He sighs again and looks sad in a way that hurts me. “Innocence, Daph.” He swallows. “If he knew you were—”
My face flickers. “I’m not.”
“Sure, yer no’ a virgin anymore.” Jamison gives me a look. “But y’are innocent.” He rolls his eyes a little bit and looks annoyed. “It’s a means to control women, that old trope. Virginity equates purity and innocence. Yer man’s friend is a virgin, sure. But there’s nothing pure about her.”
I give him a wave of my hand and an impatient look.
“I was trying t’ protect ye, Daph.” He looks for my eyes. “I didn’t mean it.”
I suck on my bottom lip, staring over at him. My eyes go big and round. “You were very convincing.”
He shrugs like he can’t help it. “I’m a good liar.”
“Oh.” I force a smile. “Well, that’s good to know.”
“Daph.” He drops his head into his hands. “You have to know I d?dnae mean it—”
“How would I know that?” I square my shoulders. “There have been too many times when I’ve seen you without you knowing I was there, and none of those times were you the person who you are when you’re alone with me.”
He shakes his head. “Because a’m better when I’m with ye,” he says in a quiet voice.
I shrug as though I’m indifferent. “Or because you’re lying when you’re with me.”
He rolls his eyes, impatient. “Why would I be lying when I’m wi’ ye?”
I shrug again, as though it’s a thought I’m just thinking now, as though it’s not been the question torturing me since I began wondering about it. “Maybe you collect things too.”
“Sure, yeah,” He nods, properly annoyed now. “And what did I collect from ye?”
I glare over at him. “My kiss.”
His face looks as though it falls a little bit, but maybe he’s just good at pretending. He shakes his head, eyes on the other side of the room. “You gave that to me.”
“Did I?” I move my head so I catch his eye again. “Or did you trick me so I’d throw it at you?”
That looks like it pricks him a little how I felt like I needed it to. His jaw goes tight, and he glares at me. “If ye think that’s right, why are ye still here?”
I move towards the door, shaking my head. “I don’t know anymore.”
He grabs my arm and spins me around. “Yer here because we belong together, Daph.”
“Another lie?”
His head falls back. “Come on!”
My eyes pinch as I shake my head at him. “How am I to trust a single word you say?”
His hands drop to my waist, both of them holding me how I want them to, and at first, his hands being on me relieves me, and then it hurts me because I realise how badly I want them there.
“Because I trust ye, and I love ye,” he tells me, not letting go. “Even though yer a fucking punish sometimes and even though yer full o’ shit.”
I look at him darkly. “How am I full of shit?”
“Because ye trust me too!”
I shake my head, trying to brush past him. “Stop.”
“You do!” He grabs me again. “It’s me ye come to. It’s me ye run to when shit starts happening. You d?nnae go t’ Peter. Ye come t’ me.”
“And where has that ever gotten me?” I practically scream, and he pulls back, startled. My voice doesn’t sound like mine anymore; it sounds wounded and mangled. I shake my head at him. “Peter would hurt me sometimes, sure, but you”—I stare at him, swallowing quickly—“are total destruction for me.”
“Daph.” He shakes his head, and I ignore him.
“You don’t bring out the worst in me. You just flatten me. Dead.”
“D?nnae say that,” he tells me softly.
He looks a bit war-torn now.
“When I was tied to that sinking ship”—I gesture someplace other than here and smack away the tears that are daring to show their face in this moment—“and it was all rising around me, and then I fell through the floor and I went under, it wasn’t the water that was drowning me, it was you! What you said—”
He breathes out. “Daphne—”
“And I can’t unhear it.” I shake my head urgently. “It was so dismissive and so embarrassing and everything I’ve secretly worried about myself, and you said it. Out loud. To a man who wanted to hurt me!”
He reaches for my cheek, and I shove his hand away.
“And Peter might be selfish and childish and—”
He cuts in. “Controlling and manipulative and dangerous and a fucking prick and—”
“And even still!” I speak over him. “I’ve never heard him come close to speaking about me how you spoke of me.”
Jem presses his tongue into his bottom lip and sighs. “I was trying t’ protect ye.”
I give him a big shrug, my eyes properly teary now. “I don’t believe you.”
Jamison presses his thumb into the corner of his eye again, sniffing. “How can ye no’ believe me?”
“Because I don’t!” I yell, taking a step back from him. “Because I don’t know what’s real with you!”
He scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Fuck off.”
I pull back. “Excuse me?”
“I said fuck off, Daphne,” he says loudly, then shakes his head. “That’s horseshit. I love you an’ ye love me and—”
“No,” I tell him, shaking my head back. “Maybe I thought I did before but I—”
“Ye what?” He gives me a look. “D?nnae anymore?”
I stare over at him, him who I thought fate had called me to, and I think of what he said about me… I let my lovesick heart bathe in what I saw before, when he called me names and nothing. I drink deep from that cup, let the poison run down my throat, fill up my stomach, and push down and away the nagging feeling I have that he is good and steady and stable like the earth I love so much. I remember that under its beautiful surface is just fiery rocks and a molten core that would burn me alive the second I let it. I remind myself that the earth can crack and shake, spilt itself wide open and swallow you whole. So I let myself fall back into the crack in the ground that I fell through when I heard him and glare back up at him through that darkness his words pushed me into.
“Moment’s over.” I shrug “Window’s gone.”
He breathes out this staggered breath, then wipes his eyes gruffly. He nods slowly, then glares over at me.
“I should hae let him hae ye.” He shakes his head. “I should hae let ye drown.”
Piano.
Do you know, he doesn’t even flinch as he says that, and it completely takes my breath away. Empties me of all air.
He doesn’t renege, doesn’t take it back, doesn’t reach for me.
There might have been a ticking hand of a clock counting down the seconds when he could have taken it back, when he could have said sorry and he didn’t mean it, but the hands spin out of control, and the clock breaks open. Kind of like how my heart feels now.
I back away from him and he lets me, and it feels like I’m fighting against invisible rubber bands, trying to snap me back into his arms, but I ignore them.
My eyes drop from his.