Page 73 of Based on You

"I was never going to ruin your career."

"I don't know that!" My voice spiked, harder than I intended, and I didn't pull it back. "You're a powerful man, Simon. You said it straight to my face. How was I supposed to know what you'd do? You were heartbroken. Powerful people do terrible things when they're heartbroken."

"Yes," he agreed, his voice dropping low. "I was heartbroken. And who broke my heart, Violet?"

I held his gaze, refusing to flinch. My shaking hands stayed clenched at my sides.

"Yes," I admitted, my voice trembling. "I broke your heart. I lied to you. But I was terrified."

"There was nothing to be terrified of." His voice rose on the words, not a yell, but sharp and cutting, each syllable pushed forward. "I read your journal. I knew what you were writing about me. I told you I didn't mind. I told you it didn't bother me at all. And you still chose to lie to my face."

"It wasn't only about you." The raw words came spilling out before I'd shaped them, and I let them come. "Yes, I lied to you. But it wasn't only about you. I was also hiding from my parents. From my colleagues. From everyone. I've been hiding from everyone for years."

"You could hide from your parents and still tell me the truth." He looked at me with devastating steadiness. "All I wanted from you was the truth. Why didn't you think I deserved to know you were someone else?"

"I wasn't pretending to be someone else!" My chest went tight. "What I felt for you was real. Everything that happened between us was real. It wasn't a performance for a book. It wasn't some sick research project. I wasn't sitting in your house collecting material. I was terrified because I was falling in love with you, and I was terrified of what that meant, and I kept putting off the conversation, and then it was too late."

"You've been lying to me this whole time," he said. "It's hard for me to believe any of it."

I just looked at him. My jaw tightened, and I let it.

"Did you track me down here just to fight with me again?" I asked. "What did you come here to do, Simon?"

He stopped cold. He looked down at the patterned hotel carpet. A muscle ticked in his jaw.

"I'm sorry," he finally rasped. "I shouldn't have said I was going to destroy your career. I was blindingly angry. I wouldn't have done it." He looked back up at me. "I'm so sorry, Violet."

I stood with the apology hanging heavy between us. He'd come here and said it. He was standing in a sterile hotel room at eleven in the morning, wearing red-rimmed eyes and yesterday's wrinkled suit, and he'd apologized.

"I'm sorry too," I whispered. "I shouldn't have lied to you. Not about any of it."

He exhaled a shaky, drawn-out breath. "So… what happens now?"

"Nothing," I said.

He stared at me, panic flashing in his eyes. "What do you mean, nothing?"

I'd known this was where we were going. I'd known it deep in my bones since the confrontation in the guest room, since the tearful taxi ride to Sloane's, since I'd lain broken on her velvet couch and felt the heavy shape of something permanently over. I'd known it, and I'd still let him walk into this room, and I was still standing here forcing myself to say it out loud, and it hurt far more out loud than it had trapped inside my chest.

"I mean, I don't think we can get past this." I pressed my trembling lips together. "The fact that you could think I didn't have real feelings for you… that you could believe that horrible story after everything we shared… it tells me you never fully trusted me. And if you don't trust me now, you're going to keep doubting it. You're always going to wonder whether what I felt in those moments was real. I don't want to be with someone who's going to doubt my intentions every time we fight."

"Can you blame me for doubting you?" he challenged.

I looked at him, sad. "That's exactly what I mean, Simon."

He went quiet.

The room held the heavy silence between us. I stood in it, looking at his broken face, and felt the grief of it, the clean, particular grief of something beautiful that couldn't be saved. The love was never in doubt.

We'd done real damage, both of us, dealt from our own deep-seated fears, and those fears weren't going anywhere. He'd always doubt my intentions. I'd always carry the guilt of the lie. Neither of those would shrink with time. They'd just become the walls we were forced to live inside.

"We're both at fault here," I said. "Something beautiful happened between us, and it broke, and I don't think it can be put back together the same way. I don't want this anymore. Not like this. The guilt alone would eat me alive, because I know I did wrong by you, and I don't want to be trapped in something where every day I'm carrying that guilt and you're carrying that doubt. It would bury us both."

He watched me in devastated silence. "So… what happens now, Violet?"

"We go our separate ways."

His mouth pressed into a severe, bloodless line. He stared at me, and I watched his throat bob as he swallowed.