‘Why didn’t you?’ he asked, eyes flashing. ‘Christ, Nina. I would have been shocked. Of course, I would have. But I would have believed you. Me.’ He slammed both hands to his chest. ‘I would have believed you one hundred per cent.’
‘I know.’
That seemed to take the wind out of his sails. ‘What?’
‘I never – not for one moment – doubted you, Markus. That’s why I didn’t tell you. Because you might have had my back, but your mama bear would have taken over.’ She looked into his eyes. ‘You would have tried to keep quiet if I’d asked, but eventually you would have snapped. You would have confronted him or made up a rumour that he had—’ she waved one hand ‘—gonorrhoea or syphilis. And I wasn’t ready.’
‘Baby girl, if I’d known it had been Alex, I would have invited him over for a drink – and then castrated him with my nail file. Sloppily.Slowly.’
‘I know.’
‘Shit.’ He sat down heavily again. Repeated, ‘Shit.’
‘Keeping it from you has almost been harder than dealing with it. I wanted to tell you so many times, Markus,’ she repeated. The tears came then, each one falling from her and taking some of that guilt and shame away with it. ‘But I … I wasn’t ready to face it. I wasn’t ready to fight, and Alex came,’ she rambled, ‘to the hospital. He told me that it was in both our best interests to forget what had happened, and I knew.’ She exhaled a huge breath, closed her eyes momentarily. ‘I knew that if I just kept quiet, he wouldn’t hurt me again.’
‘I should have known,’ Markus stated. ‘When you refused to bring security, I should have put the pieces together.’
She took his hand, so familiar, in hers. ‘We both know how much pull Alex has. The only reason I know he’ll be charged is because I hurt him. I drew blood. But that doesn’t mean everyone will believe me. Alex will lie. He’ll spin it, say that we were sleeping together, and that when he tried to break it off, I attacked him. He’ll say it was self-defence. His lawyers will tear apart my character and find small things to splash in court.’ A chill dropped all through her body. ‘They’ll pay my mother to spread lies about me. And it doesn’t matter that he might still go away, at the end of the day, I might not have a career to go back to. Becauseyou know. You know who controls this industry, and you know how wary they’ll be of hiring a woman who’s made an accusation like that against one of their own.’
‘It’s the twenty-first century,’ Markus argued. ‘You’ll have a career to go back to – even if it’s only acting for female directors,’ he belatedly ceded.
‘Alex is one of the biggest producers in Hollywood. His close circle of friends is responsible for most movies made in the US.’
He took a moment to mull this over. ‘How’s your British accent?’ he asked. ‘I’ve always wanted to live in London.’ He leaned back and framed her with his hands, closed one eye. ‘I’m seeing you in a Victorian-era gown. Pink silk.’ He nodded. ‘It’s working for you, baby. I’ll call you miss. And you can call me guv’na.’
Nina didn’t laugh it off as he wanted her to. She took both his hands again. ‘I love you. And I’m sorry I never told you.’
He sighed, suddenly serious again. ‘I want to say it’s okay. But, honestly Neens, I’m not sure that it is.’ The anger in his eyes turned to pain right in front of her. ‘I had to listen to you being assaulted over the phone. That scream …’ His eyes filled. ‘I’ll hear that scream in my dreams until the day I die, and, still, nothing will ever be more terrifying than having to hang up on you to call 911 and tell the police to hurry the fuck up because he had you.
‘I didn’t know if they would get there in time. I didn’t know if you would be alive or dead by the time I reached you. And when I finally arrived at your house, you were being carried out on a stretcher. Your face was beaten bloody. You were unconscious. But I thought …’ He held up one finger, exhaled a huge breath as he regained his composure. ‘I thought you were dead.’
‘Markus—’
‘And, yeah,’ he kept going, ‘I get not wanting it public. ButIdeserved to know.Iwould have guarded your secret until you were ready. It would have been hard not to kill him,’ he clarified. ‘But I would have done it.’
Nina hated that she had hurt him, and she didn’t know what to say other than, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘At some point, you’re going to have to realize that it’s okay to let people in, and that not everybody is going to betray you eventually.’ He sighed sadly. ‘God, Nina, I have over a decade of friendship proving my loyalty and you still don’t trust me.’
Nina thought that over, tried to determine if it was true or not. Did she trust Markus? She had always thought so, but it was also difficult to admit that trusting someone meant sharing your secrets with them and knowing they would safeguard them – which she hadn’t trusted Markus to do.
She thought back over their friendship, saw those little imbalances now. If anything – good or bad – happened to Markus, Nina was the first person he called to celebrate or commiserate with. Over the years, she had been there for him through countless break-ups, job loss, even his mom’s death. She had held his hand and let him cry. She had come, bearing pints of ice cream and, once, when a man had broken Markus’s heart unexpectedly, the materials to make a voodoo doll. She had listened. She had been present. She had been a good friend.
But had she ever, even once, called him with her own problems?
It was humiliating and upsetting to realize that the first time she had fully relied on their friendship had been after the assault, and even then, she’d been in the hospital and Markus hadn’t given her a choice.
‘I think,’ she said after a long while, ‘that growing up, I never had anyone to teach me how to trust. My mom … She betrayed me more times than I can count. And it’s hard,’ she insisted, ‘to learn trust as an adult when your entire childhood was spent staying safe by learning to be wary and cautious. But I’ll try,’ she promised.
Markus gave her a soft smile. ‘Can I be petty for one more second?’
She nodded.
‘You told Mav – a man you’ve known for two weeks – and not me.’
‘I didn’t.’ Nina frowned. ‘He pieced most of it together, I think. But he only really caught on today when … when Alex came …’
Seeing her struggle, he took her hand. ‘Okay. It’s shallow and weak, but that makes me feel a little better.’
