Rage burns through my veins, leaving ash piles of heartache and disbelief behind. That staunch determination I walked in here with to get the story first, then get the girl and make a life with her is gone just like she is. I have nothing left to hold on to, least of all confidence in my own judgment.
I don’t know how long I sit in the meeting room with a broken heart, an aching soul, and a damaged psyche, but when I break from my thoughts, I realize the conference room is almost empty with a line at the door as people wait to file out. And I really don’t care, because a huge part of me that prefers the dark places I’ve learned so well to hide in after Stella’s death knows that the minute I leave this room, I fear she’ll cease to exist. As much as I’m hurt and angry and devastated, the notion still stabs deep within me because fuck yes she played me, made me fall in love with a woman who didn’t really exist, but the emotions I felt for her were incredibly real to me.
So a small part of me worries that if I step out of this room, I’ll then have to admit it was all a fake, and I can’t do that just yet because, call me a fucking sap, but I still love her. None of this takes that away.
The hand on my shoulder startles me. I’m on my feet and turning around in an instant and without a second thought when I see John’s face before me, my arm is cocked back, my fist flying. I connect with his right eye with a satisfying reverberation traveling up my arm and into my body but abating none of the emotional distress I feel.
“You son of a bitch!” I yell as bone meets bone again, every ounce of emotion I have fueling the impact of the punch. I hate him. I hate him with everything I have because he didn’t protect her. He had her when I didn’t, kept her when I couldn’t, and he failed as a husband to do the one thing he was supposed to do, keep her safe. And I know I’m being irrational and there’s no way he could keep her safe when she was off doing God knows what, but it feels good to unleash my confused fury on someone else for a change rather than let it eat me apart.
“You didn’t keep her safe! I loved her! I loved her!” I shout as flesh gives way to force, my voice breaking, my body vibrating with everything that I refuse to accept.
People in the room move, gasp, and I can’t even process how many punches it takes for one of their hands to grip my shoulders and pull me off him at the same time I realize that John isn’t resisting me. He isn’t even flinching with each punch I land, and all of a sudden it registers that he might be in the same boat as I am. He may have never known Beaux was a spy. He may have just lost the love of his life too.
I can’t hold on to the thought for more than a second because all I can hold on to is the grief that owns my every action and reaction right now, robbing my breath, stealing my tears, and annihilating the very idea of fate.
I fight against the hands pulling me off John, and then I just give up and roll onto my back atop the broken pieces of a chair that we just obliterated. My chest is heaving; the sound of my labored breathing is the only thing I can hear besides my heart breaking as I lie there, John battered beside me, and despair stretched out in front of me.
“She loved you.” I freeze at the strained words coming from him lost in the shuffle of feet moving around us now that the show is over. I blink several times as I lie there, trying to make sure I’ve heard him correctly, because they were the last things I ever thought I’d hear come from him. I open my mouth to speak but shut it when I’m not sure exactly what to say. “We need to talk in private.”