Chapter 46 Two Halves of a Heart
B etrayal.
What a messy emotion.
It was the emotional equivalent of a volcano. Toxic. Explosive. Deadly.
From across the room, the eyes of my sister read nothing short of volcanic. Lava closed in around her pupil, incinerating the color in her eyes to crystalized charcoal. The look of them poisoned my heart, turning it as malignant as hers before I could ever even plead my case.
“Put me down,” I muttered to Ethan. “Put me down!”
His arms loosened around my body to allow me to scurry away from him in an attempt to put as much distance between me and the red-handed prints I left all over his body. The second my feet touched the ground, Monica turned and beelined it for the exit.
“ No .” My heart threw itself forward, slamming against my ribs as I watched her go. “No, no, no, no. Please, no.”
I was running on numb feet in Monica’s direction with no thoughts in my head at all. Just desperation pumping through my veins to catch her, to explain to her, to beg her to listen before she decided to hate me for good.
“Monica! Monica, wait!”
Heads turned my way as I ran through the audience that was filing through the exit. I threw apologies left and right as I barrelled through them, keeping my eye on the brunette head of hair that shifted through the crowd further and further away from me.
“Monica!” I screamed like I had been shot as I burst through an opening in the crowd as they funneled their way into the parking lot.
Monica didn’t even flinch as I yelled after her, but kept her head forward as she fast-walked through the lot of cars.
I pushed my legs to run faster after her, barely registering the slaps of chilled wind against my cheeks and bare arms as I caught up to her.
“Monica, please stop! Stop and talk to me! Mon—”
She whipped around to face me so fast that my dance shoes almost slipped on the gravel as I skidded to a stop.
“What the fuck was that?!”
A gasp cut through my throat at how furious Monica looked, her eyes vibrating with rage and an unmistakable vein of hurt that beat like it had a heart within those angry eyes.
Fuck, why did it have to happen like this?
Why couldn’t it have happened on my own terms so I could have told her like I wanted to and not only because I’d been caught in the act?
Had I been able to go about this how I wanted, I would have planned out exactly what I was going to say and how and when.
It all would have been planned down to the word to forego any unavoidable pain.
“Alice!” Monica yelled in my lack of response, startling my poor, weeping heart. “You better start talking right fucking now or so help me—”
“I don’t know what to say,” I blurted out.
“You don’t know what to say?” Her words and the incredulous mask that slipped over her face with them were taunting, electrifying the hairs on my arms. “How about you start by saying why I just found you wrapped around my ex fiancé looking like you were about three seconds from fucking him in front of everyone in the theater!”
“I didn’t know you were coming.”
It was a pathetic excuse, but it was true.
“Of course I came.” She appeared even more offended that I thought she wouldn’t come as I dug myself deeper into my self-made grave. “This is a big day for you. The date has been up on the fucking refrigerator door since before you moved out.”
Somehow, the vest of guilt I always carried around with me these days got heavier. I physically slumped over with the weight it bared on my shoulders, hunching into myself and trying to breathe through the pain.
“ Alice .”
Her tone was like a disciplining hand, yanking my head up to confront her. Monica was waiting for me to meet her stare, looking like she was teetering being composed and a full-fledged breakdown.
“Tell me,” She paused, stoking the nerves boiling alive inside of me. “What is going on between you and Ethan right now .”
I bounced my eyes back and forth between hers, searching for any sort of guidance to what the right thing to say was, but came up empty-handed.
There just wasn’t a right thing to say when you’ve done what I did.
No amount of words would make up for what I had done.
The pain was already there and the damage was done.
Nothing I could say would help un-break Monica’s heart.
With what little breath I had left, I whimpered, “I’m so sorry.”
In those three words, Monica heard all the truth she needed.
I watched the truth of my apology suck the air right out of her.
In a split moment, her entire face blanked.
The anger was gone but so was the room she’d left for uncertainty.
It was there before I’d confessed without confessing—the unsureness.
She didn’t want to believe her little sister could do something like this to her, and she had been holding a place for that uncertainty until now.
Now, that place was empty of everything but dismay.
