Chapter 17 Tearing Me Apart
Amity
My hands are clammy and my heart is hammering as I manoeuvre my way around the gruesome twosome to get into Uncle Jacob’s office.
Ella is lingering around, which means I’m pretty sure she overheard the ugliness, but I can’t muster enough strength to care. There’s a scuffle behind me, and I can hear he’s trying to speed up to me. I’m not sure who’s blocking his path, but I don’t give a fuck. I just want to get away from him. Now.
‘Excuse me.’ I hear the bite in his voice to whomever he’s talking to.
A boa-constrictor tightness squeezes my heart as I desperately try to hold my tears at bay.
Painful memories of Lincoln and Billie sear my brain. I ignore whatever stares are thrown my way, my only mission to move towards the privacy of Uncle Jacob’s office.
Fuck Lincoln and fuck that whore, Billie.
‘Amity!’ he all but yells, his voice echoing behind me.
My face burns as he draws more attention to the commotion swirling around us. I hear whispers around me, some in confusion over what the hell I’m doing here, and others shocked that someone like me is actually standing in an architect and building firm, having it all out with the son of one of the directors.
Lincoln leaps in front of me, grasping my shoulders, demanding me to stop in my tracks. I refuse to look at him, violently trying to wrestle out of his grasp.
‘Fuck off, Lincoln,’ I seethe menacingly, trying to keep my voice low as more of his colleagues traipse past us.
‘No,’ he grounds out, determination steeling his handsome face. ‘I won’t let you think I fucked Billie.’
‘Today, you mean?’ I snide, again trying to pry myself from his grip.
He lets go, forcefully shoving his sleeves up his arms.
‘Yes. Today. Not since.’ He pauses, mentally calculating when the last time was. In an instant, his face drops.
‘Not since when? A day? Last week? Last month?’ I jibe, the decibel of my voice rising.
He looks at me with guilt, regret, and sadness, confirming I’ve hit the nail on the head.
I flinch at the reminder that of course they’ve slept together hundreds more times than we ever did. For fuck’s sake, they were in a full-blown relationship all of year twelve, and God knows when they actually broke up—if they’ve even fully broken up. For all I know, they could just be going through a rough patch, be friends with benefits or be in an open relationship.
His non-verbal admission anguishes me.
‘Just fuck off and leave me alone,’ I hiss.
‘Hart, baby, please calm down and listen to me.’
The term of endearment sets me off. I’m like rogue fireworks exploding on New Year’s Eve.
Uncaring about the scene I’m creating—which is causing people to gawk—I shove him. I let loose.
‘Fine. You want to do this, huh? You want to finally fucking talk and explain how you ruined me? Us? Let’s fucking do it then.’
Ignoring the astonished and pitying faces of strangers around me, I storm towards Uncle Jacob’s open office, slamming the door behind me.
I hope he fucking breaks his nose walking into it.
Seconds later, he fumbles through it. I stand there and cross my arms in barely controlled rage. I take a few seconds to scan the office, which is a reminder that the piece-of-shit man in front of me is the son of my uncle. My dad’s closest friend. Images of our entwined families sit proudly on floating shelves, stopping at age seventeen. Since then, we haven’t all been together.
I refuse to be the first one to speak. I ignore his tantalising aftershave, which has come a long way from the Lynx he used to wear. What I can’t ignore is the overly sickening stench of a girl’s perfume that mingles with it.
Using that disdained knowledge, I turn fierce eyes to meet his face. He is watching me with cautious wariness.
‘Billie.’
My chest constricts like a boa constrictor is wrapped around it.
Oh, no he fucking didn’t. Did he just call me by that whore’s name?
I see when it registers across his face. He gasps at his brutal mistake. The remorse is immediate, and he knows he’s fucked up beyond recognition. My initial reaction is to cry, but I will not give him the satisfaction. Plus, I feel numb that he has just called me by my worst enemy’s name. ‘Hart. Shit. Habit. I swear, it was a slip of the tongue.’ I snort at his choice of words. He always manages to slip his tongue, doesn’t he? I can hear in his voice that he’s trying to placate me. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Calling me her name isn’t a big deal in the scheme of things.
He’s done worse.
‘Come on then. No need for niceties. Just spit out whatever you want me to listen to. I mean, after all, you’ve been begging and bugging me to have this conversation, despite me making it abundantly clear that I want to erase you from my life.’ I continue to rave, uncaring if the whole damn office can hear me. Laughing humourlessly, I shake my head in disbelief.
‘I admit, you had me going there for a bit. I almost fell for your texts. I was almost willing to hear all your explanations and apologies. What a damn fool I was to believe you and Billie were over.’
‘Billie and I are nothing. We’ve been over for a long time.’
‘Oh yeah? What’s your definition of over? Or a long time? Have you fucked her in the last month? Did you make her come? Did she suck your cock? Did she sleep in your fucking bed? Have you hung out alone, or with your so-called mates? Tell me, Lincoln, when exactly was it over?’ I fold my arms over my chest to protect my heart from falling out. I scornfully look at him.
His mouth moves wordlessly, a look of panic on his face as he tries to conjure up any plausible rationale for my barrage of statements.
‘Go on. Floor’s all yours. Tell me.’ I lean back on the desk, stabilising my shaking body.
