"It would help."
"I...we weren't really ever together. Officially, like. Which means I lied to the police officers. Fuck." She sounds so angry with herself; I want to wrap her up in my arms, peel her clothes away, find ways to make it all better. "We just had this thing...it went deeper than friendship, I guess. It's hard to describe."
"Were you sleeping with her?" There's a foul-tasting lump in my throat because I'm not sure I want to hear the answer.
She bites her lip. "For a while."
I dig my fingers into the leather seat until the fabric creaks for mercy. "When?
"Oh god. Not recently, Aeron. Not since I've been with you."
"I...good."
"It started a long time ago. Therapy's a pretty intense place to be." She drops a leg down, her bare calf brushing my jaw in a sandpapery rush of skin and stubble. "But we stopped speaking when I got the offer from you—or technically, I stopped speaking to her. Cut her out. I couldn't take it anymore."
I press my mouth to her knee. Kiss it. "Couldn't take what?"
She lifts the bag down and hands it to me. "You should probably take a look through this. You know, before the police figure out it's missing when they watch the security footage."
I frown into the gaping old bag, which appears to contain a bunch of print outs and newspaper clippings. Shiny magazine pages, their edges frayed with age.
"She kept everything she could find on you," Leo says softly. "Well. We did, I suppose." She drops a hand to cup my face, and studies me, her eyelashes shining with tears. "You're a beautiful man."
I flash her my dimpled grin. "I know."
"I wish you weren't."
"Let me take you home, sweetheart. Please." I will fuck this misery out of her. Carve new wounds I can make better. "I don't want to stay here."
She draws back up into the chair. "Then go home."
Already, I can feel my lip curling into the prerequisite snarl; she refused me. Unacceptable. I should force her to obey. But for some obscure reason...it's not what I want.
"We are like a cut, aren't we?" she says, her tone bitter. "Everything between us just bleeds and bleeds."
"Leo."
"I just can't right now. I can't. Leave me alone for a night, Aeron."
"I don't want to." I grip the chair tighter, afraid of what I might do otherwise. Of what I could fuck up. "Did you love her?"
"What?"
"You heard me." I lean upward so our faces are just inches apart. "Did. You. Love. Her?"
"No." She whimpers, her shoulders shuddering with badly stifled sobs. "Not the way she loved me."
It's the only good thing I've heard today, and it makes me ache in places I didn't know I had.
***
Later that night, I wait for Ash to fall asleep before I pull out Rachel's bag.
Even after three beers, I can't calm down. My cell goes off every five minutes but it's never Leo; just another work call, or a press officer, or Tuija reminding me not to "cut off my fucking nose to spite my fucking face," by running the Montgomery photos. When I got in, Ash was all hyped up from waving to a gazillion paparazzi, and Ethan looked like he'd seen a ghost. All I want is the peaceful feeling I get when I'm buried inside Leo. My canvas. My button-eyed doll. Just mine, fucking mine, and who the fuck does Rachel think she is, laying her hands on my property?
Or who did she think she was? Was. Rachel's dead now.
I remember how Leo crumpled into me as the gun went off, and the beer bottle shakes in my hand.
It seems Rachel poured all her yearbook experience and GPA smarts into compiling the Aeron Lore bible. Inside the bag is a concise dictionary of media me; everything from game reports from our old high school newspaper to the interview I just did with Forbes. There's a whole plastic wallet on the investigation surrounding my mother's death—website printouts, conspiracy sites (ha). A transcript from that shithead Dr Brody, from when some crappy local news crew interviewed him on the eve of my arrest.
Rachel wanted to throw my past right in Leo's face, so she'd remember what a monster I am.
Like I'd let her forget.
I close the door firmly, plug in the shredder, and feed each document through its metal teeth. With every savage buzz, my breathing slows. My heartbeat comes down. Bye bye, evidence of Rachel Fordham's suspicious preoccupation with the sins of Aeron Lore.
Leo doesn't answer when I call her. It makes my stomach twist. I worry about her untreated wounds. Her tears.
I'm not supposed to empathise, not with my condition. So how come all I can think about is how terrible she must feel?
***
It's barely nine a.m. and I'm done being today's bitch.
Yesterday was a shaky day. We all have them. Rachel's little stunt threw me for a loop; it happens. But I've had enough of this fuckery and I'm taking matters back into my conscience-free hands.
It took America's media about eight hours, all told, to connect me and Rachel Fordham. One of my Facebook friends—some sucker from high school that I keep around for the very opposite purpose—went straight into his vault of pathetic nostalgia and pulled out a couple old photos of Rachel and me.
We're at a party, some post-game event strewn with team bunting and paper cups of crappy beer. She's next to me in her purple Gap hoodie, her hand disappearing beneath the coat draped over my lap. It looks half like we're flirting and fooling around, and half like she's giving me a hand job.
She was totally giving me a hand job. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I remember the scene, sure, but I never knew photographs existed. Since I was seventeen at the time, I was probably drunk.
Said photo is now all over the national fucking news, and the phone calls I've been avoiding all morning? They were from my own editors, asking permission to run the same damn shot. What am I meant to say—no, you can't run it? Nobody will fucking watch us!
I've already wired Tommy Chavez a wedge of cash just to make sure he doesn't talk. I should not be bankrolling this shit. I resent it, sports fans, and I am going to make the world pay me back.
Tuija walks in as my cell hits the wall.
She freezes, inspecting the mess of cracked screen and plastic now littering my floor. "So today's started well."
I keep pacing. "Is Leo in?"
She blinks a couple times. "Not yet. Her escort was having trouble moving her, I think."
I jerk up. "Is she okay?"
"Last I heard, she was just peachy." Tuija cocks her head. "Aside from the whole dead girlfriend thing."
"I told her I'd understand if she didn't want to come in." I'm almost talking to myself now. "She could use some space, maybe. Have her come in through the back? So she doesn't have to use the lobby or go past all the forensics."
"I'm sorry—it's just, I think I can hear actual compassion. Bleugh. Are you ill?"
"I need you to run the Montgomery photos," I say through my teeth.
"Nuh-uh. We both know where that leads."
"Tuija. You will run the story."
She pretends to wring an invisible neck, clutching empty air. "I'm not going to let you commit career suicide like that. We've been through this."
I thrust a fist toward one of my silent news screens; it lands just inches from the display. "What in hell's name do you call this, then? GNS may as well throw me a whole Suicide Ball." Rachel's parents flicker up on the report, their tired eyes and drawn mouths all puckered and ready to accuse. Please, please don't let them talk. They took the money. They aren't supposed to talk.
Everybody wants to empathise with them, as if it somehow validates every fault they possess.
"This will blow over," Tuija insists. "It just all colluded at the wrong time—you and Leo making your little announcement, and Rachel Fordham pulling a Shawshank Warden on your ass. It's unfortunate, but I promise it will go away."
"Oh, will it fuck!"
"The last bad thing went away," she mutters. "Aeron. Look at me."
I try, but all I can see is the money I've spent her. Tuija is this thing I've made, and now she's trying to undo me; I was made by my mother, the dark she created, and look how that ended. History on repeat.