Page 91 of Payback
ALOUD BANGING ON MYdoor has me dropping my Xbox controller and heading down the steps toward the front door. When I open it, I’m whacked in my chest by a tiny little fist.
“You idiot!” Allie exclaims, standing in the rain on my doorstep and pushing me so hard I stumble back into the foyer. She slaps a piece of paper against my chest, her blonde hair wet around her face as she stares up at me. “If you don’t sign this right now, I will park myself on your doorstep in this miserable rain.”
“What are you doing?” I ask, grabbing her by the wrist and pulling her through the entryway.
My hand releases hers instantly, feeling an intense burn from the brief contact my skin had with hers. My eyes look her up and down. It’s been days since I’ve seen her, but it feels like years. Her T-shirt and jeans are damp, and her chest heaves as she fights to catch her breath. A shiver runs up my spine because it hurts to have her this close to me. I can smell her floral scent and see the stress in her eyes. She looks tired and not like herself. If this were last week, I would have pulled her into my arms to soothe whatever pain she has away. I would have rubbed the furrowed line on her forehead until she smiled.
But everything is different now.
“I’m trying to save you, you idiot!” she bellows, crinkling the soggy paper in her hand, her shoulders rising up to her ears. “Why won’t you sign this, Roan? They said it can save your endorsement deal. You’ve been working toward that for so long.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” I snap, my tone acidic as my hands ball into fists to fight the muscle memory they have to pull her in close and feel the weight of her in my arms.
Allie’s anger dissipates, her fierce blue eyes softening into a silent plea. “Then sign it. Sign it and you can leave this all behind you. You can leave me behind and get on with your life.”
“Oh, is that all I have to do to forget about what you did? I sign that and it magically erases that video from my mind forever?”
She sags against the open doorframe, her eyes swimming with tears as she looks anywhere other than my face. “It’s a start.”
“Do you think I give a fuck about my endorsement deal anymore?” I bark, shoving a hand through my hair and gripping the back of my neck. “Right now, I’m just trying to figure out how to fucking function with the crater-sized hole you left in my heart.”
Her chin trembles and she sniffs hard, shaking her head sharply as she fights back her tears. “I can’t fix your heart and I can’t change what I did. But this…This I can do.”
I scoff, shaking my head at how she still doesn’t get it. She doesn’t get that what’s broken in me cannot be fixed. My voice is hollow when I ask, “Tell me this, Allie. Why the fuck did you do it?” I lean down to look her square in the eyes. “Because I’ve spent the past week going over all of our time together. Every day, every hour, every fucking minute, and kiss, and caress, and I can’t figure out how I didn’t see this coming. How could I be so goddamned blind to this dark side of you?”
“I did have a dark side,” she replies, exhaling heavily and swiping at the black mascara running down her cheeks. “But it was only because I was in pain, Roan. I was in more pain than I think I even realised. When I found Parker and Rosalie in my bed together, my entire world was turned upside down. Until that moment, I thought I had a good life. I knew my dad wasn’t real affectionate, but I was okay with that. I thought Rose was my real sister, but that was a lie. I thought Parker loved me, but it turned out he loved her more. I truly thought I had a family and a good life, but one betrayal turned everything I knew into a lie.”
“I know the feeling,” I retort, narrowing my eyes at her.
She deflates under my gaze, biting her lip nervously before she adds, “I didn’t even cry when I found them in bed together. I just left. I cut ties, but I wanted to get back at them instead of grieving my losses. I wanted to get back at the world for putting all those false relationships in my life and telling me I was safe when I so clearly wasn’t.”
She pauses, pulling in huge breaths of air as she works through feelings that I don’t know if she’s ever truly worked through before.
“The striptease video idea was fucking stupid,” she adds, continuing with her explanation. “It was something I thought would only hurt them, but it turned out to be something very different in the end.”
“I’d say,” I snap, my jaw ticking with frustration. “It turned out to be a sex video of us for the whole fucking world to see.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she replies as she steels herself to step forward, closer to me. So close I can smell her scent again, which causes an involuntary reaction in my body.
“That video, Roan…I couldn’t bring myself to delete it for the longest time because it helped me. As horrible and stupid as it was for it to even exist, I watched it after I left you and it made me feel desirable at a time when I should have been insecure and doubting everything about myself because Parker chose Rosalie over me. Just having it on my phone, in my possession, and knowing I was capable of doing what I did in it made me stronger. Hell, it’s what made it possible for me to fall in love with you!”
My head jerks back, unable to comprehend her logic. “It was a video of us fucking, Allie. Nothing more.”
“Itwasmore and you know it!” she snaps, whipping my vulgar words to the ground. “The way you looked at me that night…The way you spoke to me and how my body reacted to you…We had just met and you had already made me feel more alive than I had been in my entire life. You saw me better than anyone else had ever seen me! And when I went home, that video gave me a piece of myself back that I lost years ago.”
She touches my hand, sliding her delicate fingers against my palm before holding it. “Then we reconnected and you confirmed that what we had was special. I couldn’t help but fall in love with you and once that happened, I didn’t need the video anymore. I had the real thing looking at me and everything felt right in the world.”
I pull my hand out of her grasp, unable to accept her affection because it hurts too much. All of this hurts too much. We were so good, I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. But can we come back from something like this?
“Why didn’t you just tell me? You had so many chances,” I finally state.
She nods knowingly and steps back to lean against the doorframe again. “I wanted to tell you a million different times, but I was too afraid to break our happy bubble. I’ve never been as happy as I was when I was with you. Never. So I told myself that deleting the video would erase the memory. That we were already making so many new memories together, we didn’t need the old ones.”
I close my eyes, a burning ache forming on the backs of my lids. “I just don’t see how I can ever forget what you did.”
“I know,” she replies, the corners of her mouth turning down as her voice shakes. “And I can never fix that for you. But I can try to fix your career if you’ll sign this damn statement.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “Letting someone else take the fall isn’t how I do things.”
