Page 79 of Break Me
Turns out, though, I hadn’t needed to.
Ava took care of it herself. And for a girl who’s had things handed to her in life, who probably hasn’t had to fight for much—no fault of her own—it was fucking impressive. Thinking about it now, her driving that knife into his back, it makes my cock throb.
But I can’t do that again, either.
This is the end for us.
I pull up around the back of her huge house, and I open the door before she can do it herself, although I think she was just waiting for me.
I take her hand, and she hops out of the Mercedes, then I close the door softly behind her.
She starts to pull away from me, but I pull her back. Gently.
“Hey,” I say.
She turns to face me, my back against the car. I take her other hand, and it’s cold in mine. It’s chilly out here, fall finally come to North Carolina at last, nearly a month late.
“What you did,” I say, my eyes holding hers, “that was incredible.” I give her a small smile. “Bad ass, one might say.”
She doesn’t smile. She looks down between us, chewing on her lip. I feel her shiver against the cold, and I want to pull her into me, wrap my arms around her. But I’m pretty sure she doesn’t want that.
I wonder if she’s going to say anything at all. If this was a mistake, trying to talk to her about what happened. But even though I’m leaving soon, and even though we won’t be a part of each other’s lives anymore, I know that what she did, what I made her watch afterward, she’ll need to talk about it with someone.
She didn’t want me to cover for her. But I made her do that, too. As far as the cops know, she only watched what happened.
Is it my place to keep controlling her narrative?
I’m about to let go of her, to let her walk away, when she looks up, meeting my eyes again.
“Is that…is that what you do?” she asks me, her voice quiet in the darkness around us. I see her swallow. “Do you…do that to people? Is that your job?” She almost chokes on the last word.
So we’re going here.
But what does it matter, really? I at least owe her the truth. Besides, if I give it to her, she’s less likely to miss me. It’s why I made her stay in that room.
I nod. “Yes,” I say, letting go of one of her hands and brushing a lock of blonde hair behind her ear. She turns her head from my touch and I drop my hand, feeling that small gesture more than I should.
She recoils from me.
She should.
“But…why?” she presses.
So she wants all of it.
I let go of her other hand and fold my arms, leaning against the car. “I went to prison for Bianca, as you pointed out,” I admit, and she takes a step backward. But I can’t change the past, and besides that, I wouldn’t change what I did to Thames.
“But turns out,” I laugh, sliding my hands in my pockets and looking up at the dark sky, a few stars visible above our heads, “I was missing something. About why he fucked her up.” I clench my fists in my pockets. “She was fucking Thames. And he didn’t like that she was still with me. Wanted to teach her a lesson.”
I hear her gasp, but I don’t look at her. She didn’t see that twist coming. I clear my throat. “I had cameras in our house. She didn’t know about them, and usually, I didn’t check them. They were for security, not spying on her.” Although spying is one of my strange proclivities, too. “But when I was released on bail from fucking up Thames after he fucked her up, I checked them. I don’t even know why.” I shrug, still not looking away from the sky, wondering if things would be different if I hadn’t checked. Would Bianca have waited for me?
But she hadn’t waited for me when we were together. When I was free.
“We had an unconventional relationship,” I continue, because I’ve got to at least admit that much. “We were kind of…open. We could sleep with other people, as long as we told each other.” I clench my jaw. She had definitely not told me about Thames. About her creeping addiction. I hear some crickets in the woods surrounding Ava’s house and close my eyes, pretending for a minute I’m not confessing my sins to a girl that I don’t deserve. A girl that’ll think even less of me when I’m done with this.
“I saw her. Fucking Thames. In our house. Which,” I scoff, “was not part of our deal. She had fucked him for a week before he fucked her up. That’s as far back as the video went.”
I open my eyes and finally dip my chin down, to look at Ava.
