Thirty-three

The following afternoon, the hospital releases me. My nerve block has worn off and my shoulder and back hurt like hell in spite of the painkillers they’ve given me, but I’m glad to be out of there, regardless. I’m also glad to be wearing my own clothes again, thanks to Lucas, who was able to recover our bags from Xanadu. I’ve yet to see him, though I’m told he stayed by my side in the hospital until Chase arrived, refusing to sleep until he knew I’d be okay.

“Lucas is bringing the car around,” Chase says, and for a moment I worry he senses my mixed feelings. But when I glance at him, all I see is concern for me—which makes me feel like a total asshole.

With my shoulder in a sling and my greasy hair hidden by my Yankees cap, I shuffle into the warm day on Chase’s arm, and turn my face up to the sun.

“There he is.” My mom points at a mud-splattered jeep as it turns into the parking lot, and my heart clenches when I spot Lucas behind the wheel.

Conscious of Chase beside me, I try to act nonchalant as Lucas hops down to the pavement, but by the time he reaches me, I’m so overwhelmed by the sight of him that I’m hardly able to breathe.

“Glad to see you looking better,” he says, giving me an awkward half hug.

He has a welt on his cheekbone and a bandage on one of his arms, and I can make out what looks like a black eye behind his sunglasses, but otherwise he seems to be in one piece.

“Are you okay?” I ask, shading my eyes against the sun with my good arm to study the welt on his cheekbone.

“Yeah. Rex,” he says in reference to his face. “That guy’s a machine.”

“Is he . . .”

“Alive? Yeah. Somewhere in there.” He gestures to the hospital.

“And everyone else?” I ask. “How are Blaze and Ruby? What’s happening?”

“They’re okay. Right now, everyone’s being put up in a church and interviewed by the authorities. Once they’ve all given statements, they’ll be moved to hotels until they can get their papers in order, then will be repatriated to whatever countries they came from.”

“Are any of them going to be prosecuted?” I ask.

“Maybe Rex and Aguilar? I don’t know. It’s tough to prove anything, and they were all under Kali’s influence. She left a manifesto that outlined her intentions to escort her flock through the Divine Portal.”

“Wow,” Chase says. I look over at him, and he raises his brows. “Crazy.”

“How many died?” I ask.

“Four—that I know of.” Lucas runs his fingers through his hair. “Kali, Hikari, the man we saw go down in the field, a girl who intentionally drank what was left in the dispenser—”

“Who?”

He cracks his knuckles. “One of the sisters—Karma or Karuna? The older one.”

“God, that’s awful.”

Lucas notices my mom fanning herself and opens the car door for her, handing her up into the front seat. Chase helps me into the back and slides in next to me, and we pull away from the curb, Lucas driving as carefully as he can over the uneven roads toward our hotel.

On the outskirts of town, colorful well-worn buildings with rusting corrugated roofs give way to thicker vegetation and taller trees, past which I can see the mountains in the distance. At a hand-painted sign that reads “Villas Las Palmas,” we turn down a winding dirt driveway that leads through the dense green forest to a collection of wooden bungalows with tile roofs scattered along a rushing river.

Lucas parks in the shade behind the next-to-farthest bungalow and helps my mom down from the jeep, while Chase helps me. “This is you guys,” he says, indicating the bungalow in front of us. “I’m on the end, and Irina is next to you.”

It hits me then that I’m sharing a room with Chase, that I’ll finally have the opportunity to come clean with him, and I’m overcome with the desire to run back to the dingy hospital.

“I have to give a statement this afternoon,” Lucas says. “Then I’m going to check on Blaze and Ruby and the rest. But Irina has my phone number if you need me.”

I don’t look at him as he leaves, swallowing the lump in my throat as my mother and I follow Chase up the walkway to our bungalow.

“You feeling okay?” Chase asks, unlocking the door to our room. “You look pale.”

“My shoulder hurts.” I manage a weak smile.

Inside, the bungalow has high beamed ceilings and terra-cotta tile floors, with abundant windows open to the breeze and a porch with a hammock overlooking the river at the front. A white bed is centered against the back wall with a mosquito net draped over it, facing the small sitting area with a matching turquoise-and-red-patterned love seat and chair. “This is beautiful,” I say, looking around.

“It’s kind of a shithole,” Chase says. “But there’s not exactly a Four Seasons close by, and we won’t be here long. I’ve gotta get back for the Knicks game tomorrow, and you can leave as soon as you’ve given your statement.”

And just like that, the differences between us are once again in sharp relief. “Hey, Mom,” I say, suddenly ready for what I have to do next. “Can we have a sec?”

“Of course,” she says.

“Thank you,” I say. “I’ll come by a little later.”

Once the door has closed behind her, I turn to Chase, steeling my nerves. “We need to talk,” I say gently.

“Okay.” He perches on the arm of the chair and looks at me.

Guilt weighs heavy on me as I force myself to meet his eye. “I haven’t been faithful.”

Anger flashes across his face; his eyes harden.

