The more I searched inside—past the guilt at being the reason why he was locked up, beyond the drive to get him free, was anger.
I thought I’d let it go. That I’d forgiven him for treating me as if I was nothing. That I understood why he’d been a jerk.
But...I haven’t.
The anger still burned, bright and red and throbbing with explosives ready to spread shrapnel far and wide.
“It’s not a fight if you just leave. Go home where I know you’re safe.” He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I don’t want you here, Elle.”
I understood his pride. His desire for me not to see him caged like an animal. But at the same time, he had to get over that. This was our life—for however long the gods in power wanted to play with us mere mortals.
He couldn’t take the brief moments of happiness we might find and throw them in the gutter.
“What about what I want?”
His head whipped up. “What about it?”
My eyes burned with tears, but they were rage-filled tears. Tears I could hold back and swallow while I spoke the words clambering over one another to be spoken. “Don’t I get a say in any of this?”
“Any of what?” His jaw clenched. “You’re not the one locked up, so don’t—”
“You’re right. I’m not. But I am the one paying for what I failed to do three years ago.”
All the oxygen evaporated.
I couldn’t breathe.
Penn didn’t breathe.
We stood in solid gravity, waiting for life to return.
When it did, it smashed into us, and everything we’d held back—all the truths we daren’t speak and accusations we daren’t think ricocheted like bullets.
Penn shouted, “You want to go there, Elle? Fine, we’ll fucking go there.”
I shouted, “You still blame me for not finding you. That I wasn’t there when Larry helped earn your freedom.”
Penn snarled. “You pretended to be poor. You broke into Central Park with me, you fucking kissed me—you lied to me the entire time I fell for you.”
I snarled. “Larry told me you came to visit me the night you were released. That you left with my necklace and returned with my necklace. I never saw you that night. Where were you? What made you refuse to see me?”
Penn growled, “I did come find you, I admit. I wanted to return that damn sapphire you’d mentioned. I’d thought about you every day for nine months. You were my happy place, the reason I didn’t let Twig get to me. I let myself fall in love with a lie, and when I went to your house, and you were there with Greg and your father and a maid providing everything your hearts desired, I saw everything I thought I knew about you was false.”
I growled, “So you created my backstory on one voyeur through a window? You hated that I had money—”
“I hated that you were fucking rich and hadn’t used that power to find me. I didn’t expect you to. I never thought it would truly happen. But dreams are brutal friends, Elle. I lost count how many fucking times I dreamed of you in a tiny studio, cooking meals for one, pining for me like I was pining for you. Only to find out you were fucking loaded. A spoiled little brat.”
Oh, my God, he called me a brat!
After years of toiling and sweat equity for that company.
I yelled, “Is that why you were a jerk to me? You thought I was a spoiled rich bitch who deserved to be lied to? Deserved to have her virginity stolen by an egotistical, unfeeling bastard...to what? Teach me a lesson?”
He yelled, “Yes, all right? I wanted to hurt you. I wanted to take that privileged little ass and make it mine. I wanted to control you just like you’d controlled me for years without knowing.”
My heart literally broke in two, blood rivered in despair.
I shook my head. “So from the very beginning, you chased me, not because of attraction or because you felt something for me, but because of hate? A damn vendetta?”
He shook his head. “It started that way, but the entire time I was lying to you, I was lying to myself more.”
My anger spluttered; my heart grabbed a bandage. “What do you mean?”
He sighed. “I mean that I wanted to hurt you. I wanted to make you pay for things you didn’t have any reason to pay for. I was angry. I was an idiot. I thought I could fuck you and then walk away.” Coming toward me, he held out his hand. He knew better than to touch me, allowing me to make that choice to build a link.
I did so. Hesitantly.
The moment our fingers knotted together, he exhaled in a rush. “Dammit. I ruined this, didn’t I?” He rubbed his forehead as if all the tension of our fight appeared as a headache. “I’m...confused, Elle. I’m so fucking strung up over you, but at the same time, I’m just waiting for you to end it. You should end it. You should walk away, and a part of me wants you to walk away. I’ve been nothing but a bastard, and now, I’m locked in here. You can do so much better.”
His stoic frame shook violently. “You don’t see what I do, Elle. What I’m turning you into. You used to be so pure, and I’m...ruining you. I’ve trapped you in this life when really I should be cruel to you, so you’ll leave me to my own fuck ups.”
His honesty about hating me came full circle with his admission about why.
He was confused. I was confused. Just like every couple who ever had to climb over a few stumbling blocks was confused.
That was romance.
It wasn’t paint-by-numbers or color within the lines. It was messy and scribbly and up to us to draw it how we wanted.
I’d forgiven him the moment he admitted he was hurting.
Taking the argument and turning it into confession, I said, “Despite what you think, I did try to find you. Every day for months, I called police stations. I asked David to hire private investigators to learn your name. I even hired a sketch artist to draw a likeness of you, so people didn’t laugh me out of offices when I mentioned I had no idea who you were but had to help you.”
Penn’s face shattered. “You did?”
“Not a single day went by that I didn’t have guilt on my thoughts. I fell for you, too. I think that’s why I fought you so much when you came back. I couldn’t stomach the thought that I could be attracted to another when I was still hung up on Nameless.”
He swallowed, shaking his head slightly as if he wanted to take every nasty thing he’d done and destroy it.
I wished he could.
I wished we could go back to the night we’d met again at the Weeping Willow, and he’d pulled me into his arms to whisper about Central Park and chocolate kisses.
“You called me Nameless?”
I laughed under my breath. The angry tension snapped, leaving a calm rain-battered landscape in its wake. “What else could I call you?”
“I had no idea you tried to find me.”
“Because you didn’t ask.”
He closed his eyes, tormented and full of regret. “Christ, I ruined everything.”