“You should have told me,” I maintain. ‘“You should have talked to me!”
“And said what? Exactly what I just said, and then have you say exactly what you’ve just said, and then feel both reassured and ignored at the same time? Or worse, ready to go willingly back to my personal prison?”
I turn away from her, walking back towards the window overlooking the pool. I’m too angry and hurt to think clearly, even though I recognize the grains of truth in her words. I can be a little monomaniacal about my projects, and I do have a bad habit of wanting everyone I care about to be involved with all the same things I care about too. And maybe if I’d been a more sensitive boyfriend, I would have seen that Raven felt stifled in our creative partnership even as our domestic partnership still sailed steady atop smooth seas.
But it doesn’t excuse her cowardice. Or her infidelity.
“You did so much more than try to renew your career when you left. You didn’t even pay me the courtesy of a goodbye, not to mention the Italian guy.”
She clears her throat, and I realize she’s come up very close behind me. “I was wrong to do that. Luca and I...we were seeing each other for a while before I left.”
I know this. I have known this for months. So why does her admission spark so much rage inside of me? It should be old news, and besides, it took some courage for her to admit that. She never did like admitting she was wrong.
Once I can trust my voice, I speak, still keeping my eyes on the pool. “I wish you and Luca the best. And I suppose I feel more enlightened now than before we talked, so thank you for that.”
“Luca and I broke up,” she says quickly, before I can get to the part where I ask her to leave. “It wasn’t real, Logan, it never was. He was just in the right place at the right time, able to tell me all the things I wanted to hear.”
I swivel my head to look at her. She’s standing beside me now, her eyes on the pool as well, one pale hand pressed against the glass.
And then she says it.
“I’m still in love with you.” Her dark eyes meet mine. “I know I’ve fucked things up, but I’m not too proud to beg.”
For a moment, I remember why I loved her once. Her sharp beauty. Her stubborn pride. “You don’t still love me,” I tell her. “You’re here because things didn’t go according to plan, and I’m the last person you remember being happy with. Whatever you’re looking for though, I can’t help you. I’ve moved on.”
She takes this on the chin, her only sign of disturbance at my rejection of her a slight sucking of her top teeth.
“You’ve moved on,” she echoes. “Who is she?”
Devi flashes to mind, but no fucking way am I willing to tempt fate like that. Instead I say, “There’s not another girl. I just mean that I’ve moved on personally. I’m past what happened, and I’m looking to the future. I’ve got a great new project lined up, too.”
“A new project?”
I have no interest in pitching Star-Crossed to her, but my latent enthusiasm for it bleeds into my words anyway. “It’s a new project with Vida and that Dutch studio Lelie, like a reality show where two people are falling in love, but all the sex is also open-door, which makes it better than reality TV. Plus I’m making it with Devi Dare—remember that girl from Real Playdates? She’s fucking amazing. Like, her body melts my brain, and her actual brain could melt my brain, she’s so smart.”
Raven chews her lip. “Sounds like quite the project.”
I shrug. “I’m super pumped about it, but yeah. It’s needing pretty much all of my free time.”
“That’s a shame. I was kind of hoping we could at least work together while I’m in L.A. this month.” She drops her hand from the window and smooths her skirt. “You know, some clear-the-air kind of fucking. Even if we don’t get back together, it would still feel good, wouldn’t it?”
She steps so close to me that I can feel her breath on my chest. Prior squirms to get down, but I hold him tight.
“Don’t you want to fuck me?” she asks in a low purr, her mouth in that performance pout I witnessed at Vida’s. “Aren’t you mad enough at me that it would feel so good to pin me down and take me hard?”
I hate how well she knows me; hate how well she knows I itch for exactly that. But what she doesn’t know is that even as I itch for it, I’m also repulsed by the idea of ever touching her again. “No, Julie,” I say, using her real name. “I’d rather not.”
Her jaw drops and I can’t tell if it’s using her real name or my outright refusal to work with or sleep with her again, but I don’t care. I keep going. “I’m sorry that you felt lost and I’m sorry that you felt like you couldn’t talk to me. But for future reference, that’s only a good reason to cheat on your partner in indie movies and book club novels. It doesn’t excuse what you did, and while I will work on forgiving, I would be an idiot to forget.”
I put Prior back in her arms. Her stunned expression is slowly giving way to fury.
“Fuck you,” she hisses. “Fuck you, D—” And I see it coming, hear it on the tip of her tongue, but I block it out. She can say my real name in all its twangy and possibly ironic grandeur, but it doesn’t change anything about how I feel.
“Goodbye, Raven,” I say, and then she shoots me a look of such livid fury that I actually feel its acidic heat prickle against my skin.