It still eats at me that she’d betrayed me and stolen seven years from me, and I can honestly say that as much as I love her, I still have not forgiven her for it.
“Fine.”
She pushes away and goes over to the bed, sinking down with a huff and clenching her fists even as she raises her reddened eyes and meets mine.
“You saw something that… It wasn’t what it looked like, Luc.”
“It looked pretty damned simple to me. You were kissing another boy just hours after you’d sworn to be mine,” I grate, wrestling with my emotions as the old anger invades my gut. “You were all over each other. You let him touch what was mine.”
“Huh! I didn’t let him do anything! I was talking to him about his parents’ divorce when he freaking attacked me. He must have seen you before I did and got it in his fool head that if he could get you out of the picture I’d give him another chance. What you saw was me fighting to get him off me!” she yells, shocking me to the core.
Can it be? Did I see something, something that had been no fault of hers and attributed my usual distrust to it, a distrust I’d learned living between my cold father and snide stepmother?
The thought is so harsh, so true, that my knees quake and I’m forced to lower myself to the bed lest I dump my stupid arse on the floor.
“I saw you. Not your face, but a shadow out of the corner of my eye, and I tried to get your attention, your help. He was so strong, and I was terrified, and… But you never came. You ran and left me there to defend myself,” she accuses, stripping my already flayed flesh raw.
“I… Oh, God I’m so sorry,” I whisper, grasping at my nape to stop myself from touching her. “I was…so in love with you. The whole time, and I kept… I couldn’t believe that someone as good and kind as you could love me. I’m cold and quiet and…”
There’s nothing else to say as I let the truth settle around me and take the punch to the gut that was my cowardly actions. I’d run, like a mewling girl, and cried in my soup while my love had been forced to defend herself and deal with an attempted sexual assault.
“What did the police say? Jesus, I wasn’t even here to help you through all that.”
“Uh, I never called them. I sorta just ignored him and tried to get through the rest of senior year,” she admits, inching closer by degrees.
I know what she’s doing and welcome it, though my self-hatred tells me I in no way deserve her love or the comfort she’s about to offer me as she reaches out a hand and strokes my jaw.
“I’ll make you a deal, Luc. We let this all go and start new, just the way we would have if you’d stayed and we’d gotten through it all together.”
I’m a bastard, a complete fool, undeserving of any sort of understanding or forgiveness for the mistakes I’ve made, and the deplorable way I intended to treat her, but I’m no dummy, as Ash always says.
No, I’m ruthless and determined and just arrogant enough to take what I want even if I haven’t earned it. I’m a self-made man, and I certainly didn’t get here by allowing my emotions to cheat me out of a good bloody deal.
“Deal,” I say, grabbing her up and sealing the deal before she can change her mind.
I’ll never lie to her again, haven’t really since the day we’d reconnected, but I’ll take the plans I’d made for revenge to my grave and bloody smile with my last breath.
I’ve just landed the only deal I’ve ever wanted, and it feels fucking great.
Epilogue
“Get your hands out of there! Oh, gross. Noooo!”
I almost run in fear when my “innocent” little Ju shoves her hand back into the potty and scoops up what every member of our family has dubbed “toxic waste”.
“Lucian! I need you!” I yell, grabbing the little terror and cleaning her hands before she tastes what will kill her, if the smell is anything to go by.
My husband, of course, is nowhere to be seen when we make our way down to the kitchen, and I allow Maria to swoop down and take the monster off my hands.
“The potty training is not going great,” she says, her eyes twinkling as she kisses Ju and takes her over to her chair, seating her between the other two thirds of the Terribles.
“Uh, no.”
“Have you told your friends about her refusal to leave her leavings in the thing?”
“That would be a negative,” I say, watching Lucky and Cam eat their strained peas while dodging Ju’s missiles as she flings green goop all over the place, clapping delightedly when a blob hits Lucky in the face and plops down onto the clean floor. “Those bitches are babysitting tonight, and I’m not about to jeopardize a kid-free night because I can’t keep my mouth shut. They’ll learn, and hopefully deal with little miss and her obsession with all things smelly.”