Chapter 16 Ransom
Ransom
Ididn’t mean it. I didn’t mean any of what I said. I just wanted to shut Calypso up.
I close my eyes for an interminable second, clutching the bottle of pills Ember gave to me. I walk up to Calypso, set the pills on the coffee table in front of the couch she’s sitting on. I see the gleam in her eyes, and I know.
I turn to assess her vantage point and feel a surge of betrayal slam through me.
I fix my gaze on her. “You knew she was out there.” It’s not a question.
Her eyes don’t waver. “I’m not blind, Ransom.”
“You goaded me.”
“I asked a question,” she replies lightly. “It’s not my fault you answered it like a man with something to hide.”
“You knew what you were doing.”
I know Calypso well enough to see how she saw an opportunity and took it…to hurt an innocent. I can see it in her eyes, the victory she thinks she has claimed.
Calypso doesn’t deny it. Just shrugs. “I didn’t make you say a damn thing. You said how you felt, and she needed to hear that, and you needed to hear that, because what we have, Ransom is—”
“Nothing,” I cut her off. “We have nothing.”
She rises and walks to me. “Don’t say that.” There’s a plea in her voice, in contrast with the malice I just heard.
I shake my head, take a step back from her. “You think you and I are going to happen after you threatened to tell the family about Ember and me?”
“I…I’d never do that, Ransom. I just…I love you.”
My eyes all but bug out. “You think this is love?”
No, love was what Ember gave to me. Support. Comfort. No demands. Just affection.
“Yes! And I’m fighting for you.” She flings her hands up in the air in frustration. “Can’t you see that? Can’t you see—"
“I’m not a prize.” My heart hurts as I replay the words Ember heard, at the lack of my defense of her. “Do you even feel bad that between us, we hurt a woman for no good reason?”
She licks her lip. “All is fair in love and war.”
“And what the fuck is this? Feels more like war to me since you’ve been competing with her since we got here.”
She tilts her head, and she looks defiantly at me. “You didn’t tell me about her. Why not?”
“Because it was none of your business. Because it was five years ago. And because I don’t owe you that truth. What’s between Ember and me is between us. It has nothing to do with you or anyone else.”
She glares at me, her eyes burning with fury. “Oh, so there is something between you two?”
“Fuck, Calypso. You’re a piece of work, you know that.”
She puts both her hands on my chest and pushes me. I move, take a step back, more out of surprise than because of her strength.
“Don’t paint me as the villain.” She slams her fists into my chest. “I’ve only ever wanted to be with you.” She does it again. “I fought for you. For us.”
I grab and hold her wrists before she hurts herself. “No, Calypso, you didn’t fight for me or us, you fought her and you used me as a weapon to hurt someone who’s never done you wrong, never done anyone wrong.”
There’s a silence between us then—a gaping, raw silence.
She pulls her hands away and rubs at her wrists, though I know that I didn’t hurt her, just held her away. “You said you didn’t want her. You said you didn’t love her. You said you didn’t find her attractive. Don’t pretend you didn’t mean them.”
“I felt cornered. And I let you drag me into something ugly.” I can still see the shock in Ember’s eyes, the grief, the pain.
Fuck! It’s worse than when I ended us all those years ago. Then, she’d held on to her pride and smiled through the goodbye. Now…she looked stricken. Broken. Hurt.
Her pain is mine. I can barely breathe.
Her expression tightens. “So what now?”
“You leave,” I say tersely. “Tomorrow.”
“It’s Christmas Day,” she says, a hand flying to her chest. “You’d send me packing on Christmas?”
“You sent yourself packing the instant you decided to humiliate someone I care about.”
Her lips twist. “Even though you may not have fucked her while you were with me, you were thinking about her, which makes you a cheater.”
I don’t respond.
“She’s a child,” she says, trying to convince me. “Too young for you.”
“If age mattered,” I remark coldly, “you and I would be perfect.”
“We are.” She walks to me. “Has any other woman loved you as much as I do?”
Yes. Ember. Her love is the kind that inspires poems. She never manipulated. She never made me feel bad about how we ended. She never hurt me. But I hurt her. I made her feel bad about how we ended.
God!
“I’ve been a damn fool, Calypso. Trying to make something work with someone who checks the right boxes but empties the wrong rooms. You’re beautiful. You’re exciting. But you’re also cruel when you feel threatened.”
Denial floods her face. “I’m not cruel. I am…I am just—”
“What happened just now proves it.”
Her nostrils flare. “You’re going to regret this.”
“I already do.”
“And what are you going to do?” she shouts. “Tell Margot? Tell Jean? That you slept with their precious Ember when she was still in college?”
I turn back, dead calm. “What I tell my family is my business. You don’t get to touch our story.”
She stares at me like she doesn’t recognize me. Maybe she doesn’t. Maybe I’m only now starting to become who I should’ve been all along.
“I’m in love with you,” she says again, like that’s supposed to matter now.
But all I see is a woman who only loves the idea of me. Not someone I can trust. Not someone I can turn to when I make a mistake. Not someone I can lean on.
That was Ember. Is Ember.
And I ruined that.
“I’ll make sure there’s a car here tomorrow at seven in the morning to take you to Zurich. After that, you’re on your own.”
I leave the library. I don’t slam the door even though I want to.
I hate myself for what I did to Ember, the things I said.
Damn it!
I know words are powerful, which is why I’m usually careful, steady. But anger and fear are a nasty combination, and I blurted out utter bullshit, not that Ember will believe me.
But as I walk around the chalet to find her, something flickers under the self-loathing.
A resolve to make it right.
To live my life fully.
To win her back.