Chapter 22 #3
Nobody was perfect. We all made mistakes, we all had flaws.
Mistakes could be one-offs or unintentional, but flaws were inherent in our character.
They were inside us, in what we might call …
the soul. We all had them, and they made us human.
Yet there were some faults that could not be justified, that could not be shrugged off with an, ‘I love you because of your flaws’ – or even an, ‘I love you despite your flaws’.
They were too great, too hideous, too all-consuming.
What Aspen had implied was exactly that: a flaw that ran deep into the soul.
My body was on fire, my mind a whirl. I wanted to hug Blake and I wanted to push him away from me, I wanted to scream at him and I wanted to cry, I wanted to ask for his help and I wanted to order him never to look at me again.
My head was spinning, my heart was in tatters.
How much of it was even real, how much illusion?
All those glimpses behind the curtain: were they all a sham?
Blake had said they were all too real – but what if that was just another lie?
What if everything had been a lie? What if the things Aspen had told me earlier were the first truths I’d ever heard about Blake Ames?
It couldn’t be. Because if that was the case, then none of what had passed between us meant anything. It had never meant anything.
‘Is it true? Did you … did you do it?’
Blake knew what I was talking about. Of course. His expression closed itself off, like a curtain being drawn. Or opened? Was his aloofness perhaps the most honest thing about him? ‘Mabel, you have to—’
‘I don’t have to do anything! Especially since you still haven’t given me an answer.
’ I took a deep breath and forced myself to lift my chin.
Direct question, direct answer. ‘Did you rape that girl from your class in your final year at school?’ My voice was cracking again, but when he didn’t answer immediately, I compressed the last of it into another word.
A word that sounded as desperate and pleading as I felt. ‘Blake?’
He closed his eyes. Three seconds. Then he looked at me steadily.
‘Yes.’ His gaze was as cold and expressionless as his voice.
There was no trace of remorse or self-loathing, not the slightest sign that it even bothered him to admit it.
‘Her name was Piper. Not that it matters. She wasn’t anything special, and she wasn’t the only one.
Not the first, not the last. It just proved a little more expensive than usual to buy her silence.
Irritating, but not the end of the world.
My parents took care of it, same way they take care of everything. ’
The words were flippant, edgeless, but they hit me hard across the face.
There was acid in my head, in my throat, in my heart.
Everything burned. Every tender thought I’d ever had about him, every still-more-tender emotion I’d felt in his presence, they all evaporated.
Left in their place were the ragged shreds of an illusion I had so desperately wanted to believe in.
An illusion that part of me – a part I hated, yet couldn’t suppress – wanted to believe in even now.
‘No,’ I whispered. No, no, no. I wanted to cover my ears, but I could tell from Blake’s eyes he wouldn’t let me. He would compel the words into my head with all his might, each one a crowbar. He wanted to break something. Me, or just my image of him?
‘Do you want to know why I did it? I could tell you. I remember every detail – I think about it every night. The way they felt underneath me. The tension in their muscles, the pointless efforts to resist. As if they could ever have more strength than this body. I remember their tears. Their screams. Their moans.’ He grinned, broadly and yet …
emptily. Soullessly, I thought. ‘It’s all still there. It’s a part of me.’
‘Stop it. You’re lying.’ My voice was thin, barely audible.
Blake gave a harsh laugh, and I winced. ‘I know I said I’m a good liar, but I think this might actually be the first time I’ve told you the truth.’
‘It’s not possible.’ I could hear how despairing it sounded. ‘You’re not … like that.’
Blake raised his eyebrows and hid his hands in his coat pockets, although I could still see they were balled into fists.
‘Why? Because I didn’t want to sleep with you?
Look, I’m sorry if you thought you meant something to me.
It’s just kind of off-putting when somebody’s as needy as you are.
You’ve been trailing around after me ever since we met.
Did you seriously think I’d be interested in someone like you?
’ He came towards me, and I shrank from him until my back was against the fence.
‘I was only hanging out with you to do my friends a favour, Mabel,’ he explained calmly, his voice as dispassionate as his face.
Not the faintest tremor, not the least hint that he felt anything. At least, not for me.
‘Ashton wanted Zoe around, and you were getting on his nerves. On everybody’s nerves.
So I kept you busy just to shut you up. And I must say, you didn’t really ask for much, did you?
I guess when you’ve been ignored most of your life, you’re extra eager to jump at the tiniest scraps of attention.
You could call it sad, really.’ He leant in, bringing his mouth only millimetres from mine.
Only then did his lips curl into an artificial smile.
‘But I think pathetic is the right word.’
Everything in me wanted to believe he was lying.
That he was just trying to push me away, for whatever reason.
But my rational mind was beginning to accept that this was the very truth I’d suspected from the beginning, the truth I’d been suppressing for weeks.
My desire to trust Blake had been so strong that I had staked everything on it, against my better judgement.
Now here he was, tearing those illusions into little shreds.
Until nothing was left. Absolutely nothing, except this pain, this mix of disgust, hatred, shame, sadness, hurt and rage.
It was the simplest calculation in the world: if you bet everything, you stand to lose everything.
‘How… Who are you?’ I whispered.
Blake drew back from me, his shoulders slumping. As if relieved to get it off his chest. ‘I did tell you to stay away. That I’m not one of the good ones.’
‘But you didn’t tell me you were a monster.’ I knew there were tears welling up in my eyes, and that he saw them. He just didn’t care.
He gave a narrow smile. ‘I tried. You just never really listened.’
It was true. I hadn’t. But I would never let it happen again.
From now on, I would listen only to my head, not my heart.
I wouldn’t let myself be confused, or distracted from what really mattered.
For Zoe. For Davie. For myself. For everybody else who was in mortal danger as long as these people walked free, doing whatever the hell they liked.
‘You’re right,’ I said coolly, though inside I was reeling. ‘You are one of them. So I’m including you when I say this: I’m going to end you.’
I tried to walk past him, but he moved to block my path.
I stumbled away, shocked, until again I felt the chain link at my back.
The words caught in my throat as Blake laid his hand on it.
How many times had he done that in the past: grazed his fingertips over my artery, smiling, feeling it pulse faster and faster as he looked at me.
So warm, so … happy. As if this banal sign of life was enough to remind him of the good things in the world.
His touch had been gentle, light as a breath of wind.
Now, even though he wasn’t using much force, it felt completely different: threatening.
His thumb on my artery was cold, his eyes burning into my face.
‘Don’t fuck with us, Mabel,’ he growled. ‘What happened to your friend is just a taste of what we’re capable of.’
‘Maybe,’ I hissed back, ‘but you don’t know yet what I’m capable of.’
I shoved him off me and ran past. He let me go, watching – I felt his eyes as I rushed away into the unlit park.
A passage from Wuthering Heights was racing through my head: I gave him my heart, and he took and pinched it to death, and flung it back to me.
People feel with their hearts, Ellen: and since he has destroyed mine, I have not power to feel for him.
I had never fully understood Catherine, but now, suddenly, I knew exactly what she meant. What she had felt. Nothing.
Blake’s words, his open threat, left me unmoved.
For the simple reason that I could feel nothing anymore, because there was nothing left.
Nothing of what I thought I’d seen in Blake.
Or, perhaps, in the most na?ve way, what I thought I’d had with him.
But that also meant there was nothing now to hold me back.
I would destroy Blake Ames. I would destroy the League. No matter what it cost.