There was no other option. But this was Rafael. He’d never done a single thing he didn’t want to do in as long as she’d known him—even back when he’d seemed far more languid and perpetually unbothered than this man who stood before her now, radiating a kind of authority she really didn’t want to investigate any further.
“My name is Alison Herbert,” she said again. She tipped her head back to meet his gaze, and then she told him the Alison story in all its particulars—save one crucial detail. “I’m originally from Tennessee. I’ve never been to California and I didn’t go to college. I live on a farm outside of town with my friend and landlady, Pepper, who runs a dog boarding and day care facility. I walk the dogs. I play with them. I clean up after them and live in a little cottage there. I have for years. I don’t know anything about wine and to be honest, I prefer a good beer.” She lifted a shoulder and then dropped it. “I’m not who you think I am.”
“Then you will have no problem submitting to a DNA test, to set my mind at ease.”
“Why on earth would the state of your mind be of interest to me?”
“Lily has people who care about her.” Rafael’s shrug seemed far more lethal than hers, a weapon more than a gesture. “There are legal issues. If you are not the woman I would swear you are, prove it.”
“Or,” she said, distinctly, “I could reach into my pocket and produce the driver’s license that proves I’m exactly who I say I am.”
“Licenses can be forged. Blood work is much more honest.”
“I’m not taking a DNA test because some crazy man on a street thinks I should,” Lily snapped. “Listen. I’ve been more than nice, considering the fact you grabbed me, terrified me and—”
“Was that terror I tasted on your tongue?” His voice was like silk. It slid over her, through her, demolishing what few defenses she had in an instant. Reminding her again why this man was more dangerous to her than heroin. “I rather thought it was something else.”
“Step away from this car,” she ordered him. She couldn’t let herself react. She couldn’t let him see that he got under her skin. “I’m going to get in it and drive away, and you’re going to let me.”
“Not one of those things is going to happen.”
“What do you want?” she hurled at him. “I told you I don’t know who you are!”
“I want the last five years of my life back!” he thundered, his voice a loud, dark thing in the quiet of the street, bouncing back from the walls of the surrounding buildings and making Lily feel flattened. Punctured. “I want you. I’ve been chasing your ghost for half a decade.”
“I’m not—”
“I went to your funeral.” The thunder was a stark thing, then, and far more painful because of it. It punched through her, leaving her winded. Wobbly. “I stood there and played your stepbrother, nothing more. As if my heart hadn’t been ripped from my body and battered apart on the rocks where that car went off the road. I didn’t sleep for months, for years, imagining you losing control of the wheel and plummeting over—” His fine lips pressed together, hard and grim, as he cut himself off. When he spoke again, his voice was hoarse. “Every time I closed my eyes I pictured you screaming.”
She would never know how she stood there and stared back at him, as if he was talking about someone else. He is, she told herself fiercely. The Lily Holloway he knew really did die that day. She’s never coming back.
And the Rafael she’d known had never cared about her—or anything—that much. Who was he kidding? She’d been but one of his many women at the time, and she’d accepted that because what else had she known? She’d learned how to lose herself in awful, narcotic men at her mother’s knee.
“I’m sorry,” she managed to say. “For everyone involved. That sounds horrific.”
“Your mother never recovered.”
But Lily didn’t want to talk about her mother. Her bright and fragile and largely absent mother, who had shivered at the slightest wind, susceptible to every emotional storm that rolled her way. Her mother, who had self-medicated with ever more dangerous combinations of prescription pills, always under the aegis of this or that quack of a doctor.
“Did you know that she died eighteen months ago?” Rafael continued. “That wouldn’t have happened if she’d known her daughter was still alive.”
That one would leave deep, deep scars, Lily knew. But she didn’t crack. What she felt about her doomed and careless mother paled in comparison to what she had to keep safe here.
“My mother is in jail,” she told him, and she had no idea how she managed to sound so even. “Last I heard she’d found Jesus, for the third time. Maybe this time it’ll stick.”
“These are all lies.” He was too intense. His gaze was too penetrating. She was terribly afraid he could see straight through her, see everything. “What I can’t understand is how you imagine you can tell them to my face. You can’t really think I’m likely to believe them, can you?”
Lily didn’t know what might have happened then. They were at a stalemate and she had no idea how to extricate herself from this—but then she heard voices calling to her from across the street.
Two of Pepper’s clients stood there, a married couple who called her Alison and made polite enough conversation while she held herself still, icy with terror, waiting for them to ask after Arlo. But when they did, as they inevitably did because this was the South and people still took manners seriously here, she realized there was no need to panic. The man beside her didn’t move a muscle. And why would he? It wasn’t as if Rafael knew that name. He couldn’t possibly know what it meant.
She was something like giddy with her relief when the couple moved on.
“I hope that clears things up for you,” she said.
“Because they called you by this assumed name of yours?” Rafael’s voice was mild. “Questions only lead to more questions. You’ve been living here for some time, clearly. You’ve made yourself part of this community.” His expression was harsh. Something like unforgiving. “You had no intention of ever coming home, did you? You were content to let us mourn your death as if it was real.”
He’d let go of her car door, and she slammed it shut then, aware of the way his dark eyes narrowed on her as she did. She ignored him, beeping the alarm on and swinging around again, heading back toward the mall. Where there would be lights and people. More people who knew her. More people to put between them and use as a barrier.
“Where are you going?” he asked, not particularly nicely. “Is this what you do now, Lily? You run away? Where will I find you next time—roaming the streets of Paraguay? Mozambique? Under an entirely different assumed name?”
She kept walking, and he fell into step beside her, which wasn’t any kind of help. It made her remember far too many things best left shut away inside her. It made her think about things that could only hurt. He matched his athletic stride to hers, the way he always had. He was so close that if she merely leaned a little bit to the left, she could nudge up against his arm, which was the closest they’d ever come to public displays of affection back in the day.
She felt blinded with grief,
