Dex’s expression collapses. Now he knows.
He displays his palms, as if that’s going to calm me down.
“Let me explain,” he says in a low voice.
“Let you explain!” I yell. “Explain what!? What?!”
He reaches for me again and I lash out like a snake, smacking his arm away with my purse. “Don’t touch me!” I snap at him.
He backs off an inch, panic running through him. “Your father told me not to tell you,” he says. “I thought I was doing what was best.”
“Tell me what, Dex?”
He takes in a deep breath through his nose, looking to the side. “He’s been seeing your mother. A lot.”
“I fucking gathered that. Why was I not supposed to know?”
He rubs his lips together, eyes now on the ground, the space between us. Then closes his eyes. “He thought…he wanted me to keep an eye on you. He said…your mother keeps saying don’t let her. He doesn’t know what it means. I don’t either. It might not even be you, it might be Ada, and—”
“Fuck you,” I sneer.
His eyes open in shock. “What?”
I can’t stop it. All this anger in me is uncontrollable, like it’s taken over me, like I was so easy to discard. I’m nothing but fire and hate and loathing and I want to take everyone around down with me.
“Fuck. You,” I say, jabbing my finger into his chest. “You’re a piece of shit, you know that? Of course you do. You knew exactly what you were doing when you decided not to tell me. Don’t let her? Don’t let me what? Go into the fucking house? Have a fucking baby? Which is it? Which fucking part is it? All this time I’ve been fucking haunted by that bitch and you’ve sat back and you’ve kept this from me. You could have told me and I would have played it safe. I wouldn’t have done anything. But you didn’t. No, you didn’t! And now look where I am!!”
I turn my back to him, trying to breathe, trying to shake out my arms that feel so coiled up and tense that it’s just adding to the terror inside me.
“I was doing what I thought was best,” he says quietly.
That does it.
The rage spikes through me like a shot and I whip around, slapping Dex right across the face with an open palm. The sound fills the air.
His eyes go wide, mouth dropping open. His hand goes to his own cheek where I hit him as he takes an unsteady step backward.
And I can’t stop what’s happening inside me, can’t stop what I need to say.
“I hate you,” I seethe at him.
He chokes on his breath, eyes wide with hurt, looking like he’s going to be sick.
Good.
“I fucking hate you,” I say again, then start walking off, the anger inside me an inferno, even though I know it isn’t true, even though I’m starting to hate myself instead. Maybe I’ve always hated myself.
But Dex doesn’t let things go easily.
And for my sake, I hope he never lets me go.
He grabs me by my wrists and spins me around, pressing me so my back is up against a tree, the bark digging into my leather jacket.
“You don’t mean that!” he cries out, his face inches from mine, eyes burning. “I know you don’t fucking mean that. You love me, Perry. You love me.”
Part of me is breaking down the middle from seeing the pain and desperation igniting his eyes, like my soul is being split into two.
The other part of me is this endless pit of anger and frustration and sorrow that I can’t keep under control. I don’t know why it has me like this, why it’s taking over, if it’s Samantha or if it’s just me, if there’s something truly fundamentally wrong with me, all this shit I thought I’d dealt with but I hadn’t, and it’s finally coming out.
I clamp my jaws together, the muscles straining and sore as I try to keep everything back, to stop hurting him, but fuck, I am so hurt myself.
“You lied to me,” I manage to say, breathing hard. “Why did you keep this from me? You’re supposed to tell me everything. After you were so fucking angry at me because I didn’t tell you about Samantha, now you expect to get away with this? That you’re allowed to keep this from me and it’s all fine? It’s not fine, Dex.”
He swallows audibly, his eyes watering, his hands still holding me in place with all his strength. I couldn’t move even if I wanted to.
“I did what I thought was best and I’m sorry that I was wrong,” he says, voice breaking. “I wanted to honor your father Perry. He’s my father now, too. He’s the closest thing I have to family, and he confided in me. He pulled me aside and confided in me over his own daughters. Like I really was his son.”
The rage inside is tempered, just a bit.
“I trusted you,” I whisper. “I trusted you to keep me safe.”
Now I’ve broken him. He seems to crumble before my eyes. “I’m really trying, baby,” he says, pleading. “I’m trying so hard to keep you safe.”
And that’s when I realize what a fucking burden I am.
No wonder the me in the bathtub did what she did.
One less person to worry about.
I close my eyes, my hate spreading from him to me, until I’m hating us both, and from such a deep, dark place, that I don’t think I’ll ever crawl out.
“Perry,” he whispers, putting his hands on my face. “Please. Please don’t go down this hole, don’t let it win.”
“Let what win?” I whisper.
“Your depression,” he says hoarsely. “I know what it looks like. I know what it feels like. I know that it’s not always the thing right in front of you, the thing that’s haunting you, but it’s something deeper.”
“You’re saying Samantha is all in my head?”
“No baby. No. She’s real. She’s very real. But so is this darkness within you. I feel it. I know it as intimately as I know my own. And I know we can get you out of it. Just, please, don’t turn away from me. Not now.”
