Page 18 of Queen of Ruin

“Ooh look who it is!” she yells, throwing her hands in the air when she sees me. A vase of fake flowers lies shattered at her feet and my wall clock is in pieces. “My cheating fucking scumbag of a lover!”

“Mindy, are you fucking insane? Get the hell out of my house!”

“No!” she screams, grabbing an old coffee mug from the table and brandishing it high. “How could you do this to me? Do I mean nothing to you? Do you hate me that much that you’d rather cheat on me than break up with me? What kind of fucked up move is that, huh?!”

“Mindy!” I raise both hands, eyes on the mug. “Put it down.”

“Answer me!”

“We broke up years ago!” I yell back. “You know this! We’ve talked about this!”

“No!” Mindy launches the mug at the wall and it shatters into a hundred pieces on impact. “You’re a liar!”

“No, I’m not. We broke up, remember? I got clean and I spent three years trying to help you get clean. But you refused. Do you remember that? You kept telling me I was an asshole for acting better than you because I didn’t want to live like that anymore. We argued a lot. And then you went and got high and I didn’t see you for three fucking months. I thought you’d died! So when you came back, I ended it. We’re not together anymore!”

“Liar!” She frantically scans the room, but the bare surroundings offer her no other weapons. With a snarl, Mindy storms through to the kitchen and I hurry after her, my heart hammering.

“Mindy, please— Stop! What the hell are you doing?!”

She stands in the middle of the kitchen, chest heaving and lips twisted while brandishing a sharp knife snatched from the kitchen drawer. The blade presses into the soft flesh of her wrist and a single droplet of crimson wells against her pale skin.

“You did this!” she screeches, her eyes wide and bloodshot. “You betrayed me!”

“No, Mindy. No! We’re not together anymore. We haven’t been for years and even—even if we were, okay? That woman? She’s just a friend. We’re not together and I’m not sleeping with her, okay?”

“I don’t believe you! You always do this! You don’t call. You don’t text. You don’t even send a fucking email.”

“The last number I had for you is disconnected, Mindy,” I reply, panting slightly as I inch my way toward her. “I have no way to call you.”

“You could have asked Tech!” Fat tears well in her pale eyes. “I thought you loved me. I thought we were going to be together forever!”

Once upon a time, that was the plan. A messy plan born from a string of days being so high, I couldn’t even spell my own name. Getting married to Mindy felt like the smartest idea I’d ever come up with but deep down, I knew it wouldn’t work. We weren’t together because of any romantic reason. It was pure convenience. She wanted to get high and I had a steady supply.

“Mindy…” Another shuffle forward and my heart pounds harder. One wrong move and that blade will cause serious damage. I don’t need another life-or-death situation on my hands. “You’re right, okay? I should have called. We haven’t spoken in months and I missed you. I should have called. Time got away from me. My fault, Mindy. It’s my fault.”

“Yes, it is!” she sobs, blinking furiously through the tears. “Do you know how much it hurts to see you with another woman? To come here thinking you’re waiting for me, only to see you with another whore?”

“Don’t call her that,” I snap before I can stop myself.

Mindy’s jaw tenses and she lifts her chin, but before she can do anything more with that knife, I surge forward and grab her wrist. With one twist, I wrench her wrist backward and she drops the knife with a cry, then immediately breaks into loud, frantic wails and collapses against my chest.

“Why did you do this?!” she sobs against me. “Why did you hurt me like this?!”

“I’m sorry, Mindy,” I reply, embracing her tightly despite the lick of anger warming under my ribs. “I’m sorry.”

She sags against me and curls both her hands into the back of my shirt, clinging on as if her life depends on it. This isn’t the first time we’ve ended up like this, and it likely won’t be the last.

Maybe I should move.

Mindy sniffles suddenly and leans away from me while wiping her nose on the back of her hand. “I need money.”

“What?” It’s not surprising but what hurts is that, despite the tears coating her cheeks and sparkling against her eyelashes, she doesn’t seem all that upset up close.

“I need money. Tech said you had some rich lookin’ bitch here, so I’ve come for help. You said you’d help me.” Accusation weighs heavily in her eyes. “You said you were sorry, so help me and give me what I need.”

My lips part, but anything I want to say catches in the back of my throat. It was all an act. Of course it was. The yelling and threatening her life, the tears and hugging… all part of her twisted fucking game to get money out of me.

I should have known.