“No,” I said.Calm.“You don’t know anything about me, or what I want or need.”
Andrew’s eyes softened in feigned pity.“He’s not enough for you,” he said.“You know that.You look ridiculous pretending that camping in a fucking field is what you want.You used to want…more.”
It felt like my heart was in my throat.“I still do,” I said.“You just aren’t it.”
The sound that came out of him was animalistic.
In my ear:Ten seconds.Then, softer, Marin’s voice threading through the channel she’d grabbed from the control room:I am here with you.You’ve got this.
“You still don't understand,” Andrew said.“You don't get a say in this; you aremine.You threw gasoline on our lives and called it truth.You made me a villain to sell a story.”
“I told a story tosaveme after whatyoudid,” I said.“That’s the part you always forget.That I matter.My choices matter.”
He smiled again, but it didn’t reach his eyes.“You always were easy to play.”He shifted, a little closer, dropping his voice until I could feel it more than hear it.“You fell for everything.The first apology.The second one.You liked it when I hurt you.It made you feel alive.”He tilted his head, confiding.“And then you had the audacity to think you could end it.That you could move away from me.That you could tell meno, to stop.You areMINE, your body isMINE.Your Pussy isMINE.And I don't care if you say no!I will always take what is mine.”
It should have shattered me.Once, it would have.But the only thing breaking now was the illusion that he still had any power left.So, I let the words pass through me, his acknowledgment that he heard me beg him to stop, and he didn't care.“You just admitted to the assault out loud,” I told him.
He blinked.Confusion flickered, then smoothed.“I said it to you,” he corrected, like we were in the bubble he loved.“This is private.”
“Is it?”I asked, and tilted my head, letting the tiny mic at my collar catch the light as my hair shifted.His gaze flicked to it quickly.Through the earpiece, a whisper of movement reached me, a shift in the air as two bodies closed in from either side.
Andrew recovered, smile back in place.“You liked it,” he repeated, slower, as if rehearsal could make a lie true.“You always did.The rough.The way I made decisions so you didn’t have to.”
“No,” I said.“I didn't want or ask for what you did to me.What you tried to take from me.”
He rolled his eyes, then gunned the engine of his charm again, bright and blinding.“We don’t have to fight,” he said, hands up.“Come with me.We’ll go upstairs, order a bottle of something no one else can afford, and laugh about this mess you've made.You’ll remember.You’ll remember the way we fit.You’ll remember what you sound like when you’re honest about what you want.”
A laugh escaped me, small and disbelieving.“Honest?”
He leaned in, eyes glittering.“I always told you the truth,” he said.“You were the one who lied to yourself, to everyone.All this…this show?”He gestured again to the stage.“You’re selling an edited version.The unedited you was mine.Mine.”He softened his voice again, intimacy as a blade.“Say you miss me.”
“No,” I repeated.“I don’t.”
Something in Andrew shifted.The smile cracked.There, under the polish, the aggression that had always been waiting.He stepped forward, and I matched his step back.“You’re not hearing me,” he snapped, volume spiking.“You’re embarrassing me.You wrote me wrong.You made me small.You made me into some…hack job of a man, some cartoon, and I won’t let you do this to me.”
“Andrew,” I said, and the way I said his name made him blink.“Listen carefully.”I kept my voice low, even, aware of the tinny echo I could hear in my ear, my voice going places beyond this back room.“You don’t get to decide how my story ends.You don’t get to twist this into love when it was a need to possess.You don’t get to turn my fear and pain into a lie.”
His mouth thinned, eyes bright with the kind of rage that thinks it’s righteous.“You were nothing before me,” he hissed.“You are nothing without me.”
Behind him, a security guard appeared at the edge of the curtain, the second one ghosted the other side.
He pushed on, jaw tight, heat spitting sparks, “You loved being watched.You loved being followed to see if he was better than me, to see if anyone could be.You post where you go.You practically beg people to look.You wanted me to come.You wanted a scene.You wanted me to prove I still...”
“Still what?”I asked.
“...own you,” he finished, triumphant, like he’d solved the equation.
“That’s the thing,” I said, and felt my voice steady in a way that made something warm flicker under my ribs.I straightened, steeling my spine.“You never did.”
He stepped further into my space, cologne and heat and the memory of a grip that used to bruise.“You’ll regret this,” he hissed.“I will make you regret this.And tell your farm boy he isn’t safe.None of them are.You’re easy to get to.”
“Sir.”The guard on his right spoke, placid and professional.The other came into view on his left, wide as a door.“This area is restricted.”
He tried one last face, crooked, pleading, the one that used to unspool me.“Cass.Baby.Don’t do this.You know me.We’re good when it’s just us.Say you want me.Say it and we will make this all go away.”
“I don’t want you,” I said.“And nothing you could ever say makes what you did go away.”
They took his arms with practiced gentleness.He yanked once, quick and mean, and threw his last shard over his shoulder.“This isn’t over.”
