Scarred by You

by Laura Carter

“If you want to protect her, walk away. I won’t let you bid with her, son. Caspar has no loyalty to me or anyone. He’s out for himself. If you win that well with her, Caspar will come for you both. Walk away, son.”

  “Don’t. Fucking. Call. Me. That.”

  “I did it for you.”

  I spring up from the ground and crash him back against the pillar, holding his throat. “Don’t you dare put this shit on me.” I clench my fist, and it takes every ounce of strength I can muster not to crash it into his fucking jaw. “You’re not my father.” I ram my forearm into his throat, rocking his head back against the concrete again, then I let him go.

  “Clark, you know you can’t tell her.”

  I brace my palms against the wall, my back to him. “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.”

  “You won’t because you know what it would mean if she talks. For this family, the business.”

  “For you.”

  “And for me.”

  Bile rises in my throat. “You son of a bitch. I can’t be with her and not tell her. You know that. It’s four years ago all over again.”

  “No, son, four years ago I shielded you from the truth. If you’d have stayed away from her, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You brought this on yourself.”

  The door to the driving range bangs shut behind him. I pick up the first thing I see, a bucket of golf balls, and crash it against the wall. I watch the balls roll until everything is still and the sound of my own thoughts perforates my ears.

  I need to drive. Fast. To anywhere, nowhere, I don’t fucking know. I storm through the house, desperate to get to my car and get out of here.

  “Clark, Elspeth said you were here.”

  I stop in the hallway and stare at my mother as she comes down the open staircase. I used to feel sorry for her. Now, I look at her fastening pearls around her wrist, and I just feel numb.

  So fucking concerned about the Layton family image. Fucking farce.

  I leave without speaking. As soon as the engine roars, I’m leaving dust behind me as I burst from the driveway and out onto the open road.

  I drive for more than an hour. It makes no difference to my mood, and it doesn’t solve the problem. I can’t bid with Dayna. Even if I try, he’s right; the board will follow him and veto the decision. Fuck, I don’t even want the well, or Layton Oil. I want out of it all

  All my life. Everything. It feels like a lie. It has been a lie.

  I rest my elbow on the window frame and rub my mouth with my fingertips.

  There’s only one thing I want. One person.

  He’s right. The bastard’s right. I can’t tell her. He could be prosecuted for manslaughter, or worse, murder. I hate him. But he’s my father. My blood.

  I pull over to the side of a country road and just sit, staring at nothing.

  I have to tell her we can’t bid. But she can’t go in with the government. I have to get through to her.

  And then I have to walk away. Because I can’t be with her and lie. I can’t keep something as big as this from her.

  Everything she’s doing, all her vengeance, it’s because she thinks one man killed her father.

  It wasn’t just one man.

  My own father had a hand in sabotaging Little Princess.

  TEDDY GAVE ME Dayna’s address two hours ago. It’s taken me that long to build up the courage to drive to her apartment block, and now I’m sitting outside, not able to get out of the car.

  There’s no other way.

  It’s like I’m having an outer body experience when I hear her voice come over the intercom. “Hello.”

  I hang my head. I can’t do it.

  “Hello?”

  “Dayna, it’s Clark.”

  She’s already at the door of her apartment when I step out of the lift. Even in lounge pants and a vest, with her hair bunched on top of her head, she’s gorgeous. That goddamn captivating smile is drawn on her lips. Then it fades. “Is everything okay?”

  I move inside and close the door behind me, watching her the entire time.

  “Why do I get the feeling you’re going to tell me something I don’t want to hear?”

  I take a breath. “I’m not. Not if you hear me out.”

  “Okay.”

  “I think we should pull our bids. Both of us. The figures don’t stack up, Dayna. You know it, and I know it.”

  Panic flashes across her face. “Clark, I need this. I’ve told you.”

