Say the Word(2)

His eyes were swimming with ghosts, unfocused and far-seeing as he played back memories of our time together. He flinched as the new lens created by my words slipped over his mind’s eye, casting a dark shade on every touch, every kiss, every smile we’d ever shared. His mouth gulped open as if to respond but no sound escaped, and I knew I was dangerously close to the point of no return – a hairsbreadth away from complete and total wreckage.

If I stopped now, if I took it all back, maybe there was still a chance for us. Maybe I could laugh and punch him lightly on the arm and say, You big dummy, don’t you know how much I love you? Don’t you know nothing could ever make me stop?

I kept going.

“Ah, yes, I can see by that wounded puppy-dog look in your eyes that you did believe it.” I forced out another painful laugh. “Well, checkmate, baby. Game over. I win.”

The memory of his face at that moment will haunt me until the day I leave this earth. I’ll never forget the look in his eyes when I said the words that destroyed us – shock, rage, betrayal, grief. The blood drained from his face and he recoiled from me, as though I’d dealt him a physical blow.

I’d heard stories about racehorses who are pushed to their limits, running so fast and so far that their hearts literally burst within their chests mid-race, killing them instantly. At that moment, I wondered vaguely if my own heart might explode — not from physical exertion, but emotional. It beat so fast I could feel my blood pulsing beneath the skin, hear the hollowed out thumping that echoed in my empty chest. My fingernails dug harshly into my palms as I prayed the tears gathering behind my eyes wouldn’t escape down my cheeks.

“You don’t mean that,” he whispered, his voice broken, hollow with disbelief.

“Life isn’t so easy outside your mansion, is it?” I plowed on, headfirst into heartbreak. I felt my heart splinter and dissolve into pieces, the void left in its place quickly filled by a sense of self-loathing stronger than anything I’d ever felt before.

I watched as the lies sunk in and he accepted my words for truth. Saw the hard glint of hatred and distrust cloud over his normally warm hazel eyes. Witnessed the change in his demeanor from welcoming to foreboding, as his shoulders straightened and his chin lifted. He looked down at me with an arrogant frigidity I’d only ever seen him adopt in his father’s presence.

He despises me. The thought nearly brought me to my knees.

You see, the thing about Bash and me was that we didn’t lie to one another. Not ever. So even that day, when I was lying through my teeth for the first time since he’d come into my life, he believed me. He trusted me to tell him the truth.

And I used it to destroy him.

Worse, even though he might hate me, I knew he would never lash out with cruelty or disrespect. In a twisted, backwards kind of way, it might’ve made me feel better to hear him yell and rage against my cruel words, to put up a fight when I broke his heart. But it simply wasn’t in his nature to lose control in front of other people – especially not those who’d hurt him. He accepted my words with grim resolve and, true to his blue-blooded upbringing, banished any pain deep down, where no one could see. His expression was calm – an unrippled lake on a windless day – but his eyes were a turbulent sea, offering the only glimpse of his devastation.

“Goodbye, Lux,” he said in a strangled voice, stuffing his hands into his pockets and staring at me with that quiet intensity he constantly radiated. The look in his eyes undid me.

I drank him in, knowing full well it was the last time I’d ever see him.

“Goodbye, Sebastian,” I choked out, my voice catching as I said his name.

I turned quickly so he wouldn’t see the tears that had finally broken free and walked away from the love of my life, leaving my heart behind.

I never let myself look back. Not even when I heard the unmistakable sound of a fist repeatedly hitting the trunk of our oak tree with enough force to strip away a layer of bark.





Chapter Two





Now


I’m not a bad person.

I vote, I pay my taxes on time, and I make funny faces at babies in the supermarket to make them laugh. I tear up at those awful animal cruelty commercials Sarah McLaughlin is always singing on, and I shower on a regular basis. I donate to charities even though I’m still juggling monthly student loan and car payments on top of my rent and grocery expenses. I stay out of the drama at work because work is hard enough to get through without wondering which of my catty coworkers is going to stab me in the back with a knife clutched in her perfectly manicured fingers. I don’t smoke or drink excessively – fine, I admit, occasionally I may indulge in a few too many glasses of Merlot, but nobody’s perfect – and I force myself to go running in Central Park at least three times a week. By anyone’s standards, I’m normal. A girl with her act together. Some might even call me “nice” and, for the most part, they’d be right.

I’m not a bad person.

I’m just not a particularly good one either.

To be fair, you can’t ever really consider yourself a good person when you’ve been singlehandedly responsible for the utter destruction of another person’s happiness. And that’s really the only term you can use to describe what I did to Sebastian Covington all those years ago – I destroyed him. I watched unflinchingly as the life and love drained out of his eyes, and walked away without a backward glance.