That didn’t last long though as footsteps slapped the pavement behind us, nearing closer. My head snapped back to find Ethan coming towards us, and with everything I had inside of me, I begged him to be able to read my mind and leave. He was entering a war zone as an already marked casualty.
My silent pleas went unheard as Ethan set himself dead center of a minefield.
“Monica, none of it was her fault so please don’t be mad at her—”
A shriek popped out of my mouth as Monica whipped her hand across Ethan’s face so fast, no one saw it coming. His face snapped to the side, the sound of Monica’s slap still echoing throughout the parking lot.
“Did you fuck my baby sister?”
“Oh god,” I cried, pushing the heel of my palms against my eyes to shut out the world. My legs wobbled beneath me with the weight of my uncovered lies, and I folded at the waist, collapsing into myself.
Make it stop. Please make it stop.
I couldn’t watch. I kept my hands over my eyes through the persisting silence before Ethan would answer and reveal my most terrible sin.
My chest wailed in pain as I waited, like I’d taken the knife I’d plunged into Monica’s back and sliced it down my front, letting all of my secrets and sins spill out.
“We didn’t spend the night together until after you and I were over.”
Even Ethan couldn’t hide the culpability in his voice as he admitted what we’d done. Our dirty little secret had been found out in the worst way imaginable, and my stomach pulled inside out to think of what other secrets might come up now.
“Is this why you ended it between us? So you could fuck my sister?”
Her implication forced a gasp through my windpipe, and my eyes shot open to find hers. “No, Monica, we—”
Monica sent me a quick glare that shoved the rest of my protest back down my throat.
All that was left was for Ethan to say, and my cheeks were wet before he’d even said anything, because I knew he wouldn’t lie.
I turned my attention to Ethan as he sighed and more tears pushed from my eyes as I saw exactly what was coming next in his sad but sincere expression.
“I ended it between us because I fell in love with her.”
Again, my eyes squeezed shut as the first sob wracked my body. Grief combined with my shame and poured the teardrops out heavy and strong. They came one after another, dripping down my face so I could feel the stain of their meaning. There was no coming back from this.
There just wasn’t.
Many seconds passed by in silence. I wanted the silence to consume me, to suck me up and swallow me whole. My mistakes were splattered everywhere, like some abstract painting designed to gut and maim, and I wanted away from it all.
“How could you love her when you couldn’t even love me?” Her whisper was something beyond pain.
She just wanted to be loved, and I ruined it.
“Mon, I’m so sorry.” I choked back another sob. “It-it never should have happened.”
In a snap, her attention and fury aimed at me.
“You’re goddamn right it shouldn’t have.” She watched my sorrow slip down my cheeks, not at all affected by the existence. “When did it start?”
“ Monica , please.” Don’t do this. Don’t make me do this.
She stepped into me, bringing the heat of her stare closer to burn up what was left of me.
I was barely standing, barely able to feel anything above the excruciating ache of guilt that ravaged my chest. She was watching me fall apart piece by piece, and it didn’t stop her from pushing me closer to my edge.
“Answer the question.”
A strangled cry got caught in my throat as she stared down at me with disgust so palpable, it rolled the bile in my stomach around until I was nauseous. Monica looked like she already knew the answer but wanted to torture us both by making me say it.
“Guys.” A warm hand placed itself on the small of my back. “How about we all just take a breath and we can go somewhere else and talk?”
Ethan’s sensible suggestion did not sit well with Monica as her eyes dropped to his hand on my back and caught fire.
“Get your fucking hand off of her,” she spat.
Reluctantly, Ethan did as she said, and the heat and comfort he was trying to provide me disappeared, leaving me cold and shaking beneath Monica’s awaiting gaze.
“You watched me cry my eyes out over the possibility of losing him. What about then? Were you hooking up with him behind my back then and laughing together about how fucking stupid I was for trusting either of you?”
“No—”
“Blindly!” Monica exploded. “I trusted you blindly , Alice. Because you’re my sister and you’re supposed to always have my back because I’ve always had yours.”
“I do! I do have your back. I-I just messed up.”
“No, you don’t have my back, Alice. If you did, you wouldn’t have opened your legs to the first guy that told you he loved you since Jonah.”