“Yes.”
“Why him?”
I stared down at my plate. “Because he pushed me, I guess. And because I trusted him. I guess he was the first person who made me feel safe enough to do it.”
“Maybe,” Mr. Wilder said slowly, “you can be that person for him.”
Chapter Eighteen: Fear and Anger
I didn’t think about Ashleigh. I refused to. Instead, I plunged myself into work. Work and partying, my eternal shelters. I skulked around the play room Saturday night but chose not to play with anyone. Rubio wisely didn’t show up. Maybe he was with Ashleigh. I didn’t know and I didn’t care. Ruby knew when to hang around me and when to stay away, which was a key part of our friendship.
Because I couldn’t fucking stand him sometimes.
It wasn’t jealousy. I wasn’t jealous over Ashleigh or anything like that. It was manners. You didn’t fucking kiss girls during threesomes, not like that, and he knew it.
But Ruby was the least of my problems, and Ashleigh…she was past tense. I didn’t need complications like that in my life, not with a new office opening next month in Amsterdam and the ongoing clusterfuck in Washington, D.C. I had real shit to worry about. So I wasn’t pleased when, Monday at noon, my phone buzzed on my desk.
Little Ishi is here.
I glanced at the message, pushing down the sudden, crippling desire to see her. She was here. She was right downstairs.
I’m busy, I typed. Send her away.
I didn’t read the next text, or the third. When he texted the fourth time, I pushed back from my desk and headed for the stairs. I had no hard feelings toward Ashleigh, I just needed her to move on with her life so I could move on with mine. I found her with Mem in the living room, sitting on the couch in a cute little black and white dress. She had a pink rose in her lap, balanced across her knees. It pained me to look at it, just like it pained me to look at her, so I glared at Mem instead.
“I was working. I was right in the middle of something.”
“Ashleigh has come to see you.”
“Yeah, I got that. You texted me four fucking times.”
Rude. Very rude of me. I flicked a glance at Ash, pale and agitated beside him. Mem gave me a scathing look. “Why don’t I leave you two alone?” he said.
He touched her hand and stood to go. Neither of us said a word, even after the door closed behind him. Ashleigh fingered the stem in her lap while I sat in the chair across from her, leaning my head back with a sigh.
“I’m sorry I disturbed your work,” she finally said. “But I needed to see you. To talk to you. I wanted to bring you this.”
I didn’t take the rose when she held it out to me. I felt embarrassed for her. “Very nice gesture,” I said instead. “Great sense of symmetry you have.”
She put the rose on the couch beside her and pushed her hair behind her ears. She didn’t seem angry or offended by my coldness. No, there was something else in her gaze, some enduring tenderness. I needed to stomp out those tender feelings once and for all.
“Look,” I said in a hard voice. “You have to face when something’s over. I don’t want you coming over on Mondays anymore. From the way you acted last Saturday, you’re cured. More than cured.”
She lifted her chin. “There was no reason to wig out on me and Rubio. We’re just friends.”
“I don’t care either way,” I lied. “I told you from the start we were going to keep things casual. No strings attached, for both our sakes.”
“Maybe so, but I don’t want to do that anymore. I think the whole idea of it is sad.”
“You know what’s sad?” I asked, nodding toward the flower. “That rose I brought you, to replace the other one—it wasn’t from the performance. I bought it at a florist near my house and gave it to you because I wanted to get you into bed. Because I wanted to fuck you. That’s all I really wanted from the start.”
I waited for anger, for histrionics, but she only asked very calmly, “That’s all it ever was? All the stuff you did for me? Just to get laid for one lousy weekend? Wow.” She grimaced. “I’m sorry for you then. No wonder you’re so angry.”
“I’m not angry. I just want you to understand—”
She stood, raising a hand to silence me. “I understand. I understand a lot more than you know. I understand that you have problems and they make you act like a jackass. That’s what I came here to talk to you about but now I’m feeling pretty negative toward you so I think I’ll just go. Oh, and…” She shoved the pink rose into my hand. “You can take this and give it to someone else. Whoever it is you want to fuck next. Maybe this time it won’t be such a fucking hassle for you. Good luck.”
