I draw in a breath, both for courage and to try to quell the way my body is trembling. My stomach twists violently, and I’m certain I am going to be sick. I shove it all down. I have to do this. I have to. I imagine that scalpel tight between my fingers and then, in what I have to acknowledge as bitter irony, I cling even tighter to Damien’s hand, fighting that craving for a blade. For the pain.
“I can’t do this anymore,” I finally manage to say. “I can’t live with the secrets and the half-truths and the obfuscation.”
I see shock in his eyes, then pain, and my heart twists.
Very slowly, very carefully, he says, “What are you talking about?”
“Sofia. She was in those photos and you didn’t tell me. Richter abused both of you together and you didn’t tell me. And you did kill Richter, Damien. You killed him to protect her.” I do not look at him. I cannot let him see that I do not blame him.
“Everything I told you about that night was true,” he says. I can hear the tight grip he has on control. Any tighter and it will shatter. “All I did was leave out the reason for the fight.”
“Sofia.”
“He was going to start whoring her out.” The words are as rough as sandpaper. “The son of a bitch was going to whore out his own daughter.”
“I see.” I speak calmly even though my blood runs cold. “But that doesn’t—that doesn’t change anything.” I am wishing for some sort of solution to fly down from the sky. For a magical bubble to swoop in and carry us off. But there is no bubble. There is only cold, hard reality. “I meant what I said. I can’t—I can’t do this anymore.”
I feel the lie pressing against me. I grab it and wrap it tight around me like a cloak. Because I need this lie. This lie has the power to save Damien even as it is ripping me apart. “I can’t live knowing that there are more and more secrets underneath,” I continue with my rehearsed words. “I can’t go on pretending the shadows don’t bother me.”
“Nikki.” His voice is tight and controlled, but I think I hear a hint of panic underneath, and my heart twists. All I want to do is hold him. All I want is to feel his arms around me.
I stand, afraid that if I don’t get out of there fast, I will back down. And I can’t risk destroying Damien. Not when I’m the one who can save him. “I need to go. I—I’m sorry.”
I turn and hurry toward the elevator, but he doesn’t let me get away. He grabs my elbow to stop me, and I jerk it back. “Dammit, Damien, let me go.”
“We are going to talk about this.” The veneer of shock that had been all over him only moments before has changed to something brash and volatile. I see the anger building in his eyes, about to explode out past the pain, the hurt, the confusion.
“There’s nothing to talk about. Everything is a secret with you. Everything is a challenge. Everything is a game. This stuff about Sofia. That crap you pulled with Lisa.” It is both easy and hard to say these words. Easy, because they are true. Hard, because though his secrets and shadows drive me nuts, I have accepted them as part of the man that I love. And now I am turning that around, bastardizing it in order to create an escape route.
But I have to. I just need to remember that I have to.
“Goddammit, Nikki, do not come in here and dump this on me and expect me to shrug it off and be done with you. I love you. I am not letting you walk out of this room.” His wounded eyes are scanning my face, and I know I have to get out. Have to run before he sees the truth under this mountain of lies.
“I love you, too,” I say, because it is the only truly honest thing I’ve said since I walked in this room. “But sometimes love isn’t enough.”
I see the shock on his face, and I turn and hurry again toward the elevator. This time, he doesn’t follow, and I don’t know if I’m relieved or brokenhearted.
I step on, keeping my chin high and my eyes wide and dry. Then, as the elevator doors snick shut, I see Damien fall to his knees, his face a mask of pain and horror and loss.
I slide down the polished wall and, finally, lose myself to the violent shaking of my sobs.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I keep Sofia’s scalpels, and every time Damien calls I squeeze my hand tight around the cylindrical handle of the largest one as I force myself not to answer the call. As I tell myself I cannot call him back no matter how much I crave his voice, his touch. And then, in the silence when the ringing stops, I stare at the gleaming blade and wonder why I don’t do it. Why I don’t just use this blade and set free all of this shit that’s boiling inside me, vile and violent.
I fight it back, though. I force myself not to cut.
But I no longer know what I’m fighting for, and I’m desperately afraid that my strength will give out, and one day I will press that blade against my skin, that I will feel the tug of yielding flesh, and that I will finally succumb. I am afraid that I will have to, because there is no other way to live without Damien.
I have not gone to my office for over two weeks now. At first, Damien called me five times each day. Then he dropped to four daily calls for a few days, then three. Now the calls have stopped altogether and the lure of the blade is even more potent.
I know that Jamie and Ollie are worried about me. That doesn’t take a great intellectual leap to figure out because they have both flat out said as much.
“You need to get out,” Jamie says one afternoon as I am on my bed, staring blankly at all the newspaper clippings and bits of memorabilia I was going to use for Damien’s scrapbook. “Just to the corner. Just for a drink.”