Breaking Him

by R. K. Lilley

  “Love will make you its slave,” I stated venomously. “It will ruin you. Grind you under its heel until you don’t recognize what’s left.

  “Love will take your soul.” I looked pointedly at Demi. “If you’re very unlucky, it might even turn you into someone like me.

  “I do believe in love,” I reiterated. “I believe it’s the most destructive force on earth.”

  When I finished my impassioned rant, they were both just staring at me.

  Demi looked like she might cry. She was hugging Amos, her eyes huge with pity and sorrow. “Oh, Scarlett,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry. Dante is such a bastard.”

  Even Anton didn’t look right. His mouth was twisted bitterly, eyes boring into me, something powerful moving behind them. “That fucker,” he said succinctly. “Excuse me.” He got up and left the room.

  Getting his rage in hand, I knew. He was another one with a wicked temper. So my type.

  Why hadn’t I slept with him again?

  “You’ll find love again,” Demi told me tremulously, sounding like she really believed it. “Just when you least expect it I bet you’ll run into some wonderful man that makes your heart race again.”

  I knew better, but I kept my piece. Demi could stay sweetly naive, her soul light and beautiful. I didn’t want to take that from her.

  But she couldn’t have been more wrong.

  There is only one heart in this universe that calls to mine, and it does call. Constantly, relentlessly, it sings out to me in a captivating, resonating voice.

  Day after day, year after year, it calls to me.

  But I won’t listen to it. It belongs to a liar.

  When Anton returned, he seemed more or less back to normal, and we didn’t comment on his absence.

  We were still huddled on the couch watching people get tattoos, and he rejoined us without a word.

  “There’s like a six month waitlist to get ink in her parlor,” I pointed out in true buzz-killer style. I liked crushing dreams. It was a hobby of mine. “And from Frankie herself? Who knows. Probably years. You’d probably have to know somebody.”

  “Well, poo,” Demi said.

  Anton and I shared a smile. She was way too adorable for her own good.

  Meanwhile on Kink and Ink, someone was crying as they described the reason for their angel tattoo.

  “I hate it when this show gets emotional,” Anton said, rising from the sofa to refill our glasses.

  “Why does the term emotional have such a negative connotation?” Demi asked him, sounding riled. “Humans are emotional creatures. I’m emotional but that doesn’t mean I run around crying all the time. I’m more likely to laugh and love harder because I’m emotional.”

  I blinked at her after she’d finished her own little rant. I liked this sassy side of her.

  I sent Anton a sideways glare because he seemed to like it too by the way he was looking at her. I made a note to have a talk with him at some point. He was not allowed to mess around with Demi. She was too innocent for him.

  At some hazy point Leona came home. I was pretty numb by then and so it didn’t hurt quite as bad to tell her about Gram.

  “Oh Scarlett,” she said, coming to sit beside me, taking one of my hands into both of hers. “What can I do? Do you want to talk about it?”

  I thought about that. “I do not. The scotch is helping. This show is fucking awesome, so that helps, too. You drinking with us?”

  She bit her lip and nodded.

  Even later than Leona, Farrah showed up and joined us in over-toasting my gram.

  At some point I was so sloppy drunk that I even confessed to Leona, “I slept with him last night.”

  Her eyes widened and I could see by how horrified she was that she was far from as drunk as I was. I was at the drunken stage that was incapable of horror.

  “You what?”

  I nodded, giving her what I imagined was a thoughtful look. “What indeed, my friend. What indeed.”

  I thought she was going to drop the subject, and I thought that was odd, but eventually she came back with a stunned, “You slept with him?”

  How to explain? I thought about it and, “It’s complicated.”

  “Clearly,” Anton drawled.

  “Are you guys in a better place, then?” Leona asked.

  “Not fucking likely. It’s complicated.”

  “Sounds that way,” Leona said, still giving me worried eyes.

  “We have history.” What a light, little sentence that was to hold such clenched, fathomless, unabated pain inside of it.

  “I still can’t believe you slept with him,” Demi added.

  I shrugged. It was hard to articulate sober, harder now. “Have you ever done something that hurts you just because you know it hurts the other person, too?”

  They were all just staring at me. I shrugged again. “I hate his lying, conniving guts, but sex with him can be a religious experience. He remembers things about my body that even I forgot.”

  “Ah.”

  “Oh.”

  “I see.”

  That they seemed to get. The universal understanding of phenomenal sex. Go figure.

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  “Love is a trap. When it appears, we see only its light, not its shadows.”

  ~Paulo Coelho

  The morning of the funeral arrived too quickly. I packed light and went with dread to the airport, making it to my flight with mere minutes to spare.

  Leona dropped me off, her best friend eyes worried on me as we said goodbye. Though she never voiced her concerns, she didn’t have to. She knew this was an unpleasant trip for me, unhealthy for my state of mind, but it was unavoidable.

  “I’ll be fine,” I told her chidingly, avoiding eye contact.

  That was the closest I’d get to voicing my trepidation of the ordeal to come: Acknowledging the fact that there was something I might not be fine with.

  “I know you will,” she assured me.

  We kissed cheeks and said goodbye.

