Chapter Seventeen #2
"I get it," he says. "You think you don't deserve to be happy. You think that if you punish yourself hard enough for a fucking accident, it'll balance the scales. But that's not how it works, Ash."
I close my eyes. The water is so hot my skin feels like it's peeling off. Or maybe that's the goddamn truth trying to flay me alive.
"Making her hate you won't fix a goddamn thing. It's just going to destroy both of you."
"You know why I did it?" I ask when I can't fucking stand it any longer. "Because I've always loved her. Always. For a long time, I told myself it was nothing, that it was just a phase. I tried to kill it. I tried every way I could think of to not be the kind of man who—"
My voice cracks. I can't remember the last time I cried, or if I even can. I look up at him.
"I am that man, though," I say, my throat raw. "When it comes to her, I am that man."
"Loving her isn't wrong, you stupid bastard," he rasps.
"I saw the red light that night," I say. "I saw it, Liam. I could have stopped. But she was kissing me, and it's what I'd wanted since the moment I met her. The light didn't fucking matter to me because I was invincible with her lips on mine."
He goes very still. I see the moment the truth hits him, see the slow, sick realization that the one thing he's always forgiven me for is the one thing I've never deserved forgiveness for.
"I'll never deserve her, not when my own goddamn selfishness is the reason she died that night." I laugh without humor. "It's the reason we both did."
"You son of a bitch," he groans. And when he hits me this time, it doesn't hurt at all. "You stupid son of a bitch."
He looks at me with something like pity burning in his eyes before he turns and walks out, leaving me shaking and bleeding all over the shower.
I sit there for hours after he leaves, cold water pouring over me until I can't feel my fucking legs.
I'm not sure if I've blacked out or if I'm just not moving, but when I finally look up, dawn is stretching across the horizon through the window, painting the sky that insubstantial blue-black that always comes before the sun burns it away.
All I can think about is Brielle and how badly I've fucked everything up, over and over again. Liam's words replay in my head, growing so loud I can't think through them.
She isn't eating, isn't sleeping, isn't talking.
She's a ghost.
Brielle, who once burned so fucking bright I had to squint to look at her, is a ghost because of me.
That's not what I wanted. I never meant to destroy her entirely. I just wanted to erase the part of her that might ever, even for a second, think about letting me back in.
All the righteous bullshit I fed myself about letting her go to save her? It was a lie. This was never about her safety. It was about hiding, about never letting the person I wanted most in this world see what kind of monster was really inside me.
If I made her hate me, I never had to admit to her that I ran that red light on purpose.
If she hated me, I could keep pretending I didn't see the light.
But I did see it. It just didn't fucking matter.
What I wanted did—her lips on mine did. Right up until I saw the fucking garbage truck and realized that kissing her didn't make me invincible.
It simply made me reckless enough to think I was.
And it made me dangerous enough not to know the difference when it mattered most.
"Fuck," I groan, burying my face in my hands as my shoulders shake, years of guilt and grief threatening to tear me apart. I can't keep doing this. I can't keep running from the truth, pretending that if I never tell her, it somehow makes it better. It doesn't.
All that's done is destroy her.
I'm so goddamn tired of being the thing that destroys her.
I haul myself out onto the floor, peel off my soaked clothes, and watch the water swirl down the drain. There's a moment where I wish I could swirl with it—just vanish down the pipes—but that's the kind of melodramatic bullshit I can't afford anymore.
I don't get to die or disappear or fade away when she's the one who will have to live with it. I can't do that to her, not when I've already done so much fucking damage to her.
Christ, I've done so much damage.
I wrap myself in a towel and walk into the living room.
My hands shake as I grab my phone, dialing her number.
I don't even know why I call, because I know she won't answer.
But it's like some part of me is hard-wired to her, like there's a string running from my chest to hers, and if I just pull hard enough, she'll come back like she always does.
The call goes straight to voicemail. Her voice is clipped, professional. I listen to every word, because I haven't heard her voice in two weeks. When it beeps, I hang up and dial again.
And again.
