“No.” She walks down the hall and doesn’t stop until she gets to the bar. Unlike the last time we were standing here together, she has no trouble deciding what to drink tonight. She goes straight for the whiskey and she only pours one glass.
“I’m an ass,” I tell her as she downs the whiskey in one long swallow. “But you have to believe that I never meant to hurt you.”
“Bullshit.” She pours herself another glass.
“I swear. If I had known how things would work out—”
“Bullshit!” She screams it this time, and her glass goes flying across the room. It slams into the wall and shatters into a thousand little pieces.
“Veronica—”
“No!” she cuts me off. “You don’t get to say that to me. You don’t get to come in here and lie to my face again. You might have talked yourself into believing that you weren’t going to hurt me, but that’s just self-delusion. Because the truth is you didn’t give a shit about hurting me.”
“That’s not true. I backed out of the book. No one ever needs to know—”
“I know!” she screams at me. “Now I know. Now I know that the man who tormented me—who raped and abused me for three years—went on and raped and murdered countless other girls and women. Girls whose only crime was to look like me.
“You can tell yourself all you want that you didn’t plan on hurting me when you came here all those weeks ago, but it is a goddamn lie. Because you came here to talk to me about that man. You came here to bring up a past I’ve worked so goddamn hard to put behind me. And you came here to tell me about everything he did, to tell the world everything he did and everything I could have stopped if my parents had just cared more about me than they did about their goddamn careers.”
Her voice breaks and I want to go to her, but I am frozen in place. Horror-struck.
“But you don’t see it like that, do you? Of course you don’t. Because you are just like them. Just like her. You don’t care about me. You never cared about me. Nobody ever does.
“And now you’re here, forcing yourself into my house saying you want to fix things. But the truth is, you want to fix me so you don’t have to feel guilty about what you did. But I am not a broken vase whose pieces you can glue back together. I am not a puzzle whose pieces you just have to find the way to fit together. This is my life. This is me. This is all I have left, this tiny little piece of me, and now you’re here and you want it, too.”
She starts pulling at her dress, yanking at it until it finally rips right down the center. Most of it falls to the ground at her feet but small pieces stay in place over her hips, her breasts. They should help preserve her modesty, but somehow all they do is emphasize her sexuality in a totally disturbing way.
I shrug out of my jacket with some thought to covering her, but she backs away. Starts ripping at those last few pieces, too, pulling them—and the tape they’re attached with—off her body. Letting them flutter to the floor in a macabre version of confetti.
Then she holds her arms out to her sides like she’s some kind of offering. “So, fine. You want it so bad. Take it. Just fucking take what you want and then get the hell out. Because I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m through. I’m so fucking through.”
She’s completely naked now, her bones sticking out in stark relief against her skin. Her head is down, her hair covering most of her face. And though she doesn’t make a sound, her chest is rising and falling so quickly that I fear she’s going to hyperventilate again.
For the first time I understand—really understand—what she means when she says she can’t be fixed. And that when she says she’s through, she means with much more than us.
Because in that moment, she is more than broken. More than shattered.
She is destroyed, and I’m the one who dealt the final blow.
Chapter 34
I wait for Ian to grab me, to fuck me, to do whatever he’s going to do with me.
It doesn’t matter, whatever it is. I’m so numb I won’t feel it anyway. His is just one more betrayal in a long line that’s led me here.
A bodyguard who’d rather fuck me than keep me safe.
A father who sold me out for ticket sales.
A mother who plays with my sanity like it’s a toy.
And now Ian, the only lover who’s ever mattered turning me into collateral damage for a story he wants to tell.
Is it any wonder I’m so tired? Any wonder I just want to get this over with?
But long seconds pass and he doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. I’d be tempted to look at him, but I don’t want to see the contempt on his face. I just want to finish this, once and for all.
He doesn’t seem to feel the same way, though, because he just stands there, fists clenched by his sides as more and more time slips by. The silence is deafening, breaking over us like so many forgotten promises.