Damaged Read online

  “You’re going to give me an ultimatum?” But even as I ask her, I know that’s what she’s doing.

  She has no idea.

  I just need time. I need her to just give me time. As soon as I’m out of this, I can do whatever she wants.

  But not right now.

  I can feel her slipping away. Every second that passes that I don’t tell her, she’s turning colder toward me. But she can’t know. No one can.

  My lips part and I can feel my lungs still. The words are right there. Begging me, and desperate for her to hear. I need her more than anything.

  “Kat,” I say her name but it’s so much more. It’s me begging for her to love me blindly, to trust that I love her and that I’d never do anything to hurt her.

  I can’t. I can’t risk her, and I won’t do it.

  My mouth closes and I turn away from her, running my hand over my face.

  “Get out,” Kat says and her voice hitches at the end. I turn to see her cover her face.

  I close the distance between us. It only takes three steps, but by the time my arms wrap around her, she’s pushing me away. Her hands slam into my chest. She tries to knock me back, but only manages to throw herself off balance instead.

  I grip her hip to steady her, but she slaps me. Hard across the face and the sting catches me by surprise.

  I flex my jaw as she screams at me to get out. Her body’s shaking. The sinful mix of hatred and betrayal ring in the air between us.

  “Do you really want me out?” I ask her, genuinely not knowing anymore. I don’t know at what point I lost her completely. There’s only so many times I can ask her to give me everything while I hold back.

  I guess I should be more surprised it hasn’t happened sooner. I rub my jaw as I take a step back, only giving her the bit of space I’m willing to offer. “I know you still love me,” I tell her and watch as she rips her eyes from me and takes a step back. Her face is blotchy and red and her breathing is frantic.

  But she calms as she stands there not able to answer me. And that’s all I needed. Just a little bit. Please, Kat. Just hold on a little while longer.

  “Just tell me the truth,” she begs me and I wish I could. I feel my throat tighten and my body tense. My hands clench as I swallow.

  “I didn’t sleep with her,” I say and even I don’t believe my words. But it’s not what she thinks. I wish I could tell her, but the moment she finds out, everything will be at risk.

  “Why don’t I believe you?” she asks me and I don’t have the decency to answer.

  “I swear, Kat.”

  “So you’ve never slept with her?” she asks me and I know it’s over. Her expression changes and her eyes darken when the silence stretches too long. So many secrets have built up. Too many to hide. She was never supposed to know. “Since we’ve been married,” I start to say, knowing I’m toeing the line of truth, “I’ve never slept with anyone. Never kissed anyone but you.” I look her in the eyes so she can see it’s the truth. “The day I put that ring on your finger, it was only you.”

  “Then why put me through this?” she asks me with tears in her eyes. “And what were you doing?” I struggle to keep my breathing calm as the questions start piling up.

  I lick my dry lips and take a step forward. “Things got out of hand.”

  The words stop and I run my hands down my face.

  “Why were you with her?” Kat asks me and I know she wants an answer right now.

  “Because it’s what I had to do,” I tell her the truth with my eyes closed.

  “What you had to do? You had to go to her hotel at three in the morning?” I can’t look at her as I nod my head. “And you couldn’t tell me this before?” I nod my head again.

  “You tell me everything right now, or you leave.”

  “Another ultimatum?” The words drip with disdain.

  “Don’t talk to me like that,” she says and I can hear her resolve harden.

  “It’s better if you didn’t know everything,” I say softly.

  “Are you serious right now? You’re throwing away our marriage over her? Over your job?”

  “Kat, just-” I start to say, but she cuts me off.

  “Fuck you,” she sneers and says, “I said get out.”

  “I’m not leaving,” I tell her firmly, staring back at her, even as she turns her back to me.

  “It doesn’t matter, the weekend’s coming,” she says beneath her breath as she leaves me.

