Harper #3
“I moved out there after, staying close to Cal Tech for Sadie, working local jobs and other projects that Grant could find for me until she graduated. We stayed out there for a while after, so Grant could help Sadie set up her security business, always her number one supporter. I owe him everything, not just for Sadie, but for myself. He is the other owner of Cirque, my silent partner. He has been working in the tech world for years, investing in companies, outright buying others. He helped me build connections and showed us the way this world works. Without him, Sadie might not be here and without her…I don’t know what would have happened to me. ”
“And what happened to the ex? Once you found out what he did,” Colton asks, his words calculated and cold, like he wants to avenge me and Sadie, years after the fact.
No need, it’s already done.
“I wanted to confront him in person, so I played the part, told him I was just there to visit, and I couldn’t wait to come home to him.
I used to work here, so when I came back to get my stuff before I moved, I asked him to meet me here.
Told him I wanted him to keep me company while I closed up for the night because I missed him so much.
When he got here, Gus helped me give a proper greeting.
I asked him why he did it, why he would do that to me.
He told me he weighed his options and made the choice for me.
He said he was helping me, that cutting her off was the right thing, that he had done what I was too weak to do. ”
The memory shouldn’t bring a smile to my lips, but it’s one I savor. Like any good villain, you remember your first.
“Gus held him, and I held the bat. I told him to weigh his options and pick where he wanted me to strike. Then I made the choice for him. I broke his leg in three places and dropped him at the emergency room on my way out of town,” I tell Colton, waiting on bated breath for the moment I had feared.
Showing him the first stain on my heart, the darkness that bled into my soul and now creeps its way into the picture he painted of me.
He nods, seemingly satisfied by my retribution.
“No one would blame you for what you did, avenging your sister and yourself. And in the end you still did the right thing and brought him to the ER, he’s lucky you didn’t let him bleed out.”
I am no avenging angel, and he’s clinging to this idea that I am somehow redeemable. Reasoning that my actions were justified, scraping together a weak argument to account for the things I have done.
I need him to understand what happened that night and how I chose to get revenge, it didn’t change me.
It set me free. It gave me the permission I had been yearning for, to let the monster out.
This isn’t some memory I look back on and wonder how my actions should have been sated, or how I would have been better served reigning it in.
The only regret I have is that I was weaker then and my swings didn’t land quite so hard.
“Oh, honey,” I shake my head, bringing up a hand to cup his cheek.
“He didn’t get lucky. I didn’t bring him to the hospital because it was the right thing to do, or some misplaced regret.
I needed to make sure he survived. That he would think of me with every step he took.
During physical therapy sessions and rainy days when his stride feels weak, I want him to feel me. ”
Colton doesn’t respond to this, he just keeps his hold of me, reality sinking in as I savor his touch, knowing it might be the last I feel.
“This is who I am. My dark deeds may have started as retribution for a wrong done, but everything after that is because of who I am, at my core. I want you to accept it, I need you to accept it, if this is what you want. You said you didn’t want half measures, that you wanted me, all or nothing,” I lean away from him, gesturing to the bar around us before landing on myself.
“This is what my all looks like, the good, the bad and the wicked.”
Colton opens his mouth to argue, but I need him to think on this, not just react out of fear. To defend his initial want. He’s willfully ignoring the string tethering the rumors that surround my name and the truth I’m laying at his feet.
I’m probably the only woman he will ever want like this, the only one that will need clarity when asked about her body count.
“Please, don’t tell me it’s fine or that it doesn’t matter. It matters to me,” I clear my throat, uncomfortable with the raw vulnerability scratching through each word. A foreign sensation to discuss my feelings, and a reminder why I prefer to keep them buried with poor decisions and ex-boyfriends.
“I wanted to be honest with you, because whatever this,” I gesture between us, “is, and whatever you think of me now, I want you to trust me. I need you to trust me, because when I tell you what is going on at Cirque,” at this he sits up straighter, his curiosity peaked, “you’ll have a choice to make. ”
Make the right one.