“I’m gonna…” My mouth was so dry. “I’m gonna send you to jail.”
His lips rested against my cheek, and I thought I felt his body shake with a silent sob.
But as I fell into sleep and oblivion, his words were sharp and clear in my ear. “Then you better hope I never get out.”
Winter
Present
I sat in the theater, listening to the latest rehearsals for the annual Nutcracker performance and remembering when I was up there with all the little kids, too. The stage was larger than life, and I still remember leaping around as the snow fell, barely registering the audience, because the world up there was far too beautiful to look anywhere else.
Someone squeezed past me in my aisle seat, sitting next to me.
“How are you?” Rika asked.
I just gave her a small smile.
There were no answers to that question. Saying “fine” would seem comical.
I clasped my hands in my lap, chilled from the air, and I dipped my mouth under my thin scarf, breathing out to heat myself up.
“Come stay with us,” she said.
She’d made the offer ever since the haunted house the night before last, but I felt numb now, and I didn’t want to run. I wanted to win.
“You’re helping me,” I pointed out. “I appreciate it.”
We met yesterday about her and Michael sponsoring a performance, and it wasn’t much, but it was a path to get out on my own. They’d get their money back with ticket sales—if I were fortunate enough to have any—and whatever was left we’d split as profit. But she’d called earlier today with more ideas, including a tour. Maybe scouting other performers who weren’t getting seen. She was really into it, and it was nice to have another person excited for my dancing. Other than Damon…
“You look a little dangerous,” she mused. “Like you’ve got ideas.”
“For the tour or for my sister’s husband?”
She snorted. “Whichever one you have that look to kill for.”
“I hate him,” I said, pulling down the sleeves of my little jacket. “I hate what he did to me. He deserved his punishment.”
He deserved to go to jail.
“But?” she pressed.
But my weak heart kept thinking about what he said in bed two nights ago when I’d held the blades to his rib and neck. About lying to me being the only way he felt he could get close to me in high school. Maybe it was just a lie he fed my mother to get rid of her.
Or maybe it wasn’t. It didn’t make it right, though.
“There were so many moments back then—” I told her, “—they felt real, like he could’ve been different and I could’ve been different.”
He seduced me with a lie. Why was I having any doubts about the man he was?
“I do hate him,” I told her. “I just wish I hated him every second.”
“Alex told me after the haunted house the other night about everything that happened to you,” I explained to her. “How they mistakenly thought you were the one to upload the videos and they went after you because they thought you sent them to prison.” I paused as she remained silent. “She told me what Damon did. But you don’t seem to hate him. Why?”
She invited him and our family to her engagement party. She was fine being around him at the haunted house. I heard a rumor they were having business meetings.
But she just sighed. “Why don’t I hate any of them?” she asked. “I guess when you hate someone you don’t have to hate them forever.”
But it wasn’t okay. How could she trust him? How could she forgive him?
“I don’t excuse what he did,” she said, hesitating for a moment, “but…I don’t know. I see a chance in there. I can’t explain it.” And then she continued, “Michael, Kai, Will… They have never disappointed me since.”
I didn’t know what they’d done to her compared to Damon, but I knew what he did to me compared to her. I would never forgive him.
“He hasn’t hurt you, has he?” she asked, like she expected he wouldn’t really.
Another hard question to answer. Was he forcing me? No.
Was he threatening me? Playing with my head?
“The mindfucks are a little rough,” I told her.
She scoffed, sounding like she understood. “Yeah, they are good at that.”
The director was shouting on stage, giving direction, and then the piano started up again as I heard a dozen pairs of ballet slippers hit the stage, the musical number beginning again.
“The only good memory I have of Damon when we were younger was when we were kids,” Rika told me. “I was like three or four—the memory is faint but I remember the gist—and we were at the library. Another kid pushed me down and stole my pop-up book.” She laughed a little at the memory. “Damon stole it right back and gave it to me. He never talked to me, and my mom invited him to come sit with us and read, but he had to leave with his nanny, I think.”
I pictured it in my head, Damon doing what he did and taking control of the situation. I wasn’t sure why she told me that, as if an endearing little story would make up for who he was now.
“I didn’t start to fear him until high school.” Her voice sounded thoughtful as if she were figuring something out herself for the first time, too. “After everything that was happening in that house happened to him.”
“It’s no excuse,” I pointed out.
And she agreed. “No, it’s not.” she said. “It’s a reason. Plain and simple. There’s always a reason why things are as they are.”
I returned to the house late, sliding out of my shoes and unwrapping my scarf as I entered my bedroom. I hadn’t seen Damon for almost two days, and I wasn’t sure where he was or what he was doing, but I was tired.
So tired.
I undressed and slipped into one of my sleep sets, the cool silk of the shorts and shirt refreshing on my exhausted body, and I plugged my phone into the charger, ignoring the notifications from my mother.
I reached my mom yesterday morning, confirmed she and Ari were safe again, and when I asked how she could leave me and when she’d be back, she paused just a little too long, and I hung up. Let her get her excuses straight and leave me a message.
Had she honestly believed that shit he told her? About us being in love and needing time to reconnect?
Or was it what she wanted to believe, because it was easier than fighting back?
I locked my door and lodged my chair under it before sliding into bed and setting my alarm.
But as tired as I was, sleep wouldn’t come.
Doors opened and closed quietly downstairs as Damon’s security moved about, circulating around the property and keeping an eye on the house while he was away.
At first, I thought it was guards for me. To hinder my coming and going and report back to him on what I was up to. And those were undoubtedly some of their orders, but no one gave me any hassle when I wanted to go somewhere, and I never got any instruction to stop doing that or stop going there.
A driver chauffeured me, doors were opened for me, and if it wasn’t them or Damon creeping me out the other morning or in the theater, I actually felt a little safer with them here.
When he was gone.
I clutched the sheet, resenting the thought that wormed its way in. That a part of me wished he wasn’t gone.
Where was he? It had been days. Did he still have Mikhail?
Or did Damon go to the Maldives after all? A pang of jealousy hit me, and I drew in a deep breath, pulling my shirt away from my neck, because I felt stifled.
Fuck you.
What the hell was I doing? The sex was good, so I forgot that he was a lowlife? What a cliché.
I didn’t care that he defended Rika when she was four or that he was abused as a child. Plenty of people grew up shitty.
I’d fucking loved who he pretended to be, but his lie negated everything that happened between us. He humiliated me.
Why was it so hard to remember that whatever he made me feel had been a lie, too?
The haunted house. The fantastical fear. The pulse in my veins.
But then I remembered his strong arms around me.