21. Violet #2
"There was nothing to be terrified of." His voice rose on the words, not a yell, but sharp and cutting, each syllable pushed forward. "I read your journal. I knew what you were writing about me. I told you I didn't mind. I told you it didn't bother me at all. And you still chose to lie to my face."
"It wasn't only about you." The raw words came spilling out before I'd shaped them, and I let them come. "Yes, I lied to you. But it wasn't only about you. I was also hiding from my parents. From my colleagues. From everyone. I've been hiding from everyone for years."
"You could hide from your parents and still tell me the truth." He looked at me with devastating steadiness. "All I wanted from you was the truth. Why didn't you think I deserved to know you were someone else?"
"I wasn't pretending to be someone else!
" My chest went tight. "What I felt for you was real.
Everything that happened between us was real.
It wasn't a performance for a book. It wasn't some sick research project.
I wasn't sitting in your house collecting material.
I was terrified because I was falling in love with you, and I was terrified of what that meant, and I kept putting off the conversation, and then it was too late. "
"You've been lying to me this whole time," he said. "It's hard for me to believe any of it."
I just looked at him. My jaw tightened, and I let it.
"Did you track me down here just to fight with me again?" I asked. "What did you come here to do, Simon?"
He stopped cold. He looked down at the patterned hotel carpet. A muscle ticked in his jaw.
"I'm sorry," he finally rasped. "I shouldn't have said I was going to destroy your career. I was blindingly angry. I wouldn't have done it." He looked back up at me. "I'm so sorry, Violet."
I stood with the apology hanging heavy between us. He'd come here and said it. He was standing in a sterile hotel room at eleven in the morning, wearing red-rimmed eyes and yesterday's wrinkled suit, and he'd apologized.
"I'm sorry too," I whispered. "I shouldn't have lied to you. Not about any of it."
He exhaled a shaky, drawn-out breath. "So… what happens now?"
"Nothing," I said.
He stared at me, panic flashing in his eyes. "What do you mean, nothing?"
I'd known this was where we were going. I'd known it deep in my bones since the confrontation in the guest room, since the tearful taxi ride to Sloane's, since I'd lain broken on her velvet couch and felt the heavy shape of something permanently over.
I'd known it, and I'd still let him walk into this room, and I was still standing here forcing myself to say it out loud, and it hurt far more out loud than it had trapped inside my chest.
"I mean, I don't think we can get past this.
" I pressed my trembling lips together. "The fact that you could think I didn't have real feelings for you…
that you could believe that horrible story after everything we shared…
it tells me you never fully trusted me. And if you don't trust me now, you're going to keep doubting it.
You're always going to wonder whether what I felt in those moments was real.
I don't want to be with someone who's going to doubt my intentions every time we fight. "
"Can you blame me for doubting you?" he challenged.
I looked at him, sad. "That's exactly what I mean, Simon."
He went quiet.
The room held the heavy silence between us. I stood in it, looking at his broken face, and felt the grief of it, the clean, particular grief of something beautiful that couldn't be saved. The love was never in doubt.
We'd done real damage, both of us, dealt from our own deep-seated fears, and those fears weren't going anywhere. He'd always doubt my intentions. I'd always carry the guilt of the lie. Neither of those would shrink with time. They'd just become the walls we were forced to live inside.
"We're both at fault here," I said. "Something beautiful happened between us, and it broke, and I don't think it can be put back together the same way.
I don't want this anymore. Not like this.
The guilt alone would eat me alive, because I know I did wrong by you, and I don't want to be trapped in something where every day I'm carrying that guilt and you're carrying that doubt. It would bury us both."
He watched me in devastated silence. "So… what happens now, Violet?"
"We go our separate ways."
His mouth pressed into a severe, bloodless line. He stared at me, and I watched his throat bob as he swallowed.
"Is it really that easy for you to give me up?" he asked, his voice thick.
The question hit low and stayed there. I let it.
"It was easy enough for you to give me away," I countered.
"I know I didn't do right by you. I know I lied.
But we could have had a fight. We could have screamed at each other, and slammed doors, and been terrible to each other, and still been standing together afterward.
Instead, you sent me away like I was nothing.
You said what you said, and you walked out.
" I was glad my voice didn't break. "That's hard to ever come back from, Simon. "
He swallowed again. He looked down at his empty hands. "You're right. I wasn't right to do that."
He'd come all the way here. He'd gotten up, dressed in yesterday's clothes, driven through Midtown traffic, and knocked on a door in a random hotel he'd somehow figured out through Sloane, because he couldn't stop himself from coming.
And I was standing here telling him it was over for good, and he was just sitting with it.
Not arguing, not pushing back, not storming out.
Sitting with the pain of it, the way I'd stood in the guest room and sat with what he'd said to me.
It didn't change anything between us. But I understood it was costing him something enormous to sit there and hear it, and I let myself feel a brief flash of sympathy for that before I put it away.
Neither of us spoke for a long time.
"Where are you going right now?" he finally asked, his voice hollow.
"I have a publishing contract to sign. A good company wants to publish my books."
He looked up, his eyes sharpening. "My company wants to publish your books."
"You're the person who said you'd make sure no one in the industry ever signed V.M. Ashby," I reminded him.
"I know. I'm sorry I ever said that." He looked into my eyes. "I want you to sign with Beckett Publishing."
I stared at him a long, surreal moment. There was something almost unbearable about this part, the bizarre fact that we were standing in a sterile hotel room negotiating a corporate publishing contract like we hadn't been tangled in each other's beds two weeks ago.
Like we hadn't made each other laugh in dark kitchens.
This was the cold paperwork of a thing that had ended.
I pressed my palm flat against my thigh and forced my face to stay still.
"Did you come here today as the CEO of Beckett Media?" I asked. "Or did you come here as Simon?"
"As Simon."
"Then I don't know how to believe you."
He said nothing. He just looked at me, hands hanging loose and defeated at his sides.
"What would it take?" I asked. "For me to sign with your company. What would it cost you?"
"What do you want, Violet?"