T
he next sound I hear makes me stop in my tracks.
“Mmmm.”
It’s a single noise, but it’s all I need to hear.
I know exactly what has happened, but everything seems slow and fast at the same time and I can’t breathe.
He wouldn’t, couldn’t, not with her, when…
I know before I reach the door what I’ll find inside, b
ut I have to see it for myself
or I’ll never forgive my cowardice.
I crack the door open slightly.
I’m going to throw up, right now, right here, oh god, thiscan’tbehappening.
I could have swung the door open and slammed it against the wall. They never would have noticed.
She’s on top of him, and her skirt is in a heap on the floor and her shirt is gone and her long, beautiful hair is thrown back, and she’s murmuring little sounds and groaning.
And his head is turned and his eyes are clenched shut and his hands are moving slowly, quickly, over her back and I know what it feels like and how and why and what happened
are
the only thing
s
I can think.
Don’t let them see me
, I manage to thin
k to myself. M
aybe I said it
aloud
. How long, why, what, who did this?
I want to flee, but my feet are stuck
.
He
peers
up
at me
and those
beautiful green eyes meet mine. T
here’s shock there at first and I don’t care what else. I turn
around, trying to find anything to
look at but what’s in that room
and
I fall into a sturdy pair of muscular arms.
“
Ben
,” I gasp.
T
hat’s all I can manage.
Ben
quickly
takes in my face
and then
glances
back into th
e room.
I hear the sounds of Chris
pushing her away like he didn’t wan
t it, or her, but it’s too late.
I saw ev
erything. He’s saying something and I hear my name, but
I can’t look at his face. It would break me entirely.
Ben’s turning me around to get me out of there, and I can’t help but to
glance
back
once. I meet his eyes, because
I will not be that
pathetic
.
I will not let them laugh at me.
I remember all of the silly, sentimental things I had
said
to him and my face flushes at the memory.
I remember a
ll of the little “
hmmms
” she
(
who
doesn’t deserve a name)
offered in response to my endless musings about him.
I was so stupid.
So fucking stupid.
His eyes are pleading with me, but I can’t find any part of the boy that I thought I knew in there, despite the g
uilt and shame
written all over his face.
And that’s it. I am broken.
Chapter 26
CHRIS
Shit.
I have really, really fucked this up, backwards, sideways and all ways.
Sophia
is saying something to me, whispering in my ear, but I have no earthly idea what she is talking about and I don’t care.
The only thing that matters
right now
, the only
thing that will ever matter,
is
Hallie
.
I had seen her face, her beautiful face that can’t hide anything,
fall into pieces
before.
Her face was broken the night before when she had fled from me.
But it was nothing compared to t
he
shattered look
in her face
when she had seen
Sophia
and I.
Christ, the shattered look I had put there.
What we had was inviolable, but I just violated it.
I scramble
to find my clothe
s, and my t-shirt
is backwards, but
I do
n’t care. A
ll I want
to do was find her to tell her that I
’m
sorry,
that I’m
a jea
lous
, stupid asshole
.
Ev
en if she was with someone else..
.
Even if she was with someone else, m
aybe
we could be friends again if there was some way she could forgive me
. That way, at least
I wouldn’t lose all of her forever
.
If she was even with someone else, my head said, trying to make sense of her and Ben.
Before Ben hustled her out of the room
, he
had looked at us once. If
there h
ad been a gun or a blade
nearby
, both
Sophia
and I would be dead right now.
The hatred I had seen
in every muscle of his body was
for
Hallie
.
I still can’t figure out his reaction. He didn’t seem angry at her, just for her.
I rush out the door, completely oblivious to anything that
Sophia
is trying to say. I’m running through the party and everyone is looking at me like I’ve lost my mind and I have, I think. I catch them at the elevator. His hands are on her shoulders and he’s saying something to her, but I’m not close enough to
hear what it is. She’s shaking
, pressing the button over and over again,
and fat tears are pooling on the floor beneath her.
“Don’t go out the front,” I say, and my voice sounds much more normal than
I feel. “The cameras are out there. The side door should be open.”
Christ. That’s all I can think to say?
T
here has to be something I can to do fix this, some way of atoning for the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.
He’s
shielding her body,
blocking any chance I have of appealing directly to her
.
I know that’s his intention
.
