Chapter Twenty Paul #2
"Damn, I didn't even have to move," the voice cackles, and once my vision clears, I see that it's a leather-clad blonde, smirking at me. She stubs out her cigarette and puts a new one into her mouth, lighting it.
Rubbing the lump on my head, I take deep breaths, trying to get my heart rate to calm down.
"You fucking scared me," I snap, once I can speak again.
"Boo, bitch," she snarks, blowing a stream of smoke in my direction. Once my eyes adjust to the dark alley, I finally see the owner of the voice.
"Wait—I know you," I say. A flash of memory—her walking out of Rhea's apartment, those sharp blue eyes like steel, and that lip curled into a sneer. Then again, at Haunts, a smirking at me from the bar. "Are you stalking me?"
Her face doesn't move for a second, then there’s just the faintest tightening of her jaw, and her mouth twists into disgust. Shaking her head, she takes a long, slow drag off her cigarette before speaking, "You fuckin' wish, asshole."
I frown at her animosity toward me. "Then who the fuck are you?"
"A concerned citizen," she shrugs casually, looking at the cigarette between her fingers with a slight smirk on her face. My brain seems to be working at full capacity now, and everything pieces itself together.
A concerned citizen who saw me at Rhea's with Elise, my coworker...
"What the hell? You—" I sputter, running my hand through my hair as the world seems to tilt.
My nausea returns as I stare at this woman who decided to take it upon herself to try to ruin my life.
"You're the one writing to my boss? You realize you almost got me fired? What the fuck is wrong with you?"
"Pretty sure yours and your—ahem—mistress's actions almost got you fired,” she snorts, shrugging her shoulders. “I, as a concerned constituent, just reported the fuckery happening. My civic duty."
Staring at this woman, I try to put a name to her face.
She's tall, almost as tall as me, heavily tattooed, and dressed in black leather and dark jeans and boots that look like they're itching to stomp right on my balls. If she’s from Starling Cove, she was definitely out of high school by the time I entered, and from the look of her, it doesn't appear that we even ran in the same circles.
"What the hell did I ever do to you?" I ask, my voice hoarse.
"You exist. Men like you," she spits venom at me. "But it's not what you did to me. Sophie's a good friend of mine, and what you did to her..."
My heart drops at the name.
"Sophie? She—I..." I trail off pathetically. There’s no point in defending myself against what I’ve done, because I did it. I cheated. I betrayed her. My mouth snaps closed, and I slump against the wall, but my defeat seems only to piss her off more.
"You had gold in your hands," she barks, her voice rising. "You had what people spend their whole lives searching for—what they pray for—and you fucking threw it away like it was nothing. What I wouldn't give..."
Her voice breaks off, and she inhales—then again, chest rising and falling in choppy waves. Her eyes are red-rimmed and glassy, with a heartbreak that looks like it runs too deep. She closes her eyes and takes another drag from her cigarette, the cherry lighting up the dark alley.
Frowning at her words, I ask her, confused. "You... want Sophie?"
"No, you dumb fuck," she exhales a stream of smoke and rolls her eyes, tossing the cigarette on the ground and stubbing it out.
"Love. You had your love right in front of you—alive, breathing, yours—and you spat in her fucking face.
You ripped her open and left her bleeding, and for what?
Because she got sick? Because she needed you to show up, and you're so weak you couldn't hack it? "
"I... I had never gone through anything like that before. I was scared," the words scrape out of me, a punishment for my cowardice.
"You were scared?" she says, but nods at my words. "No, that's valid, Paul. That’s a real fuckin' valid thing to feel in your situation, but you didn't even try to fight with her. You just buried your dick in the nearest and willing pussy, hoping to feel anything at all."
The words are delivered evenly, but they land like a kick to my throat, and I actually flinch at being read so easily.
Her blue eyes narrow as she steps closer, and I shrink back against the brick wall behind me.
"Congrats, you broke free, but do you feel any less trapped?"
"No..." I whisper, my voice pathetic.
Sophie's face enters my mind, remembering the exact moment I saw the light leave her eyes when I confessed. Her broken face when I told her I cheated the day of her biopsy, when I told her I have feelings for Elise.
And then—worse—I see the other Sophie. How she would smile at me from across the breakfast table, cradling a mug in her hands while telling me about her plans for the day.
That one flickers into the broken one. Then back.
Over and over and over again. A reel of everything I destroyed, everything that I ruined.
"People like you," she growls, stepping closer still, her voice shaking with fury, "are the bane of my entire fucking existence.
Walking around thinking love's just something that’s owed to you.
Like it's not a fucking gift to be loved, to find a person who understands you in a way no one else has.
