She shakes her head and for the first time, I see regret in her eyes. “I named you JoslynElanorGirard. Elanor, after Carlo’s mother. You’ll be twenty-one in November,” she says like she hasn’t just flipped everything on its head. “I thought changing everything was for the best. The more Eric’s you were, the more of a father he’d be to you.”
“You were wrong.”
“I know that now.”
I shake my head. “No, Mum. You say you hate me? Blame me? But it was YOU.Youwere wrong.Youopened your legs and got pregnant.Youmet Eric. He was a choiceyoumade.Youlied toeveryone. YOU. None of that was on me. None of this was ever on me.” I swipe the snot from under my nose. Fuck, I’m crying. I don’t want to cry. She doesn’t deserve my tears. I stomp across to the chair, as I pretend to listen to Mum’s excuses, and pick up my first phone. It belongs to Dax; I’m not leaving it here. While I’m there, I grab hers too.
“…I wanted to leave, but he used you against me. Then the boys. When Carlo came back…”
“You should have told me!”Carlo bellows.
His anger tips her over the edge. I don’t know if she expected sympathy, but she isn’t getting it. She goes frompoor metoscrew youin the time it takes for her expression to twist viciously.
“Fuck you. Fuck both of you! You have no idea what he put me through,” she wails. After everything he’s done, after everything she’s confessed tonight, she thinks she can say that? To me? My hands are a throbbing mess of burns and bandages and yet she thinks she’s the only one he tortured?
I see red. I’m shrieking words before my thoughts even solidify in my head.
“YES, I FUCKING DO! HE PUT ME THROUGH IT TOO!” I don’t think, I just react and I’m all anger and bitterness. I throw her phone. It bounces off the wall beside her arm. The loudthunksnaps me back to myself. I’m instantly ashamed. I don’t want to be him. I don’t want to emulate my father, and then I remember he’s not my father. Not my genes. I’m not even the person I thought I was walking in here tonight.
I’m angry all over again.
I suck in a rattling breath and try to regain my calm. Nothing matters. They don’t matter. I don’t matter. The kids are downstairs waiting with strangers.
“You two can sort this shit out. I’m done.”
I put myself in the line of fire for her and those kids every single day to protect the woman I watched suffer to raise us. Sure, he hit her, shouted at her, demeaned her, controlled her, but henever went as far with her as he did with me. I always thought it was because I spoke back or fought to deflect his anger from them to me, but now I know it was because I was never his. She raised me in a house where her husband hated my existence and then she has the cheek to blame me for the shit life she received from the man she chose? Her words, if you’d never been born,slam behind my eyes, pounding for me to see the truth. Well, I see it now and if they think I’m taking on any more of their shit, then they can think again.
“Jules, you can’t just walk away!” Carlo calls out.
“Watch me.”
Dax and two of his men wait outside. The suits enter as soon as I’m clear and Dax follows me in silence, suggesting he heard most what they said. I appreciate the space, but I need a distraction. I need to get out of my head. As soon as we’re enclosed in the elevator, I round on him.
“What do you want from me?”
“Jules…” he begins, trying to—what? Talk me down? Stupid. He’s not even calling me by my real name. An ugly sound falls from my mouth. I look away, unable to face my own sorry reflection in his eyes.
“It’s been a complete fuck up of a day and it’s not even nine a.m,” I tell him. There’s that ugly sound again. You’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a laugh. Only someone who reallyknowswould hear the pain I’ve hidden within it.
“Little gem,” he tries again. This time, I hold his gaze. His expression is beseeching, but his eyes are a riot of emotion; pity, anxiety, determination, fear, molten rage, concern, heat…
It’s the last one I pay attention to. It’s the last one that I leap upon because it offers escape. There’s no permanence, no safety, no assurances, but there is escape.
And right now, I don’t want to be here.
I’m unpractised and inelegant, but I throw myself at Dax, shoving us both into the metal wall. His body offers no resistance,no question or judgement. I grab his tie and pull him down, our heads and lips smashing together painfully. I kiss him brutally. Salty tears contrast with his sweet minty taste. It’s a one-sided assault until it’s not.
I don’t know if it’s pity that wins out, or passion, but Dax matches my ferocity, swapping our positions so that I’m the one trapped against the wall. Only when he senses my fire waver does he softens the kiss. His hands grip my face, pulling my filthy hair from my skin. His thumbs sweep again, and again, to clear my tears. His tongue pulls back until only his lips work mine, and then he withdraws entirely.
His blown pupils flick back and forth, concern written in their depths and in the creases of his skin. He eyes me like I’m dangerous. Perhaps I am.
No, I’m worse than dangerous. I’m utterly stupid.
The doors ping open to an empty lobby.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I just…I…” A sob wrenches from deep in my gut. “I don’t know who I am anymore.”
Irush out of the Tower with no idea where I’m going or what I’m doing. Men haul the bikes onto a flatbed truck and secure them down. The van with the bodies has its door wide open. Other cars are parked here and there among the madness. It’s like I imagined everything that happened upstairs. But then, why would I dare to believe that the world would stop for me?
