Only the villain in this case was him and, oh god, she could hardly stand it.
Just hearing the bafflement in his voice. The vulnerability.
The fake, fake, fake fucking vulnerability.
“You went through my emails? Why would you…How could you…?”
“I don’t think demanding answers from me is really the way you want to go.”
“I don’t know which other way I should go. I don’t know what you think this is.”
She stood up then. She had to. There was too much roiling emotion in her to stay seated.
And besides, she needed room to move. To throw her hands up and shake her fucking fists.
“Oh my god, are you serious? Are you seriously going to try spinning this garbage out? Look at this shit! Man, the jig is fucking up, asshole. I know, okay. I know that you’ve been fucking secretly filming me and sending emails to some dickprobably the same one that split my fucking head open.”
“No wait, just wait a second, let me think.”
“Yeah, that sounds like it would be a super smart move for me to make. Wait so that you can dream up a way to weasel out of this. Or maybe you just want time to figure out how to dump the pig blood on my head anyway, huh? Bring your master plan forward a little, perhaps?”
Now it was his turn to throw his hands up. To lose it a little.
“This isn’t Carrie, Letty, goddamn it, I just” he started.
But she couldn’t let him finish. Not when he was this good at making it convincing. Not when he could make his eyes seem so full of panic, and force that desperate tone into his voice.
“You just what? Your thumb slipped on the record button? You fell headfirst into emailing Mr. Douchebag? I can imagine all of that pretty easily. But you know what I can’t imagine? How you can possibly have meant your apologies, when right here in black and white you say that I deserved it.”
She managed to get through most of it before she broke. But then she got to the word deserved and her voice just started to fall apart. Every bit of her fell apart. She had to take a second to gather herself, to hold back the tearsthough her efforts were nowhere near as good as they once were. Some still leaked out. Her chin still trembled. And when she finally spoke again, her pain was riddled through her voice.
She could hear it, and knew he could, too.
“And you know what, Tate? You were right. I did. I totally did deserve it. I deserve all of this, too, because honestly, anyone this fucking stupid should never get some fabulous and amazing happy ending. I fucking knew exactly what you were and still let you fool me. I honestly thought you cared for me, even after everything that happened.”
“You weren’t wrong to think I care for you, Letty, you”
“Oh just fucking stop it, Tate, stop. There is nothing you can say that will make me believe you. You can’t trick some bumbling professor into setting me up a second time. I won’t take off my clothes again or tell you I love youit’s done; it’s completely done. You’ve wrung every bit of joy and life and love right out of me, and now there’s not even enough to make it funny for you anymore.”
“You don’t mean that. Come on, tell me you don’t mean that part about it all being wrung out,” he said, voice and tone and expression so full of a kind of pleading desperation that for a second she almost wavered. She had to glance away to get a grip on herself. She had to remember how good he was at knowing exactly how to get her, before she could go on.
“I’m sorry if it ruins your plans to torment me until the end of time. I really am. But it will always and forever be the case from now on. I never want to look at your disgusting face, or hear your pathetic voice, or acknowledge a stupid word you say, ever again.”
“That was…that was really harsh.”
“You think that was harsh? Oh, it’s got nothing on the stuff I came up with over years and years of sheer loathing. The hours I spent lovingly crafting insults just for you, my love. And now I have nothing left to lose, and a hundred times the ammunition.”
She stopped there, partly to calm her rising voice.
Mostly so she could push past him, while the blood was still hot in her veins. She didn’t think he would stop her, but who knew really? Who knew what this man was capable ofthis man who stood there silently as she opened the door, still playing the part of a broken man?
She even saw him close his eyes as she spat her goodbye, so real it actually left her satisfied.
Like she’d really hurt him with that one last parting shot.
“Go on and give me an excuse to use it, motherfucker.”
Chapter 23
It took a month for him to accept the game was over. A month of deleted emails and texts, of him knocking on her door in the middle of the night. One time she woke from a fitful sleep to hear Lydia screaming at him in the hallway; in the morning she showed Letty the mark on the wall where she’d thrown a shoe. I would have thrown a hammer if I was confident I would hit his massive head, she’d said, as they lay in her bed all snuggled down together.