behind? Any information?”

“No.”

By the time Marcus worked up the courage to check on him again, Caleb had gone through an entire pack of cigarettes and most of a bottle of wine, staring at nothing.

Marcus backed out quietly and pulled out his own phone in the hallway.

He dialed Tania.

 

• • •

 

Tania was at a coffee shop with Jordan when the call came in, though she let it go to voicemail for the moment, too caught up in her own disappointment.

“I just never read them,” Jordan said again, for what felt like the tenth time. “I’m sorry, Tania. Whatever your uncle wanted you to know, it’s gone.”

She left the coffee shop feeling hollowed out, and nearly walked straight into a young woman coming the other way. Their eyes met for half a second.

Something about the shape of her face, the set of her mouth, struck Tania as strangely familiar.

“Wait—” Tania reached out on instinct.

The girl’s eyes went wide with something that looked almost like fear. She yanked her arm back and disappeared into the crowd before Tania could say another word.

Tania stood frozen on the sidewalk, trying to place why a total stranger’s face had rattled her so badly, when her phone finally buzzed through. Marcus.

She was at Caleb’s office within the hour, and found him slumped behind his desk, thoroughly drunk, an ashtray full beside him.

“Get out,” he said the moment he saw her, his voice slurred and uglier than she’d ever heard it. “Just get the hell out, Tania.”

It was the first time he’d ever cursed at her. She could feel how much pain sat underneath it, and wondered, not for the first time, if an apology from her would ever be enough to touch it.

“Are you forcing yourself to hate me?” she asked quietly. “Because I don’t think I deserve to be anywhere near your life, Caleb. Not really.”