by Nivia Borell
Why did he try to challenge me? It is not as if I can fight with him on top of everything else. He purses his lips. “Will you help me find her if I don’t succeed tonight?”
He huffs as his feet point at the door. I understand him well. I am also eager to leave this barstool behind and go to tussle with Bria over her own life. Even in my foggy brain, it sounds fucked up.
“No, Damien. We are not bro-mancing, here. I had this plan in my mind for tonight, a desperate plan made by a reckless man since I have to trust you, the one who took everything from me in a last attempt to save her. This is the reason I waited for you to show up so you could see the police video, and this is why I’m telling you everything. I still have a gleam of hope that maybe you are the key to her salvation. It’s so ironic how I must put my faith in the person responsible for her downfall, but I have no more cards to play and no plan left.
“It’s now up to you. You have one shot at it. If you ruin it, she’ll die. So, try your best because it will be on you to carry the weight of the guilt for her death, and such remorse will likely put you into an early grave as well.”
I pull myself up, my hands in front of me, and my head slumps.
“Enough now. You made your point.”
I falter to him in my last attempt at making him understand the depths of my feelings for her. “I can’t live in a world where she is no longer present. She was my light at first and my darkness in the end. Without her, I’ll lose the compass for my life.”
Eye to eye something flashes in his gaze but is soon replaced by another dagger aimed at me. “One more thing before I can call it a night. Your fiancée, Monica. I’ll make sure she’ll pay for what she did to Bria.”
“Don’t call her that, Monica will suffer for her actions. It’s my duty,” I spout, and Alexander shakes his head as he tsk-tsks.
“No, it was your mistake. Don’t confuse the two terms. You can do whatever the hell you want. It won’t deter me. I’ll know by tomorrow if you succeeded, and believe me, I hope you do. Afterward, though, I’ll just pack my stuff and go back home, and our paths won’t cross again, Damien du Sky.”
Alexander clamps his hand on my shoulder squeezing it. “What’s going to happen when the newspapers report one of the heirs of the M&S empire died in a plane crash? Will you reveal to the families the truth, Damien? How she planned it all and decided to live the last of her remaining time as a recluse somewhere untraceable? Can you look them in the eyes and admit it was your fault? Stick with the plan and let her have her way. It will be enough for your families to lose her. Carry on with your golden-boy image they all have of you and make her proud by continuing her legacy.
“Goodbye, Damien. I wish you a happy and extensive life. Oh, I forgot you won’t have a happy life now, but I wish it will be long enough, for the mistakes you’ve made to cripple you.”
He’d already barging through the door when he cranes his head only to add over his shoulder, “And if you destroy her achievements, I’ll come again, and mark my words, if I have to pay you another visit, it won’t be a friendly one. And congratulations on your impending wedding. It’s in… what? Six months? I have to apologize in advance as I won’t be present.”
I lug myself toward him as his lips quirk up.
“Now, don’t hate the player, hate the game. Look at you! You’re not even capable of standing straight, Damien. But you did better than I thought, you didn’t collapse. The two of you have something similar, yet… you crash but only on the inside.
I roar, and the walls rattle with my pain.
The door slams shut behind him, and I crumple.
ALEXANDER
I march away and don’t take a second glance. The crisp air pulls me out of my trance. As I’m descending the stairs, my hands slide into my pockets. Trapped in my own thoughts, I crash into a soft whimpering body as we tumble, and she lands on me with a hiss snatching my air. Adrenaline rushes through me, the discomfort in my back is a clear reminder my mind is not where it should be. I help us up and apologize while recognition dawns on me as I stare into way too familiar intense blue eyes. Well, if it isn’t it the devil’s sister! Just my luck to knock them both off balance, one emotionally and one physically. And for once tonight, she is the only one who elicits in me a genuine grin as she stares at me dumbfounded and pats the clinging black fabric on her delicate hour-glass frame and mumbles in, I am sure trained to sound offended, a high-pitched voice, “Watch where you’re going, you idiot! Get your head out of your butt.”
For years, I have thought Sophia du Sky is unaware she has no blue blood, and now I’m getting to see the wild animal under her dozens of layers of put-together sophistication and royal aloofness. I’ve never met a woman like her. Four years later, and I’m still trying to peer behind her meticulous façade as she tries her best to tromp the volcano residing in her, and still it would throw lava once in a while. I am curious when she’ll give up the fight with herself. This must be my lucky day. I’m getting to see everyone as they are. Call me the justice man. I peel your masks off and leave you there all alone and afraid of what it might mean to live as yourselves. An odd kind of a déjà vu hits me. I am sure my old friend, Liam, would have been proud to see me at my worst behavior or rather, my natural one. I guess Bria has been the only one worth being good for. Without her… I don’t finish my thought. I wander away with a Sophia poking at my back on my tail.
DAMIEN
Alone in a dark room, I assess its appropriateness. l am frozen on the spot as I stare at the door Alexander darted through only minutes earlier. I know I have to find Bria, but I’m just not ready to face her, yet. What can I say to her, anyway, to make it better or at least bearable? How should I behave after everything I’ve put her through? And most importantly, how will I be able to look her in the eyes knowing everything I know now? I thought about every single one of my mistakes and false assumptions.
