Page 152 of Aftersome
“I… I didn’t just come here randomly. To Seattle, to work for the Orchids’ organization,” she began to confess, causing my heart rate to take off. “I came here for you, Mal.”
For me?
What the hell did that mean?
“Eleven years ago you left us. No calls, no messages, no letters, no anything. And I despised you. For so long I hated the man that you were.”
Her words felt like a knife to the chest as I staggered back.
“But then I had Greg and Shelia come to me. They were so lost about what to do, Mal, about how to get you back home. And that’s when they asked me.” Her voice cracked. “They asked me to come and get you.”
Fuck…
Betrayal like no other had flooded me. Finding any air seemed like an impossible fucking task as the weight of her confession stripped it all out of the room.
What did she mean they asked her to come here? Did that mean everything up until this point was a fucking lie?
Tearing my eyes away from hers, I could hardly look at her without feeling the burn of her deception.
“Mal…” She tried taking a step closer toward me, but with the firm shake of my head, I stopped her. It was against all my instincts to tell her no, but I knew if she was near, I wouldn’t think clearly.
“So, what does that mean? That all of this wasn’t just a coincidence?” I scoured my brain for any signs, anything that would have given me a clue on what I could have missed or if I was just blind due to my obsession.
Ultimately, it was my fault for not looking further into her sudden reappearance into my life. How fucking blindsided I was for the woman who haunted my dreams, and not once did I think twice about why she was here.
I quickly spun around so my back was to her now.
With my fists clenched tightly at my sides, I slammed my eyes shut as the pain began to sweep across my chest.
“You came here to fuck with my head to get your way? To get me home again?” I growled with a pounding head.
“No, Mal, I… I didn’t expect for this to happen, to fall in love with you, but I did.” She cried through tears that I couldn’t see but heard. “At first, yes, my intentions were solely focused on forming some sort of truce with you so I could convince you to come home, but somewhere along the way the lines started to blur and I realized I didn’t despise you like I once did…You needed me just like I needed you and I fell so hard and so easily that I was terrified to tell you the truth.”
I wanted to tell her that I didn’t need her. That I’d been doing perfectly fucking fine until she came along, but my heart wouldn’t let me. The one organ that I swore was faulty had now felt like it had been repeatedly run over and stomped on like it was nothing.
“How am I supposed to believe that any of this was real and at what point do I say that it was? At Kate and James's gender reveal? Hayes’s anniversary? Fucking when?” I finally turned back around to face her.
“Mal…”
“No, don’t… You lied when you had every chance to tell me the truth. Why, Doe? Why not fucking tell me?” I said, my chest aching in the worst possible way.
“Because it was already too late! You wouldn’t…” she choked, her eyes wavering for a split second before coming back to me. “You wouldn’t have felt the same.”
Her preconceived idea of how I would have reacted pissed me off. Didn’t she realize that no matter what this woman put me through, I would always be hers?
“So you waited until now? When you know I can’t live without you?” My voice was now raw with emotion as I scoured her eyes for an answer.
One that I couldn’t find through the endless tears that were streaming down her face.
She looked so fucking broken. So torn, and although every bone in my body was telling me to forgive her, I fucking couldn’t.
Not when another heap of questions had bombarded through my gut.
“Does Shelia know?” I swallowed as the pain from saying her name became almost too much to handle. “Do they know about us?”
Doe’s watery eyes met mine.
“No, they don’t know anything. I… I’ve been lying to all three of you,” she confessed.