  I keep my feet planted as she stomps up the stairs and I wait for more. I wait for her to push me out, to yell at me, to demand more from me. I’m ready to fight, ready for war with her to keep her. But that’s not what I get.

  She gives me back exactly what I gave her. Nothing.

  Chapter 13

  Kat

  * * *

  I hear your voice in my head,

  It keeps me up at night.

  It’s rough and deep and sounds so sweet,

  There’s nothing left save that to fight.

  * * *

  The one that sounds like sorrow,

  The one that sounds like pain.

  Please just leave me behind,

  I promise, there’s nothing left to gain.

  Four manuscripts to go through this weekend.

  Four authors waiting to hear back from me.

  I doubt I’ll be able to focus enough to comprehend a full page. I’ve been reading this paragraph over and over and not a damn sentence is staying with me.

  It doesn’t matter though. None of this really does.

  I’ll stay in this room for as long as Evan’s here. He’s like a ghost in this house. A ghost of his former self.

  So I’ll do what I always do, I’ll bury myself in work. That was the plan anyway, but I can’t focus on anything but the sounds of him moving through the house.

  He keeps walking by the door and I know he wants to open it, he wants me to talk to him, but all I can hear is him saying it’d be better if I didn’t know. Fuck that and fuck him.

  I’m not going to give him all of me when he can’t be bothered to do the same.

  So we’re at a standstill, him refusing to leave and me refusing to forgive.

  His voice plays in my head over and over again, telling me it’s only ever been me. I want to believe it. It’s everything I’ve been praying for him to say.

  But then what is he hiding?

  My eyes flicker to the screen as my nails tap on the ceramic mug next to my laptop. Tick, tick, tick. I read the line over and over.

  Love is a stubborn heart.

  Magdalene, the editor, highlighted the line. She thinks it’s beautiful and wants repetition of the analogy throughout the book.

  Love is a stubborn heart.

  Is it though? My forehead scrunches as I think back to the story in the manuscript. The tale about a modern-day Romeo and Juliet. Two families who hated each other and their children who wanted nothing more than to run away together. It’s not a tragedy though, and it doesn’t have a happily ever after either. It’s too realistic.

  If love really was that stubborn, wouldn’t they have been together in the end?

  Or maybe it wasn’t really love. Or maybe love just wasn’t enough.

  I don’t know that I agree that love is stubborn. I suppose it is, but more than that, it’s stealthy and lethal. I nod my head at the thought.

  Love is deadly.

  I don’t know the very moment I fell in love with Evan. It felt like I was counting the days until it would be over, and then one day, I simply decided on forever. Just like that. Slow, so slow and resistant, and then in an instant, I was his and he was mine. And that’s how it was going to be forever.

  I smile at the thought and try to focus on the lines on the computer. I try to read the words, but I keep glancing at the wall behind me. At a photo of the first night he took me to meet his parents.

  I’d never felt that kind of fear before. The fear of rejection. Not like that, because I’d neve
r put my heart out there for anyone to take. And I was very much aware that Evan had every piece of me. Unless he didn’t want me. In which case, I’d be broken and I didn’t know how I’d recover.

  The thought consumed me the night he brought me to his family home. I was sure his family wouldn’t like me. It’d been so long since I’d been with a family for dinner. I used to go to my friend Marissa’s when I was in high school. But it was just better not to.

  When you lose your parents at fifteen, people tend to look at you as though they’ve never seen anything sadder. I’d rather be alone than deal with that.

  And so I was, until Evan. And he didn’t come on his own, he had a family that “had to meet me.”

  My back rests against the desk chair as I take in the photograph. I had it printed in black and white. It’s the four of us on the sofa in his family home’s living room. It’s funny how I can see the colors of the sofa so clearly, the faded plaid, even though there isn’t any color in the picture that hangs on my wall.

  All four of us smiling. His mother insisted on taking the photo. Just as she’d insisted he bring me that night.

  It’s only now that I can remember how Evan’s father looked at her. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but that’s because they hadn’t told us that she was sick.