I open my eyes, tears running down my face now. “You broke my trust, Dex.”
His chin trembles, his fingers pressing into my skin, eyes wild. “I know I did, baby. I know and I’m sorry. I was wrong. I should have told you from the start, I know I should have. I just didn’t know how to honor your father and you at the same time.”
“You’re supposed to honor your wife first,” I whisper. “Especially when it involves her life.”
He nods, licking his lips anxiously, still looking so pained. “I know. All your father wanted was for me to protect you. And I couldn’t even do that.”
There’s a sharp pinch in my chest, the kind that wants you to keel over.
This man loves me so fucking much. I can’t let anything cloud that. I have to find that again. I have to believe it.
“You’re doing all you can,” I whisper. “You’ve done so much for me, Dex. I’m sorry I said those things. I didn’t mean it. I don’t hate you.”
He gives me a sad smile. “I know you didn’t. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t kill me to hear it. Please don’t ever say that again.”
“I won’t.” I lift my head so it’s resting back against the tree, my eyes going to the branches above. “I’m just…so angry, Dex. It scares me. I’m angry and tired and I’m scared and…I’m just so tired of being scared all the time.” I try to swallow. “I felt like I was so close to getting everything I wanted and then…it was taken from me.”
Dex runs his hands over my hair, over my face, cupping my chin. “I’m still here.”
I lower my face and stare at him, overwhelmed by every emotion under the sun, my mind clearly not thinking straight. “Kiss me,” I tell him for the second time tonight. But this time I’m begging.
Flames run through his eyes.
Then he kisses me.
His lips bruising mine, the back of my head pressed against the tree, the bark in my hair. Whereas our kiss from earlier was soft and sensual, this one is rough, and raw, and panicked. As if there’s some hourglass somewhere that’s just been flipped over and we’re runni
ng out of time.
Maybe we are.
“I’m still mad at you,” I murmur as his mouth goes to my neck and he grabs my ass, lifting me up until I’m pressed against the tree.
“Then stay mad,” he says, sucking and biting at my skin while I wrap my legs around his waist. “I deserve it.”
The anger wants to consume me still. So does the darkness. So does desire. Dex reaches down and unzips his pants and before I can even breathe, he’s pushing my underwear to the side and thrusting up inside me.
I gasp, pain overwhelming me for a moment, my body not quite ready for the size and speed of him. Then I’m holding onto his shoulders as he slowly pulls out and pushes back inside me, tight and hard.
“Fuck,” I cry out softly, feeling like I’m being broken and mended all at once. I want this to reset what happened, I need to let go.
“Never do that to me again, baby,” he says into my neck, thrusting into me hard against the tree. “Never tell me you hate me. That’s not fair.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to him, my words trailing off into a cry. “I just…”
I’m so mad.
I’m so lost.
So scared.
And yet with each sharp pump upward from his hips, each scrape of the bark along the back of my head, each time he catches my skin between his teeth, the fear goes to the background.
“Promise me,” he says, giving another punishing thrust, my neck arching from the impact, my mouth falling open as he drags himself over every coiled nerve. “Promise me we don’t fight like that anymore. We don’t get vicious. We don’t purposely hurt each other.”
His words trail off, his grip tightening around me. “Fucking hell, Perry,” he says, breathless. He lifts his head to stare at me, lust and love and sorrow in his eyes, his mouth wet from kissing my neck. “We can’t afford to fight like this.”
“But we can afford to make up like this,” I say as he lets out a rich groan, his hips slamming into me again, knocking the air from my lungs.
“We fight and then we fuck. In that order,” he says, pressing his forehead against mine. “But we don’t fight like we fuck, okay?” He lets out a low curse and then pins me against the tree, his hand against my throat as he pumps inside me. “Not us.” His hand goes off my throat and back to my jaw, holding my face. “Promise me.”
“I promise,” I whisper, before he kisses me viciously, consuming me, and the pressure inside me starts to build. The hurried breath of him at my mouth, the fact that we’re fucking in public, the emotions from the entire evening are swirling around us, it’s all coming together in a hurricane. “I love you.”
“I love you.”
He grunts roughly, and with a few deep, hard shoves, his brings us both over the edge. We come hard, holding on tight, our bodies melding together like liquid metal.
But when he lowers me off the tree with trembling hands, my own legs shaking from holding his waist, I don’t feel any stronger. The connection I have with him that usually feels unbreakable now feels precarious. Like one wrong move and it could all come crashing down.
The sex didn’t help this time. It was only a Band-Aid, a balm on the wound. Something to soothe the fear and the anger and hopelessness inside me, but it did nothing to eradicate it.
“Perry,” Dex says to me, grabbing my hand and pulling me to him. He reaches over and smooths the hair behind my head. “I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you. I’ve been wrestling with it for weeks and I feel…I feel terrible. The worst. Like a fucking jackass. I didn’t mean to hurt you and I know I have and I wish I could take it back.”
I nod. I’m still really hurt, and I still think he made the wrong choice, but I understand where Dex was coming from. “I’m sorry I said those awful things. I didn’t mean them.” I pause, eying his cheek. “And I’m sorry I slapped you.”