Bria never betrayed me. She was drugged and played to make me think she cheated on me, and I bought it all as if I’d never known her at all, never suspecting it might have been a con. I concluded my innocent and sweet Bria had become a cheating whore overnight.
While I assumed she had hooked up with strangers and was living her life to the fullest in the USA, she was fighting for her life in a hospital bed suffering from a heart condition and recovering from surgeries. She had lost our baby and had become emotionally detached to cope with her new reality. These things were happening to her while I was drinking for my poor broken heart and finding new insults to add to her record.
I believed she was romantically involved with Alexander and asked for war when she appeared after three years with him at her side.
Countless times, I called her an ice queen, cold as a reptile, and now I know her coldness was because she suffered from emotional numbness.
I have done so much to her these last years, and then, the night I lied to her in such a cruel manner as a way to disguise my own fears and insecurities. My chest twinges at the reminder.
I could go on and on. I’ve lost seven years of my life, but the truth that hurts the most is I’ve also lost pieces of forever in which I could have been sharing my life with her instead of starting a conflict I would never win because my heart wasn’t in it, only my mind and ego.
In a remote corner of my soul where I have buried all my feelings for Bria under layers of pain, there is love flickering. I am still in love with her and always have been. I just tried to smother it with bitterness and self-flagellation.
Now, I have to save her from herself. How the fuck do I accomplish this? I run my hand through my hair knowing I have one chance to make everything better—maybe it is too late for us, too late for love or even forgiveness—but not to give her back a life.
The moment I should have stayed with her, I let my grief blind me. I switched my ego on and snapped my heart. When I think of that day with the knowledge I have today, I realize she always said she didn’t know or remember what happened. Not even a
fter years was I capable of seeing beyond my hurt and me. Now, I know why she didn’t recall any of it. Drugged, used, and played by someone who should have been loyal to her and protected her. Sure, I’m aware Monica is no saint. She had flirted with me, or rather tried to, but I believed it was a young girl’s infatuation. I never would have expected her to go to such extremes.
Now with the veil dropped from my eyes, I recognize all the times she was by my side trying to comfort me, how she painted Bria as having two faces, pretending with everyone else and playing the innocent. She’d say Bria had used me and was always looking at other men when I was not there. She insisted that once she had caught Bria telling someone else she didn’t love me, but it was convenient for her to remain with me.
And the fool I am believed everything she told me because it was the only thing I could do since I thought the proof was on my side. When she followed me to London, I gave Monica her own public relations department. She was not the best choice, but it’s how I showed my gratitude for her sincerity as she worked to prove to me I didn’t make a mistake.
Monica eagerly accepted my offer to a charade of a wedding, and here I’d thought it was because we were friends and the check she would receive after what I like to call our business transaction was over. I drank in every venomous thing she ever said about Bria as if it were Krug champagne. In all this time, I now see she was a snake who took everything from me.
My hands ball into fists as I fill my lungs with air. I swear, when the time comes, there will be no hole in which she can sneak away from my wrath. She played a good and dangerous game, but the truth came out, and the loss was on her. Oh, I will wait and strike at the perfect moment, and then she’ll choke on her own venom. I was stupid enough to believe her and not the one person I had shared everything with for sixteen years. No one knew Bria better than me, and I was the one who chose to forget everything and give all away because of something I had seen. The sight betrayed me. Even though my heart always knew better, I put my faith in deceitfulness and not in the reality I was a first-hand witness to for so long.
There is nothing I deserve, and I will never ask for something from her. I just have to save her. Afterward, I have no plan. For the first time, I have no plan.
And last year, I had her wrapped around me. She was mine again, but I was too damn afraid she would put me through something similar again. Like the coward I was, I fancied the trickery of control. Not only throwing her out but making her feel dirty. Yet, all the while, I was the filthy one, taking it further and sealing my faith for good with a contract signed in blood, my blood. No soap could ever rinse away the thick layers of dirt and guilt off me.
She has been mine while I have forgotten the number of the women I’ve slept with. And I promised her it would be a sacred thing, our lovemaking, but I was the one who broke the pact only hours later. No, I couldn’t even find it in me to forgive myself, so how could my sweet Bria ever do it?
How often did Sophia warn me to wake up? Yet, outraged, I refused every time. Soph saw her fading away while everyone else ignored it until it became mundane, of no true importance as if it were normal for a person to act like Bria. And I indulged them all in their blindness because I had never considered her side of the story. Foolishly, I thought I had the truth on my side.
I am not a victim but a criminal. I’ve destroyed Bria’s life and the life of our unborn baby. My flesh peels off with the flames of the truth. Pain gnaws on my skin and snaps my bones. It tears my heart from my chest and presents it to me.
Could a normal person live with what I have done? Why was I still alive while Bria’s time was ebbing away? I didn’t see the fairness in it. She was so brave for such a long time, her only friend her emotional numbness without which she wouldn’t have made it through. If her brain had numbed her, her pain must have been tremendous. Losing the love of your life without knowing how you woke up with a stranger beside you and waking up in a hospital bed to be told you have lost a baby draws a realistic picture of how Bria became so wrecked.
