I stood my ground, my arm extended and pointed in the direction of my front door. Xavier silently rose and went. At my doorway, he turned around. “There are some things you don’t understand,” he angrily said. “Not everyone has had the picture-perfect life you have.”
The statement came out of left field. Now it was my turn to freeze from shock. The sound of a nearby door opening did nothing to break the spell Xavier’s weird assertion had on me. Ann-Marie appeared over his shoulder, her sleeping mask pushed up on top of her head.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
I didn’t answer, and neither did Xavier. He must have said his final piece because he turned around and nearly threw himself at the front door. It slammed behind him, his footsteps on the stairs echoing on that last note.
Ann-Marie stared at me, her frizzy hair falling around her face in messy pieces. “What the heck was that about?”
I couldn’t answer. My entire body was shaking. Things went from good to bad to horrible so fast that my head was left spinning.
“Riley? What’s going on?”
“I kicked him out,” I answered. My words sounded hollow and emotionless. Maybe I was in shock.
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
“Wow.” She guffawed. “Good for you.”
“Yeah… good for me.” With that, I fell onto the couch and succumbed to a wave of tears.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Xavier
Somehow, I ended up back at the club. I didn’t remember getting there, but I saw the black floor littered with the evening’s trash passing under my feet. The night’s patrons were all gone, and it was just the staff. The bartender said something to me as I passed by, but I couldn’t make out what it was, and I didn’t stop to ask him to repeat himself.
I climbed the staircase, one painful step at a time. My body was twice as heavy as it used to be. An enormous weight pressed down on it, threatening to flatten me. Riley’s words played over and over—not just in my mind, but in the air that I passed through. You sound like the biggest misogynist in the world.
Did she mean what she said? How could she? How could a girl like Riley, an upper-middle-class one from a nice Long Island town, understand anything about the real hatred out in the world? And how could she accuse me of being a part of it?
She might as well have said I was just like my father. Fuck, maybe she didn’t have to. The way that she looked at me, with pure disgust in her eyes, she didn’t have to say anything. In that moment, Riley hated me just as much as I hated my father.
Maybe she was right. Maybe I was more like him than I knew. I’d spent my whole life telling myself that I was protecting women by beating up the men who wanted to hurt them, but maybe I was fooling myself. I did hurt Riley, after all. And I wasn’t entirely sure how I could have avoided doing so. That was the worst part. I was who I was, mostly because of what I’d been through, but also because of what I’d made sure not to put myself through.
I’d avoided real intimacy in an attempt to protect myself. Ironically, doing that had resulted in me hurting someone else. I saw that so clearly now. And it might not just have been Riley. There could have been other women too. Women who, over the years, hoped to get close to me. But if that was the case, I would never know it. I’d never taken the time to open up to others, never taken the time to listen to what it was they wanted and needed.
This last realization hit me like a bolt of lightning. I halted in the hallway to the office and shut my eyes. I’d been picking guys out of Enigma’s crowd and starting fights with them since the club began, and all under the guise of saving women. But each night, after the fights were over, I would go out and parade around with women, but never really give myself to them. No matter how badly they wanted to get to know the real me. I just couldn’t do it.
I saw the truth now. I may not have been exactly like my father, but I wasn’t that far off.
“Fuck!” The yell ripped out of me like fire from the chest of a dragon. Hell, it was appropriate. I was more dragon than man. I was more fiery beast than human.
Rushing into the office, I kicked the back of the sofa. The heavy piece of furniture didn’t budge against my shoe. I let loose on the end table instead, flipping it over and sending glass coasters onto the floor. The wall came next. I delivered two swift kicks into its smooth wood paneling. My foot snagged in the last hole, causing me to stumble and almost go down.
The moment gave me what I needed. Forced to pause, I stepped back and surveyed the damage.
“Fuck,” I said, except much softer this time. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
The only right thing to do seemed to be to pour a drink. I went to the minibar and filled a tumbler with whiskey, then settled on the couch. Something still wasn’t right, though. Slamming my glass down on the coffee table, I pushed the couch sideways till it faced the window. The blinds were open, and I could see the lights from the building across the street.
It made me feel slightly better, seeing the yellow squares. In that building, at least a few people were still up. They were going about their lives, getting ready for bed or waking up. They didn’t know me, and they didn’t know how fucked up I was.
I drank my whiskey and stared out the window. Eventually, the blackness turned into gray, and then the gray turned into dark blue. It seemed to happen all in the span of a minute. I was frozen in time, unable to even think. I still heard Riley’s voice, though. Her disgust. Her anger. Her disappointment.
She hated me. Actually hated me. I didn’t blame her. Maybe a lot of women who knew me hated me, she just happened to have the guts to voice her opinion.
She wasn’t like that when I met her. She’d had trouble just declaring what she wanted to drink. My abuse of her must have been too much. In a sad, twisted way, my shitty behavior forced her out of her shell.
The sky brightened even more, but there was none of the orange or pink you would see in the country. Instead, it was just progressively lighter shades of dirty blue. I thought of the retreat I took Riley to, of the still lake and the calm night air. If I could have gone back to any time and place in my life, it would be that one.
My phone sat on the couch cushion next to me. I stared at it, a new idea swirling around in my head. I knew Riley wouldn’t be calling me up anytime soon. I’d blown things with her. I’d hurt her and knew she was better off without me. Fuck, maybe I was also better off without her. Even if we made up, I’d find some way to ruin things sooner or later.
But maybe I still had one chance left to do something good in this world.