The Taking (Seven Deadly Sins #3)(63)
Author: Erin McCarthy

Her mouth opened as if she were going to speak, but then she closed it, her head shaking slightly from left to right as she remained stoically silent.

“Just say something, please. I’m begging you, Regan.”

Eyes filling with tears, she said, “How could you do this to me? How could you?”

Her voice was so filled with agony and hurt that Felix felt like he’d been slapped, and he wished he could take back his plea for her to speak.

That expression, those words of anguish, felt like they could kill the man that couldn’t be killed.

So Felix walked out of the house he should never have entered and away from the woman he should never have dared to love.

Chapter Eighteen

Regan stared into space from her chair on Chris and Nelson’s patio. Nelson was an amateur gardener and he had the courtyard in full bloom, lush reds and oranges popping all around Regan, but she didn’t notice.

Her coffee was cold, but she didn’t care.She needed a shower, but she didn’t have the energy to take one.

Chris lit a cigarette in the chair across from her, and while she normally wrinkled her nose at the pungent tendrils of smoke crossing in front of her, she didn’t even blink.

“Regan.” Chris leaned forward in his chair. “This is getting f**king ridiculous. You’re like the dawn of the dirty-hair dead. You know you’re welcome to stay here as long as you like, but you need to talk to me. This silence is freaking me out and it’s not healthy for you.”

She stared at him, impassive, trying to work up the energy to respond. Everything was so much effort, so much work. She knew she was in some kind of sleep-deprived depression because it just wasn’t normal to feel like it was almost too much work to breathe. Getting dressed ruined her for the day, and chewing her food seemed more trouble than it was worth.

“I can’t talk about it.” Regan was afraid that once she started to talk, she would start to think, and once she started to think, she would start to feel.

And that was not something she wanted to do.

It had been three weeks since she had seen her distorted face on that video, since Felix had made up the most outrageous story she’d ever heard in her life, and she had learned that loving him had been yet another mistake. That like Beau, she had never really known Felix Leblanc.

She didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to think about the fact that his ring had the same inscription her wedding ring had, or that he knew things, things about Camille that he shouldn’t since he had never read her journal.

Her lawyer had confirmed that Beau had in fact owned her house and that he had upward of twenty million in liquid assets in addition to almost fifty million in properties. Regan had ignored Richard’s voice mail and subsequent calls.

It didn’t matter.

Nothing mattered.

After her debacle of a house party, she had taken a suitcase full of clothes, Camille’s journal, and had left her house and its many questions behind. She had been staying with Chris and Nelson, working and doing nothing else, including sleeping. That eluded her completely. This week she’d finally given in to the fact that she was not functioning and had taken two weeks off from work. She wasn’t sure what would be better in two weeks, but she couldn’t do her job the way she was.

“You’re not even going to tell me what went down with Felix?”

“No.” How did you explain to your best friend that your judgment was so poor you let a man move in with you who was either delusional or a liar? Or that a small, strange part of you actually believed him? That you thought maybe, just maybe, he could be telling the truth, no matter how bizarre it was.

“And you won’t talk about the video.” It was a statement, not a question, because Chris knew her answer to that.

“Nope.”

“Will you eat something? I swear to God you’ve lost ten pounds and a cup size.”

“Isn’t thin in?” she asked, feeling a sudden urge to take a hit off of Chris’s cigarette. But she already had enough problems, she didn’t need to create a nicotine addiction at the same time.

“Thin is always in. But unhealthy isn’t. Your hair is dull, your clothes are hanging on you, and the skin under your eyes looks like you’ve been beaten black-and-blue and you’re recovering. You look bruised and miserable.”

At least he was being delicate about it. “I am bruised and miserable!” Regan said in a louder voice than she would have thought she’d have the energy to use. “I feel like I have been beaten black-and-blue. Crazy things happened in my house. The dreams, the sleepwalking, the dangling off the balcony, the face oozing out of my face… something got inside me, damn it, and it’s crazy and I don’t know what to do!”

“Well, you can keep ignoring it, because that’s clearly working for you,” Chris said sarcastically, before taking another drag on his cigarette. “Or you can deal with it. Kick this bitch out of your house.”

“And how exactly am I supposed to do that?” she asked in frustration. “I would love to have my life back to normal. I would love to be able to live in the house I paid a boatload of money for.”

“Felix would know.”

“Fuck Felix.”

Chris’s eyebrows shot up. “Okay, then. Apparently whatever happened in that thirty minutes you were alone with him was not good.”

“No, it was not good.” It was crazy. Crazy. All of it just … crazy.

“So how about another voodoo practitioner? Or a priest? Or maybe you can just talk to Camille, and tell her it’s all good. That it’s time for her to pass on to the other side or whatever they say in that movie Poltergeist. Tell her to go toward the light.”

Regan knew Chris was just trying to help, that he was worried about her. She was worried about herself, too. But his well-meaning suggestions were just irritating her.

“I’m going for a walk. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” Then because she felt bad, she kissed Chris on the top of the head when she stood up. “Thank you, for everything.”

“Do you want company?” he asked, though he looked perfectly comfortable lazing back in his chair.

“No, I’m fine.” Regan walked through the well-decorated but cluttered house and out the front door. There was something claustrophobic to her about all the knickknacks and excess furniture Chris and Nelson collected, so different from her own style of decorating.

Or maybe it was her own thoughts that were claustrophic. Those weren’t so easily edited and streamlined as a living room.