“I’m sorry.” I pause, struggling with what to say, how much to say.

He crosses his arms, then pinches the bridge of his nose. “I haven’t, either,” he says.

I draw back, stung. The image of the lipstick on the coffee cup in his loft materializes before my eyes. My impulse is to ask when, with who? But I gave up that privilege when I slept with Lucas. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now.

We stare at each other, our relationship disintegrating between us.

“So I guess we’re even,” he says.

“Yeah.” I sigh, wishing I’d planned this better. “I love you, Chase. And I care about you deeply. But I think we both know we’re not compatible. We’ve known for a while.”

He nods curtly. “I tried.”

“I know. We both did. I’m sorry it had to end this way.”

He doesn’t meet my eye. “Yeah.”

“I really wanted this to work,” I say. I reach for his hand, but he grabs his messenger bag instead, and slings it over his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” I repeat.

He pauses for a long moment, and when he finally meets my gaze, I see that the anger in his eyes has been replaced by resignation. “Me, too.”

I twist the ring off my finger and place it in his hand. He pockets it.

“Something happened to you down here.” He says it not as an accusation but an observation.

“A lot happened to me,” I agree.

“Not just the physical stuff.” He evaluates me. “You’re different. I could tell the minute you woke up. It’s like you’re more—I don’t know, stronger, or something.”

“Thank you,” I say.

“I mean you’ve always been strong. But you had that look, like you did on the catwalk the night we met, when you were the cockatoo. Like nothing was going to get in your way. I hadn’t seen that in a long time. And I realized, maybe I’d clipped your wings.”

I stare at him, stunned by his perception.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “That was never my intention.”

“It’s not your fault,” I say finally. “It was us, together.”

He nods. “What are you gonna do?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I was thinking about getting some information on classes at CUNY. Maybe I’ll finally find my calling, figure out something positive to do with this estate.”

One hundred eighty million dollars. The amount hangs in the silence between us. I haven’t had time to fully absorb the meaning of it, the changes it will bring to my life. I recognize I’ll have to work to remain grounded with that kind of insulation, and I know finding the right purpose for it will be key to that.

After a moment, he grabs his duffel bag. “You will.”

Once he leaves for the airport, I sit on the bed for a long time, allowing myself the space to find closure. A relationship doesn’t have to last forever to be successful, I realize. I learned a lot about love and myself, about what I do and don’t want, and I’ll carry that knowledge with me going forward. I have no ill will toward Chase—the opposite, in fact; I really do wish him all the best—but I also feel no regret for letting him go.

Which I take as confirmation that I’ve made the right choice.

 

I find Lucas in the hammock on his porch, tapping away at his phone. He puts it down when he sees me. “Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” I say.

I sit in one of the wicker chairs, looking out over the river.

“Where’s Chase?” he asks.

“On his way to the airport.”

He glances down at my bare ring finger and nods, understanding. I keep my eyes trained on the forest as his gaze settles on me, the thing we’re not talking about heavy between us. “Sveta—”

“Were you involved with Kali?” I cut him off.

He measures his words before he speaks. “Not for a long time.”

I let that double-edged sword sink in.

“I owe you an explanation,” he continues, moving from the hammock to the chair next to mine.

“And an apology,” I say.

He nods. “I’m sorry, Sveta. I’m so sorry. I want you to know, everything between us was real. I’m so angry with myself that I fucked it up by not telling you the whole truth.”

I evaluate him. “What is the whole truth?”

He meets my gaze. “Kali was my mentor in The Circle. We were matched when I was thirteen and she was nineteen.”

I feel a stab of fury at the confirmation of what I had assumed. “That’s statutory rape.”

“Yeah.” His stoicism speaks to the heat of the rage he once felt and the work he’s done to quell it. “They saw sex as a sacrament.” He runs his fingers through his hair. “My father was one of the people responsible for getting the FBI to break up the cult, when I was sixteen. I went through deprograming therapy, then to live with him, and never spoke of it again.”

“What happened to your mom?” I ask.

“She went through deprograming, too. Remarried and lives in Canada now. I’ve forgiven her, but we’ll never be close.”

“And Kali?”

“She left the country,” he says. “Changed her identity and used sex, the way she’d been taught in The Circle, to get what she wanted.”

“So she was, what, a call girl?”

He shrugs. “The way she saw it, she brought beauty and spiritual depth to the people she had relationships with, and in return they supported her. But she always stayed in touch with me. And we’d see each other when she was in town.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Abuse messes with your head.” He sighs. “Kali and I shared something that no one else would ever understand; she was the only one I could talk to about this huge part of my life that cast a shadow across everything else. It bonded us, and I couldn’t escape it. Not for a long, long time.”

I let my gaze drift past the trees to the river, reflecting the blue sky as it meanders through the jungle. “So how did Kali end up with Paul?” I ask.

“I introduced them,” he admits. “I took Kali out to his retreat center in Sonoma—showing off to her, really, that I knew this famous self-help guru. No one, not even my dad, knew my relationship with her—we let them think we’d met only recently, randomly. She charmed Paul, and before I knew it, they were together.”

