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CHAPTER 46 - FINAL

I wake up on Reece's chest. We are in his apartment and have been for the past few months. Every week or so, a new development in the case arrives at our doorstep. As I suspected, Damon and Otis are trying to implicate me for conspiracy in George's death so it's us against them. Tasha is somewhat out of the picture: after an intense grilling at the police station, she cracked and told them that she killed George. How she did it is still unknown but the verdict is out that she used something noxious. Essentially, he was poisoned. My lawyer is still fighting to have an autopsy done. The picture I took proved that George and I both ingested a harmful substance but somehow the opposition have flipped it on us. Apparently, the reason why I had this chemical in my system was not because I gave George mouth-to-mouth but because I was the administrator. Like some fantasy Romeo and Juliet crap, I'd taken poison in my own mouth and applied the kiss of death to George. According to my own lawyer, the prospect wasn't far-fetched; I was a student with a history of counselling; a dead father who I'd recently found out killed a man. Maybe I was suicidal. Maybe I was a megalomaniac who wanted revenge on George and his family. Maybe.

In order to find out more, a test had to be done to determine the levels of this poison in George's body. But to do that, we needed the Levantine's permission to extricate the coffin and test George's body again. There was still talk of cremation and it was making me anxious that I could go down for this when I wasn't responsible.

For the past few weeks, I've been sick: vomiting my guts out at the strain of everything. Reece is always there, patting my back, giving me food, nursing me to health only for me to upchuck everything all over again. It felt like a never-ending cycle.

On this bed with him, I am watching his chest rise and fall as he reads a book over my head. I have another meeting with our lawyer this afternoon so we are having a lie-in. He is tentatively flicking through the Collected Poems of Langston Hughes with one hand and cradling my shoulder with the other. Near him, I am comforted.

"Wanna tell me what you're reading?"

"Fire-Caught," he clears his throat and does his best impression of an American accent. "The gold moth did not love him so, gorgeous, she flew away. But the grey moth circled the flame until the break of day. And then, with wings like a dead desire, she fell, fire-caught, into the flame."

I tilt my head up to see he is looking at the words intensely.

"Morbid," I comment.

"Really?"

I prop my body up on an elbow. "A moth dies after catching fire? That's morbid."

He chuckles. "But he did it for love."

"What?"

"It's about love... self-sacrifice. Being drawn to that which will surely kill you."

"That doesn't sound like love, it sounds like self-sabotage."

"Isn't that what love is?"

"No."

My mind flits back to being on the balcony with George: how tightly he grasped me when I leaned over to look at the street. How easily everything around me drowned out when I was in his arms.

"No?" He sneers. "And you know what love is?"

I don't like his tone. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You tell me," he asks directly. "You've said yourself you don't know what love is. In fact, you've said it many times."

It's true. It had even become my catchphrase. Whenever someone spoke of love, I always shrivelled from the conversation or avoided saying the word aloud. It was so overused and misunderstood, I didn't even like to hear it.