I hear it now, the annoyance at my worry over Sadie not returning my calls, the groans when I say we can’t take this trip or go to that concert because I need to save the money for Sadie’s school and supplies. The argument over moving in together and my reluctance because there was no space once Sadie came home after school while she looked for jobs. He wasn’t even subtle. He wanted her gone, the responsibility of a little sister to disappear from our future.
He knew I would always choose my sister, so he didn’t give me the choice.
I remember the look of devastation on Grant’s face, realizing that he came swooping into my life just to deliver blow after blow of devastation. It’s the same look on Colton’s face now.
I felt battered and broken by the time we got to Cal Tech and Grant had explained everything to me. I had to rely on someone else to tell me about my sister’s own life and what she had been going through. It was the single worst day of my life, realizing how badly I had let her down, all because I trusted the wrong person.
“I moved out there after, staying close to Cal Tech forSadie, working local jobs and other projects that Grant could find for me until she graduated. We stayed out there for a while after, so Grant could help Sadie set up her security business, always her number one supporter. I owe him everything, not just for Sadie, but for myself. He is the other owner ofCirque, my silent partner. He has been working in the tech world for years, investing in companies, outright buying others. He helped me build connections and showed us the way this world works. Without him, Sadie might not be here and without her…I don’t know what would have happened to me.”
“And what happened to the ex? Once you found out what he did,” Colton asks, his words calculated and cold, like he wants to avenge me and Sadie, years after the fact.
No need, it’s already done.
“I wanted to confront him in person, so I played the part, told him I was just there to visit, and I couldn’t wait to come home to him. I used to work here, so when I came back to get my stuff before I moved, I asked him to meet me here. Told him I wanted him to keep me company while I closed up for the night because I missed him so much. When he got here, Gus helped me give a proper greeting. I asked him why he did it, why he would do that to me. He told me he weighed his options and made the choice for me. He said he washelpingme, that cutting her off was the right thing, that he had done what I was too weak to do.”
The memory shouldn’t bring a smile to my lips, but it’s one I savor. Like any good villain, you remember your first.
“Gus held him, and I held the bat. I told him to weigh his options and pick where he wanted me to strike. Then I made the choice for him. I broke his leg in three places and dropped him at the emergency room on my way out of town,” I tell Colton, waiting on bated breath for the moment I had feared. Showing him the first stain on my heart, the darkness that bledinto my soul and now creeps its way into the picture he painted of me.
He nods, seemingly satisfied by my retribution.
“No one would blame you for what you did, avenging your sister and yourself. And in the end you still did the right thing and brought him to the ER, he’s lucky you didn’t let him bleed out.”
I am no avenging angel, and he’s clinging to this idea that I am somehow redeemable. Reasoning that my actions were justified, scraping together a weak argument to account for the things I have done.
I need him to understand what happened that night and how I chose to get revenge, it didn’t change me. It set mefree.It gave me the permission I had been yearning for, to let the monster out. This isn’t some memory I look back on and wonder how my actions should have been sated, or how I would have been better served reigning it in. The only regret I have is that I was weaker then and my swings didn’t land quite sohard.
“Oh, honey,” I shake my head, bringing up a hand to cup his cheek. “He didn’t get lucky. I didn’t bring him to the hospital because it wasthe right thing to do, or some misplaced regret. I needed to make sure he survived. That he would think of me with every step he took. During physical therapy sessions and rainy days when his stride feels weak, I want him tofeelme.”
Colton doesn’t respond to this, he just keeps his hold of me, reality sinking in as I savor his touch, knowing it might be the last I feel.
“This is who I am. My dark deeds may have started as retribution for a wrong done, but everything after that is because of who I am, at my core. I want you to accept it, Ineedyou to accept it, if this is what you want. You said you didn’t want half measures, that you wanted me, all or nothing,” I lean away from him, gesturing to the bar around us before landingon myself. “This is what myalllooks like, the good, the bad and the wicked.”
Colton opens his mouth to argue, but I need him to think on this, not just react out of fear. To defend his initial want. He’s willfully ignoring the string tethering the rumors that surround my name and the truth I’m laying at his feet.
I’m probably the only woman he will ever want like this, the only one that will need clarity when asked about her body count.
“Please, don’t tell me it’s fine or that it doesn’t matter. Itmattersto me,” I clear my throat, uncomfortable with the raw vulnerability scratching through each word. A foreign sensation to discuss my feelings, and a reminder why I prefer to keep them buried with poor decisions and ex-boyfriends.
“I wanted to be honest with you, because whatever this,” I gesture between us, “is, and whatever you think of me now, I want you to trust me. Ineedyou to trust me, because when I tell you what is going on atCirque,” at this he sits up straighter, his curiosity peaked, “you’ll have a choice to make.”
Make the right one.
22
COLTON
“Cocaine,” I parrot back at Harper as we sit in the back of her town car, heading back toCirque. They say repetition is the best way to retain information, but repeating snippets of her own story back to her is coming across like I don’t understand the gravity of what is happening, or like I’m trying to waste time until the car stops, and I can make a run for it.
I don’t need time to decide, nothing she told me has changed the way I feel, not about her or about Sadie.
She sees herself as a villain, and she might be. A Ringleader moving her subjects through each act and introduction, setting the stage for your demise while you clap and applaud your own downfall. That might make me a fool in the end, but love makes fools of us all.
As she relayed what was going on atCirque, the pieces of Harper’s life started falling into place. The organizations she donates to and charities she helps run. The reason she told me about her and Sadie’s history, why she needed me to trust her. She needed to be sure I would understand andbelievewhy thiscould never be her. She has done terrible things in her past, but she would never risk Sadie in this way, she wouldn’t bring drugs into her home, not after all the harm it's caused her family.
“Yes. A lot of it,” she leans back against the seat, letting her head drop back, taking a single moment to relax before she continues. “After the first bricks were found in the alcohol shipment, I started having Wade help unload and break down the crates for all the shipments, but after that one we didn’t find anything. All the shipments were normal.”
“Wishful thinking to believe this was a one off and they abandonedCirquealtogether?” Though I doubt I would be getting the full story now if it simply ended there.