Even now, when she has evidence and knows she’s innocent, Bria doesn’t want to accept it. She still blames herself for losing the baby and me and for the rupture between her and the family. Bria does what she thinks is the only thing she can control—she protects me from the truth of what Monica did, believing the idiocy that I love Monica and want to marry her as if she were the love of my life. Well, another thing to blame myself for, her protecting me by not telling me what happened to her, safeguarding the families so they could go on with their lives like nothing was wrong, shielding Sophia and Filip by not allowing them to glimpse behind the complexities of her illness and the walls around her. She is just tired.
Well, so am I, the difference is she’s not able to feel a thing. She should let me feel for the both of us, then. I’ll carry her through the hell of pain and life and more if I have to. So, she is empty inside, well I want to be full, so she can take from me whatever she desires and needs. It is me in the end, the most undeserving person who might get through to her. Yet, instead of loving and healing her, I shoved her toward the abyss the first time. Now, we will either fall together, or I’ll develop wings to fly down into the crater I put her in so I can raise her up.
I’m aware I can never undo my wrongs. I welcome the misery. However, it’s impossible for me to accept her giving up her life. I’ll do whatever it takes to get through to her. I got through once, unaware of her walls and her illness, and I’ll do it again because now I know what is at stake—her life. If it doesn’t mean much to her, too bad, but for me, her life represents everything.
With my heart in my hands, I stride to the elevator, determination erupting in me to save her.
I thread my way through the now almost empty ballroom. I call for the elevator, my head resting on the cold surface. I go to her hotel room first. She has to be in there. I would go that far and say I sense her in my vicinity. I know how it sounds, but I don’t fucking care. The elevator’s door slides with a ping as I enter and press the button to the third floor. The weight of my regrets and guilt pulls me down. I feel like the titan, Atlas, as he realizes he has to carry the weight of the sky on his shoulders forever.
If she refuses to answer, I will bash the door down.
When the elevator doors slide open to her floor, I shudder with my responsibility.
Here I come, baby, a desperate man aching for forgiveness he doesn’t deserve, craving to save you, crawling to you.
There it is—Room 305. I stay in front of the dark wooden door catching my breath. I know when the door unlocks, a hell of pain will break loose until we wreck it for good or ascend from the depths like phoenixes.
BRIA
My nails scratch at my heated skin, and pain oozes from me. Everything aches. I’m feeling so much at once, and the force of my emotional state crushes me under after a whole year of feeling nothing at all. Everything was going according to plan, and then Alex had to ruin it by showing me that video and answering the question I long ago quit asking myself. I accepted my guilt and my illness, the loss of my baby, and even knowing I might have been abused. There was nothing I could do to change it, so I accepted the blame for everything I lost.
Now, Alex has given me the other side of the story in which I am the innocent. I don’t want to believe I was a victim but wish to be responsible for my downfall and misery. I throw my heels in different corners of the room as I pace barefoot on the carpet letting a moan out in satisfaction and wondering if I’ll wear a hole in the floor by the end of the night.
Nothing soothes the tension spreading through me. I’m incapable to support the walls I’ve built around me. For a whole year, I have been rebuilding them from scratch. I thought they were impenetrable. I avoided Damien for he was the only person who could smack my walls with a look or a word. This is why I stopped going to family gatherings and became this perfect emotionless recluse. I had to accustom them to my not being around anymore.
This entire plan was
my baby, and as with my first one, somebody had the power to rip it from me and leave me with empty, outstretched hands. But nothing will change. No one will ever know of Monica’s involvement in this family drama. Damien loves her, and I will let him have her. I don’t have it in me anymore to hate her. I’ve suspected she had feelings for him. I recall how she seemed to blossom whenever Damien came around, how her round, brown eyes would shine with happiness only when he bestowed her with his attention. How she would snap at me over nothing one moment but borrowed my clothes the next. How she eyed him with what I know now is longing. But considering all she went through with the loss of her parents, I didn’t think much when she came from boarding school and sought only him or my mom out. A sigh escapes my battered body, and my head drops. I just never thought she would be so desperate as to devise such a devious plan to incriminate me with no remorse. And they accused me of being ice-cold.
I assume she’ll celebrate when news of my passing reaches her.
The past is in the past where it belongs. I have no future anyway, so let the other woman have one. Don’t be selfish, Bria. You can’t change a thing. The love of your life hates you and thinks you are a whore. Let him be happy with Monica. You got what you wished for… him finding happiness and love, so let it go, like you asked him to do too. He ceased being yours a long time ago. The final proof of your undying love for him is to let him be together with the one person who didn’t grant happiness to you.
I repeat these things to myself until my head throbs, and I am beginning to accept my own words as I plop on the bed and pound the mattress to suppress the contradictory emotions that scuffle inside me. I am dying. It’s a certain thought. We have lost too much and will never be able to get it back. It wouldn’t change the past at all.