You hate me. I don’t blame you but—”
“I never want to see you again.”
“I understand but—”
“I’m shocked that you have the audacity to show up here.”
“I needed to see you.” I look at her forehead. There’s a tiny scar of where she hit her head. “That looks like it’s healed,” I say, raising a finger to touch her but she flinches. “Jamie took care of it.”
“I’m sure he did.”
She stares at me motionless. “What were you trying to do, kill me?”
I lower my head, brows pushing together, the weight of her accusation settling hard and heavy on my heart. I am aware how deep hatred can run, but I’m still not prepared for the depth of Mari’s hate for me even though she has every right to abhor me forever. “I was trying to protect you.”
“By grabbing me and hurling me to the couch?”
“You slipped and I was worried you were going to trip and fall into the fire.”
“That’s not what happened.”
I blink, confusion rendering me speechless for a few moments.
“That’s not what happened,” she insists.
“What do you think happened?” I ask, slowly.
“You had your hands on me. I tried to shrug you off but you wouldn’t budge. You scared me.”
“I didn’t mean to take a hold of you, Mari. I was angry. You betrayed me.”
She laughs cruelly. “By reading a few pages of your book?”
“Yes.” She won’t understand, ever, and now is not the time to tell her. I doubt I ever will. “You hurt me and I reacted in the only way I know how.”
“That’s worrying,” she throws back.
“I’m not perfect and I have a temper, but I would never hurt a hair on your head.”
She looks stunned.
“When you tripped and hit the mantelpiece, I was scared you were going to fall into the fire. You were holding your cell phone in one hand.” She stares at me as if she’s replaying that scene in her head again, as if she’s unsure whether to believe me or not. “I let someone go to her death once and I’ve lived my life blaming myself for it. I wasn’t about to risk you falling into the fire, so I grabbed you and hurled you as far from it as I could. I should have been gentle but my main concern was for you not to get hurt.”
She seems to believe me—she should believe me, because it’s the truth. There’s a softness in her eyes for the first time. Then, “Did you hit your daily word count?” she sneers. “Is it sex you want now?”
The blow hits below the waist and my brain stutters, trying to make meaning from this. All those important bodily functions, like the heart beating and blood circulating, lungs breathing, they all slow down. She’s another one who means the world to me, but now she’s pushing me away.
“Is that the reason you’re here?”
I care about her, is the reason I’m here. This isn’t me, this isn’t what I do, come grovelling to someone, but this is exactly what I’m doing and she’s throwing it back in my face.
But I also understand rage. I fool myself into believing that she doesn’t mean what she’s saying. “It stopped being about the sex a long time ago.”
She scoffs, then shakes her head. “That’s what you’d have me believe. You’re incapable of emotion. Of feeling, of empathy. You think about yourself and no one else.”
“That might have been true once.”
“It’s true now.”
“If I could turn back time and take that day back, I would do things so differently.”
“Would you?” she snarls, showing her teeth. “What would you do differently, Ward? What?”
I didn’t come here to talk about me. I came here to find out what I could do for her. But since she’s asking. “I’d take a step back. I’d ask you why you were reading my manuscript. I’d ask why you were taking pictures. I would behave a whole different way.”
“Like a normal person?”
“I never said I was a normal person,” I raise my voice without meaning to. She knew that about me from the start. I’m shaped by my past. Most people are.
“You’re so far off the normal spectrum, I think about us and wonder what I saw in you.”
That’s another blow below the belt. I’ll take it. I’ll take anything she wants to hit me with because it means she’s getting her anger out, and she needs to. Built up anger can poison a person as surely as strychnine.
“I don’t regret a thing,” I tell her.
“That’s because