Chapter 17 #2
“What are you talking about.” I didn’t let it sound like a question.
His chest lifted, mouth settled into a sure line. “You understand that things—how they ended, did a number on my parents’ reputation, don’t you? They moved their office because of it. It’s why I commute.”
I sat, dumbfounded. His parents’ reputation was injured?
All regard for keeping personal feelings out of this discussion flew out the window.
There was no way he was actually opening this conversation right now. Even the idea made me sit forward, my eyes turning to moons as I tried to keep myself from floating out of my chair.
“You weren’t affected after you left for school, but the things people were speculating in town were absolutely absurd and—”
“Excuse me?” I blurted. I pressed a hand to my throat. “I wasn’t affected? Really?”
Images, like scenes on a movie roll, clicked in rapid fire before me.
Still shots of moments between us, the silent tears in my bedroom, the moment on the back of the truck, his hands in my pants, his nails digging into my skin, his teeth on my shoulder, pressure, so much pressure as he pushed me into the place he wanted, the feel of his knee splitting mine apart and his weight trapping me.
Everything. All of them, all at once, so stout and bitter that my lungs caught fire.
He made a withering sound. “Let me finish.”
I turned mute with shock.
Like so many times before, he took my silence as a go ahead, and went on.
“I wanted to say that I forgive you for what you said. Or, well, didn’t say.
I didn’t take it to heart—I know you were hurt by our breaking up, and in the end, I truly think it was for the best. I’m sure you’ve had some amazing relationships since, as have I, and I think we can both agree that the tension is still there but what people said afterward is more important.
I didn’t appreciate the bullshit you managed to catch fire to, and to be frank, I had to work pretty hard to convince my coach that I wasn’t bullying women in my free time. ”
It was like someone had sucked all of the air out of the room.
I saw red.
“You bullying women?” I snapped.
He gave a look as if he agreed. “That’s what I said.”
“And how were you just bullying women, Ivan?”
Either he was plain stupid, or he was really terrible at reading people, because he waved a hand, almost nonchalant as if we were talking about the weather, and said, “Someone overheard you speaking with that friend of yours. Sayer, I believe? And there was some suspicious connotation to it, about how you didn’t seem comfortable with me and then it run rampant and people started to speculate that I was, how would you say”—he rolled his hands together, in a get-on-with-it motion—“pushed myself upon you. We both know it was consensual, and teenagers will be teenagers—”
My heart was too fast, my limbs too buoyant, my brain too clouded.
I exploded.
“You think I ruined your life? You think I hurt your reputation?” I ground out.
His posture didn’t so much as tense. It was languid. Easy. Lazy, as he watched me. “All I’m saying is that I didn’t appreciate the speculation, especially when it affected my family, is all.”
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t do this.
Did I want to list with Ivan? Is this really what I wanted? This house, this money from the sale, to go to him?
Was this a sign? Was I pushing things too quickly? Did I really, really want to give Aunt Cadence’s home to someone—someone like this?
It took every fiber of my being to clench the arms of the chair instead of his papers and rip them to shreds.
Images of the house selling, of me being unsuccessful in the search for Hadrian, someone who didn’t love the house for its character, flooded my mind.
My chest clenched so hard that I felt it in my spine.
This could go well—but it could also go very poorly. I wanted this place to be loved.
It was supposed to be a home. I wasn’t sure Ivan could provide that—history or not. I didn’t need to do this. I was done—absolutely, completely done.
Maybe Hadrian was right. I gave the project such a tight timeline, all for the sake of getting it gone, replenishing the monetary hit I was taking, and running so, so far away, just so I didn’t have to sit in this any longer than I needed to.
“You know what,” I said gently. But the words were strangled. Choking. Just like my heart was. “I don’t think Harthwait needs to sell. I think I’m going to pull back on listing.”
“What?” He sat forward, expression shuttering.
Weight rolled off my shoulders, away from my ribs. The slightest of pressures released from my heart. “I’m not selling. I’m sorry. I’ve changed my mind.”
Ivan’s laugh was scratchy. I stared at the floating shelf on the wall behind his head, now empty of the tea set. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“No. I’m not.”
He shook his head and pushed up from the table.
“This is out of spite, isn’t it? You thought you’d dangle something in front of me now, just like before?