Her little tirade aroused me. Why did she have to arouse me with everything she did? When she started across the living room toward the door, I reached out to stop her. “What did you mean about my problems?”
“I know why Mem calls you Ishi,” she said, turning back to me. “Someone finally had the courtesy to explain what the fuck is going on with you.”
I regarded her suspiciously. “What do you mean, what the fuck is going on with me? Nothing’s going on with me, except that you can’t seem to move on.”
“I talked to your father.”
Her words took the wind right out of me. I stared at her. “You didn’t— How— You don’t even know my father.”
“Mem gave me his business card. I went to see your father and we had lunch, and he told me where you came from and everything you went through when you were a child named Eric. And now I know.”
God damn it. I was going to kill Mem, the prying, manipulative ass. Her voice softened and her pale eyes searched mine. This is exactly what I hadn’t wanted, her sympathetic gaze seeking out the damaged, broken little boy inside me. “I’m sorry, Liam. If I had known—”
“I didn’t want you to know.” I would punish them both for this, Mem and my father too. My past was my past. It was something I’d left behind, something that had no place in my current life. I felt stricken. Exposed. “My dad shouldn’t have done that. He shouldn’t have told you. I don’t share that with anyone, ever. It’s nobody’s business but my own.”
“But Liam—”
“You shouldn’t have gone to see him. It was none of your fucking business!”
“None of my business?” Her fragile sympathy turned to anger. “It’s none of my business, really? When I told you everything about me? When you pried it out of me, sneaking around and looking into my past? I told you everything, every horrible, wrenching detail, and you hid everything from me, everything that makes you the person you are. Everything that makes you—that makes you”—she threw out her arms angrily—“behave this way! You even use a fake name. Jesus, Liam! Or should I say Eric?”
“Don’t call me that.” I bent the rose stem and flung it over toward the kitchen. “I took a new name, yes, to start a new life. My dad and my therapist agreed that I should do it. I didn’t want to live in the past.”
“You completely erased yourself. How is that healthy? How come I had to be fixed and you didn’t?
I balled my hands up in my hair. “You asked me to fix you! Because you couldn’t have sex, remember?”
“And you can’t have love. Or any relationship besides being someone’s dominant. Someone’s casual sex partner. Are you really happy like that?”
I shook my head. “Stop it, Ashleigh. Just stop.”
“You made me face everything. You made me accept what happened to me and move on. So how come you don’t have to? Why won’t you give me a chance to help you now?”
“Because I don’t want your help. I don’t need it.” I took her arm and dragged her toward the door. I had to get her away from me before I lashed out again. “I have work to do. You need to go.”
She dug in her heels, struggling against me. “Don’t box me out, Liam. Talk to me. God, what your mother did to you was so much worse than what my father did to me. So much worse, but you never said anything. You never shared
anything with me.”
“Because you didn’t need to know. Damn it, Ash. I put that shit away a long time ago.”
“I only wanted to know why,” she said, her eyes wide and pleading. “Why you pushed me away. Why you keep these rigid walls around you. I understand the pain, the impulse of hating yourself. Of believing it was your fault when it wasn’t really. I understand how risky it feels to let someone in when your trust has been broken so badly—”
I spun and walked away from her, back toward the living room. I wasn’t prepared to have this conversation, not with her, not with anyone. “Leave my past alone,” I said, putting distance between us. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I want to talk about it.” She followed after me, like a dog yapping at my heels. “We need to talk about it, because I love you.”
“No.”
“I do. I love you, whoever you are, whatever your past. I fell in love with you and I want you to love me back. Nothing bad will happen. Just affection and caring between us.”
