The Comfort of Black (6 page)

She wrapped up her speech with, “and I really like to make people happy. It's why I do what I do. I consider myself a kind of therapist. I help people. I want to be able to give you what you want, Samuel.”

Hannah could hear Dallin's breathing. Loud and fast, like some kind of goddamned fucking
animal
.

“So, Samuel. Tell me a little about yourself. What kind of work do you do?”

“I'm…in technology. Computers.”

She smiled. “You must be very smart. I could never figure them out. Maybe you can look at my laptop and tell me why it keeps crashing.”

He's not a fucking computer repairman, you whore. He runs one of the largest Internet security firms in North America
. Hannah didn't know why she felt like defending her husband, but this girl was making him sound like he was some kind of plumber.

Dallin's laugh sounded nervous and uncertain, two adjectives Hannah would never typically associate with her husband. But in front of Rebecca, he was just a shy little boy. Hannah's stomach continued to collapse in on itself into a tiny, fiery pit.

“I have to say, Samuel, you are damn sexy. Why do you want to see me?”

“You came recommended.”

Recommended? By whom?

“I know,” Rebecca said. “I will thank our mutual friend for that later. But I mean, what is it that you want to do with me? Is it something you can't do otherwise? And please don't be too explicit in your answer.”

“It's…unconventional.”

“Unconventional is my specialty, Samuel. I'm sure you've heard that from your friend. I'm very open minded. That's another reason I require a thorough pre-screen. It's also why my rates are what they are. Tell me, Samuel.” Rebecca leaned slightly forward toward the camera and her face filled the screen. She pursed her lips and widened her eyes just enough to make it clear she was up for anything. “Do you like to be in control?”

The next words Dallin said were louder than all the others. And they didn't come from the laptop speaker. They came from directly behind Hannah.

“What are you doing?”

Hannah screamed. Or thought she did. She didn't even know. She turned and saw Dallin standing in the doorway to the room, looking at her with confusion.

What was he doing home?

Zoo jumped up. Eyes wide. Whiskers bristling.

The video kept playing, though Hannah only heard it. Her gaze was locked on her husband's face. The Dallin on the computer—
Samuel
—spoke with the quiet conviction of a child in Santa's lap.

“
The kind of control I desire is…somewhat extreme. It's something I've never asked of any partner. Money isn't an issue
.”

The Dallin in the room was far less controlled. His expression immediately changed from confusion to anger as he raced toward Hannah and snatched the laptop off the desk. As he yanked it, the power cord and mouse went along with it, whipping up into Hannah's face. Dallin yanked out the cords and hit the power button, killing the conversation between Samuel and Rebecca.

“Dallin, what the hell was that?
Who is she?
”

“Where did you find this?”

“Are you kidding me? Who the hell is she?”

“No one.”

“Don't you dare do that, Dallin,
who is Rebecca?
” She hated hearing the whore's name come off her lips.

His face softened into one she recognized, and Hannah was suddenly chilled by the thought that this was actually his pretend face. The one he used when he needed to get what he wanted.
Maybe the question wasn't who Rebecca was, but rather
who was Samuel?

“You went through my stuff?”

Dallin didn't wait for an answer. He walked out of the room, taking the laptop and flash drive with him. Anger welled through Hannah as she followed him into the master bedroom.

“Don't walk away from me,” she said. “And don't turn this around on me. I needed the spare laptop for Justine. I have a key to your desk. Now I know why you kept it locked. Now I know why you really have a second cell phone. How long have you been doing this?”

“Hannah, calm down.”

They stood at the foot of their bed. She kept her gaze locked with his, refusing to look down or away.

“Don't tell me to calm down. Don't you
dare
tell me to calm down. Did you
fuck
her?” The word
fuck
sent a pain through her core. Saying it out loud made the possibility so much more real.

“I don't want to discuss this when you're hysterical.”