  “No. You don’t need to run a loss, Dayna. Stop, just listen to me. If we don’t pull out until the last minute, Caspar will probably up his bid. He wants to win now, and he won’t be thinking about the money, he’ll only be thinking about your deal with Hassan. If we pull out, Caspar will win, and he’ll have spent so much money to rank first that there’s no chance he can turn a profit. That’s how we win, Dayna. We outsmart him.”

  Guilt tears through my gut. What I’m saying is right, but I feel like I’m lying to her already. I can’t stand it. It was the only way I could think to protect her and not have to lie directly, or maybe worse, tell her the truth.

  She looks up at me, wide-eyed, vulnerable. “So… you don’t want to put in a joint bid?”

  I don’t understand why she asks, why she needs more confirmation, and the look she gives me — desolate, hurt — it will haunt me for the rest of my messed up existence.

  “I think you should go.”

  Even though I knew it was coming, her words cut me deep. I reach out to touch her but she turns away from me.

  “Please. Go.”

  I take her in one last time, trying to memorise everything about her before I walk away for the last time.

  I love you so much it hurts.

  I PLAY THAT look on her face over and over in my mind as I work down a bottle of Jack, necking shot after shot in the dark. I don’t want to turn on the lights. I want my apartment to be in darkness, as black as I feel.

  I’ve always known my father is an evil bastard.

  I didn’t know he was a murderer.

  Was he always like this? Did she drive him to it? Did he love my mother enough that she drove him to the edge?

  I didn’t think I was pissed, but I find it hard to stagger to the bathroom. I use the chair, the door, the wall to help me get there and back.

  A couple of months ago I was living in ignorance. I could have continued to go about business like I was heading up a company that supported me. I had a fiancée I could have been happy enough with. I thought Harold Layton was a dick and my mother was concerned about money and status more than her kids. That all sounds like bliss in comparison to what I have now.

  Nothing but a past forged on lies. A father who is a killer.

  I keep asking myself if I would have rather known the truth all these years.

  I don’t know.

  But another shot might help. I don’t bother with the glass; I drain the bottle and fall back onto the sofa.

  At least if I’d known the truth, my gut wouldn’t be wracked with the pain of being lied to all my life.

  The room starts to come in and out of focus as I stare up at the ceiling.

  I’ve left her. Again. I’ve broken her heart. Again.

  I see her face move through the darkness.

  I GROAN AS the sun pierces my eyelids. My head feels like lead. My throat is dry. I’ve slept in my jeans on the sofa.

  My iPhone is ringing, the sound like white noise. I knock the empty bottle of Jack off the coffee table as I reach out for my phone, closing my eyes and pressing it to my ear.

  “Layton.”

  “It’s Connie. You said you’d text me where to meet, but it’s eleven thirty and I don’t have a message.”

  Fuck.

  “Clark? Are you there? Where are we meeting for lunch?”

  “Connie. Lunch.” It comes back to me slowly. I texted her because I want to tell her the truth. Jay said I should, and the feeling I had last night, wondering whether it was years of lies that hurt more tha
n knowing the truth, made me text her. “Let’s go to the café you like.”

  “Soufflé? Okay, I’ll see you there.”

  I need to pull myself together for another fucking marvellous day of fucking honesty.

  I shuffle to the bathroom, strip down and stand under the hot jets of the walk-in shower. I turn the tap as cold as it will go, and finally the liquor fog starts to lift. I almost wish it hadn’t, because the first thing that comes to my mind is that look on Dayna’s face, those desolate, helpless eyes.

  I ball my fists and hold them to the tiles above my head, looking down at my feet. It’s Friday. The tender closes at midnight AST, nine in the UK, and I don’t know if I got through to her. I have no way of knowing if I convinced her not to bid.

  Christ, that woman is so stubborn she’d probably go in with Hassan to spite me. But it’s more than that. She doesn’t know how to let go of the past.

  Now I can’t get close to her. I thought we were getting somewhere. I knew it would take time if we went into business together, but I thought we could get there. The way she touched me, the way she responded when I touched her and told her how I feel…

  I smack my fist into the tiles and instantly regret it when searing pain cuts through my knuckles.

