With his hand on her throat, Steve glares at her, his eyes narrowed, teeth clenched. He looks like a monster.
How could I ever kiss this man? Kathi asks herself. How could I make love to him?
She claws at his arms and flails her feet, but to no avail. He lifts her by her neck until she has to get on her tiptoes in order to touch the floor. He’s stronger than she ever realized, holding her pinned against the fridge, her feet straining to find the ground below her.
In a panic, she thinks, I’ve married a killer, and now he’s going to kill me. This is what I get.
Then he releases her, and she drops to the floor, gasping, crying. The magnets and photographs from the refrigerator are spread around her on the tile floor, mementos from all the places they’ve visited together.
Steve kneels down, breathing heavy.
“You brought this on yourself.”
He tries to put a hand on her, but she twists away. He won’t be denied. He grabs a fistful of her hair and makes her look him in the eye. He balls his other hand into a fist and draws it back.
“Listen here,” he snarls. “Don’t mention the name Eric Wright ever again. Forget you ever fucking heard that name. Do you understand?”
Kathi is paralyzed with fear.
She doesn’t recognize the man staring at her. She realizes she’s seeing Eric Wright—the real person hidden behind the mask of Steve Marcum—for the first time in her life.
Suddenly, he releases his grip on her and apologizes. His anger turns to despair, and he starts crying along with her.
“I just snapped,” he explains. “You’ve got to understand that if the wrong people find out I’m here, I’m dead. And they’ll probably kill you, too. Do you see why I’m so upset?”
But as Steve cries, Kathi finally sees through him. That night at the cemetery, he cried so hard that she believed there was no way he could be faking the pain. But it was all a lie—an untruth that had nothing to do with protecting himself from the CIA. If she could believe that his secrets and lies were all to protect himself from the wrong people finding him, she might be able to forgive what he just did. But he still hasn’t offered an explanation for why he made up those stories. No explanation for why he broke down in that cemetery and sobbed. All that elaborate deception was just done to manipulate her.
To toy with her.
If those tears were fake, these ones are, too.
“I love you,” he wails. “But you really fucked up.”
“I’m sorry,” Kathi says because she knows that’s what he wants to hear.
“Can you forgive me?” Steve says, tears streaking his cheeks. “I can’t live with myself if you don’t forgive me.”
Kathi wraps her arms around him.
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I just want things to go back to the way they were. I forgive you. Let’s just forget the whole thing.”
Look who’s lying now, she thinks.