Chapter 53 #2
I arched an eyebrow at her blatant lie. “I heard you in the hotel last night.” Her dark eyes narrowed on me and I held up a hand. “I was waiting for the lift, not creeping around. If you don’t want accidental eavesdroppers then save it for the bedroom.”
“Fair enough.” She turned back to the mirror. “But just for the record, we didn’t get that far.”
With her face fixed, I watched as she fussed with the shirt.
The boat neck sat wide on the shoulders, dipping low at the back.
It was just the right amount of sexy on me, on Angie, it dipped low enough to show the top of her scars.
Scars that Charles had left there. My stomach turned at the sight of them.
“If you put your hair down, it’ll cover those.”
She stiffened as if she’d been filled with concrete. I watched as an array of emotions flew across her face but just like Alfie, she smoothed it away as if it was never there.
In silence, she pulled the tie out of her hair, releasing her high ponytail. She dug a hairgrip out of her clutch and fixed her hair in a half-up, half-down do.
I shifted from one foot to the other, feeling the elephant in the room watching us both. I’d just acknowledged out loud that I’d seen the scars and she knew I knew what they meant. Taking a deep breath, I prepared to address it.
“Thank you for letting Alfie tell me about what happened all those years ago.”
She kept her face an indifferent mask as she finished fixing her hair. “It was the right thing to do and I know you won’t tell anyone. You care about Alfie too much.”
She stuffed her make-up bag in her clutch and returned her gaze to the mirror, running a shrewd eye over herself. Aside from the outfit change and damp tips of her hair, you would never know she’d just had a glass of wine thrown in her face.
“I’m in love with him, you know.” She spoke so softly I barely heard her but there it was, finally out in the open.
“Yeah, I know.”
She stared at her reflection, dissecting it. “I thought that if I waited long enough, if I was the right kind of person to fit into his life…I mean, look at me.”
I let out a laugh. “Yeah, it’s not lost on me that you fit his world better than I do.”
“Then why?” She turned, hitting me with an accusing glare, as if I was the reason he’d never chosen her. “Why you and not me?”
That was a loaded question and the answer was probably going to get me a slap in the face, but it needed to be said. “Because you fit the lifestyle but not the man. It’s not the same thing. Alfie doesn’t fit his own lifestyle in a lot of ways.”
She blinked, as if that thought had never occurred to her before. Despite everything, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her as I watched her realise she’d never stood a chance.
“He’s never going to love me, is he?” I didn’t need to answer her question, she already knew the answer.
She turned, a sharp sob escaping as she shed fresh tears.
Her shoulders shook with the effort of holding herself together.
She straightened her spine, letting her strength shine through.
She looked back at me, sad and sorry. “What do I do now?”
“Quit your job,” I shrugged, “and fuck Dexter if he’s single.”
She laughed, dabbing a tear from her eye and checking her reflection again. “Is that what you would do?”
“No, I’d demand a promotion. Becoming a boss in the company your rapist was supposed to inherit? It’s the ultimate power move.”
Rapist. I’d said the word out loud and she hadn’t flinched. Not even a little.
Angie laughed again and for the first time, I saw the woman that Alfie cared about. There was kindness there, I’d just had the misfortune of getting in the way of what she wanted.
“Lola, I’m sorry for the way I treated you. It wasn’t fair.” The stiffness in her voice told me those words weren’t easy to say but I could see she meant them. Did I trust her enough to forgive her? Definitely not. Did I care enough to hold a grudge? Not really.
“Thanks. I get it.”
We stood silent, letting our new truce settle around us.
“Well,” she picked up her clutch, “I should go back to the hotel and you should go and finish your dinner. Alfie will be missing you.”
I let her pass by me before a question that I’d had for a while finally left my lips. “Angie, why did you let Alfie tell me about Charles?”
Angie paused, her shoulders tensing. “Because I care about him more than myself, and seeing him suffer like that…I couldn’t stand it.”
“But, you knew it would drive him closer to me.”
Her sharp eyes softened with sadness. “Please just make him happy.”
“I don’t know that I can,” I answered honestly. “The cameras…I know you must know about that. It might be a step too far into crazy town.”
She nodded again and I knew that she understood better than anyone what it was like to be violated by a Tell man.
“You know, I think he hates himself more for what he’s done to you than for what he did to his brother.
After Charles, Alfie was in a dark place for a long time.
There were nights I thought he might go crazy.
He was obsessed with the company. He worked himself to exhaustion, like it was all penance for what he thought he was responsible for.
It didn’t matter how many times I told him it wasn’t his fault, he never listened.
His father and brother were evil people and Alfie has still spent twelve years torturing himself over what happened. ”
It was strange to hear Angie talking so openly. I stayed quiet, too scared to move in case I spooked her back into silence.
“Over the years, he became where I felt safest. I knew when I was with him, I was protected. He made sure I had everything I needed.”
It surprised me that I didn’t feel jealous, only sad for the woman whose love would never be returned. “I know he cares about you.”
“That’s not my point. My point is that I thought I was special to him, but it wasn’t until he met you that I realised how little of the man I really had.
” That anger was back, that accusing stare as if I had stolen him away from her.
She shook it away, looking guilty. “He met you and he started to change. He started missing work and smiling at his fucking phone. He was happy.”
She stared into nothingness for a moment, lost in her own dark memories.
“Then you separated and I think he really did go a little insane. It was as if everything that happened with Charles and his father had been safely tucked away and you dragged it all out into the light. You unknowingly released his demons and then left him to deal with them alone. Keeping you in his life, in some way, was the only way to stay out of the memories of all the shit they did to him.”
Her dark eyes were full of anger only this time it wasn’t meant for me, but for two dead men that would never be able to answer to the two people they’d hurt the most.
“The cameras were a biproduct of that insanity, a fucked up coping mechanism. I don’t condone it, nor does he but neither you, or I, or anyone else can be as angry with him as he is with himself.”
I believed her. I knew Alfie was dragging himself over the coals for what he’d done but that didn’t change anything. “That doesn’t help me trust him, Angie.”
“So end it.” She shrugged. “But before you do that, you should take a long look at the man you’d be giving up.
You’ve both worked hard to get to this point and now that you’re here with clear skies ahead of you, you don’t want the journey anymore?
” She took a step closer to me. “I know I can be a bitch but Alfie Tell is the only person in the world that has ever given a shit about me. So if you’re going to let him go, make sure you let him go in one piece. ”
With that, she turned on her heel and walked out of the bathroom, leaving me alone.
Was she right? I’d felt so lost in the storm that it hadn’t occurred to me that clear skies might really be waiting for me on the other side.
The problem was that to get there, I would have to take the biggest leap of faith I’d ever taken, it would mean trusting a man who had already wronged me so many times.
I closed my eyes, once again feeling my mind spin. I searched for my axis, the thing that would keep me steady. As always, I found Alfie waiting there for me, as if he knew that sooner or later, I’d come back to him.