Page 43
“Oblivious,” I read aloud. Tearing the page free, I place it on top of the newspapers. Consider it a gift, or a stalemate. Since I evidently can’t destroy her, I can at least offer a few home truths.
“You can edit what others say or think about you, but it won’t be enough. This is your story, whether you like it or not. This is where you need to start.” For a moment, I’m certain she’s going to stubbornly deny everything I’ve said, but instead, her attention drops back down to the drawing again. The words reflect in her eyes, her breath becoming shallow. Black ink stains the side of her finger from the marker that is still clutched in her hand. She looks unsettled, slightly violated, and incredibly exposed. I know that feeling better than most, but I don’t try to comfort her. It’s not my place.
Yet, the longer I watch her, the clearer a fresh perspective becomes. If I can’t have Everest, if I’ve already lost whatever version of him could have belonged only to me, then maybe this is my last fuck you to Nicholas. He wants Everest to date Meg because they look good for the cameras.
What Nicholas doesn’t realize is that Meg won’t obey his demands. She won’t pose and smile how he orders. She’s not the prop he thinks will become his newest puppet. All this time I’ve been trying to make Meg weak, but to survive Nicholas, she’ll need to be the opposite. That unwavering resolve Everest loves so much needs to make a reappearance, immediately.
My eyes roam her delicate face, my fingers twitch as if I’m preparing to touch her. To reassure her, or I don’t fucking know, hug her? Whatever it takes to start repairing the damage I’ve caused, to prepare her for the shitstorm that’s coming her way. She may have survived Harrison, but Nicholas isn’t an ex-con in hiding. He’s the devil in a designer suit, and he’s far closer than she realizes. Luckily, before I make an ass of myself, the bell shrieks from across campus.
Meg jerks slightly, the fragile bubble between us shattering beneath the sudden shift of students and voices rising throughout the studio. I close my sketchbook in one smooth move and shove it into my satchel, using the motion to rebuild the expression people have come to expect of me. Bored, detached, mildly cruel. It’s far easier to keep my secrets when everyone is hesitant to approach me.
Standing and slinging my bag over my shoulder, the books knock against my ribs, and I suppress a groan, just. Nodding to myself, I turn to leave until a hand catches my wrist. Freezing in place, my heart slams forward as if it didn’t get the memo. I glance down at the light touch, tender fingers brushing the thin scar across my wrist. Meg releases me on instinct, as if she’s just as surprised as I am. Raising my pierced brow, I remain in place, waiting for her to lick her lips and pretending I didn’t track that motion.
“You were wrong about one thing,” she declares, building her resolve back up brick by brick. Picking up the black marker, she draws one decisive line through a single word on the page. Alone. The strike is heavy, packing a weight behind it that is mirrored in her expression. Then she stands, lifting the paper like she means to give it back.
“I was never alone.” For a moment, all I can do is look at her. Not at the sketch, but at her. Her features are set with determination, and although I hate myself for it, I see the appeal. I see why Everest can’t resist making her look at him this way. Unlike us, she doesn’t have to fake bravado. She exudes it. Even now, when anyone else would be sending every day crying into their pillows or hunting for a way out, she’s here, standing tall and thrusting my page back at me.
“Keep it,” I manage to say despite my throat closing in on itself. “It’s not my story, remember?”
Then I leave before she can start to read me instead, heading out of the studio without looking back. I don’t have a destination in mind, only wherever my feet take me to ease the pulsing in my ribs, the throbbing in my skull, and the unfamiliar notion of doing something not entirely selfish.
I will love Everest until my dying breath, but I no longer hate him for not choosing me. I no longer resent him for having the chance at an ordinary life with the girl he wants on his arm. I no longer want to destroy Meg so that I might be able to win. The revelation eases the throbbing in my head, my chest feeling lighter than it has in years, even if I’m unsure where that leaves me.
Chapter Twenty Two
I made a mistake. Many mistakes, actually, but the most recent is missing my pre-sleep smoke. In doing so, I should have expected the hands that would find me as soon as I closed my eyes, yet somehow, I’m still as shocked. Brutal hands carved from the same unforgiving marble that holds up Calloway Manor. Nicholas’ hands.
