Like Gravity(90)

I jolted awake at the sound of my window sliding open. Sitting up on my bed, I grabbed for my cellphone on the nightstand and frantically pressed the button to turn it back on. I could hear someone maneuvering through the window just as my phone blinked alive.

I was halfway through dialing 911 when I saw that the feet descending through my open window were stuffed into familiar black motorcycle boots, their scuffed toes apparent even in the dark room.

Resignedly, I switched off my phone screen and stowed it back on my bedside table. I sat on the bed, arms crossed, and watched as Finn tumbled through the window, losing his balance and nearly face-planting in the process.

When he righted himself, his eyes instantly cut across the room and locked on mine.

“Hi,” he said, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jeans, and making no move to approach me.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, my tone unwelcoming and my demeanor frigid.

“Well I climbed the tree–” he began.

“I asked what not how,” I said, cutting him off.

“I had to see you, Bee,” he said, staring at me with a desperate look in his eyes. “I don’t know what’s going on. It’s not fair that you’re clearly so angry, when you haven’t even told me what I did to piss you off.”

“Not fair? Not fair?” I asked, my voice scathing. “That’s rich – you talking about what’s fair.”

“What?”

“Don’t play dumb, Finn. If you’re going to be here, wasting my time, the very least you can do is be honest.”

“Brooklyn…” He held his hands out in surrender, as if he was trying to calm me. As if I could be calmed, at this point.

Is he freaking kidding me?

I’d thought I had it under control, thought I could get through this confrontation without losing it, but it was just too much. Seeing him here like this…still lying to me, still pretending…

I snapped.

“Tell me a story, Finn,” I said, my voice bleak. His face drained of color as the familiar words registered with him, and he realized that I knew.

That I’d remembered.

I walked across the room, approaching him where he stood utterly still. I could see the vein in his neck throbbing with each heartbeat, his neck and shoulders straining with tension as he held himself immobilized. His eyes were slightly narrowed, filled with wariness, indecision, and what looked a lot like fear as he waited to see what I would do.

When I reached him I got right up into his face, pushing aside my pain and channeling every swirling emotion inside me into one singular feeling: betrayal.

“TELL ME A STORY,” I screamed in his face, my control shattering to pieces.

He flinched, but otherwise remained still and silent, with his gaze locked on mine.

“Fine,” I said, my breathing labored as I looked into his dark eyes. They were heavily guarded, concealing whatever he was feeling from me. “Then I’ll tell you a story. It’s about a little girl who lost everything, who had nothing left. Nothing and nobody to call her own. Until she met a boy, and for a while he became her everything.” My voice broke on the last word and I cursed inwardly, determined to hold myself together through this.

There were things that needed to be said, and since he’d forced this confrontation, they were going to be said right freaking now.

Hauling a breath into my lungs, I forged on. “But that boy, the one who gave her back a piece of herself? He’s a liar. He’s a manipulator. So even though that little girl, who wasn’t so little anymore, had trusted him to glue back together her broken fragments…even though she thought he could make her believe in happy endings again…even though she thought he would be the one to erase all her scars…”

Tears were leaking from my eyes now, and my voice grew shakier with each sentence I forced out.

“The little girl was wrong. The boy couldn’t be trusted, any more than all the other men in her life who’d let her down. He’d spun deceit and deception until she couldn’t tell reality from the lies anymore; until she knew there would be no happily ever afters for her. Not ever.

“Because she was broken, irreparably, for the second time in her life. That glue the boy had used to piece her back together wasn’t strong enough, wasn’t true enough, to hold her together. It slipped and crumbled, and all her pieces fell and shattered worse than they’d been in the first place.”

I’d lost all control by this point; tears were streaming down my face and Finn looked like a shadow of the man I’d come to know; he looked as haunted as I felt inside.

“I suppose I should thank you,” I said, a bitter laugh slipping through my lips.

He held his silence for a beat, then whispered, “Thank me?” His voice was rougher than I’d ever heard it, devastated and lacking any of his typical self-assurance.

Good. He should be broken too.

“I thought that I was strong, that my walls were impenetrable, until you came into my life and proved just how weak I really was. I actually thought I was safe with you,” I laughed mirthlessly, looking up at the stars painted across my ceiling. “So thank you, Finn, for showing me my own fragility. I’ll be sure not to make the same mistakes in the future.”

“Bee–” he started.

I cut him off. “Don’t. You don’t get to call me that anymore.”