And again.
On the fifth try, her voicemail doesn't pick up. Neither does she. The phone just disconnects. She's blocked me, refusing to leave me even the comfort of her voicemail.
I set the phone down and pour myself a drink, promising myself that I'll stop after this one.
That's a lie.
By the time the sun is up, I've finished the Macallan. I stare at the window, but I don't see the city. All I see is her, looking up at me with that mixture of fury and hunger, her black hair a halo around her head, her mouth swollen from my kisses.
I see her kneeling because I told her to, a fucking queen even when she was on her knees at my feet. I see her, her mouth full of "fuck yous" and her perfect fingers pressed so hard into my skin I still have the bruises.
And I see her, crawling across the fucking floor to me, tears dripping down her cheeks. I see her, shattering into pieces as I pushed her up against the wall and took every last thing she had left. I see her, finally learning to hate me in a way that sticks.
I thought, even if I broke her enough to make her hate me for good, she'd still survive me. She'd be okay because she doesn't know how to be anything else. And if she finally hated me the way I always deserved, maybe I could stop hating myself so goddamn much.
Instead, I hate myself more than ever. For what I am. For what I've done. For everything I never said.
"Come back," I whisper to her memory. "Just…come back. I'll make it right."
The words sound pathetic, even to me.
At two, I'm in a cab, headed to her apartment on the Upper East Side in a suit that smells like a brewery. The driver gives me a look, then decides not to say anything. I pay him double and stumble up the stairs to her building, ignoring the doorman's questions.
By the time I reach her floor, I'm out of breath, barely holding it together.
She opens the door, her arms crossed, her eyes ringed with dark shadows. There's still a bruise on her jaw from the accident, faint but visible. The cuts, scrapes, and bruises on her arms are mostly healed.
She's lost weight. I see it in the lines of her collarbone and the way her shirt hangs off her shoulders. Her eyes are dull, nothing but pain behind them. Her face is pale, her expression lifeless.
Liam was right. She's a ghost, just going through the motions. This is what I've done to her, how I've hurt her. Seeing it…fucking hurts. Christ, it hurts like hell.
She looks through me at first, like she doesn't even see me standing there, and then she looks at me like I'm a stain on her carpet. "You look like you lost a bar fight."
"I deserve worse."
She doesn't argue.
I try to step inside, but she blocks the doorway with her body.
"What do you want?"
Now that I'm here, I don't even know where to start. How do you tell a truth that's eaten away at your soul for years? How do you undo all the damage you've selfishly done and fix everything you've broken? I don't know. I've never tried.
"I want you to come back to work," I rasp, not sure where else to start. "Fuck the agreement. Fuck the rules."
She laughs, but it's not a nice sound. "You want me to work for you?"
I nod.
"That will never happen. I know what you are now, Asher," she says.
"What's that, princess?" I ask, terrified to know what she sees when she looks at me now, of what she thinks when I haunt her mind.
She looks me up and down, slow and deliberate, cold. "You're just another rich asshole who likes to break people just because he can."
The words hit harder than any punch Liam threw last night.
"That's not true," I protest. "I didn't want to break you. I just…Christ, princess, I just wanted to be with you the only way I thought I deserved."
She leans against the doorframe, looking through me again. "Don't lie to me. You don't get to do that anymore."
I want to say I'm sorry. I want to say I only ever wanted her, that every fucked-up thing I did was just my way of being close to her, even if it meant destroying everything in the process.
I want to tell her that I fucking hate myself and desperately needed her to hate me, too, even when I tried to keep her close.
I want to tell her that I'm in hell without her.
She doesn't give me a chance to say any of it.
"You know, I actually thought you were the only person who really saw me," she says. "What a joke, right? Turns out, the only thing you ever saw was a toy to fuck and break."
"That's not—" I start, but she cuts me off.
"Any other day, I might have loved getting on my hands and knees for you.
Any other day, I might have crawled and fucking loved it.
But you knew exactly what you were doing by demanding I crawl after I told you how I felt about you," she says, her voice breaking.
