Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
‘Belle, I lied.’ My hands grab her palms, holding them tight.
A vertical line appears between her brows. I watch her expression shift into confusion and I have no idea where to start.
My brain is trying out different openers simultaneously, then forgetting them just as quickly. It’s complicated. You’re going to hate me but … It’s not what you think. None of them are right.
I snort out a laugh, just one. ‘Right, well, thing is …’ I pause. ‘I blame the psychopomp, really …’
I laugh again and stop. She isn’t laughing. She isn’t doing anything, just holding my hands and waiting.
‘The truth is … I was sent to visit you … to save myself, not you. This tour, it wasn’t for your benefit. It was for mine.’
She blinks and her patience somehow feels worse than if she’d already started shouting.
‘Gabe didn’t give me a choice.’ I say this and regret it, because that’s a lie. Try again.
‘I’ve been stuck in the in-between for ten years. Most people don’t get stuck there but I did because there was something I needed to put right. Something bad that I did when I was alive – to someone I loved.’ I swallow. ‘It was never your soul that needed saving. It was my soul, Belle.’
I feel her hands slipping from mine.
‘I should have told you at the start, I know that, but you were upset and angry to see me and it was your wedding day, and I didn’t know how to—’
‘How to what?’ Belle dips her chin.
‘How to tell you without losing you again.’
It sounds romantic in my head. It sounds like the right thing to say, the sort a hero would say at the end of a movie where he’s professing his love, but I watch it land on her face and that isn’t what she’s heard.
She takes a step back and lets go of my hands.
‘I wanted to tell you, I nearly did, about three times but—’
‘You’re saying that all of this …’ She turns, her voice level and controlled.
‘That I walked through every relationship I’ve had – watched myself with Sebastian, with Joe …
I relived the worst parts of my life, the night before my wedding, because you told me my soul depended on it, but in reality you were just scared of losing me? ’
I stand with my mouth open but nothing comes out.
‘Like you hadn’t already?’
I stare at my empty hands like a part of me is missing.
‘I know how it sounds.’
Belle brings her hands to her forehead and turns. ‘I wasn’t yours to lose, Jake.’
I freeze.
My eyes run over her face and she’s not blinking, not moving, but her chest rises and falls quickly, her hands cleched at her sides, her dress slipping from her shoulders.
‘Belle—’
‘Did you work it out, then? The thing that was so bad, you got stuck there – do you even know what you did?’
I know the answer. I’ve known since about halfway through the evening, maybe earlier. Every relationship we visited, every man she chose, every bad decision and emotional turmoil and walls she put up, my fingerprints are all over it. I know exactly what I did that was bad enough.
And now she’s asking me directly, as I’m sure Gabe will do too, and the words are right there in my throat, but I just can’t make myself say it to her face.
‘I know …’ I gasp.
Then silence. My mouth is dry and my hands feel pathetic at my sides. It’s there, the apology, on the tip of my tongue – the video, the smooth whisky bottle in my grip, being scared and drunk, everything I said, the holding her back, the controlling … I swallow.
I feel it then, before I can stop it. My mouth curling up, the air through my nose, my eyes squinting shut. A laugh.
Belle takes another step back and the distance between us widens from feet to years.
‘You laughed at me.’ Her voice sounds different, low and cold. ‘When I was twenty-five, in my bedroom, I told you I’d seen what you’d said about me and you laughed. Exactly like that.’
The room tilts.
‘I’m sorry, Belle …’ But my smile is still wide and her face is crumbling.
‘And then you left and then you died and I spent ten years wondering if you ever did feel sorry, and you’re standing here telling me you know, but you still can’t say it.’
‘Belles—’
‘Both times I tried to show you who I really am – when I told you I wanted more, let you in on my dreams of a fresh start, and then again tonight – and both times you’ve made it all about you. And what you were scared of. What you could lose. And then you laugh, because you can’t admit it.’
‘I can.’ My voice comes out weaker than I want it to.
‘Then say it.’
‘I didn’t mean any of it.’
‘Then why say it?’
‘Because …’ I stutter, then stop.
‘Because? Just because? Fucking hell, Jake.’
I can’t do anything but stand here, stupid and dumb, and she’s turning away now, laughing.
‘Do you know what’s really worth laughing about?
’ Her voice is breathless and messy. ‘The really funny thing is that I didn’t realise until tonight how much that video influenced everything that came after.
The good, the bad … With every person I was with, I was just waiting for the moment they’d turn around and do the same.
I chose people who were so easy, because there was no threat, and then chose people who would humiliate me because then at least I knew it was coming.
I chose people I knew I couldn’t really love.
Because loving someone means giving them the power to do what you did …
So thanks, Jake. Thanks for all my trauma. ’
My chest feels like someone is kneeling on it. She’s never said this to anyone; I can tell by the way her hands are shaking that this is the first time she’s putting it all together out loud.
‘So it’s all my fault?’
It comes out wrong, falls out of me like the wrong lyrics to a song. And her face doesn’t change. She doesn’t flinch or recoil. She just looks at me, nodding slowly, lip quivering.
‘Well, we’re done now, aren’t we.’ She shakes her head. ‘You’ve saved your soul. Now leave.’