Is this to get back at me?” He placed both hands on the table and leaned over me while I held my seat.
I could smell the cologne—rich and intoxicatingly sweet, so much of it that I wanted to vomit. “A tease?”
I schooled my features. My phone vibrated—again. This was starting to get ridiculous. I should have turned it off.
“I think you should go, Ivan.” I stood, already pushing my chair under.
He held his place. “You’re not even going to give me the courtesy of discussing this?”
“No. I have somewhere I need to be. So if you could move along—”
“You’re upset I dumped you. You strung me here, dangled the chance to sell this place in front of me, and now you’re cutting me off just to prove a point, aren’t you?”
I stilled. Turned, robotic, to Ivan.
For the first time, I didn’t feel intimidated looking up at him. I should have. But the dormant frustration morphed into a rabid creature, sprouting claws and spikes and razor-sharp teeth. I leveled him with my most poisonous glare.
“Why did you come here, Ivan? Be honest.”
“The listing—”
Before he even got the words out, a hot flash of hate flooded every crevice of my body.
“You used me,” I snarled. “I didn’t ruin your family.
I did nothing—I gave you everything while we were together.
I showed you every ugly thing about my family, about my life, and all you wanted was a nice, solid lay.
You held me under your thumb, you kept me at your beck and call”—my voice rose, to the point I felt the veins in my neck bulge—“and you enjoyed it, you narcissistic prick. I gave you a chance to prove you’d changed because Emma brought you here.
” I started to walk around my chair, then stopped.
I pointed my finger at him, and this time, I was the one that leaned in, teeth bared. “You want to know something? I didn’t tell anyone about the things you said to me. You assaulted me. You tried to rape me and no I did not enjoy any of it!”
His cheekbones purpled. “What I did to you, Lan? Really. Get a grip. We were teenagers. Do you know what a tease you were? Making me beg like a dog? Hormones—”
I threw my hands down and roared, “You told me I’d end up pregnant, alone, with no friends, and that I’d never be loved by a man!” My voice broke, garbled—and that’s when I felt it. A chill washed through the room.
Still, I pushed on. I grabbed that last mangled thread inside my chest cavity and yanked it free.
“I said I loved you, and you said I was too ruined by my own daddy issues to ever know how to love you like you needed. You said that the women in my family didn’t know anything about pleasing men and that was why my dad had to cheat on my mother all the time.”
Silence.
Wide and expansive, vast and acidic, it stretched between us. The room overflowed with it. Ivan went from staring at me, to staring over my shoulder. His pallor leeched of color.
The sound of three sharp clicks.
I knew those clicks.
“This is absolutely insane. You are insane,” he muttered.
He turned to leave. I wanted to give chase.
I wanted to shout, I wanted to slam the door in his wake, to be the one to cut him out, but I didn’t.
I listened to the whisper of his shoes over carpet, until the front door banged shut.
The stained glass rattled before falling silent.
Then, I glanced behind me to see where the clicks had come from.
It was the darkest corner of the room—the opposite side from where the sun usually hit.
A corner cabinet, filled with antique crystal, sat behind a stack of taped boxes I hadn’t gotten to yet.
There, in the glass door, I saw my reflection—and beside it, Hadrian’s, just as I had the night he’d appeared in the kitchen, but this time it was daylight.
He smiled. It was not a kind smile.
A war of emotions twisted inside me: confusion, relief, and the sharp, tangy taste of fear. Relief, because I’d need to figure out what to do about selling, but—I’d said it. After all these years, I’d said something. I’d stood up for myself.
For once.
I released a shaky breath; gasped to catch it again.
Okay. This was happening. I wasn’t selling the house. At least for right now. That was probably best. It would give me time to finish things up—and find someone I trusted. That loved the house and would help find the right buyer.
But the fear lingered. I clasped my hands on the closest chair back and dropped my head, eyes closed.
“Hadrian?” I whispered. The dining room echoed with his name.
“Yes, dearest?”
My tongue weighed heavy on my next words. “He saw you, didn’t he?”
A long, pained pause. “Yes, Lan. I believe he did.”
Neither of us needed to say any more. He was progressing. And we still didn’t know why.
I sat in the breakfast nook, laptop open, when my phone vibrated. The sun had already started to set, sending a chill through the open windows despite the humidity that lingered from earlier in the day.