“Did you keep seeing her?”

He nods. “In the beginning. But as I got older and spent more time in therapy and less time with her, I wanted less and less to do with her. I didn’t want my time in The Circle to determine the rest of my life. I wanted to be normal, have real girlfriends, maybe even my own family someday. So we grew apart.

“After they moved down here, I hardly heard from her. Until I got this crazy email from her about two weeks ago. She was claiming to be the Kavi, just like her father had, spouting the same BS about leading her flock through the portal. It was The Circle all over again, and it scared the shit out of me.”

“What did you do?” I ask.

“I called Paul and confessed everything to him,” he answers. “I also reached out to the FBI agent who had been assigned to my case sixteen years ago and showed the message to him. He was sympathetic, but there was very little he could do about consenting adults in a foreign country, without any evidence of wrongdoing.”

“Damn,” I say.

“Yeah.” He sighs. “That’s when Paul decided to come down here and close Xanadu. So of course when Hikari called me last week to inform me of his death, I immediately had this terrible feeling Kali had done something. I went to the FBI again to ask them to investigate, but they told me the same thing.”

I frown, considering him. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

“The agent advised me not to say anything to you, for your own safety.” His voice is heavy with the implications of what he walked us into. “I’m sorry.”

“Right. And they couldn’t help when Kali trapped us down here?”

He shook his head. “Not in any official capacity. I think after Sunshine died, they would have been able to do something. But by then it was too late.”

“So, the assistant you called—?”

“Was my FBI contact. A call I later found out Kali heard every word of. That’s the argument you saw us having in the woods.”

Beyond the lush greenery, the river gurgles. “But I don’t understand—you introduced Kali to Paul, so why pretend not to know her here?”

“No one here knows that. It would have complicated things, brought up questions about our past that we didn’t have easy answers for.”

“Did she know you were coming down here?”

“No. And she was not happy about it,” he admits. “She was so angry yesterday that I’d betrayed her by calling the FBI. She thought she could convince me to come over to her side, and when she realized she couldn’t, she saw the end of her reign was near—which I knew would make her more dangerous than ever. Blaze had told me in the morning about the park rangers, so I went for help. I hated leaving you, but I couldn’t find you and I didn’t think I should wait a minute longer. I left you a note—”

“That I didn’t get.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So, Kali killed Paul before he could shut down Xanadu,” I say, putting it all together, “then, when we got in the way of her plans to take over, and she found out the FBI was involved, she decided as a last resort to pull the rip cord and lead everyone through the portal?”

“Like her father.” He grimaces. “I’m so sorry I brought you down here, got you involved in this.” His dark eyes rove over my face. “I wish that . . .” He bites his lip, searching for the right words. “I know I shouldn’t have slept with you without telling you the truth first. I knew it when I was doing it. But I . . .” His gaze locks on mine and a flame flickers inside me.

It’s too much, the way he’s looking at me right now. I stand and go to the railing, putting more space between us. The river gurgles as I stare unseeing at the jungle, my emotions swirling. “You said you’re going to see Ruby and the others later?”

“Yeah.”

“I want to come,” I say. “I want to help them. Put them through deprograming, like you went through. Give them some money to get started. I told Ruby I’d connect her with my friend in New York who has a yoga studio . . .”

He joins me at the railing. “I can help you with all that, if you want me to.”

The question hangs between us as I wrestle with myself.

The truth is, I do want his help. He knows better than anyone what someone coming out of a cult needs. And no other attorney is going to take as good care of me during probate as he will. “I’d appreciate that, thank you,” I say.

“Sveta . . .” The brush of his fingers against my arm sets a hummingbird loose in my chest. “I know I screwed up. And as much as I want it, I know I don’t deserve another chance with you. But if you can ever forgive me, I hope we can at least be friends.”

Friends. Could we be just friends?

“Lucas . . .” I gather my willpower, choosing my words carefully. “I forgive you. And I can’t say you’ll never have another chance with me.” This elicits a small smile. “But I need some time to myself to figure things out. Figure out who I am and what I want.”

He pauses, considering me. “I respect that,” he says, wrapping me in a hug that very nearly weakens my resolve.

“And it’s not like we’re not gonna talk during probate,” I add.

“If conversations about trust accounts and revenue shares is all I can get, I’ll take it,” he murmurs into my hair.

I allow myself to enjoy the warmth of his strong arms around me for just a moment longer, knowing it may be a while before I’m this close to him again.

I don’t know what will happen between us, I have no expectations. I won’t cut him out of my life, though. He’s made mistakes, but he’s been through a lot, and I understand now that he was never out to take advantage of me. I don’t care if some people think that makes me a pushover. Life isn’t black and white. If I’ve learned anything in the past year, it’s to be true to myself. I’m more determined than ever to do the work to make myself whole. And I trust myself to make the right decisions for me.

After all, it’s my choice whether I lead a life of bliss or sorrow. And I choose bliss.