A person who has seen all of you—the good, the bad, and the ugly, and still fucking stays.
Still chooses you again and again. Fucking pathetic. "
I clutch my stomach, feeling nauseous again. The world flips, and I use my other hand to hold onto the brick wall, needing stability, or I think I might pass out.
"You had Sophie—that sweet, wonderful, kind woman. And you let something like cancer get in the way of that?"
I shake my head, my throat closed too tight even to breathe, let alone speak.
"Do you know that I would give anything to be able to hold my wife again?"
That word—wife—spoken with such aching reverence causes tears to pool in my eyes.
"I would give anything to hear her tell me that she loves me.
To tell her that I love her more than anything in this hellhole of a world," her face turns a little wistful, before it shudders, and fury overtakes it.
"But she was taken from me by some piece of shit who drove drunk.
She was the most precious woman in the world to me. Now she's dead."
Her words are shaking, furious, and her eyes are a glacial storm, but her mouth trembles in pain. Her partner didn't choose to leave, but I did. I chose to cheat on Sophie. It’s like I shot myself, and tossed her the gun so that I could tell myself that, “really it was her decision to end things.”
I want to say something—anything—that might justify what I did, but there's nothing.
"Why?" she asks me, shaking her head. "Why'd you do it?"
"I don't know."
My voice is thin and trembling, like I'm admitting something shameful.
Because I am. I can say it was the fear.
I can say I wanted an out. I can repeat it over and over until my voice is gone, but.
.. I don't know why I chose this. I don't know why I told Sophie those horrible things about her breasts, about the cancer, about my feelings for Elise. I don’t know why I wanted someone to comfort me when I should have been the one comforting her.
This woman looks like she can see right through me, and her expression shifts into something hard, no sympathy to be found.
"The bitch in me wants to tell you that you're a useless sack of shit and that Sophie's honestly better off without you. Which is true."
Her words hurt, mostly because she’s right.
"I'll leave you with this—a word of advice—figure your shit out. I drowned myself in my grief, and it didn't do anything for me. The only thing that actually helped me was talking about it. So, get help, Paul, before you ruin your life even more."
She stomps off, shoulder-checking me as she walks past, and I stand there in that alley for a couple of minutes, absorbing her words. The parting message swirls around my head on repeat.
Get help. I need to get help. I need to be better. I need to change.
I need to be someone who Sophie would be proud of.
Sophie was going to be my wife. We were together for six years, and I know her better than anyone.
I know she must still love me, I know that love didn't go away.
And maybe—if I figure it out, if I face what I've done, if I take accountability, and become someone worth being loved—then maybe there's still hope, still a chance.
I'll fix myself, and I'll become someone worthy of being loved by her. I’ll support her through cancer, through everything. I’ll be there for her the way I should have been from the beginning.
I'll show her that I can be the one who shows up every day and chooses her every second.
◆◆◆
"What brings you in today, Paul?"
Somewhere in this office, a noise machine plays rain sounds meant to relax me, to make me let my guard down, so that this woman in front of me can pry open my head to see what's broken inside.
That's therapy, isn't it?
At least, that's what Adriana had made it sound like when she spoke of her sessions. When I got back to the motel room on Sophie’s birthday, I had reached out to Adriana on social media, asking for nothing but a therapist's number.
She had sent me a couple of options and then blocked me immediately. Deserved.
That's why I'm here, sitting in this office, on this comfortable sofa. To fix what I fucked up. To fix me because I'm fucked up.
Isn't it strange that you think everything is fine, that what has gone wrong in your life is not your fault at all? That you're the poor unfortunate victim of life's circumstances, and how unfair it is that bad things happen to good people?
Sophie getting cancer? Something that happened to me.
My cheating on Sophie? Something that happened to me.
Me, me, me.
Dr. Gillian Forseti's green eyes don't leave mine after she asks her question. She's older, probably around my mom's age, with salt-and-pepper hair, dressed more casually than I would have expected of a therapist—a purple cable-knit sweater, jeans, and a pair of well-loved sneakers.
I had walked in shaking like a dog, and she greeted me with a smile, shook my hand, and introduced herself. Her open demeanor, her soft voice, her soothing office cracks me open like an egg.
I clasp my hands tightly in my lap, watching as my knuckles turn white from the force, as if holding them together could somehow keep myself from falling farther apart.
My gaze drops to the dark carpet, unable to meet Dr. Forseti's eyes as I mutter, "I think I'm a selfish asshole who ruined the best relationship I ever had because I'm also a coward.
I hate who I've become. I want to change. .."
Dr. Forseti doesn't even blink. She picks up a pen and jots down a quick note on her notepad, and she meets my gaze with a steady look.
“Why don't we start from the beginning.”