Witt’s words. Cameron used them to drive nails into her stomach. “Fuck you.”
“You know what you are, Max? Besides a liar.” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “You’re a tease. You’re using Witt to get your sexual power fix without having to commit. ‘Max gives and Max takes away.’ When he finally figures out you’ll always run, my love, he’ll walk away from you. You’ll have no one but yourself to blame.”
“You’re a bastard.”
“You did the same thing with me, Max. Played with me. Tested to see how badly I wanted you.”
“I married you.”
He was silent a long moment. Then, “Why’d you marry me, Max?”
Because ... because she’d suddenly seen herself as a ragged old woman in a convalescent home, dying alone, unloved, unwanted. The way her uncle had died in the end.
He snatched the thought out of the air. “Such an endearing reason.”
“I tried my best to be a good wife. I’m alone anyway.”
“You will be alone for the rest of your life if you don’t stop using sex as a power tool.”
“He was the one that started it.”
Silence. For a beat longer than necessary. She used it to slip in her own dig. “Why’d you marry me, Cameron? I dished out the same crap to you as I do to Witt. Why’d you stick around?” Come on, big boy, answer that one.
His voice was a whisper on the night air, soft, gentle, devastating. “I loved the woman I thought you could be, the woman hiding inside waiting to be set free. So tough and so strong on the outside, a survivor. But on the inside ...”
She closed to her eyes and hugged herself. She hadn’t been any of those things. On the inside, she’d been weak and hurt. Leaning on Cameron even for moments had given her such ... peace ... almost joy.
“I admired you for your strength, but I loved you for the times you let go. The times you laughed and you forgot the past.”
She’d never been like that. Cameron’s memory had short-circuited when they’d killed him.
“I don’t know why he wants me,” she said so softly the words might have been only in her head. She’d certainly never leaned on Witt or let him see this mystical quality Cameron thought lived inside her.
“He sees you the way I know you.”
“You can read my mind. He can’t.”
“You think you’re so good at hiding what you think and what you feel. But sweetheart, it’s written all over you. How badly you wanted justice for Wendy. How much you want it for Bethany. How much you fucking care.”
She didn’t want Witt to examine her, to know things she didn’t or couldn’t tell anybody. She didn’t want him to want her. She didn’t want him to even like her. She’d given everything to Cameron, and she’d never do that again. Maybe there wasn’t even anything left of herself to give.
“This is your last chance, Max, do you know that?” Cameron plucked her thoughts out of her head. Desperation tinged his voice.
“My last chance at what?” The chill had crept into her heart. She let it bleed into her voice. “At finding the man of my dreams? Living happily ever after? My name isn’t Cinderella, and I don’t believe in fairy tales.”
“Your last chance at living your life instead of hiding out. Let the scars heal, and I’m not talking just about my death or about your rape. Heal them before you become that dried-up prune with no friends, no family, and no heart.”
A pithy comeback died on her lips. She wasn’t in danger of becoming a withered crone dying alone and abandoned in some urine-infested old folks home. No, not her. Not that way. She was sure she’d go out long before that, in a blaze of glory.
“You’re already that woman. You’ve abandoned yourself.”
She turned her back on his voice, turned her back on his words. Turned her back on the truth.
He didn’t leave. She smelled his peppermints and fell asleep amidst the uncomfortable silence between them.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Dr. Prunella Shale, a short, round woman with frizzy red hair, was quite unlike the image her name conveyed. Either by stroke of luck or due to the urgency in her just-shy-of-midnight phone call last night, Max secured an appointment with the good doctor at ten the next morning.
The office was by no means plush nor relaxed. Prunella—which was how Max thought of her—sat on a secretarial chair behind a cubicle-style, three-sided desk unit. Max’s own chair was typical office furniture also, blue-cushioned seat and back, wooden arms. A matching chair sat close to the window. The floor was standard linoleum. The only things that remotely suggested a psychiatrist’s office were the oversized box of Kleenex and the egg-shaped stress reliever on the side table.
The doctor wore a frumpy pink-and-black-checked suit with the sleeves an inch too long for her short arms. She’d applied little makeup. Her fingers and ears were bare, and a simple gold chain circled her throat, disappearing into the neckline of her blouse. Max suspected a cross, though why she couldn’t have said.