I’m shaking as I reach my room, and she puts a gentle hand on my back as I enter my room in just enough time to collapse in hitching sobs on my bed.
She sits with me for a long time, stroking my hair and shushing me like a baby. Her concern is real, and as my crying subsides, she speaks. “It’s not a good idea to care in this place, Ash. It usually ends badly.” I nod numbly at the truth of her words before she continues. “Are you in love him?”
I shake my head in confusion, and as my face scrunches in pain, I open up to her. “No. I don’t know.”
She asks me more questions, and I talk to her. I’m not afraid in the least that anything I tell her will be used to hurt or betray me, and so when she asks about the specifics of our time together, I tell her. I tell her every last detail of the day before and every last detail of Derek’s and my time together. Her eyebrows raise on more than one occasion as I discuss the ways in which we have sex, his rule breaking, his behavior after he watched me touching myself and crying out for him, even his comforting touch at Mr. Grayson’s mansion, and the cloudy, but very real memories of his touch the night before. Every last detail is shared in the graphic way that is only appropriate in a place such as this.
I can tell by the expression on her face she’s shocked by most of what I tell her, and as I finish talking, I add one final admission. “I’m just an idiot. I don’t know what I was thinking, letting myself think he cares. He’s not allowed to care.”
My sobs are coming easily through my words, and my head is shaking in painful exasperation. I must be a truly pathetic sight, and I hate myself for my weakness.
But Liz is quick to comfort, and she talks long and forcefully while holding my hands tightly, and imploring me desperately to listen. I do listen, crying quietly. “I’ve never seen him this way with anyone, Ashton. I mean, my God, the way he is with you… That isn’t the Mr. Pennington we know, and that doesn’t make you an idiot. You’re human. You feel the way you do because of the way he is with you. He’s only doing this to protect you. You said yourself that Mr. Grayson was pissed because Mr. Pennington’s not spending time with the rest of us. That’s why he’s doing this. You know that. You don’t deserve to feel this way. You haven’t done anything wrong.” She’s speed talking, trying to get every last thought in her mind out before I fall apart.
But it’s no use. My tears are streaming down my cheeks at her so-generous words and the genuine heart behind them. Her words are validating, but they don’t make the pain disappear, and long after she’s left my room and I’ve cried my tear bank empty, I make the boldest decision of my life. My pain and sadness have morphed to rage, as they always do, and I have no intention of not confronting him. I throw on my oldest and most tattered jean shorts and T-shirt, looking every bit the disgraceful, normal woman I shouldn’t, and I march the eight feet across the hall to his apartment. I knock and wait, and a few seconds later, the door opens.
“What is it?” He’s cold, his eyes dead.
His expression takes me back to the weeks he tormented us both with his frigid attitude, and I blurt out my first thoughts before my restraints kick in. “Were you going to tell me?”
My eyes tear instantly, and he grabs me by the wrist, pulling me harshly inside his apartment. He pushes me up against the wall by the door with his hands at my waist. His face is contorted and pained. He doesn’t know what he wants to say, and he’s fighting himself incredibly while I watch.
When he speaks, it’s through gritted teeth. “I don’t owe you any explanation about who I choose to fuck. I thought I made that clear to you.”
And, oh God, how those words pierce straight through my heart. My tears boil over, and my body is wracked with a new wave of furious sobs. My face is scrunched as I fight the emotion, and I can’t escape his grasp as he glares into my face.
I want nothing else than to turn this pain to rage, but my wounded heart overwhelms me, and if my pain isn’t enough, he decides to add one further clarification for me to chew on. “You and I … we’re nothing to one another.”
And there’s my fury. My mouth scrunched up in a mad grimace, I reach up, hitting him hard across the face with my open hand. The slapping sound is loud, and instant shock registers on his face. He pauses for only a second before he grabs my wrists roughly, and swiftly plants them above my head, pinning my body to the wall with his own. He’s seething with fury as he glares down at me.
But I’m done caring what he thinks, and I unleash my accusation on him. “You’re a liar,” I snarl at his face, condemning him with my words as he glares back at me. His jaw is clenching, and his nostrils are flaring in his rage. He won’t break my stare, and he won’t release my body, but I have one last attack, and I unleash it with every last ounce of rage I can muster. “I hate you.” My lips tremble, my mouth, my face, my entire body is vibrating in anguish and fury, and as he finally releases my body, I sink against the wall.
His eyes look defeated as he staggers back from me, overwhelmed even, and were I not so filled with loathing for this man, I would pity him. He speaks one more sentence to me on a choked and ragged breath. “Yeah? I knew the second I met you that you eventually would.” And with a defeated and pained shake of his head, he turns and walks away to his bathroom, slamming the door when he disappears within. Moments later, the loud shattering sound of something hitting the wall echoes back to me, along with a ferocious “fuck!”
I return to my room, sinking to my bed. I stare at the ceiling, unable to move, unable to think. I hit him. I could be fired for hitting him, and were I thinking clearly, I’d have realized that could be the most dangerous thing in the world for me. But in the moment, I didn’t care. I wanted him to feel my pain, every last painful stab of it. To be touched so gently the day before when I needed it so much, and then tossed aside in an instant a mere day later was more than I could take.
I stare endlessly at the ceiling, not moving a muscle, and I know the time is near. She’ll be arriving soon enough, and a new wave of jealousy takes me over as I try to stifle it, but it’s hopeless. Veronica is beautiful. She is the perfect hourglass shape and has chestnut hair and freckles. She’s built the way every woman here is built, except for me. Voluptuous and flirtatious. I see him touching her skin, entering her body, thrusting into her as she moans loudly. I hate the images that play so graphically in my mind, but I can’t escape them. I cry, and I curse myself for being so stupid. As the sun falls and the night lights of the city illuminate the skyline, I slip into nightmarish dreams. My dreams are as painful as being awake. They are incessant and persistent, filled with images that make my heart scream. But they don’t last.
I’m brought out of my sleep when my phone rings. I pick it up and hear Liz on the other end. She is talking quickly and quietly. “Nothing happened. She tried to touch him, and he kicked her out before anything happened. She just left my room a few minutes ago.”
While my heart breathes an incredible sigh of relief that I can’t deny, my brain snorts and sends a comment of its own. You might as well get used to this torment, baby. I hang up, wasted and exhausted. My heart has been in knots for hours, and my brain is right. I will feel this pain again, many times over before it is through. And that stills my heart. I ache for him. I want him desperately, but he will, without a doubt, destroy me. With these most depressing thoughts in my mind, I drift off once again.