  I guess in some ways it was the last photograph. If that isn’t accepting someone into your family, I don’t know what is.

  I have to sniffle as I think of her. I only met Marie twice. The first time was that night. The second was after she’d told Evan; she didn’t have a choice, seeing as how she had to be hospitalized. The third time I saw her was at the funeral.

  I may not know when I fell in love with him, but I think I know the moment he fell in love with me. The moment a part of his heart died and he needed something, or someone, to fill it. Maybe I got lucky that it was me. Or maybe it was a curse.

  I roll my eyes as they water, hating that I’m stuck in the past because I can’t move ahead with the future.

  Maybe we weren’t really meant to be. Maybe it was never the type of love that’s meant to keep people together. Just the type of love when you feel compelled to give someone compassion.

  Are there types of love? I find myself typing the question into the editor’s suggestion box and then deleting it.

  If there are, then maybe Evan’s love is the stubborn kind. He’s not so stubborn that he’ll stay this weekend though. Come Friday he’ll be gone again. Maybe it’s a different love then …

  It’s only when I hear the bedroom door shut that I finally look back at the manuscript and email the editor back. I need more time before I can give feedback on any of these to the author and I’m ready to fall asleep in the corner chair, or anywhere I can where Evan will leave me alone.

  I need more time for so much more. I need time and a clear head to move forward with my own life. I need someone to tell me I’m not walking away from the only man who will ever love me, but there’s no email I can write for that unfortunate request.

  Chapter 14

  Evan

  * * *

  If I could focus on the hate and leave her all alone,

  I’d be able to move forward, if only I had known.

  I can’t speak the truth, I don’t want to make it real,

  I can’t stand what I’ve done or what it makes me feel.

  Regret will settle in my chest and suffocate the day.

  If only I could make it right, if only there was a way.

  “It’s good to see New York again,” James says as I walk into his office on Greene Street in lower Manhattan.

  He’s staring out of the office window. It’s a picture window, eight feet wide and eight feet in height, making the view seem like it’s not quite real.

  I don’t return his sentiment. I’m fucking miserable. I want to drop to my knees and tell Kat everything. I think she’d forgive me. I can see it in her eyes that she wants to. I could tell her almost everything and I think she’d let me stay.

  I’m too scared to do it though. Not until I end things here at least. It’s step one to getting my Kat back.

  “It’s crazy how you miss it, isn’t it?” he says as he turns to me. He’s more relaxed than he was in London. I close the door as he takes a seat at the desk.

  “Sorry you had to wait a minute, I was just getting this paperwork wrapped up.” He sits back in his desk chair, loosening his tie and unfastening the top button of his crisp white dress shirt.

  “Are we going to talk about it?” I ask him, needing to get this shit off my chest. I kept quiet in London, but I can’t anymore. It’s been weeks. That must be enough time.

  Is that how long it takes to get away with murder?

  “Talk about what?” he says and his voice is gravelly and low.

  “Talk about the fact that the charges against Bruce are dropped?” I tell him and hold his cold gaze.

  He may have been more relaxed before I sat down, but now he’s still. And silent. I let my eyes fall to the stack of papers on his desk, then to a small picture frame. It’s a cube and matte black on all sides, and I have no idea who the woman in the picture is.

  I absently pick it up, ignoring how his eyes bore into me, how his icy gaze heats as I let the question hang in the air, forcing him to answer.

  The block is lighter than I thought it’d be and I don’t recognize the woman. It’s not his ex-wife, or his current girlfriend. Not that I thought Luna or whatever her name was, the fling of the month, would have a place in his office.

  “My sister,” James answers the unasked question. “A Christmas gift.”

  I nod my head once, putting the block back down and waiting for him to answer me.

  “Bruce didn’t do anything, so of course he got off,” James says in an eerily calm voice. “We knew he was innocent.” James pulls out a drawer and shuffles something inside of it, but I can’t see what. He doesn’t elaborate or give any room to further the conversation that we should have.

