Just One Night, Part 2_ Exposed(3)

Dave stood in front of me the whole time and fed me my lines.

I felt it when I texted my friend Simone to tell her Dave is my choice. I texted because I didn’t think I could speak the word “choice” without crying. In truth, my choices are gone. They vanished when I got off the boat, handed Dave the keys to my car, and let him drive me to my prison. He drove and I sat in the passenger seat wringing my shaking hands, like a hostage. Like a liar.

It’s not just my parents who love Dave. Dave is the godson of Dylan Freeland, the cofounder of the firm I work for. “He’s like a son to me,” Mr. Freeland had said at my engagement party. It had been a subtle reminder that my career and my love life are not as separated as I’d like them to be.

And Dave knows the secrets of my family . . . he knows about my sister who lost control as she recklessly danced with self-destruction. He knows that she used her own irresponsible impulses to the same ends as Cleopatra used her snake and Juliet used her dagger. He knows I wanted to be different from my sister.

He knows that I failed.

And so he drove me to his home and for ten minutes we stood in his living room without exchanging a word. I had wanted to break the silence but I couldn’t find a way to add actual gravity to the words “I’m sorry.”

So in the oppressive stillness we had stood across the room from each other. I had tried to meet his eyes, but the ferocity of his glare had forced my gaze downward. He’s barely five foot ten but in that moment his anger made him taller, more menacing.

He had stood there, in front of his fireplace, holding on to the mantel as if he intended to tear it from the wall.

“You’re a whore.”

“I made a mistake,” I said feebly. “I . . . I think I got scared. I wasn’t sure about marriage. . . .”

He took the Waterford vase on the mantel into his hands, stared at it before hurling it across the room. It crashed into the wall behind me . . . too far away for me to think that he was aiming for me.

But still.

“You’re a whore.”

“Dave, I’m so sorry—”

“I don’t want your apologies.” He took a step forward. He has blond hair and pale blue eyes, gentle colors that are tainted by brutish enmity.

I did that to him. It’s my fault. “If you don’t want my apologies,” I said carefully, “what is it that you want?”

“I want you to admit it.”

“Admit what?”

“That you’re a whore.”

He stepped closer.

The last time I made love to Robert, it had been in his home. He had held me afterward. We had giggled and shared the casual details of our lives. He had been kind and loving, a perfect and compelling balance to our rough desire.

I feel guilty as hell . . . but I don’t feel like a whore.

“I think,” I said quietly, “that you should give me my car keys. We should talk about this when you’re calmer.”

My steadiness had brought him to a new level of fury. He grabbed my arms and pushed me up against the wall.

When Robert had me up against a wall, it had been exciting . . . but that had been the touch of frenzied ardor.

Hate is a very different thing.

Dave’s violence affected me in ways I couldn’t have predicted. It’s like I came out of myself. I wasn’t the woman he had pinned against the wall but simply a bystander, watching, observing. I saw Dave, and the more enraged he became, the weaker he seemed. I hurt him, I betrayed him, I was wrong.

But his reaction makes me think that maybe I had cause.

“I need you to let go of me.”

Dave hesitated. He wanted to hurt me. Maybe he wanted to hurt himself, too. But unlike me, Dave has mastered self-discipline.

He took several steps back and looked away as he gathered up his willpower. I can’t help but admire him for it.

“My keys,” I said again.

He continued to stare at nothing . . . or maybe he was staring at the past. Maybe he was seeing all the missteps that led us to this place.

“I told your mother that it could have happened to anyone,” he said.

I froze. “You spoke to my mother?”

“This was years ago,” he clarified. “We were visiting them in their Carmel home during the Pebble Beach car show. You, your father, and me . . . we all went but your mother pleaded out. A migraine, she said.”

“I remember.”

“I left you there with your dad about an hour into it. I’ve never been into cars and you two don’t get a lot of alone time. I came back to your parents’ house and there was your mother, sitting on her cream-colored couch in her vacation home, photographs scattered all over the coffee table. She was crying.”