Page 186 of The Comedown

Does it? At times hate may feel just as strong as love, but in actuality, it isn’t nearly as powerful. Hate can’t heal, or lift, or promise, or persevere. Hate is like a chokehold—you can fight it, or you can succumb to it, but the choice is always yours to make. Love is like poison—you don’t get a choice at all, only an antidote steeped in time and distance after you’ve already been infected. Where hate can disappear at a moment’s notice, it can take years for the potency of love to lessen.

Bodee mistakes the two because he’s never known true love, not even for himself.

“Besides, none of this will stick.” He waves a hand at what sounds like Julian being carted off by the officers, cursing as he goes. “Your boyfriend’s a drug addict and you’re a whore. Nothing you two say can touch me.”

“Is that so?” I ask with a chuckle, showing him how wholly unconvinced I am.

“Yes. It is,” he bites out.

“Back when we were together, you used to be quite the force. You could get anyone to do anything you wanted with the snap of your fingers alone. Then, you started losing your touch, and it took more effort from you.”

The edges of his lips quiver, but he tries to hide it, saying, “You’re lying through the teeth I paid for.”

He didn’t pay for my teeth. He bought me clear aligners to straighten them…when I was sixteen years old, just a growing teenage girl.

Shaking my head in mock-disappointment, I ignore his jab, and shrug. “Now, it’s almost sad the lengths you have to go through to get people to do your bidding. Your name, your legacy, your influence, they’re not what they used to be. I performed here tonight and there wasn’t a damn thing you could do about it.”

“Couldn’t? I couldn’t do anything about it?” His voice is harsh and icy like January in the Northeast. “You haven’t seen what I’m capable of yet.”

I lift my chin to take a step in his direction, my ankle screaming from the weight shift. Perhaps Bodee got his wish and I broke my leg after all.

“What are you capable of? Really? Oppressing my career? Maybe back when you still had some balls on you, but certainly not now.” I eye him up and down. “I just played The Mousais—a gig I earned myself. Nothing you say can touch me. I’m untouchable.” And because I know men like him hate, absolutely hate, being laughed at, I laugh. I laugh so hard and so loud, it borders on maniacal, but it does the trick.

Bodee roars, “I’m untouchable, you stupid cunt!” He grabs one of my arms while simultaneously silencing me and the rest of the amphitheater.

If a pin dropped in here, it’d trigger an earthquake; it’s that quiet. Save for Bodee’s voice of course. The vein in his forehead bulging, he yells in my face, “You got The Mousais the same way you got me, by spreading your goddamn legs! Julez didn’t make you, I did! And just like the last time you forgot that, I’m going to enjoy reminding you!”

“By ordering John Davies to rape me again?”

Ordering Jack to do that the first time wasn’t to punish me or make me more agreeable like I used to believe. It was to break my spirit, to break me, by either the act itself or the subsequent miscarriage they were hoping to elicit. But even if it had, even if they’d succeeded with their plan, it wouldn’t have lasted forever. A woman is who and what she wants, whenever she feels like it, and eventually I would’ve found myself again.

Like now.

After years of living in fear of Bodee, I can finally feel the collar binding me to him molting away from my throat.

Bodee lowers his voice, bragging, “I wouldn’t have to order it. After weeding through the thousands of photos I’ve collected of you over the years, he’d do it voluntarily. After I took my turn with you.”

A collective gasp finally penetrates Bodee’s belligerent stupor, and he blinks, glancing around like he’s just been startled awake from a bad dream.

I seize my moment to lean in close, telling him, “Legends may not die but villains do. You’ll be lucky if there’s anything left for the worms to feast off your corpse when I’m done with you. Rest uneasy, Bodee, I’m coming for you.” Then I rip my arm out of his hold, standing entirely on my own as I stare unflinchingly in his cold, calculating eyes to let him see I will no longer be cowed by him.

I run my gaze over Jack next, sitting with his head between his knees, and tell him, “Enjoy your freedom because you’re going to prison.” Maybe not tonight or tomorrow, but I’ll see to it myself Jack ends up behind bars. “I hear a pretty face is a hot commodity in there… Looks like you’re screwed.”

To both, I say, “See you in the courtroom. I’ll be the one up on the stand, testifying against you.”

I will not be cowed by any man.

From the sound of it, I probably won’t be the only woman pressing charges against Bodee or Jack, but if it comes to that, I’m ready to battle them alone. Self-preservation might’ve passed as an excuse for not going after Bodee Keys before, but not anymore. Not after discovering there could possibly be more victims.

Bodee’s reign of terror in this business and in my life is over.

Collette

“Axel found him,” Irelynn says, looking up from her phone.

“Where?”

Julian bailed himself out of jail before I could, so we’ve been holed up in my hotel suite, staring at our phones, searching for him ever since. His own phone’s going straight to voicemail, and nobody’s seen him, not even Bare.