  And off I went. Heading back into hell for the sake of Gram.

  Oh the irony. She’d been one of the few people in my life that’d actively tried to keep me out of it.

  I wasn’t even mildly surprised when I found myself in a first class seat for the flight from LAX to Seattle. It was so Dante. The nonchalantly rich bastard.

  I’d been conditioned to stay awake on airplanes, so I didn’t sleep a wink for that entire leg of the trip. I’d brought a book, and it was a good one, but I couldn’t focus on it for shit.

  Instead, I stared out the window and drove myself crazy.

  Why did I still feel so much for Dante? What would it take to make me numb?

  I’d have paid a heavy price for numbness, felt I’d already paid it in the attempt to seek it out.

  And for the price, nothing. All of my efforts had been futile. Every furious, vengeful, masochistic thing I’d ever done to get over him had left me at ground zero.

  I still felt. Too much. With just the slightest provocation, I was wrapped up in him again, in the good and the bad. He got to me, was so deep under my skin that even now, years after the end of us, it was a fight with myself not to let the bitterness of it consume my waking hours.

  At SeaTac I switched to a tiny commuter jet for the short flight to the small town I’d been raised in.

  That flight was shorter but worse for my peace of mind. I hadn’t been back in years, and when I’d left, I’d been ecstatic to be done with the place.

  I hadn’t planned to come back ever, and the reason for it . . . fuck my life.

  One small relief was that Dante didn’t pick me up himself when I arrived. I’d been almost certain that he would.

  Instead it was an unfamiliar middle-aged man wearing a comfortable looking T-shirt and jeans and holding a small sign that said SCARLET.

  Despite the spelling of the name, I figured it was meant for me. Who else?

  He was the only one in the tiny a
irport holding a sign, so it was a bit laughable, but I walked up to him with a straight face.

  “You Scarlett?” he asked me, looking bored out of his mind.

  I nodded and held out my hand. “And you are?”

  “Eugene. I’m, er was, Mrs. D’s gardener. Dante, er, Mr. Durant asked me to pick you up and take you to your, erm, lodgings.”

  “Lead on,” I told him wryly. It was a random welcoming committee Dante had sent, but frankly, it was a warmer reception than I’d expected from the town of my nightmares.

  He took my one rolling suitcase without another word and started to walk.

  I followed silently.

  The town was a small one by city standards, but not tiny. At about a hundred thousand residents, last I checked, it had a whopping three high schools, and more importantly, four Walmarts.

  I couldn’t remember how many hotels it had, and didn’t particularly care which one I was staying at, so I didn’t ask. Anything would do, because whatever it was, I was used to worse.

  Eugene didn’t open the door for me, and I didn’t take exception to that. I just got in the car, which happened to be an old beat-up truck, and stared out the window while Eugene steered us wordlessly through my despised hometown.

  Time hadn’t been kind to the little hellhole. I’d read a few years ago that it’d become the drug capital of Washington, the entry point for cartel distribution into the northwest, and the signs were apparent nearly everywhere I looked.

  I took in every change I saw with a stoic face. It was dirtier than I remembered, with more dead behind the eyes pedestrians loitering aimlessly in the busier parts of town.

  It was as though every negative thought I’d ever channeled into this little slice of purgatory had taken root and poisoned each dark corner of the place while I was absent.

  It gave me an unwilling and brief spiteful thrill. The way I’d been treated here, it felt almost like justice, like it’d finally gotten the reckoning it deserved.

  But all of that was stupid, emotional drivel. It was only a place. A spot on the map.

  It was the people here that deserved a reckoning. Not all, but many. Too many hostile faces and names for me to recall that had helped to shape me into the bitter, little ball of hate I was today.

  We were nearly to our destination before I shook myself out of my memories enough to realize just where we were going.

  “I’d like to go straight to my hotel. I need to freshen up and change before the funeral, since I still have a few hours,” I told Eugene, voice firm. “Thank you.”

  He shot me a glance, cleared his throat, and kept driving.

  “Did you hear me?” I asked him when he didn’t respond.

  “I did. You’ll have to take that up with Mr. Durant. He didn’t tell me anything about a hotel. He just said to bring you to Miss D’s house.”

  My jaw clenching in agitation, I pulled out my phone, sending off a hasty text.

  Me: Which hotel am I staying at?

  Bastard/Stalker/Liar/Cheater/Ex/TheDevil: You’re almost to the house, right? We’ll talk when you get here.

  I shot Eugene a hostile look. He’d officially reached collaborator status in my book.

  I punched out another furious text.

  Me: I hope you don’t think I’m staying at that house.

  He didn’t respond, which was just as well, as we were pulling into the long drive that led to Gram’s large estate.

  As usual, manipulative bastard that he was, Dante had orchestrated everything before I saw the trap that had closed around me.

  There were several cars in the drive, and I assessed a few of them with an eye for whom they might belong.

  A few nondescript sedans: whoever had been hired to prepare the huge house for refreshments after the funeral.

  Silver Rolls Royce: Dante’s father, Leo.

  White Mercedes: Unknown but worrisome. Any sign of money pointed to either Dante’s family or someone even worse.

