Something in her mother’s voice made her eyes narrow, but Amie only looked back at her innocently.
“If I find out that you’re talking to Jason behind my back…”
“Just his mother---”
“Mama!”
“You did not say that I should not speak with his mother either!”
She gritted her teeth in frustration. Oh, how good Amie was at twisting her words. “I didn’t say – I never told you not to talk to his mother or even to him.”
Amie let out a sigh. “So dramatic. You cannot even say his name. If you truly don’t love him anymore---”
“Mama.” She waited for Amie to look at her. “I never said I didn’t love him either. I never even said I’m over him. I only know that he does not---” Keanne swallowed painfully. “---I only know that he does not love me.”
“That is where you’re wrong, ma petite.”
She froze at the sound of that hatefully familiar voice, the one sound that made her have dreams and nightmares. They were just so beautiful and painful at the same time that Keanne had stopped trying to figure out what they could be.
When she looked up again, Amie was already driving away in the golf cart she used to tour the vineyards. Jason stood in front of her.
“Hello, Keanne.”
“H-hello.” She couldn’t make herself say his name. If she did, it would be over. She would be over.
“You’re not going to look at me?”
She shook her head.
“Surely I taught you better than that.”
The taunting words shocked her so much that she did look up, unable to believe he dared say something like that.
And that was when she realized she had been tricked.
He looked sober, his face a little too pale. He was thinner, too, and there was a look of strain in his eyes that reminded her too much of her own.
No!
He was not going to fool her again.
With a choked sob, she tried to escape, knocking down her easel in her need to get away from him. But he caught her wrist easily, whirling her around and she lashed out at him, slapping his face. “Je te hais!”
He did not let her go even as she repeated the words over and over, slapping him each time. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.
But why, she thought brokenly, did it feel like she still loved him?
He said roughly, “I know you do. I know I deserve it. But I want to make it up to you. I want to woo you like you deserve and make you realize that I will love you like no other man ever could.”
“I will never believe you anymore!”
He shot back, “Even if you don’t believe me, I’ll keep loving you because it’s the only thing I know how to do.”
“No!” She pushed against his chest ineffectually. “You say the nicest words,” she sobbed, “but we both know that it doesn’t mean anything---”
“Then maybe you’ll believe this.” He thrust a piece of folded paper into her hands just before he released her.
Keanne looked down dumbly at the half-crumpled sheet of paper in her hands. She whispered, “What is it?”
“I bought your book when it came out,” he said hoarsely. “I know how you see me…and you drew me like I was the only one who had the power in our relationship.”
“Because it’s true!”
“No, it fucking isn’t and I made that---” His head jerked towards the paper in her hands. “I want you to know that you have me so fucking whipped there’s no way I can even breathe without thinking of you.”
“You’re lying.”
“No. I’m not and you’ll know---”
Slowly, she tore the paper in her hands into two and let it fall to the grassy ground.
When she looked at Jason, the hopeless devastation on his face was almost more than she could bear, but she hardened herself.
“I can’t ever believe you would be so cruel to do that just to hurt me,” he whispered.
She didn’t say anything even though she knew he was wrong. She had been cruel and she had done it to hurt him.
She bit her lip hard when she watched Jason fall to his knees like a man defeated by life.
“You don’t love me. And I will learn to stop loving you.”
Keanne forced herself to move away.
The tears fell, fast and furious, and she quickened her steps. Her mind was suddenly tormented with images of Jason in the years they had been together.
Jason, always laughingly teasing her when she was a withdrawn child of fourteen…
Jason, always so gentle and sweet even though the whole world thought he was a carefree playboy…
Jason, always knowing the right thing to say…
Jason, always expecting himself to suffer for others because he could never forgive himself for once being the reason his brother was hurt---