He taught me early that there are a thousand different ways to make a person feel small, and only half of them leave marks. In the throes of a nightmare, they are everywhere. Around my throat. In my hair. Curled around the back of my neck as I kneel on polished hardwood that smells of lemon wax and my dried blood.
No matter how far I crawl, those hands find me, dragging me back to the center of a room that keeps changing. One second, I’m in the dining room with a broken wine glass buried in my palm and red wine spreading across the marble. The next, I’m in the manor’s corridor, the floor too bright beneath the chandeliers with a smear of blood leading away from me. For once, I don’t seem to be the culprit.
Placing one arm in front of the other, I drag myself forward, following the trail toward a figure slumped at the far end. My heart clenches in my chest. Everest? Desperation powers my broken movements, drawing me closer inch by inch. The smell of copper fills my nostrils, my scream trapped within my own throat.
The dream shifts again, and suddenly, I’m almost on top of the figure. My hands slip through the blood, brushing aside long hair of chestnut brown to reveal a delicate face. Huge blue eyes look up at me, swimming with tears and fear. Not Everest. Meg.
Nicholas is behind me before she can scream a warning, his hand tightening over my shoulder, but I don’t feel the pain of his grip. I feel the frantic cling of hers, our slick palms struggling to maintain their hold. The hitch of her breath scrapes through my chest. The tremble in her fingers vibrates against mine.
She’s not mine to save. I know that, yet with no sign of Everest, I refuse to let Nicholas drag me away again. Shoving him off, I curl around her small, broken body and take every punch, kick, and snarled insult he throws at me. This is what Everest would have wanted, I try to reason with myself, but there’s another truth surfacing.
She’s suffered enough. She’s suffered at Harrison’s hand, then mine. I won’t let Nicholas get near her. I know the shape of his rage, the effects of his anger. It’s enough to break a person, even Meg with all her stubborn pride. Call this my redemption, locked in the recesses of my mind, taking agony in her place.
Eventually, finally, Nicholas relents, dragging himself away with long scuffs of his dress shoes and the breath sawing out from between his teeth. I hold her still, waiting in case he comes back. After an age, when I realize we’re safe for now, I brave a look down, only to have the breath knocked out of me too.
Meg stares up at me as if I’m the only solid thing left in a world determined to keep breaking beneath her. Her blue eyes are too wide, tears trailing in thick rivulets through the blood coating her cheeks. Even so, beneath the damage, beneath the tremble of her lips and the fragile rise of her chest, there’s still that stubborn spark refusing to go out. Even in my nightmare, Meg pulls herself upright, a small nod steeling her spine. I choke on an incredulous laugh.
Who gave her the right to keep bouncing back time and again? Who taught her that she can fight off any foe with an upward tilt of her chin? And since when did I start to resonate with the way she bleeds? Survival is all I know, and now she’s lying in my arms and looking straight at me, I also know that I was wrong. I could never have broken her.
Gently releasing my arms, I push to move back. I wish she’d simply let me go. Instead, Meg reaches out to grab my bicep. I halt, closing my eyes before I can see her expression. Her hatred would be so much easier to handle, her disgust at the person I am and the things I’ve done. That’s what I should be focusing on. Not trying to become some second-rate version of a hero who has no right to even dream about her in the first place. Not seeming to get the memo, Meg crawls closer, her nose brushing the shell of my ear.
“You were never alone either.” The words split me open, and I wake with a gasp sharp enough to tear through my ribs.
For several seconds, I don’t know where I am. My room is dark, the air stale with paint, smoke, antiseptic, and the metallic tang of panic coating my tongue. My music has stopped at some point, leaving behind a silence so thick, it presses painfully against my ears. My bedsheets are twisted around my legs, damp with sweat, and my bandaged palm throbs as if I’ve truly crawled across broken glass.
Fuck, I haven’t gotten myself in this much of a state in a long time. I’d almost started to believe I was numb to my own mind, immune to the recurring agony Nicholas continues to inflict, even when he’s not here.
Sitting upright too fast and immediately regretting it, pain shoots through my ribs until my vision flickers at the edges. The images come crashing back. Nicholas standing in the corner, Meg on the floor, and as a new addition, Everest standing in the center of us all, looking torn apart by the choice he still hasn’t made.
Blinking away the pain, I find myself alone once again, contrary to whatever Dream Meg thinks. There’s no one here except the canvas I forgot to turn around before slumping into bed last night.