The word
hysterical
attacked her, making her skin itch with a thousand ravaging fire ants. Hannah was her father's daughter in this moment, and how she wanted to control the temper she had so often successfully reined in. But there were moments when it was just too much, when Billy's DNA controlled her, and Hannah didn't just want to argue. She wanted to pick up something heavy and destroy. She longed to hear the sound of something fragile shattering into a thousand pieces.

“
Who…is…she?
”

Dallin turned, slipped his hands into his pockets, and gazed out the window at Puget Sound.

Hannah crossed her arms, stared at the floor, and willed herself not to cry. She looked over to Zoo, who, while not whining, was wide-eyed and alert, his muscles tensed in rapt attention.

“Why would you do this to me?”

“It's nothing,” he whispered to the window.

“How long, Dallin? How long have you been cheating on me?” Now she approached him and spoke to the back of his head. “How many other web girls have there been? And what the hell kind of fantasies are you into that you can't tell me about them? When did I become not enough for you?”

He let out a long breath, the sound of a parent trying to be patient with a child. “You're too upset to discuss this right now. Let's talk about it later.”

For the second time in two days Dallin suddenly seemed as if he was reading lines off cue cards, an actor in some stage production about love and betrayal. His voice, sounding not at all like it should, made everything dreamlike. Well,
nightmarish
would be more precise.

She wanted to touch him, ground herself, something she was so used to doing, but Hannah kept her hands at her side. She so desperately wanted him to tell her it was all a joke, made up, some kind of sick prank, but in her soul she couldn't conceive of how that could even be a remote possibility.

“You're not seeing this for what it is,” he said.

Hannah dropped her hand, the hope for any assurances or comfort dissolved. “Seeing it for what it is? Dallin, you won't even answer my questions. We're talking about this now. I don't even know if there
will
be a ‘later'.”

Finally, Dallin turned to her. His face had the smooth plastic expression of a mannequin. “What does that mean?”

She threw her arms out. “Do you seriously think I'm just going to allow you to do this to me? What if I was talking dirty with some guy on the Internet? You'd lose your fucking
mind
.”

“We'll talk later.” Dallin started to walk around her.

“Don't leave this room. You don't get to make that decision.
You don't get to leave
.”

“Hannah, we'll talk later.”

“No, we will talk
now
.”

He took another step. She grabbed his arm, and in that
moment, it was Billy's arm. Hannah was fifteen again. In her mind, her hand held a lighter with a flame that glowed in a dark room.
You don't get to do this anymore. You don't get to hurt any of us ever again. It ends tonight
.

Like Billy, Dallin looked down and yanked his arm free. Unlike Billy, Dallin then kept walking and disappeared into the other room.

Now Hannah screamed.

“
I'm the one who gets to leave you!
”

Silence for a moment. Then Dallin reappeared. He stood there in the doorway, hands in his pockets, perfectly still. It wasn't that he was merely quiet, observing. He was completely motionless. The way he looked at Hannah was something she had never experienced from her husband. In that look, in that absence of life in his body, he wielded all power in the room, as if, telepathically, he commanded the sound and the air to leave the room. And Dallin just stared. He just fucking
stared
at her. Then very quietly he said, “What did you say?”

Her voice was coarse and dry. “I'm the one who gets to leave you.”

Dallin stormed into the room. That's the word that came to her mind in the seconds before he grabbed her. He's
storming
. The twisted face of rage, the anger at the inconsideration of someone defying him, the need to punish the insolent, the disobedient.

She heard his sharp, fast breaths—
jackal
—as she saw him raise his hand.

Then it was around her throat, and he used that hand to shove her against a wall. The pain in her throat as he squeezed dwarfed the concussive slam of her head against the sheetrock. A framed picture from their honeymoon fell and shattered on the floor, shards of glass scattering around her feet.

Zoo roared to life, barking furiously, the yapping piercing Hannah's brain.
Bite him!
her mind screamed, as her voice was unable.
Fucking bite him!
But Zoo only barked.

