But as soon as that thought hits me, a dozen others flicker and fade in my mind’s eye and neutralize the bitter taste of rejection on my tongue: her fluent Dari, the pictures she’d take at night when she’d sneak out time-stamped for proof, secret phone calls in the hallway, keeping her past a secret, so many things that appeared unrelated at the time. But now this common denominator blinking like a huge arrow overhead makes the truth seem so obvious.
But more than anything is the feeling that from day one I was being played somehow, some way. That notion she wiped away with her defiant nature and addictive body. The one she made me forget all about with words like I love you and I can’t. She used me, used false emotions in a real world.
Except my emotions weren’t fake. They were real. Still are real.
She’s gone.
This can’t be real.
But they are saying it’s real. The woman at the front of the room is telling me she pretended she couldn’t shoot a gun when I knew her. That she was faking it and used it as a perfect way to play someone like me and make sure that I believed she was this naive little thing in this big bad far-off land.
I’m completely disengaged during the rest of the briefing, overwhelmed with memories that won’t release me. With feelings on my end that were one hundred percent genuine that now make me feel so ridiculous and yet hurt nonetheless. She wasn’t some little inexperienced freelancer. She was a spy who came overseas, used me for cover, and then when she was done, came back home to her husband and everyday life until it was time for her to leave again on another mission.
An agent who was playing me at every turn. And I had no idea.
I thought I knew her. Thought the love I felt in her touch and saw in her eyes was real. How did I misread every single fucking moment when they were so damn perfect, so sincere, just so much more than I’ve ever allowed myself to feel before?
Dropping my head in my hands, I try to comprehend how I was willing to go back on every single principle I’ve ever held. How was it just hours ago I was more certain than anything I’d ever felt in my life that she was the one? When I got back from this assignment, I was planning to show her I was willing to give up my career for her, take a chance at getting arrested considering the restraining order, and fight like hell to prove that even though she was married, I was the right one for her. Not John. Not anyone else. Just me.
Because it was that fucking real.
But obviously I don’t know shit, least of all what real love is, because every single thing was a lie. A big fat lie.
Why couldn’t she have done her job and been my partner without luring me in? In time I’m sure I’ll understand that maybe she was protecting her family and John back home by saying she wasn’t involved with somebody, but why do this to me too?
But she’s gone. I wish I could ask her, wish I could shake her shoulders and demand an answer, and then I wish I could kiss her senseless and feel her pulse race beneath mine. I’d give anything to get the chance to be mad at her, fight with her, tell her how much I hate her for putting me through this and then leaving me to sort through it all, but I’ll never get the chance.
Rage burns through my veins, leaving ash piles of heartache and disbelief behind. That staunch determination I walked in here with to get the story first, then get the girl and make a life with her is gone just like she is. I have nothing left to hold on to, least of all confidence in my own judgment.
I don’t know how long I sit in the meeting room with a broken heart, an aching soul, and a damaged psyche, but when I break from my thoughts, I realize the conference room is almost empty with a line at the door as people wait to file out. And I really don’t care, because a huge part of me that prefers the dark places I’ve learned so well to hide in after Stella’s death knows that the minute I leave this room, I fear she’ll cease to exist. As much as I’m hurt and angry and devastated, the notion still stabs deep within me because fuck yes she played me, made me fall in love with a woman who didn’t really exist, but the emotions I felt for her were incredibly real to me.
So a small part of me worries that if I step out of this room, I’ll then have to admit it was all a fake, and I can’t do that just yet because, call me a fucking sap, but I still love her. None of this takes that away.
The hand on my shoulder startles me. I’m on my feet and turning around in an instant and without a second thought when I see John’s face before me, my arm is cocked back, my fist flying. I connect with his right eye with a satisfying reverberation traveling up my arm and into my body but abating none of the emotional distress I feel.
“You son of a bitch!” I yell as bone meets bone again, every ounce of emotion I have fueling the impact of the punch. I hate him. I hate him with everything I have because he didn’t protect her. He had her when I didn’t, kept her when I couldn’t, and he failed as a husband to do the one thing he was supposed to do, keep her safe. And I know I’m being irrational and there’s no way he could keep her safe when she was off doing God knows what, but it feels good to unleash my confused fury on someone else for a change rather than let it eat me apart.
“You didn’t keep her safe! I loved her! I loved her!” I shout as flesh gives way to force, my voice breaking, my body vibrating with everything that I refuse to accept.
People in the room move, gasp, and I can’t even process how many punches it takes for one of their hands to grip my shoulders and pull me off him at the same time I realize that John isn’t resisting me. He isn’t even flinching with each punch I land, and all of a sudden it registers that he might be in the same boat as I am. He may have never known Beaux was a spy. He may have just lost the love of his life too.