She was there, right there, with her intent, pretty face and her tearful eyes. She terrified me. What she was offering terrified me. I fended off her hands when she reached for me. “You don’t love me,” I said. “You loved the sex. That’s all we had together. Sex.”
“I love you, Liam. I’ve loved you forever, since the start. Since you told me in the dressing room that everything would be okay. Since you waited outside my door that night to be sure I locked it. Since you paid off my teacher’s school and made love to me at your cottage and…and bought me that goddamn bed. Your denials won’t change anything. They just make both of us frustrated and unhappy.” She reached out and took my hands. “Trust me, please. Love doesn’t have to be a tragic thing.”
She didn’t understand. She didn’t understand anything. It had nothing to do with her or my brothers or sisters, or my mother, or anything except the pain of loving someone. It had to do with the danger, the horrible risk, and the way you couldn’t control any of it. I pulled away from her, wishing I had a blanket fort to hide in. Safe walls, luminescent stars. “I don’t want to love anyone,” I yelled. “Why can’t you respect that?”
“Because I love you,” she said just as angrily. I refused to look in her eyes or process the fact that she was crying. Everything about her petrified me. Her intensity, her emotion, and the bond between us that I couldn’t seem to break.
“Why can’t you love me, Liam?” she asked, prodding me. “What are you afraid of?”
I breathed the word, because I couldn’t say it. “Everything.” I forced myself to look into those eyes, the deep blue-gray pools that had compelled me from the start. “None of it’s real, you know. Boundaries and control. Consent. All that shit I taught you about. In real relationships, it’s not there.”
I turned away from her, drawn back to another time, another place. I remembered shock and helplessness, gunshots, the horrible blood and the silent intensity on my mother’s face. I never meant to hurt my mother. It sounded so stupid, that I hadn’t meant to hurt someone I’d shot in the face, but it was true. It just happened, a desperate incident outside of any consent or control. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing the memories away. “I can’t, Ash. I can’t. Will you please just go away?”
She slid her hands around my neck. I stood stiff, frozen. “Liam,” she said against my lips. “You won’t hurt me. You helped heal me. You’re a wonderful, caring person and I love you. Won’t you let me help you now?”
“You have to go,” I said, pulling away from her. “I have work to do.”
“Liam—”
“Enough!” I bellowed in a voice I’d never used with her before, an even worse voice than I’d used with Ruby that night. “The answer to your question is no. I won’t let you help me. I’m—I’m—” I cast around for words to express the way I felt. “I’m fine exactly the way I am. I don’t need your fucking help. That was wrong of you to go see my father, to go sneaking around behind my back. You think you can fix me? Maybe nothing’s wrong. Maybe the problem is you. That I don’t trust you, that I don’t like you, and that I don’t really want you. Did you ever consider that?”
She blinked at me once, twice. “No, I didn’t,” she said, her voice cold and sharp as an icicle.
“Well, maybe you should.” I pointed at the door. “If you don’t mind, I’d like you to leave without saying anything else. If you need a ride home, talk to Mem about it.”
And I left her standing there, because I couldn’t bear to look at her any more.
*** *** ***
Mem touched my arm as he drove me home through the busy streets of London. “You must forgive me, Ashleigh. This is all my fault.”
I shook my head, twisting my hands in my lap. I’d taken so much care to dress up and look pretty for Liam. And the flower, ugh. I’d pictured an emotional scene that ended with him falling into my arms, thanking me for my concern and maybe even professing his undying love for me.
Nope. It hadn’t gone like that at all.
“It’s not your fault,” I said to Mem. “At least he knows now that I understand. I wanted to see if it changed things, but it obviously doesn’t.”
“It changes more than you know.”
“But those things he said to me at the end—”
“He did not mean them. He loves you and it frightens him terribly.”
I covered my face as more tears squeezed from my eyes. If Liam loved me, it was the bad, destructive kind of love that made you want to hurt whoever it was you cared about.
“So what do I do now?” I asked from between my fingers.
“I think there is nothing to do.” Mem stopped at a light and looked over at me. “I believe the next move must be his.”