  “What’s done is done, and there’s nothing more to say.”

  “That’s not what Sam told me. She told me she’s scared.” It’s the only reason I let her get so close. She’s terrified that the truth is going to come out. And because she helped, she’d go down with me.

  “Whose fault is that?” James sneers.

  “She’s your wife,” I tell him, pushing the words out through my clenched teeth.

  “I don’t have a wife,” he answers me with a sly smile, as if he’s clean of this mess. As if it’s all on me. And deep down in my gut, I know it is.

  “Ex then,” I tell him and add, “I didn’t know the divorce had gone through yet.” He picks up a pen and taps it against the desk but doesn’t take his eyes off me. It hasn’t gone through yet, according to Samantha. All the money needs to be split one way or the other, and neither him nor Samantha, his ex-partner in this business and future ex-wife, wants to take less than the other.

  “Either way, what’s done is done and the two of you need to let it die.”

  “An innocent man-”

  “Got off!” He looks me in the eyes as he leans forward and adds, “And a guilty man got away.”

  “We should have come forward.”

  “Should have, but you listened to a shady bitch. That’s your problem, not mine.”

  My gaze falls to the desk as my fingers itch to form a fist. I called him. His office. But she’s the one who answered.

  “I panicked,” I start to say, but he cuts me off.

  “Because you fucked up. And now I have to clean up your mess and make sure you stay out of trouble.”

  “Is that what this is? You doing me a favor?” I ask sarcastically, letting the memory of that night fade. I can’t quit while there’s still an investigation. I can’t bring more attention to myself or to the company.

  I wish I could tell Kat everything. But then she’d know she was married to a murderer. Even if it was just an accident. I’m a coward and I’ll never be
a man she deserves. But every day that goes by, I want to be more of the man I was the day before it all changed.

  “I need time off,” I tell him, fed up with the conversation. I imagine this isn’t the first time something like this has happened and I sift through the memories of all the shit that’s gone on behind the scenes for years. I never questioned anything, I never suspected a thing. Not until James brought me into the inner circle.

  “No,” James answers immediately with no negotiation in his voice.

  “Then I want to quit,” I tell him as my fingers dig into the chair. The only thing I can think about is Kat. She’ll get over that I kept this from her. I know she will. It’s not the first time I’ve kept a secret from her. We’ll be okay as long as I quit.

  His thin lips twist into a half smile as he says, “Well that can’t happen.” He looks at me with a calculated glint in his eyes. Like he’s been waiting for this and he’s ready for my rebuttal, eager for it even.

  “And why not?” I ask him as my muscles coil. “I don’t want to work for this company anymore.”

  “That’s not-”

  “It’s called quitting,” I spit back at him. I don’t need this job, since I’ve got plenty of money in the bank and Kat’s career is finally stable. She bled money for years, but it’s leveling out. We’ll be alright financially and this is what she wants and what I need.

  “You can’t just quit.”

  “I can, and I am.”

  James’ smile fades and he tilts his head to the side, an expression of the utmost sympathy on his wrinkled face. His brown eyes look darker as he picks up a folder on the left side of his desk. It wasn’t hidden, but it’s not labeled and it looks like all the rest.

  My eyes follow his movement and my brow furrows until he opens it.

  “The hotel had cameras. And of course they’re gone now, but a few snapshots were taken. Some I think you’d find particularly interesting. Maybe enough so to stay.”

  I can imagine what they are before he flips the folder open. The eight-by-ten glossy photo paper shows the one thing that proves I lied. I’m walking into the hotel lobby I claimed I didn’t enter. And I’m not alone. Standing right next to me is Tony. Only hours before he was found dead in the rec room of the hotel. The one reserved for our company and the division Bruce is the head of. Seeing Tony and his bloodshot eyes takes me back to that night. To the moment I found him dead on the floor.