Page 59 of On Your Knees

He doesn’t even fuck me.

I start sleeping in the other room. I wonder if I should leave.

Patrick comes over at one point. I’m in my room, lying in bed, so I don’t hear the words, but I can hear Ethan and Patrick arguing. I hate it because that’s more than I can get from Ethan. With me, he’s wooden.

Then Patrick comes into my room. It’s the first time I’ve seen him without a suit. He looks very different in jeans and a black T-shirt. He looks younger. He looks upset too. He stands over my bed.

He says, “I think you should come with me.”

I don’t respond.

“Ethan can’t take care of you right now. You can stay with me.”

I roll over to face the wall.

“Goddamn it,” Patrick mutters.

He leaves.

Then Ruby comes over.

This time, I’m in the kitchen because I’m so hungry that I feel like I’m going to be sick. When the doorbell rings, I don’t know what to do, but Ethan doesn’t appear, so I go to open it, thinking it will be Patrick again.

Ruby’s lip curls contemptuously at the sight of me.

“Disgusting,” she mutters and pushes open the door, smashing it into my bare feet.

I hop back as she storms into the penthouse, calling Ethan’s name.

We all converge in the kitchen. He’s shirtless, wearing only gray sweats. I worry that he’ll be angry with me for letting her in, but he ignores me to snap at her, “What do you want?”

Her posture in her black skirt and billowy white top is demure, but her voice is sharp when she demands, “Did you see?”

“See what?”

She snags her phone from her purse, pulling something up. She holds it out. I’m closer to her than Ethan is, so I see it first. It’s a picture of Ethan. And me.

It’s him kissing me the other day after we left the church.

Ethan takes Ruby’s phone. He stares at the image. His eyes are bloodshot. There are dark smudges under them like he hasn’t slept. Stubble shadows his jaw. He hands the phone back to her.

Her mouth pinches, maybe at his lack of reaction. “I’ll have to make a statement, Ethan.”

“Fine.”

“If you could’ve just kept this behind closed doors where it belongs. It was bad enough that you attacked John in that bathroom. There were pictures of that too, Ethan, of him disheveled. But at least that happened behind a closed door, so he could say that he slipped and fell.”

“Just get out.”

“You have made it exponentially harder for me to control this narrative. Do you understand that?”

“I don’t care anymore.”

“We could lose everything! And all because of you! Always because of you and the corruption you brought into this family. Get rid of your filthy little whore!”

Ethan shouts, “Get the fuck out of my house!”

As he storms toward Ruby, she scrambles back with a startled cry. She wheels around and hustles out through the entryway, heels clipping frantically. The door thumps shut.