I studied his dark, steady eyes. He seemed to know everything about everything. I wanted to beg him, What? What will his next move be? I hoped it wasn’t to file a restraining order against me. “Maybe we’re not meant to be together. It shouldn’t be this hard to love someone.”
“It shouldn’t, but sometimes it is. Both of you have the cards stacked against you, as the saying goes.” He looked down at the gearshift of Liam’s sporty car. “I was sorry, by the way, to hear of your father’s passing.”
I snorted. “I wasn’t sorry. I drank a whole bottle of wine to celebrate.”
He looked at me until the light turned green, and then moved back into traffic. “Do you think you will ever be able to let the anger go?”
Anger? I never thought of myself as being angry. I was the victim, the person betrayed, the powerless one. But he was right. I carried around a lot of anger and hate, not just for my father, but my mother too. It took up a great deal of space inside me, but their sins seemed too horrible to forgive. “I don’t know,” I said to Mem. “I don’t think I can ever let it go completely. Is that bad?”
He shrugged. “You will never forget the wrongs done to you, but anger, like guilt, can poison an entire life.” He pulled up to my building and put the car in park, then took a deep breath and looked over at me. “You must strive to exorcise your demons, you and Liam both. You cannot change the past, but you can change the future.”
“I’m trying. I’ve been changing a lot, but how can I make Liam change if he doesn’t want to?”
“You ripped off the bandage. It was a good start. He’ll need time to stop the bleeding, time to try to put it back on again, and then…”
“And then what?” I asked, desperately needing answers.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure he’ll ever be fully healed, but I also know he’s not happy the way he’s living. He deserves a love-filled life.”
“A love-filled life,” I echoed. “Maybe with us, two wrongs can make a right.”
“There is nothing ‘wrong’ with either of you,” Mem said. “You’re a very strong, brave woman, and Liam is a caring man. Give him a little time to bleed. All of us, deep down, have some survival instinct. At some point, he’ll realize he’s weakened from lack of bloo
d. Or lack of love.”
“So I have to wait? I can’t do anything?”
“I’ll watch over him in the meantime. I won’t let him come to harm.”
I didn’t want to wait, but I knew from experience you couldn’t force someone to get better until it was time. It had taken a certain degree of desperation for me to reach out and ask Liam for help.
I gave Mem a hug and a nod of solidarity. “Tell Liam to come to me when he’s ready. Tell him I’ll be waiting for him, however long it takes.”
*** *** ***
I skulked around my big echoing house, feeling wrung out and battered. I avoided Mem on principle, and I skipped out on my usual Sunday dinner with my dad. They’d both betrayed my trust, under the guise of “helping me.” I was so damn sick of the whole helping thing I was about to bust. I’d worked through my issues as a child and come to a place of peace, and I didn’t want to open up that can of worms again. The status quo was easier, and I was mostly happy with my life.
Except that life didn’t include Ashleigh.
Fucking hell.
I understood the hypocrisy of my actions, believe me. I’d done far more snooping around on her than she’d ever done on me. Hell, I’d even broken into her apartment once, but I only ever did those things to be a friend to her. I hadn’t waved a flower in her face afterward, demanding honesty and trust and love.
Her words haunted me as I drifted through the week. I heard them during the day while I worked, and in my dreams when I slept. Why can’t you love me, Liam? What are you afraid of? Bedlam and loss of control, for starters. Blood and screaming. The grinding, devastating burden of not being enough. Not being enough brother, not being enough son. I understand the pain, the impulse of hating yourself. Of believing it was your fault when it wasn’t really. But that wasn’t the issue, whether or not it was my fault. The issue was the risk inherent in love, especially love for someone like Ashleigh, who’d already been hurt so badly.
It was impossible, all of it. I went to Amsterdam to work on the new office, thinking distance could smother my feelings for Ashleigh, but it didn’t. I dreamed of her every time I managed to sleep.
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