Chapter 25 Nineteen Days #2
“That was you?” she whispered. “You took my virginity?”
“I wanted to be your first and last,” I whispered. “Just like you’re mine. You’re my everything, Doll. Please don’t be upset. I need you right now.”
“You had no right,” she said, her words soft but burning with passion.
“I know,” I said. “I couldn’t help myself. I loved you so fucking much, Doll.”
She swallowed, a tear trickling down her cheek. I hated the way she was looking at me, like I was a stranger now.
“Did Devlin know?” she asked at last.
“No,” I said. “No one knows except us, and my dad.”
“Your dad,” she said flatly. “Of course it all goes back to him. Because that’s when it started for me. That day when he beat you with a belt for breaking the vases. Remember?”
“I remember every moment with you,” I said. “I knew they were important.”
She wiped her face and took a shaky breath. “Was it his idea?”
“Are you mad about it?” I asked. “Do you want your first time to be with someone who’s gone, or someone who’s here, who loves you, who’s always loved you?”
“I can’t do this right now,” she said, her plump lower lip trembling. “Not when you’re like this. Because I want to scream at you and punch you, and I can’t. It’s not fair of you to tell me now.”
“It doesn’t matter, though,” I insisted. “Don’t you see that? If we’re together, it doesn’t matter. We’ll be together a million more times.”
“But you didn’t give me a choice,” she said.
“Is that why you told me now? Because you know I can’t be pissed at you when you’re in a hospital bed, when you almost died?
Or because now you can use it to your advantage, and you knew it was wrong, but you can pretend it’s not that bad if we end up together? ”
“It’s not, is it?”
“You violated me, Preston,” she said. “I didn’t have any choice in the matter, and you know that if I had, I wouldn’t have done it. Do you know what that makes you?”
“Would you rather I’d never told you?”
She swallowed. “I can’t talk about this right now. We can talk about it when you get back. If the Dolces even let you come back…”
“It’ll be okay,” I assured her. “I’m going to be fine. I’m going to get out of here and take care of them.”
“Let it go,” she said, her eyes pleading as they rose to meet mine. “You have to stop fighting. They already won.”
“I can’t just walk away,” I said. “They’ll hurt Colt and Mabel.”
A chill went through me, and I was grateful that Lindsey had chosen to go to Faulkner High with her boyfriend, even though I’d strongly opposed her decision at the time.
“If you go back, they might hurt you,” she said. “They might kill you, Preston. I can’t lose you, too.”
That brought a stab of hope to my chest. She didn’t hate me. She still cared. I leaned in, and even though I was covered in bandages and had just revealed my betrayal, she let me kiss her. “I won’t go back then,” I said. “If you’ll be mine.”
“What?” she asked, her gaze searching.
“Say you’ll be with me,” I said, grabbing her hand. “That you’re mine. Life’s too short to be scared, Dolly. This might be all the time we have. I’m tired of waiting.”
She shook her head, tears pooling in her eyes again. “But you didn’t wait, did you?”
Her words dropped an unendurable weight on my guilty conscience, but I didn’t stop. I would never stop until she was mine. “We can be together,” I said. “I’ll protect you.”
“I don’t need protection,” she said. “And if you weren’t all drugged up, you’d know that’s a terrible idea.”
“Why?” I said. “Devlin’s gone. He died with another girl. No one expects you to play the grieving widow.”
“I’m not playing,” she said, extracting herself from my arms. “I am grieving. We might not have been together, but he’s been my friend for eighteen years, and she was my best friend the last few months.
I’m not going to be the heartless bitch who jumped in bed with his cousin before his body’s even been found. ”
“Then when?” I asked.
“When?”
“When is it our turn?” I asked.
She shook her head, tears spilling down her cheeks. “I don’t know, Preston. Maybe we don’t get a turn. You took your turn and didn’t even let me know that’s what it was, that it would be the only time we got.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Maybe the time will never be right for us,” she whispered, swiping her tears. “Maybe it could have once, but now… I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to look at you the same, Preston.”
“Stay,” I said, grabbing her hand when she stood from the bed.
“I can’t,” she whispered. “I have to go. I have school tomorrow.”
I stared at her a long moment before releasing her hand. My voice came out flat and uninflected. “Are you coming back?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I need some time to think.”
“You can’t run forever.”
She turned and walked out without another word. She didn’t look back.
Later, when they took the bandages off and I saw my face for the first time, I understood.
I understood why she didn’t want me, even now that Devlin would never come back to her.
And I understood why I could never ask her again, why I couldn’t make her stay or expect her to love me.
Why it would be unfair to expect anything more than horror and pity in her eyes when she looked at me.
Because when I looked in the mirror, I saw the face I’d hidden under the mask of Darling perfection for so long—ugly, twisted, and unlovable; more beast than human.
At last, the lightning strike had arrived. Not the one that cleaved a tree in two, but the one that illuminated the dark half of it, the branches that were blackened by fire, invisible in the darkness of night.
At last, the world could see that I was damaged, a hideous monster deformed by rage. They could see what was under the mask that the fire had burned away.
At last, I wore the face of the man I’d always been.