Page 122 of What You left in Me

I stare at him until my eyes sting. “I hate that you’re right.”

He nods again, like he’s shelving it. “Hate me, then. I can take it.”

“I know,” I say, and that’s the worst part.

He turns like he’s going to leave. I think he will. I think I should let him. But my mouth, and honestly, at this point, who is in charge of my mouth, says, “If you ever use me to make a point again, I will take that anklet off and throw it into the lake and then I’ll jump in after it just to make sure it’s dead.”

Something like a smile ghosts over his face and then dies, appropriately. “Noted.”

“Don’t you dare say ‘good girl.’”

He doesn’t. He just looks at me like he’s memorizing the shape of my anger and tucks his hands into his pockets so he won’t do something stupid, like touch me. “Dinner is at seven,” he says, absurdly practical. “Eat something before.”

“I’m not a fainting goat.”

“You’re a human with low blood sugar and terrible coping mechanisms,” he says. “Eat.”

I want to throw a hydrangea at him. I settle for rolling my eyes with such force I might sprain them. “Go away.”

He does, finally, the gravel crunching under his shoes like punctuation marks. I watch him until he vanishes around the hedges. The ache doesn’t go with him. It sits in my chest like a tenant who pays in drama.

I walk back to the house on legs that feel like someone else’s. Inside, the hall mirrors everyone but me. Lydia looks up from rubbing down the silver, reads my face, and decides to rub harder. The study door is shut again.

In my room, I close the door and lean against it, forehead to wood, heartbeat where the hinge can hear it. The evening light slides across the floor, slow and honey-thick, and I stand in it like I’ll learn photosynthesis out of spite. My cheek throbs in time with the clock. I touch it and think, absurdly,powder can only do so much.

His phone, the way he saidmy mother is dead… It all replays in my head on loop. I cross to the window and look at the lake until it looks back.

I press my palm to the anklet through my jeans. “I hate you, Mom,” I whisper into the room, into the glass, into the shadow.

Chapter 37 – Finn – Ruin & Redemption

I pour two fingers of bourbon and stare into the glass.

Do I regret it? No. Not the truth. Not the way I put it on the table and made Eleanor choke on it. I regret one thing only: the look on Ariane’s face when the world tilted. Betrayal like a flood. Tears she tried to swallow. A sound in her throat I still hear in the goddamn drywall.

I finish the bourbon. My room’s lamp throws a coin of light across the desk; contracts sit in their folders pretending money is still interesting. My MacBook pretends like I’m in the mood to listen to jazz. But I keep seeing Ariane under that chandelier, hand on her cheek where Eleanor struck her, eyes on me like I was the gun and the shield, and she couldn’t pick which to hate more.

“Fuck,” I say, tipping my head back.

I don’t regret a goddamn thing. I tell myself that twice. Three times. The fourth time it sounds almost like a question.

My phone buzzes.

Eric:You good?

He means: Did you get what you wanted and is the house still standing.

I type:Yes. For now.Then put the phone face down and let the drink stare at me.

She’ll come. I know she will. Because we are a bad habit and a religion and a relapse at once.

I count to a hundred and then to two hundred to trick myself into patience.

When the door opens without a knock at three twenty-four in the morning, I’m still on my desk, waiting.

Hair loose, eyes rimmed red, mouth set in a line I want to bite. She’s shaking. If rage were electricity, she could power the estate.

“You,” she says, and the word is an indictment.