"You knew telling me that I was just a fucking distraction you wanted to own and demanding I earn my money would destroy me. It's what you wanted to do."
"Brielle, I—"
"Go fuck yourself, Asher." She steps back, trying to close the door in my face, but I put my hand out, blocking her.
"Please," I say. "Just tell me how to fix it."
She looks at me, her green eyes blazing. "You can't," she says. "You don't get to break things and put them back together on a whim."
"I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry. Tell me how to fix it," I plead, my voice cracking. "Please. Just… tell me what to do."
She looks at me, and for a second, I see the old Brielle—the girl who used to dare me to find out how far she'd go if I just let her. I see the woman who felt more alive with my hands on her body than she ever did before. She blinks that version of herself away, wearing her hatred like steel.
"Crawl," she says.
"What?"
"If you're so sorry, get on your knees and crawl."
I drop to my knees without hesitation, the wounds from last night screaming every time I move. I crawl toward her, one hand after another, my eyes never leaving hers.
I hear a door open down the hall, someone's head poking out to watch. I don't care. I'd crawl in front of the fucking world for her if it's what she asked of me.
When I reach her feet, I stop, looking up at her.
She stares at me like she's seeing me for the first time. Not the boss who infuriated her, not the billionaire who trapped her, not the monster who ruined her life. Just me, the man who has always been hers to command, the one who would defy gravity and destroy kingdoms just to worship at her feet.
"Good," she says, her voice shaking. "Now get the fuck out of my apartment and out of my life."
She turns away, but I stay kneeling. I can't get up. It's like my bones have turned to concrete.
"Brielle, wait," I whisper, not really expecting her to do it, but she stops anyway. She doesn't turn around, but she stops.
"It's always been you," I say. "Always. I loved you from the second I met you.
The night of the accident, when you told me how you felt, I wanted to say it back, but I fucking couldn't, not when you weren't even eighteen yet.
Not when I knew how fucking wrong it was.
" I swallow. "I tried so goddamn hard to kill it because you always deserved better than me, but I never could. "
She says nothing.
I keep going, because if I stop now, I'll never say it.
"I saw the red light that night," I rasp, my whole fucking body shaking.
"I knew the second it turned red, but it didn't matter because you were finally kissing me.
For the first time, you were in my arms, and I was bulletproof.
I was just daring fate or God or the goddamn universe to try to remove you from them. "
She stands there, her hands clenched into fists, her back rigid.
"When I saw the garbage truck, I knew I'd fucked up, but it was already too late.
I tried so fucking hard to stop what I knew was about to happen, but I couldn't. Christ, I couldn't," I groan.
"I nearly killed you because I was too goddamn selfish to let you go, and I've hated myself for it every day since. "
"Good," she says, her voice whisper-quiet. "You should."
"I know," I rasp. "But I hate myself more for what I did to you after.
For every time I made you feel like you were less because I couldn't face myself.
For every time I taught you to hate me because I thought that would make living with what I did to you easier.
" I swallow past the lump in my throat. "For telling you to crawl when all I've ever wanted was for you to stand beside me.
For every fucking time I hurt you when I was the one who wanted to die. "
She doesn't move.
"I thought I needed you to hate me so I could live with what I did to you, but now that you do hate me?
Now I know that was never going to work because you're the one thing I can't live without.
I don't know how the fuck I'm supposed to forget what I did.
But I don't know how to live without you, either. I can't."
"Not my problem," she mutters.
"I'll keep trying to fix this," I tell her, my voice breaking. "Even if it takes the rest of my life."
She turns, finally, and looks down at me. There's nothing in her eyes but exhaustion, as if she cried herself out a long time ago.
"Don't," she says, her voice wooden. "Just leave, Asher. That's what I want from you. Just leave."
The door closes on her face, on her impossible eyes, and I taste the salt of my own tears for the first time in years.
But I'm not giving up. No matter how long it takes, I'll fix this.
Not because I deserve it, but because she does.
Because, out of everyone in this world, she deserves to know love the most.