Cadence’s mouth went tight—a thin line of insolence.
“Now I know why you’ve been absent. I do. And I know I deserved your absence. But it ends now. You’re gonna stop playing your bullshit passive-aggressive games with me.”
He walked to the bed and grabbed her upper arm, hauling her to her feet. She ripped her arm from his grasp.
“I’m studying,” she spat.
“I don’t give a fuck.”
Cadence balled her hands into tiny fists. Mark saw and encouraged her.
“Just give it to me. Would that make you feel better? Because I need anything in the world right now to make you feel better,” he said. “How many times can I apologize? How many ways can I work to make things right? I was wrong to hurt you like that, but you’ve gotta forgive me at some—”
Cadence swung at his face, driving her fist into his right ear. She gasped in disbelief. She hadn’t meant to hit him that hard. But the blow fueled within her a desire for revenge—the physical kind where someone goes down for the count.
Mark hissed and rubbed his ear, but said nothing.
“I want to rip you apart! I want to make you hurt like you’ve hurt me!!” she screamed.
“Then do it,” he replied.
“I’m resentful of you!”
“Then show me.”
She wasn’t expecting an invitation. She stood, momentarily confused, waiting for him to rescind his offer. But he didn’t, so she drove a fist into his chest. It wasn’t a hard hit. It was tentative, like she was testing him out. Did he mean it, and could he handle it once her hesitation turned into full-out fury?
“Show me,” he urged. “If that’ll make you feel better.”
This time she didn’t hesitate. She beat on his chest harder, making him stumble backwards slightly. She slapped his face over and over—one cheek, then the other—her hand stinging from the hit and his stubble. She pushed against his shoulders in an attempt to knock him to the floor. He took each blow, accepting punishment for his deceit, knowing it was deserved and justified.
“You LIAR!” she screamed in his face.
He nodded.
“I can’t trust you!”
She pounded his upper arm.
“I HATE you!
She slapped his face with all the force her 100-pound body could muster.
Mark grunted and blinked until he no longer saw stars.
She didn’t know how long she pummeled him. She thought he deserved at least an hour of it, but her hands started aching, and she grew tired.
“You . . . you . . .”
She dropped her arms and stood staring at him. She thought she was supposed to cry for her pain, but she had no tears. Her heart was detached, unfeeling. She wanted to be close to him, but the wedge between them was thick and unyielding, and she feared it would divide them permanently.
“You have to forgive me, Cadence,” Mark said quietly. “You can’t carry around that resentment, or we won’t survive it.”
Cadence nodded.
“I’m just so angry with you. It’s taken root in my heart, this anger. It’s grown a monumental hatred that’s made me crazy. I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
Mark reached out and took her hand. She let him.
“I know I acted out. I know I frightened you when I wouldn’t call. I know I hurt your feelings when I wouldn’t show up for dates, wouldn’t spend time with you. I just didn’t know how to punish you enough. Every time I did something ugly, it only made me want to do something else even uglier. I got addicted to it—seeing you hurt. Because it provided me a little measure of satisfaction. ‘Good,’ I thought. ‘He hurts as much as I do.’”
“You had a right to feel that way,” Mark said.
“You hurt my feelings. You made me feel like I wasn’t important to you—just some stupid girl with nothing special about her. I can’t shake those words you said to me. I think the damage is irreparable.”
“I hate that I said those things, Cadence. I didn’t believe them at all. I would have never pursued you if I didn’t see something special in you. Something worth cherishing. You’ve been my savior—that person who showed me how to feel again. How to love again.”
Cadence sighed. “I don’t know how to get back to where we were,” she whispered.
“We may never get back there. We may have to find a new place. A better place.”
She hung her head.
“But that’s worth doing, right?” he asked. “I want to find a new, better place with you.”
She nodded, and he picked her up, encircling her waist with his arms and rocking her side to side the way he did the first time she visited him at his apartment. He was surprised at the soreness he felt from her blows. She was little, but she packed a mighty punch.
“You still love her.” Cadence didn’t state it as a question.
Mark was silent for a moment, contemplating his response. She may not like it, but he would never lie to her again. So he told her the truth.