Cavemen. Definitely cavemen.
I AM WALLOWING IN MYmisery. Yes, wallowing, because I see now Ellie will never be able to forgive me. I took it too far and ruined any small chance I had with her.
I won’t beg her to stay when she walks into this room and demands to go home. I won’t crack or crumble until she’s gone. I did this. And I’ll face the consequences. My heart sinks a little further. Tomorrow, I’ll disappear. Go so deep undercover that I’ll forget this life, and any other life ever existed, and hopefully one day forget Ellie exists, too. Because the memory of her will slowly destroy me. Like it is now. She’ll never understand the effect of those few precious weeks. How she changed me. How I loved her.Loveher.
I hear the front door creak open, and my insides petrify. I can’t allow myself to feel anything or I’ll never survive her leaving again. I’m on the brink of a meltdown already.
“Hi,” she says unsurely as she stands in the darkness on the edge of the room.
“Hi,” I respond desolately.
The silence stretches for a long time before Ellie takes a deep breath and crosses the living room to where I’m sitting on the couch, the moonlight spilling through the windows highlighting her slim body and bare feet.
“Can I sit?” she asks¸ fiddling with her fingers nervously.
I gaze up at her with just my eyes, hoping she sees a steely look instead of a dying man.
“Of course.”
Ellie climbs onto the couch, tucking her legs underneath her, sitting much closer than I expect.
“Kayne, I’m sorry.”
“For what?” I ask floored. The last thing I expected from Ellie was an apology.
“For getting upset and throwing wine at you. I think I was harboring some residual anger.”
I actually laugh. “Ellie, you have nothing to be sorry for. I deserved it. That, and so much more. I just wish . . .” I swallow the emotion that’s trying to choke me. “ . . . I just wish you could find a way to forgive me.”
“Forgive you? I forgave you a long time ago. Trust is the problem. I trusted you.” Her voice strains and my heart twists. “After everything you put me through, I still trusted you, and then you betrayed me. I didn’t know what to believe anymore. First, you were one person, then you were another, and then you were someone entirely different. I felt so used. So humiliated. So stupid.” Angry tears start to well in her eyes. It’s clear she had already been crying from her smudged mascara, and here she is about to do it again. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to make her smile as much as I’ve made her cry.
“Ellie, I’m sorry.” I try to reach for her, but she pushes me away.
“Please let me finish. You were right when you said I liked being yours.” It sounds like that was very hard to admit. “And after you pulled the rug out from under me, I hated myself for it. I hated you. I was ready to give up everything for you. I was content,” she says tormented.
I have no idea how to respond to that, so I just apologize again. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” she snaps frustrated. “Just tell me why. Why did you feel the need to take it to such an extreme?”
“Why did I need to take it to such an extreme?” I repeat her question, running through the thousands of answers I had come up with over the last year because I knew this conversation was inevitable. “Part necessity, part appearance, part selfish desire,” I answer truthfully. Because right now, the truth is all I have to give.
Ellie looks at me confounded.
“I didn’t know you’d become so important in such a short amount of time.” Now I’m the one who sounds tormented.
“What?” She shakes her head not understanding.
“Those few hours sitting together on the couch during Mark’s party.” I start to recount. “Talking, laughing, flirting. I didn’t want the night to end, and I never wanted to let you go. But my life was so complicated, I wasn’t sure how much I could give. Then Javier showed up and everything spun out of control. I knew what he was capable of, I’d seen it firsthand.”
I tighten my fists from the traumatic memories.
“Women, so many women . . .” I get a headache just thinking about it. “Crawling around the floor like animals. Stuffed into cages so small they were hunched in a ball, all of them starved and abused.”
“What? Why?” Ellie asks horrified.
“Money. Some of them were for his personal use. Most were to be sold off as sex slaves.” Ellie turns pale. The light may be dim in the room, but the color of her skin unmistakable. “But that’s not the worst part,” I continue, on a mission to make her understand. “I visited his home once. Three months before he came to the States. While I was there, he made a habit of abusing one of them nightly. Screams . . . all night I heard them scream, like he wanted to make a point. He wanted me to know exactly who I was dealing with, and unfortunately, he made an impression. I’ll never deny it. The sounds still haunt me.
“But the last night was the worst. God, what he put that poor girl through.” I still get sick thinking about it. “She screamed for hours until I finally couldn’t take it anymore. If there was ever a time I was going to chuck it all, it was that moment. But just as I was about to leave my room and go on a murderous rampage slash suicide mission, it all stopped. A little while later, I heard digging in the backyard. That’s when I saw her, lying dead on the ground, mutilated beyond recognition. Her bloody and contorted body looked like a prop in a horror movie. She almost didn’t even seem real. I watched sickly while one of his thugs dug her shallow grave.”
