And just like that, the delusions, the denial, were gone.
I won't deny it. Those pictures broke me, took something precious inside of me, and left a hollow shell behind.
I did some terrible things after. Unforgivable things. Because I was lost, broken, and afraid.
Nate was just too easy of a mark. Too convenient. Too perfect for my purpose; which was, of course, revenge.
He came to me, flew all the way out to L.A. just to comfort me.
I let him, or at least let him try, let him go through the motions, hugging me, holding me, whispering reassurances.
I let him think he seduced me. I let him think that I wanted him back, as much as he wanted me, that I cared, that I was even capable of feeling, that anything he said or did or felt got through to me.
Nothing did, but I must have faked it convincingly enough.
I let him think that I loved him. I let him think that I would marry him.
I did it all for one reason. An obvious, vengeful one.
Nate was in the shower when I intercepted a call for him from Dante.
I was feeling particularly hateful when I answered it with a purring, "Hello, Dante."
Silence on the other end.
That was fine. I had enough to say for both of us. "Nate's in the shower. He's not like you. He doesn't like to wear his sex, always has to get cleaned up right after. Can I take a message for you?"
He managed to make out some word-like noises, something like, "Don't. No. Please, no."
"Too late. We did. Many times. Did he tell you? He proposed. I said yes. You're not invited to the wedding."
"Oh my God. What did you do, Scarlett? What did you do?"
I shuddered at the awful, anguished sound of his voice. I could feel his pain, reaching out across the distance, over the miles that separated us. Moving north to south. East to west.
Racing over mountains, across roads and through cities, flowing down from him to me.
It pounded out to me until it felt like my own pulsing hurt.
Every gory bit of us was strewn and twitching in the space between us.
"I think that's pretty obvious," I managed to get out. "Do you want me to spell it out for you? Would you like me to send pictures?"
"You're heartless," he told me, sounding like he couldn't quite believe it.
Like he thought I would deny it.
I did not. "Of course I am. Did you think I wouldn't be? You were my heart. And you left."
The sounds he made then were almost comforting in their familiarity, anguished, desolate noises that matched perfectly just how I'd felt since he'd left and taken not just my heart, but my soul with him.
So he wasn't over me. He still felt something.
It was humiliating how relieved I was.
I needed him to feel. Needed him to hurt, needed his wounds to throb in time with my own.
Needed to bring him to my hell.
At least then I would not be alone here.
A small distinction but a real one.
So I couldn't have him. At least I would still have the satisfaction of knowing that we suffered together.
"And what about you, Dante?" I finally managed to choke back at him. "Where did your heart go?"
"You still have it." He lobbed it at me like an accusation.
The bastard.
"And you can keep it," he continued, voice ragged, breath uneven. "But I'm finished with you. Finished. We are done."
And that was that. As he'd said, we were finished. Of course we were. We were beyond all repair.
I broke it off with Nate—he'd served his purpose. I wasn't kind about it. I didn't tell any pretty lies to soften the blow. I'd never loved him. I didn't want him. No, it had not been good for me. I'd only slept with him to hurt somebody else.
A week after I sent him from my sight I got a call from Nate's mother. He was in the hospital. He'd tried to kill himself with a bottle of pills. He'd live, but he was a mess.
She blamed me as much as I blamed myself and told me to stay the hell away from her son.
I was only too happy to comply. Relieved was an apt word for it.
And so it went. I became completely rootless for a very long time.
And I hated Dante with what little there was left of my heart.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SIX
"Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."
~Rumi
PRESENT
SCARLETT
I should have never brought it up. Okay, I didn't. It wasn't like it was a choice.
Nate called me while I was in the bathroom. I'd left my phone out on the bed.
Dante saw. It was bad.
Worse than rage, though that was there. It hurt him, wounded him deeply that I was in contact with his old friend.
"You know what happened after I broke it off with him," I told him, attempting to explain myself. "I was on a warpath after we ended, and I wasn't just callous with him. I was cruel. I felt—feel bad for him. At Gram's funeral he said he wanted to start talking again—as friends—and so I agreed."