He rubs at his face and gives me a quick smile. “I actually deserved that. Better than you getting me in the nose again, anyway.” He cups my face in his hands. “Ready to go back to the party?”
I nod. The party. I forgot all about that.
He kisses me lightly and then grabs my hand, leading me out of the park.
But for all it seems like we’ve made up, I know that something changed tonight. That I showed both him and myself a part of me that I’ve tried to keep hidden. And that maybe I’ve damaged us in ways I can’t even imagine.
No. I can already imagine what it’s changed.
I feel it in my soul, and in my bones.
And I know it’s going to kill me.
Eighteen
At three a.m. Samantha pays me a visit.
I wake up because she places her fingers on my eyelids, cold as icicles, and physically pries my eyes open until I’m staring at her awful face, just inches away.
“You had your chance,” she says in a low, metallic voice, her mouth this fathomless pit of evil, moving with a million black tongues. “You should have taken it Perry.”
Her fingers trail to the side of my face where she gently strokes my cheek, her eyes turning from all white to black to white again. I can’t move at all, can’t breathe, can’t speak. It’s like she’s reached into my chest and put an icy hand over my lungs, over my heart, holding them hostage.
“I was trying to help you,” she goes on, the rasp of her voice twisting my gut with fear. “I was trying to get you to see your potential. Your power. If you had listened to me, you wouldn’t be in this position.”
What position is that?
A grave expression comes over her. “You don’t know? You’re the sacrificial lamb.” She smiles. “I tried to give you an out. You could have joined me. We could have won together. You could have stopped this all. But you didn’t, because you’re weak. You’re pathetic. You’re very much in love, and love doesn’t even exist.”
She runs her finger over my lips and it feels like she’s freezing them solid.
“The next time I see you will be the last time I see you,” she says. “But I won’t be alone. I tried for so long to get you to see your potential, but I don’t have the strength to try anymore. You’re just a lost cause. You always have been.”
What do you mean you won’t be alone?
She gives me a smile that’s both sad and terrifying. “You know what I mean. You know that I’m cursed, and will continue to be cursed until you set me free. But you don’t want to do that anymore, I can tell. It doesn’t matter. I will find my way. But you…you have lost your way. And when you lose your way, you’ll so easily be led. Believe me on that.”
Then she gets up and starts moving backward until she fades into the shadows of the room and then she’s completely gone.
It’s only then that I manage to breathe.
* * *
I wake up hungover, my body reeling from all the drinks last night.
My mind is reeling too. Not just over what’s happening to my father, or that Dex and I had the worst fight of our lives, or that even sex did nothing to put us back together. But that Samantha paid me a visit in the middle of the night.
The last time she’d be alone.
I don’t have to think much to know what she meant by that. For whatever reason, perhaps Samantha was trying to save me all this time? Or maybe that’s what she wants me to think. Either way, when she comes back, she’ll have the curse with her, the demon, and I know in my heart of hearts that it will be the end of me. That the both of them will take me to some place I can’t come back from.
Dex isn’t beside me, but I hear him in the kitchen, smell bacon sizzling on the stove. Normally I’d be all over this him making me breakfast after letting me sleep in, but my appetite is gone. I doubt I’ll even be able to get down dry toast.
I get up and step out of the bedroom, my mouth dry, feeling so incredibly delicate, like all my bones might break with one wrong step.
“Morning,” he says to me, giving me a quick smile over his shoulder as he stands at the stove. “How are you feeling?”
I just stare at him, my words slow. I shake my head and carefully walk forward, leaning against the island. “I don’t know how I feel.”
“Hungover?” he asks, almost hopefully.
“Yeah,” I say, staring blankly at my hands on the counter. But that’s not only it. I don’t feel brittle because of the alcohol. I feel brittle because I know how close I am to losing everything. “I saw Samantha last night.” I glance up at him.
He stills. Turns to face me, brows knitting together with worry. “You didn’t wake me.”
“I fell asleep.”
“What happened? Did she do anything to you?”
I press my lips together. “Not really. But she said that next time she comes for me, she won’t be alone.”
I watch as his tries to take that in. His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat as he swallows. “Perry…”
“I know.” I stare back at my hands. They don’t even feel like mine anymore. “She’s going to come back and she’s going to bring that curse with her. I don’t know what to do.”
“Bird,” he says, after a moment. “I can get in contact with Bird. With Roman.”
“I’m not possessed.”
“Yet.”
I shake my head and straighten up. “I’m going to spin class.”
His mouth drops open, nearly dropping the spatula. “Are you insane?!”
I laugh bitterly. “Yes. Clearly. I’m fucking insane, Dex. Don’t you get it? I don’t even know what’s real and what’s not real anymore! I don’t know if that really was Samantha or if it is some crazy manifestation of depression or my anger or what the hell it is.” I throw my arms out. “I mean, look at me. I don’t even know who I am! So I’m going to go to spin class, because that’s one normal thing I can do, one way I can just stop thinking and worrying, and maybe those endorphins will show up for me and for a little slice of time, I can pretend that everything is okay.”
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