Page 4 of Queen of Ruin
“About my parents?” he asks, but he already knows the answer.
He collapses into the chair as if his legs can’t hold him up any longer. “I never liked Langley, but God…” He can’t finish the sentence after putting the pieces together. Which I’m glad because right now I don’t think I could explain this tangled web.
“I’m sure he’s the one that had the photos,” I accuse. “It makes sense.”
“Jesus!” He rubs the back of his neck and stands up again. “If you had told me, I could have done something.”
I hug myself as if to keep my insides from spilling out. Heavy shame shivers down my spine. “I… I couldn’t,” I say honestly.
“What were you doing at that bar?” he demands. “Did you follow me?”
“No!” I exclaim. “I didn’t know you were going to be there. I couldn’t go home that night, not after finding out about your father. I didn’t want to be alone,” I admit.
“You could have just left me in that alley.” He looks at me with a weary expression.
“I wanted to see…” I whisper, leaving the rest of the sentence hanging, but he grasps my meaning.
“Well, now you know,” he says, raising his arms. “I’m nothing like him.”
“That’s not true.”
He doesn’t know how very much like his father he is.
“Did you know who I was? In the bar?” he asks, eyes searching mine.
I shake my head no, but that’s not true. There was a familiarity when he quoted Emerson. It felt like fate.
I carried a flame for a man who burned bright because he was the only thing bright to hold onto. But he was just a man. He wasn’t perfect like I’d made him out to be. He was a husband, a father, a son, and a politician. How could I expect so much from one person I barely knew?
“Yes.”
“Fuck,” he mutters, running a hand over his mouth while the other is planted on the desk. His head is bowed, the thick, dark wavy hair covering his eyes.
He finally looks back up at me. “Did you fake everything?”
I know what he’s asking me, and he wants to know the answer badly, whether he chooses to believe me or not.
I should lie and say that I faked everything, even my orgasms, just to hurt him, to get back at him for putting me in this position, but that’s not who I am. In truth, I put myself in this position because I did walk into that alley to see if he was okay, not knowing it would unlock this chain of events.
“No,” I say as genuinely as I can.
“Because you’re so fucking good at your job,” he spits with a resentful tone.
“Because even I’m not that good, Darren.” I shake my head understanding how betrayed he must feel.
Only one of the pictures remains on the desk, and the way his father twirls that single strand of hair between his fingers, and the way I’m looking at him as he does it….
As if he’s reading my mind, he asks, “Were you in love with him?”
“I don’t know how to answer that,” I say honestly.
“It’s a simple yes or no, Evangeline,” his voice is tortured, coming from somewhere deep within him.
It’s not as simple as that. I shake my head, but the words that come out don’t match, and how could they? “Yes,” I answer, feeling tears burn at the back of my eyes, because for a long time, I thought I was – maybe I still am.
How do you know if you love someone when you’ve never been loved?
“Do you not see how fucked up this is?”
