He uprooted and walked forward. “Why? Why the fuck you have to cut out on me like that? What did I do to make you treat me like I was nothing?”
Jake was shouting and the barman looked up, catching Rielle’s eye. “You okay, love?”
“Fine, Dave,” she called. She looked back to Jake, not sure how to manage the anger vibrating out of him, wanting to touch him, but worried he’d shake her off. She managed to say, “I’m sorry,” and heard how outrageously simple and inadequate that those two words were.
“You’re sorry. You’re sorry. What’s the point of being sorry? You couldn’t have answered a call or sent me a message? You couldn’t have said, ‘hey, good to hook-up, have a nice life’?”
Rielle searched Jake’s face for any sign of the infinitely patient man she’d known. All she could find was hostility and aggression. She dropped her head. “I couldn’t do that.”
“Why the fuck not?” His rage was so intense it was burning the platform under her feet. Any minute now she’d fall through the plywood stage.
“Because I was broken and I couldn’t be what you wanted.” She believed that. He need to understand it too. “If I talked to you I’d forget it and I’d hurt you more.”
“How did you fucking know what I wanted?”
“You told me you wanted me whole before you fell in love with me. And when you did, you settled for half: half of me, half the story, half of what you deserved. One day you were going to wake up and hate me for that, for being a fake and a liar. So I had to go, had to push you away. Don’t you get that?”
He stared at her, uncomprehendingly. “I loved all of you.”
Rielle shook her head. “I wouldn’t let you. You only had part of me.”
It was true. Jake loved all she’d shown him, but she’d only given him parts, selections, edited highlights, and yet he’d been willing to live with that. He surveyed her body, a critical appraisal, like she was a piece of steak he might pick to grill on an open flame. She felt small, so small and without hope.
“So, who are you now? Is there a new name to go with the new look?”
“I’m just me, Jake. Arielle, Rielle, Rie, all the same person now.”
“Changed.” He hissed. “I didn’t think you believed people could change.”
“I didn’t.”
He glared at her and she saw genuine hatred in his eyes. Hatred she’d put there. “Why are you here?”
How to answer him? She came to try out her new sound, the new music, a different performance from the big stage madness of Ice Queen. She came because it was home and she wasn’t scared of it anymore. She came because it was safer here than in other parts of the world for this experiment. But now looking at Jake, at the fire in his eyes, and the fury in his muscles, she knew Rand was right. She came because despite the way she’d changed, she wasn’t yet whole. She’d left a part of her heart here and this man, frowning at her, furious with her, held it in his hands.
And he would crush it, squeeze it bloodless, and fling it away. And she’d deserve it.
Realisation brought tears to her eyes. “I came for you.”
Jake balled his fists, he shifted restlessly. He was different, without respect, without any tenderness. He scared her. “We could’ve worked it out together.”
She had nothing to lose. She’d already lost. “I loved a man once who faced his fears. He said there are some things you have to do alone. He was right.”
Jake shook his head. This couldn’t be real. She couldn’t be real—not the rock star, just the girl, alone, playing to a suburban pub audience. What kind of fucked up cruelty was this? How had he ended up here, his heart crashing around in his rib cage? This was meant to be a quick social drink with friends, not an encounter with the demon woman he hadn’t yet managed to exorcise from his senses, who threatened to cut out his remaining sanity and smear it over the tiled pub walls.
He wasn’t ready for this. He’d never be ready for this. He should’ve walked away as soon as he saw her, but he couldn’t now. If he did, he’d be the one who was only half a person.
He looked in her duplicitous green eyes. “You ripped my heart out.” In two strides he was on the stage