‘Hart, baby…’
‘Apologise. Explain. Go on,’ I goad him. ‘It’s what you’ve been dying to do, right? Tell me how sorry you are for ghosting me. For destroying our friendship of fourteen years. For devastating me by moving on so publicly. Come on. Tell me how you could choose her over me. Tell me how you could sit silently while you watched your friends mock, bully and shatter me with their taunts about how fat I was, how better off without me you were, how much more compatible you were with Billie, how I’m nothing and nowhere near as good as your vain, vapid, narcissistic, self-absorbed, conceited friends. Tell me how you sat there and listened and laughed and let them humiliate me. Or wait, maybe you should tell me how easy it was for you to move on from me. How you didn’t even hesitate to finger Billie in front of our entire grade, or fuck her senseless for years. How you’re still fucking her, despite you apparently ‘being over’. I’m waiting. I’m listening. Actually, colour me intrigued. I can’t wait to hear whatever it is you have to say.’
He stands there in silence, hands clenched in fists at his side. A look of utter devastation mars his face.
‘Let me guess.’ I tap my finger on my chin. ‘You were young. Stupid. Naive. Horny. Swayed by friends. Blinded by Billie’s bitchy fakeness. No. I have it.’ I snap my fingers. ‘I was never going to be your everything, like you were mine.’
His eyes jerk up to meet my now deflated demeanour at the realisation of how true that statement was. Blinking back tears, I walk slowly towards him to drive the final nail in the coffin. His eyes bore into mine, portraying a mixture of guilt and regret.
The pain ravishes my body, but I need to push through the trauma and scars he left me with.
‘You never believed in us. You didn’t believe we were ever going to make it past high school. I wasn’t your soulmate, like you were mine. I wasn’t your missing link. I didn’t hold your heart. You didn’t believe in our friendship, relationship or our love. Our future wasn’t worth fighting for, because you never saw me in it. I was simply never going to be your world, like you were mine.’
He remains quiet as I shoot every arrow I have into his chest. His eyes water, signifying how my rant is affecting him.
‘Well. Tell me. Have I nailed it?’
He bows his head as droplets fall from his eyes before he dashes them away.
Feeling defeated, I take a step back, pausing to say the one thing that hurt me the most.
‘You never said you were in love with me. You didn’t love me the way I fiercely loved you.’
He lifts his head immediately, eyes flashing in response to refute me.
‘I was young. Stupid. Persuaded. Torn. Conflicted. Blinded. Lonely. Frustrated you left. Despondent I lost you. Scared. Dumb. You name it, I probably was it.’
I swallow as my eyes drink in his tortured expression.
‘All the fucking above and more, Hart. But baby, don’t you ever think for a second I was never in love with you—or stopped loving you. Ever. I may not have told you in those exact words, but my entire life, you’ve been my obsession,’ he grounds out agonisingly.
With a distressed cry, I shove his chest.
This is the first time he has openly declared his love to me in words. This is how he tells me he loves—or loved—me after all these years? Seriously? I deserve better than that. I don’t deserve to be told after the fact. After what he’s done. The tears cascade down my face.
‘Then why? Why did you abandon us? Why did you give up on us? Why did you choose her instead of me? What did she have that I didn’t? Why did you move on, if you loved me so much? Why did you kill us?’
I whip my head furiously as I wipe at my grief-stricken face. ‘What did I do apart from leaving that warranted such brutality, not just from you and her, but from your friends? Why wasn’t I good enough for any of you? Why did you go behind my back and talk to her, even when we were together? Why did you let her ruin me with her words? Let all of them decimate me?’ Years of stored up pain pours out of me as I fail to hold back the flood of heart-wrenching tears.
‘Hart.’ His voice cuts through my sobs as he cups my face and lifts my head to his.
His eyes are red-rimmed, shimmering with emotion.
‘You never did anything to deserve what all of us did to you.’ He lowers his head to mine, the contact and closeness of him scrambling my emotions further.
‘I wish I had a good enough reason to tell you all the whys, but I don’t. All I can say is that I’ve made so many undeniable mistakes. Losing you was the worst thing that ever happened to me. Billie was always a means to an end. My feelings for her don’t even fall in the same universe as what I felt and feel for you.’
Hearing him say he had any feelings for her is like an ice bucket to the face.
I jerk back, hugging myself in protection.
‘But you had feelings for her. You chose her. You stayed with her for years. You had a connection. A relationship. A life together. Put yourself in my shoes. Imagine it was me who gave up on us, moving on with a close friend of yours. Then imagine that friend stabbing you in the back.’
‘You’re right, baby. The thought of you ever doing that is the worst.’
I regard him with silence, too exhausted after my mental breakdown.
He links his fingers with mine, a spark of something zipping up my arm.
‘I’ll never be able to tell you how sorry I am. For hurting you. For breaking us.’ His sincereness stabs me, and it forces me to look over his shoulder at the closed, light wooden door. I don’t want to let him in more than I have tonight.
‘Don’t you get it, Lincoln? It’s hard to breathe right now. It’s so fucking hard to breathe with you near me. I have to go. Tell your dad I couldn’t find the files.’
He tightens his grip, locking my hand in his. ‘Please don’t go, Hart. We have so much more to wade through.’
My fingernails bite into the flesh of his skin, leaving moon indentations. He lets go of my hand at the sudden sharpness.
‘I can’t talk anymore today. It’s already too much.’
Without a second to spare, he pulls my body towards him and wraps his strong arms behind my back. He feels familiar, yet entirely different. The contours of our bodies still fit seamlessly but it’s weird, like we don’t know if the puzzle pieces still fit anymore.
He’s hard all over, and he’s taller than I remember.
Feeling his lips on my temple, I hold my breath. I haven’t felt his lips on me since the last time they were on mine.
‘Promise me we’ll talk again?’ he asks me breathlessly.
I swallow what feels like a fur ball before shaking my head solemnly. He gave me the best explanation he could. He apologised.
‘There’s nothing else left to say.’
‘Yes, there is, Hart. So much more.’
As I stagger away, I’m relieved that Billie is nowhere in sight.