  Black Audi: Dante, because he always freaking loved Audis.

  I didn’t even want to get out of the truck, in fact, I sat there for a few awkward minutes, Eugene holding my door open for me, just staring at the house before Eugene muttered, “Well, shoot. I can take you to a hotel.”

  Sure, I thought scathingly, now he was offering, right as Dante emerged from the house.

  With a heavy sigh, I got out of the car.

  He was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt. I hadn’t seen him wearing anything but a suit or, well, nothing, for ages, and the sight struck me, reminded me of when we were teenagers.

  Already off to a horrible start, I noted. As bad as I’d dreaded it would be.

  “I’m not staying here,” I told him as he approached.

  He didn’t respond, didn’t even aim his stern eyes my way, just took my bag from Eugene and started heading back to the front door.

  “What are you doing?” I asked his back, following him with a quick, furious stride. “I need to go to a hotel to get ready.”

  He paused at the door and finally looked at me. I could tell he was angry with me, some remnant of the temper he’d last left me in still present. “Your room is untouched. Gram kept it for you from the time you left.”

  This got to me. The sentiment of it. In my last year of high school my grandma had decided she was done dealing with my shit and kicked me out. I hadn’t had to go far. Just that five-minute walk uphill from my grandma’s trailer, and I’d been welcomed here with open arms. It had meant the world to me. Still did.

  “The house will likely be sold by whoever inherits it,” Dante continued, “so I assumed you’d want to go through your old things yourself before all of that happens. If I assumed wrong, Eugene will take you to a hotel, but in case you forgot, there isn’t one close. You’re looking at a forty-five minute drive each way. The funeral is in two hours, so you won’t have much time, but if that’s what you want to do, by all means, be my guest.”

  I glared at him, temper boiling up. “I should have seen this coming. I should’ve guessed you’d pull something like this.”

  “What did you expect? Did you think I was going to put you up at the shitty hotel over on Main Street?”

  “I’m used to shitty hotels.”

  “You know what?” His voice was unsteady suddenly, volume going up with every word, ”I don’t give a fuck what you’re used to.” By the unholy light in his eyes, I could tell he wasn’t talking about hotels anymore.

  Perversely but predictably, his apparent fury calmed my own. I leveled a serene look on him, one meant to either stir him up or stop him cold. “Okay, fine, it’s hardly worth arguing over. I’ll stay here and I’ll go through my old room, though I can’t imagine I left anything behind that I wanted to keep.”

  His jaw was clenched, eyes still flashing hotly at me. Stir him up it was. “You might surprise yourself,” he told me softly.

  That made my eyes narrow, serenity gone. It was amazing the landmines we set for each other with the most innocuous phrases, and I wasn’t interested in walking over even one of his, particularly not at the start of what was bound to be a trying few days.

  “I’m quite certain,” I enunciated slowly, “that there is not one thing I left behind in this town that I have any interest in now.”

  He seemed to deflate at that, eyes darting away, shoulders slumping, and without another word, I walked into the house.

  Point for me, though I wasn’t sure it counted. It certainly didn’t feel like a victory.

  CHAPTER

  FIFTEEN

  “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,

  Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.”

  ~William Congreve

  I went straight to my old room, leaving the bag for Dante to handle.

  It was a huge old house, with ten bedrooms and several living spaces, but while I heard people working (cooking, cleaning, preparing) somewhere in the house, the kitchen and dining room I assumed, I didn’t pass by one soul as I ma
de my way through, which was a relief. I wanted a brief respite before I went straight into battle again, especially here, where every unchanged thing I saw brought back bittersweet memories. From the entryway to the old den where we used to spend hours our senior year of high school watching movies.

  All of it was bad, but my old bedroom was the worst. The second I walked in the door, I had an almost overwhelming urge to flee.

  I shouldn’t be here, I thought to myself, staring at the dresser that remained exactly as I’d left it, covered in sweet, little knickknacks, almost all of which had been gifts from either Gram or Dante. Every one of those things had meant something to me once upon a time. Years’ worth of Valentines, birthday, and Christmas gifts from the boy that had broken my heart and the woman who had tried to save it.

  No matter the circumstances, I should not be subjecting myself to this, I thought, eyes fixated on a small silver key strung across the corner of the mirror.

  “Uncanny, isn’t it?” Dante’s voice came from the doorway, mere inches behind me. “She didn’t move one thing. Ten years later, and she was keeping it for you exactly how you’d left it.”

  “Like a tomb,” I murmured.

  “Or a shrine,” he returned, moving past me, brushing against me like it was nothing, and setting my suitcase onto a large ottoman at the foot of a comfy armchair in the corner by my old bay window.

  He didn’t look at me on his way out, but he did stop at the door, clearing his throat, his back to me. “If I were you, I’d search that dresser before my mom gets to it. She’s going to clean this place out fast, mark my words, and everything in this room is yours by right, so claim it now if you want it.”

  I waved my hand, dismissing the notion. “She can have whatever she wants. I won’t be taking any of it with me.”

  Only his head turned as he leveled me with a hard stare. “You’re going to want to double check that dresser, just to be sure. Trust me.”