  I dress and head out to Connie’s favourite café by the Saatchi Gallery.

  She’s sitting in the window, her golden-blonde hair swept across one shoulder, a scarf tied around her neck, and she’s talking to a waitress.

  “Wow, I’d lie and say you look good but…”

  I laugh. “Don’t worry. You, on the other hand, look lovely.” I kiss her on the cheek and she squeezes my shoulders.

  “Thanks.”

  The waitress comes back with two coffees, and for a second I think she might be an angel sent from Hangover Heaven.

  “I ordered you a croque monsieur, too,” Connie says.

  “Thank you.”

  “Why are we here, Clark?”

  I sit back with my coffee, enjoying the sun’s rays through the window, warming my skin through my shirt.

  “I feel like I owe you an explanation. A full one.”

  She holds her coffee cup in both hands. It makes her look sweet and innocent, a complete contrast to how I feel. I tell her everything I knew before yesterday. I tell her about Dayna, four years ago, eighteen months ago. I tell her about Little Princess and that I never called Dayna when her father died. She already knows some of it, most of it really, but not how I truly felt, how I still feel about Dayna. Connie shifts in her seat, clearly unsettled, and I feel bad, but I don’t stop telling her, because she should know the truth. She deserves nothing less than the truth.

  I get to us, our wedding, and I tell her how much I love her. I rub away her tears with my thumb when she cries.

  “I’m fine,” she says. “Please, keep going. I think I need to hear it.”

  I walk her through the moment I caught my father cheating, and how I knew I didn’t want to end up like him. I shake my head. That was before I even knew the extent of who my father really is.

  “It’s not like I’m saying I’d be settling with you, Connie. You are amazing. You’re perfect.”

  “Just not perfect for you.”

  I take her hand. “I’m still in love with Dayna, Connie. I’m sorry, so incredibly sorry.”

  She nods through tears. I move my chair to the side of the table so I’m sitting next to her, and I hold her head to my shoulder, kissing the back of her hand.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper again, holding her against me until she’s composed.

  “Have you… have the two of you…?”

  I stop her before she has to ask. “Yes. But you should know we’re not together, and Dayna would never want to hurt you, or…” I stop myself before I say “anyone”.

  She does want to hurt someone. She wants to hurt the man responsible for blowing up Little Princess, the man who killed eleven people and drove her father to suicide. She doesn’t know she should want revenge against my father, too.

  “You want to be with her,” Connie says, maybe noticing the shift in my body, the tensing of my muscles.

  “Yes.”

  “Does she feel the same?”

  “No.” The word twists in my torso, right under my ribcage.

  “If she’s the person you tell me she is, Clark, I don’t think she would have slept with you if she didn’t still have feelings for you.”

  “It’s not that simple with us.” She winces at the word us. “You don’t want to hear this.”

  She gives me a forced smile. “Actually, in a strange way, I think I’m glad you told me. It makes me feel like it wasn’t just me not being good enough for you.”

  “Jesus, Connie, don’t ever say or think that. You’re ten times the person I am and more.”

  “I think I’m going to go,” she says, reaching for her bag to pay.

  “I’ve got this.”

  She holds my chin and strokes my hair, in a way that’s so familiar it makes my lips curve into a sad smile. She kisses my cheek and lets her mouth linger. I breathe in her comforting smell.

  “Thank you for telling me the truth. You should try the truth on Dayna, too.”

  I open my eyes and she’s gone.

  I WANTED TO wake up today and realise it was a bad dream.

  He doesn’t love me.

  I’m stupid for falling for it again. Maybe even harder and deeper this time. I believed he loved me, like Teddy said.

  The crazy thing is I think I was going to turn down his offer to bid together for the well. I hadn’t thought beyond that to what I’d do if we didn’t submit a joint bid, but after Teddy left the other night, I realised I love Clark too much to close the door on us. I love him more vehemently than ever. Teddy was right — I couldn’t watch Clark put the deal to his board, risk his reputation and make a loss just so he could protect me.

