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I thought it had healed. Years of pills and therapy had worked through the scream, buried it, or even healed it. Seeing Max again had reignited it, but it fuelled my response to the offer of his throat or mouth.
As I held my phone, staring at Bunny crying on the screen, all I could hear was the scream. The panic attack ripped through me violently, unhinging and releasing my pain.
He betrayed me. After all that, after everything I let go of and sacrificed inside myself, after the rage and the nerves and him coming after me again and again, convincing me he loved me. He hid the truth at the drop of a hat, all so he could fuck me.
I had to keep breathing. I was choking, propelled outside my body, looking down on myself, curled up in the foetal position, holding my phone like it was the only thing keeping me sane. There was no air. My lungs had given up, and the pain was splitting my heart in two.
I tried to pull myself back into the room.
He might not have known. Max might have only found out when he got to the office. They were going on tour soon. Obviously, he had to plan and rehearse.
Trembling, I lifted my head, clutching my phone and pulling the video up on my phone. I needed to check when it was filmed. Even though Jazz said Bunny had been at it all day, she was eight hours ahead of us. Maybe she got the times mixed up. Maybe she was just wrong.
But I made the mistake of scrolling down too quickly to see the date they posted it.
HoppingMad: How is this SLUT better than our Bun Bun?
The top comment sliced through me, and any sense of control I had vanished. A broken cry followed when I saw the time stamp underneath the video.
There was no air, no space, or reality. The excitement that had fluttered through me at the thought that maybe we really could do it, that Max and I could start fresh and build something new, became a distant memory as I tucked my chin to my chest and laughed, empty and lifeless. I could barely squeeze it out through the tremors racking my body.
With my knees bent to my chest, I forced myself to watch the video. I wanted to be angry at Bun, but she had every right to do this. Even if Max swore their relationship was fake, and even if I’d seen her sneaking off with Damien, they were still engaged. He was still going to be her husband.
I should have listened to that voice, the one that told me to stop. Why did I think I could trust him? Why did I fall for it again after everything I’d been through?
FloppyEars69: What’s that WHORE got against Bunny? How could she do this to her?
I started reading the comments, even though it was drilled into us from an early age: never look at the comments, don’t read articles, don’t listen to or watch anything where people are freely spreading their opinion around with no thought of how it might affect their subject. Mum went through so much at the height of her career, and she learned to shut it all out. She tried to keep us as far away as possible from it. People would say anything they wanted when they could hide behind a screen.
But I couldn’t stop. Thousands of them, all directed at me. They didn’t know who I was, yet the comments were pouring in. People speculating, people sending Bunny supportive messages, but most of all, people simply hating. The words jumped out at me, invading every part of me. I was letting it wash over me in a sea of abuse, and I lay there, taking it.
SLUT. WHORE. BITCH. CUNT.
It was the same as before. Only, instead of Goss’s sinister smile leering at me from the recesses of my mind, it was hundreds of blank faces looming over me, crowding me, descending on me with echoing voices of hate.
I was drowning, breaking, falling, and this time, there was no one to catch me.
Max
Itore through the city like a madman, desperate to get back to Cat. I probably had a new collection of tickets for running red lights but fuck it. As soon as I left, I was terrified that that was it. As soon as I closed her front door behind me, that was her chance to shut down, to run away from me again. And all because I was such a fucking idiot that when saw her smile this morning I didn't want to break it, choosing to treat her like fine china instead of the solid rock she was.
I needed to make sure she was still with me. The confidence from before, when I stormed into her office, past the security guard, past fucking Dom, had dissolved into a pool of panic because we had days of something so fucking pure and real that we couldn’t go back, and if I lost it, I didn’t know if I could cope.
I was leaving tonight.
They had set us up on the other side of town. We were playing alternate nights. There would be time to see her. But it was still a fucking repeat of ten years ago, and if I left now and she disappeared, I’d break. We’d worked it out, we made love — love worth writing in the fucking stars — and I wasn’t giving it up, no matter what excuses she came up with. I knew her well enough to expect her to pull away, but the idea she would actually do it still fucking scared me.
The paps had grabbed photos of me as I shot out of the car and into her building. I was fast, but they still followed me. I had a reputation for punching reporters after they’d hounded us during all of Goss’s bullshit, so they kept back. I barely waved at the security guard as I took the stairs, not trusting myself to stay still in that stairlift of an elevator.
Panting, I knocked on her front door and tried the handle. It was open, so I burst in.
“Cat, where are you?”
It wasn’t like I had lied. I just pushed the truth aside for a few more hours of bliss. Something told me that wouldn’t hold up in Cat’s court of law.
I made a beeline to the bedroom, swamping out the light as I filled the doorway. Curtains pulled tight, she was curled up against the headboard, knees to her chest, the dull light of her phone illuminating her blank face, and she was scrolling. She didn’t even look at me. She just sat there, scrolling, her thumb mechanically working the screen.
She let me stand there, basting, trying to figure out what was going through her mind. Blind panic set a wild tempo in my heart, and I gripped the door frame. Why did she look like that? Why the fuck was she so small?