I won’t hurt her, I want to scream. But
that’s not true—
I
already did.
“
Hallie
,”
Ben
says, cupping her face in
his
hands. His thumbs move over her temple, forcing her to look at him. “I need you to go downstairs now.”
The elevator dings
and he stands in the frame of it, shifting his body so she
is looking at him and only him. G
od help me, I want to kill him, even if
she is in love with him
.
Especially if
she’s in love with him
.
She nods.
“Go downstairs and wait for me there. Do not go outside.”
She slides i
nto the elevator
.
“
Hallie
,” he says again, sharper thi
s time. “Do you understand me?”
I see her visibly pull
herself together and she nods once before disappearing
.
He watches the doors shut
before he turns to me. Without hesitation, he
pulls back his fist and punches me directly in the face. Blood is coming from my nose and he shakes his fist
out
.
“You will never touch her again. You will never come near her again. You will never speak with her again.
That girl’s been through hell and back and she does not need you in her life. You’re scum. Scum.
”
I open my mouth to say something,
to ask him what hell and back means
. His eyes, flashing with anger
,
had darkened over those words
. H
e hadn’t meant to say it.
I need to know what it means.
I don’t know whether he punched me because I fell in love with his girlfriend or if he punched me because she’s hurt or if it’s some weird mash-up of the two. His face tells me that I’m not getting any answers.
I’m still staggering
from the blow,
when
he gives me one
last
murderous
look and
then disappears down the stairwell
.
Chapter 27
HALLIE
A few minutes ago, I had been running, almost skipping, through the apartment, with a little shiver of happiness for the fact that my favorite people in the world were all in the same place.
I didn’t realize that two of them were
really
in
the same place.
Too soon
for a bad joke
.
It might always be too soon.
The bile is coming back up my throat.
She
doesn’t even like him, I think to myself, calling her every nasty name
I can think of
, and then I realize I’v
e been yelling “
Whoreslutwhore
” to myself in an elevator.
I want to make them the villains. If this was a movie,
she
would be a completely evil and unhinged psychopath and Chris
would be t
he complete asshole who gets hit by a bus. That could work, I think.
And then the reasonable part of me takes over. Real life is not a fucking movie. Because there’s a little hero and a little villain mixed up in everyone, I think. No one is eithe
r entirely good or entirely bad;
we just all live somewhere in the middle.
I am making entirely too much sense to myself right now. The rage comes back.
So, what does that make Chris?
A fucking asshole.
I slump against the wall
of the lobby
and I don’t care that the doorman is staring at me like I’m the deranged psychopath.
I want
Ben
now. I want him to hug me and to tell me that it will be all right.
And I want to get the hell out of this fucking city and I never, ever want to come back.
Ben
bursts through the doors
and gives me a long, even look, even though he is barely disguising
his
anger. After another second, he lets out a long sigh, crosses the room in a few steps,
and throws his arms around me. “It’s going to be okay,” he says, whispering it into my hair.
We stand like that for a long time, and I remember a thousand other moments like this where he’s been there, and even though I still want to throw up and it feels like the world has just fallen off
its
axis, he’s right—it really is going to be okay.
“He’s a fucking asshole,” I manage to gasp
out.
“He is a total fucking asshole,”
Ben
agrees.
I
gaze
down at his hands,
which are still
clenched into fists.
I realize that there’s b
lood dripping from one of them.
I cradle it in my palm
gently
.
“
Ben
!”
“He deserved it.”
I bite my lip
and tear off my cardigan, wrapping it around his knuckles.
It’s entirely out of character
for him to punch someone
.
Great, now
I’ve dragged him
even further
into my mess.
“Now we’re ruining clothing over the fucking asshole,”
he says, disgusted,
trying to pull the wrapping
off
his fingers
.
“It’s not my sweater
. It’s hers.”
It makes me smile.
In spite of all of it, this whole messed-up situation and everything falling to pieces around me, we both find this incredibly funny and burst out laughing.
“Good riddance,” he says, wiping his hand
with the sweater and smearing blood all across it. He does it again and shoves
it into a trash can
with a
flourish
.
“Good riddance,” I manage.
I’m not talking about the sweater anymore, but
Chris and
Sophia
.
I know that I don’t mean that entirely. And t
here
they come again
,
the
big tears bubbling in my throat.