He takes a deep breath and exhales slowly, wiping his hands on his pant legs. He shifts in his seat. Clears his throat and shifts again. I’ve never seen him nervous like this, and my heart starts pounding in anticipation. How can he possibly explain this mess away? How can he say anything to make it better?
He stares out the windshield for a moment before his eyes slide back to mine. And he begins.
“All my life, I’d done everything I was supposed to. Everything my parents wanted. I never rebelled like Eli or slacked off like Junior. I was the favorite. The overachiever, the most driven, the one who applied themselves. And then…I met Melanie.” I wince when he says her name, I can’t help it. Landon’s frown deepens, but he continues on. “I’d always been surrounded by the same type of people, in private school, in college, in my parents’ social circles. Melanie was…different. She was intriguing. She tried hard to fit in, but she wasn’t like the rest of us, and when we started dating, I liked that about her. I know you won’t want to hear this, but I was enamored with her.”
Idon’tlike hearing it, but I can’t say I’m surprised. Melanie used to have this sort of magnetism about her. I thought it drew me in all those years because she was my sister, but maybe that’s the way she was with everyone. Maybe she did what she had to in order to get what she wanted. Maybe neither of us really knew her at all.
“After two years of dating,” Landon continues, “we decided to elope. At the time, I thought it was spontaneous and romantic. No one knew because we’d agreed not to tell my parents, who would not only disapprove, but disown me the way they did my brother. I was an idiot who didn’t care and didn’t realize the true consequences of our actions.”
He releases a shuddering breath, his entire body shaking with it.
“Looking back, I realize she was my rebellion. Being with her didn’t alter the things I was truly passionate about—science, research, making a difference—so in that way she was a safe bet. That is, until I realized that my marriage to her directly affected everything I’d worked so hard to achieve at school and in my work life.”
His eyes grow distant. “After we were married, her personality…shifted. That’s the only way I can describe it. It didn’t happen all at once. It was gradual over time, but eventually, I felt like I was waking up next to a stranger instead of the woman I married.”
“Why?” I ask. “Why did Mel change?”
“I don’t know if she changed or if she just stopped putting on this…front. A part of me thinks she realized that this new life wasn’t going to fix all her issues, thatIwasn’t going to fix her issues, and she blamed me for it. There’s something going on in her, some unresolved pain, or anger, or fear she’s harboring deep down that made her this way. I’m still not sure if she ever loved me, if she was capable of loving me, or if she just loved what I represented. But even money and status couldn’t fix everything.
“When the company took off, I poured my heart and soul into making Prolimbinary a success. I brought my father on as an investor. I spent hours at the office. I wanted a divorce, but if I brought it up, Melanie would threaten to tell my family that we’d been lying to them all this time.”
“Maybe they would have understood,” I cut in.
Landon shakes his head. “I know you want to believe that, Violet.Iwant to believe it, but they wouldn’t have. The stakes were higher than ever, and my dad would abandon the company if he found out about Melanie and me. If he were to pull out as an investor, his contract stipulates that he would need to be reimbursed for his investments by selling off current assets. If my dad left, we’d go bankrupt, and I would lose everything I worked so hard for. And after a few years, it just became the normal way of living. Melanie and I lived separate lives. I found solace in my work and only my work. Melanie was perfectly fine spending my money and sleeping around behind my back. She became manipulative and…abusive.”
My body goes still. My mind hyper fixates on the word he just used. On the weight of it. “Abusive?” I ask carefully. “You mean, like, emotionally?”
Landon pauses, his eyes boring into mine, and then slowly, he shakes his head no. My heart…my heart stops. The world turns upside down.
“Physically?” I whisper, though I don’t want to hear the answer. I can’t hear the answer.
He hesitates, then dips his chin, just barely, in a nod. My breath lurches. This car suddenly feels too small, and the air in here seems too stale. I’m sick to my stomach.
Swallowing, I ask, “She…she hit you?” His eyes never leave mine, almost like he’s using our locked gazes as a lifeline, an invisible thread linking him to me. He dips his chin again, and my brain short circuits. I don’t know what to say. I can’t find the words. “Landon…”
“I don’t know if you remember, but…” He trails off. Clears his throat. Regroups. “I don’t know if you remember, but I had a bruise on my cheek the night you showed up.”
Somehow, I filter through the blind panic and the blatant shock to the part of my brain housing stored memories. I think back to the first night of my arrival. Most of it’s a blur of emotion and adrenaline, but I do remember his face. I remember wondering how he got the bruise—if he’d gotten in a fight.
“I remember.” My voice is barely above a whisper.
“She threw a hair blower at me a few days earlier,” Landon says, and though his outward demeanor is calm, his voice wobbles with a false note only apparent to someone who knows him. I try to process this information, but it’s not computing. “Remember the wine glass?”
“The bandage on your hand?” I ask, recalling how strange Mel acted when I brought up the blood in the garbage can. I was hurt she’d dismissed me so fast. That she’d lied to me about the stitches. Now I understand why.
“She threw it at my face,” he says. “I caught it. I shouldn’t have.”
I shake my head, unable to believe what I’m hearing, wondering how I missed all the signs. But deep down…deep down, I know it’s true. I take a deep breath, wanting to scream. “Is there more?”
“Nothing that left a lasting mark,” he says darkly, which tells me all I need to know. Suddenly, I need air. Lots of air.
I shove open the passenger door and step out into the rain, shutting it behind me. I stare off across the parking lot, sucking in deep breaths. I let the rain soak me through, I don’t even care, and my chin wobbles. I clench my teeth so tight they hurt.
Nothing that left a lasting mark,replays over and over in my head, and that’s when I feel it. An unfamiliar white-hot rage scorching my stomach, flowing through my body like lava, burning me up from the inside out. Pain sears through my chest, and I rub at the skin over my heart as I come to terms with these horrifying truths.
My sister isn’t the person I thought she was.
But she practically raised you,comes that stupid, insufferable mantra I can’t seem to get out of my head.