“Leave me?” Dallin said. His voice was calm, controlled,
as his fingers squeezed her throat. “That's what you're going to do? You think you can
leave
me, Hannah? Just like that? With everything I've done for you? Saved you from a shitty white-trash existence. Made you wealthy. Given you everything you wanted, just so you can sit here and drink all day. And you get to leave me? No, I don't think so.”

His fingers squeezed into her neck. Hannah reached up and grabbed his forearm with both hands and dug her nails in as hard as she could.

Dallin's eyes widened barely more than a hair. “You have no idea what's good for you,” he whispered.

He wasn't squeezing hard enough to block her air passage. Yet. She sucked in a shallow breath and asked the only question that existed in her mind at that moment.

“
Who are you?
”

Dallin studied her. There was no joy in his eyes, yet neither was there menace. There was just a complete sadness, a resignation, the look of someone lost deep in the woods who finally realized they weren't ever going to make it out. He leaned in and Hannah felt his breath on her ear as he spoke. The words came on such a light whisper she wasn't even convinced she heard what he said.

“I'm so sorry.”

Then, without saying anything else, he released his grip. She fell forward, almost to the ground before catching herself, regaining her balance just as she saw Dallin turn and walk into the living room. Hannah stared out vacantly in that direction, unable to move, gasping. Zoo came up and whimpered softly as he licked the top of her right foot, the small, wet tongue rolling over the ridges of her bones.

You don't touch me
, she thought, thinking not of her dog but her husband. The last man who had hurt her physically was Billy, and the emotion, the adrenaline, the heat from the rage, which created millions of pinpricks across her skin, it all came back in this moment. In this moment Hannah was nearly blinded from
anger, and despite all the love and history she had with Dallin, she wanted to smash in the teeth of whoever that man was in the other room.

She steadied herself, breathing more slowly. Hannah reached down and patted the top of Zoo's head, and he licked her fingers greedily.

Hannah held her breath and listened, her body tensed, ready to spring.

Silence for a minute. Then the sound of the TV turning on in the other room. Dallin was watching the news.

Hannah raced into the master closet and pulled down a leather overnight bag. Zoo followed her every step, staying so close Hannah twice tripped over him. He barked and nipped at her feet, trying to get her attention. Hannah shushed him.

She turned her attention to the task at hand, frantically grabbing at clothes on the racks and stuffing them into the bag. Now into the bathroom. She snatched items off the counter indiscriminately, cramming them in the bag wherever they would fit. She risked a glance at herself in the mirror. Her face was puffy and red from crying, her eyes bloodshot. Her long blond hair, which was so fine it could rarely ever fall anywhere but straight down, was disheveled, as if she had just rolled out of bed. She leaned in and saw the marks around the base of her neck, where Dallin's hand had been just minutes earlier. They were a sunset red, the kind that would eventually turn into a gunmetal gray as bruises flowered.

She turned away, wanting to see no more.

Leave, Hannah. Leave now
.

Her purse was by the front door, and in it was everything else she needed: wallet, keys, phone. She had to go through the living room.

She slung the overnight bag over her shoulder and went back into the bedroom. She still heard the TV in the other room. Financial news. Dallin loved to watch the goddamn financial news. Loved to follow the markets. See what was happening in the various tech industry silos. Echo Systems—Dallin's company, of which he was the Chairman and CEO—was a security tech
company, and he feasted on information. She pictured him out there, on the couch, shoes off, feet propped on the table, watching the news. As if nothing had happened.

Hannah steeled herself to make her way to the front door. What if he wasn't on the couch? What if he was standing by the door with a knife? She only heard the TV, the sound of some talking head droning on about post-market closing corporate announcements of the day.

She couldn't even call 9-1-1 if she wanted to. Hannah and Dallin only had cell phones. No landline. Hannah's cell phone was in her purse.