  I didn’t have to back out, though, because Clark reneged his offer. Teddy was wrong. I was wrong.

  I was his rebound. I naively let myself think I could be more than that, but the moment we left Dubai, as soon as we came back to reality, he changed his mind. He dropped me like I should have known he would.

  I’m working from home, in an oversized shirt and skinny jeans, no make-up on, my hair wet, just staring at my draft email. I’ve rolled my cursor over Send more than a hundred times.

  I have to do it. I have to submit my offer to get into bed with Hassan. I want the well. I want my father’s revenge. I want to wipe that supercilious look from Caspar’s face. I need to show him that his threats mean nothing to me. That he can’t, won’t, break me.

  I could walk away. I could do as Clark says, let Caspar win and wait for him to suffer a loss from the well, if he suffers a loss.

  But Caspar is the reason my father took his life.

  I roll my finger across the mouse pad of my laptop. This time, I’m going to do it. I jump when my intercom buzzes and instead click Save.

  I’m starting to get seriously fed up of people coming to my apartment.

  “Hello,” I snap.

  “Dayna, I need to talk to you.”

  My chest tightens and a lump forms in my throat. “I have nothing to say to you, Clark.”

  “Good, because I have a lot to say to you.”

  My eyes start to sting, again, as if they didn’t shed enough tears when I cried myself to sleep last night. “Please, Clark.” My words are a drained plea, exactly how I feel. “If you care about me at all, just leave me alone.”

  “Dayna, I know I’ve hurt you. Again. But I need to talk to you. God, I shouldn’t and there’s a big part of me that doesn’t want to.” He sighs, and for a second I think he might be hurting too. “Have you submitted your bid yet?”

  “No.”

  “Please let me talk to you before you do. You’re going to want to hear what I have to say. Then I’ll understand if you never want anything to do with me again.”

  That thought hurts so much I c
an hardly stand it. I respond by buzzing him in. That’s the best I can offer.

  When I open the door he stares at me, scrutinising every inch of my face. His hair is messy, and he has dark circles under his bloodshot eyes.

  “Why would I believe anything you have to say?” You told me you wanted to bid with me because you love me. Then you did what you always do. You showed me you don’t love me at all.

  The way his face contorts makes me wonder whether he can read my mind. “Because it’s the truth.”

  I leave the door open and walk into the lounge, my arms wrapped around myself, a small protective barrier between us.

  The door clicks shut, and I feel him approaching. My shoulders tense at his presence.

  “Please look at me. I need to see you.”

  I turn to him, but I can’t meet his eye. “Talk.”

  “Maybe you should sit.” He rubs his chin, clearly edgy. “I just don’t… there’s no easy way…”

  “Just say what you came to say, Clark.”

  “When we were young… years ago…”

  “Clark!”

  “Your father. My mother.”

  I have no idea what’s coming but the mention of my father makes me uneasy.

  “They had an affair.”

  I blink several times, staring at him. “Come again?”

  “They had an affair. It obviously didn’t last. My parents stayed together.”

  I let his words sink in. “What?” I say disbelievingly. He stares back at me with pity in his eyes. Or maybe empathy.

  I walk back until my calves touch the sofa, then I sit. My father had an affair? “You just found out?”

  He walks to the patio doors, looking out of the window. “Yes.”

  I fight against the feeling of my airways closing. “Why would you tell me that?”

  He turns sharply. “Do you wish I hadn’t?”

  I press a hand to my chest, trying to keep it from exploding, feeling my heart racing. My dad? “I don’t know. I don’t… I don’t… I don’t know.”

  He moves to the coffee table. The fact that he comes closer pisses me off and makes my head spin more, if possible. He takes my hand and turns my knees until they’re pointing between his spread legs. He takes a breath that wavers. It scares me. “Dayna, I need you to process this, okay?”