“After the past twenty-four hours, I’m surprised you haven’t turned into an alcoholic.”
She’s kinda got a point.
“Just a small one. I’m the world's biggest lightweight,” I concede.
“I think you deserve it,” she says, pouring what I definitely wouldn’t describe as a small one.
“Thank you,” I whisper when she passes it over.
“Come sit.” She curls herself into one side of the couch while I take the other. She stares at me for a beat while I try to come up with where I should start. Thankfully, she beats me to it. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”
I blow out a long breath at that question as I try to figure out the answer.
Did he hurt me? Yes.
But I wanted him to. I needed him to.
“I understand why he did what he did.”
“That’s not what I asked, Macie,” she warns.
“I know, I just…” I take a huge sip of wine as I try to get my thoughts together. “I knew it was too good to be true,” I blurt out.
“I’m going to kill him for hurting you. I warned him. I fucking warned him,” she seethes.
“You can’t be mad at him. What he went through—”
“Still doesn’t give him the right to hurt you no matter what’s happened. You were a kid, Macie. He said it was ten years ago, so you were what… eight?”
I nod.
“Did you even understand the significance of what you walked in on that day?”
I shake my head because I didn’t, I truly had no idea at the time. I knew it was bad. But I didn’t know things like that happened, that people could be just that evil to take advantage of kids like that.
My uncle being mean to me was one thing. But one of his boys. Never in a million years would I have thought that was even possible.
“No. I had no idea how serious it was. It was only in the years that followed that I understood what I even saw.”
“None of it was your fault, Macie. Leon had—has—no right to blame you for it.”
“He’s hurting, Let. It’s festered inside him all these years, slowly eating away at him.”
“You’re too understanding.”
“Trust me, I’m not letting him slip back into my life as if nothing happened, but I get it.”
“Your uncle… he hurt you too, didn’t he?” she asks, although from the concern on her face, I think she already knows the answer.
I nod. “Just not in the way he did Leon.”
“It doesn’t make it right, or better, or even easier to deal with.”
“I guess,” I mutter, not wanting to confess that over the years I’ve felt weirdly lucky that my uncle never touched me like he did Leon.
“Were there others?”
“I assume so, but Leon was the only one I ever saw. I was banished from that house not long after that incident.”
“You never told anyone?”
I shake my head ashamed that I was never brave enough to say anything.
“Christ,” she mutters, taking another giant mouthful of wine. “I knew he was hiding something awful, but I never thought it was something like this.”
We fall silent, both of us sipping on our drinks lost in thought.
It doesn’t take long for the alcohol to start to have an effect on me and by the time I sip the last drop into my mouth, my head is starting to spin.
Letty must sense it because she looks up at me.
“Ready to tell me what he did yet?”
“Umm…”
When I wake the next morning, it’s with my second ever hangover.
Rolling over, I groan into my pillow as my head pounds, my brain feeling like it’s suddenly too big for my head.
“Damn you, Leon Dunn,” I moan.
Before I found the courage to tell Letty the truth, she refilled my glass and before I knew it everything was pouring from my lips. To my relief she never once judged me, even when I confessed to wanting Leon to do what he did, that I was more than willing to take the punishment he was dishing out.
I understood when she opened up and confessed to having similar experiences with Kane at the beginning of their relationship.
Listening to her talk about how toxic the two of them were made me feel better about what happened, about how I felt when he was so lost in his anger, his darkness. It fed something twisted inside of me that I didn’t even know existed. But it seems I might not be the only one to have felt that way.
My cell pings dragging me from my hazy memories of the night before and I blindly reach out to grab it from my nightstand.
Letty: How are you feeling? ☺
“Ugh.” It’s the smiley face that does me in because it means that she probably feels completely fine whereas I’m once again dying.
This is all his fault. All of it.
If he never picked up Charlie that night then we might never have collided.
Is that what you’d rather have happened? To never have met him?
With another groan, I throw back the covers and make my way to the bathroom on unsteady legs.
I’m pleasantly surprised by the time I get there because I feel nowhere near as bad as the last time and when I look at myself in the mirror, I feel almost normal aside from the pounding at my temples.
But what stares back at me in my reflection, however, that is a freaking mess.
Leon Dunn, what have you done to me?
I stand there for long minutes just telling myself that I’m okay. What happened… happened. Now it’s time to move on.
I know that’s the truth, that he’s not going to want anything to do with me now, hell, I should want even less to do with him after the way he treated me. So why does my chest ache as I consider never seeing him again?
I want to say it’s fear for what he’s going to do now that he’s got the information he wanted. But it’s not. In all honesty, I don’t care what he does next. That’s exactly why I’ve done nothing about the fact he knows of my uncle’s whereabouts.
Plus, he’s safe there. He pays thousands a month to ensure his privacy and safety. I highly doubt Leon’s going to be able to walk straight in and act on the revenge he craves so much.
I wash up before pulling on an oversized hoodie to hide in and finally, when I can wait no longer for coffee, I slip out of my room.
Voices carry down the hall to me the second I close my door behind me and my stomach drops into my feet knowing I’m going to have to say something about why I’m here.
I should be in Miami having the time of my life with Leon. But here I am nursing a hangover and dare I say it… a broken heart.
No.
I slam that thought down the second it hits me.
He can’t have broken anything that didn’t belong to him.
Throwing my shoulders back, I gather some inner strength from somewhere deep inside, hell knows I know it exists after what I’ve been through in my life and with my head held high, I walk toward the kitchen as if this is just another Saturday morning.
“M-Macie?” Nathan stutters the second I emerge.
“Morning,” I sing, wincing as my overly happy voice hits my ears.
Way to go trying to look like everything is normal. Well done, Macie.