“For the tour or for my sister’s husband?”
She snorted. “Whichever one you have that look to kill for.”
“I hate him,” I said, pulling down the sleeves of my little jacket. “I hate what he did to me. He deserved his punishment.”
He deserved to go to jail.
“But?” she pressed.
But my weak heart kept thinking about what he said in bed two nights ago when I’d held the blades to his rib and neck. About lying to me being the only way he felt he could get close to me in high school. Maybe it was just a lie he fed my mother to get rid of her.
Or maybe it wasn’t. It didn’t make it right, though.
“There were so many moments back then—” I told her, “—they felt real, like he could’ve been different and I could’ve been different.”
He seduced me with a lie. Why was I having any doubts about the man he was?
“I do hate him,” I told her. “I just wish I hated him every second.”
“Alex told me after the haunted house the other night about everything that happened to you,” I explained to her. “How they mistakenly thought you were the one to upload the videos and they went after you because they thought you sent them to prison.” I paused as she remained silent. “She told me what Damon did. But you don’t seem to hate him. Why?”
She invited him and our family to her engagement party. She was fine being around him at the haunted house. I heard a rumor they were having business meetings.
But she just sighed. “Why don’t I hate any of them?” she asked. “I guess when you hate someone you don’t have to hate them forever.”
But it wasn’t okay. How could she trust him? How could she forgive him?
“I don’t excuse what he did,” she said, hesitating for a moment, “but…I don’t know. I see a chance in there. I can’t explain it.” And then she continued, “Michael, Kai, Will… They have never disappointed me since.”
I didn’t know what they’d done to her compared to Damon, but I knew what he did to me compared to her. I would never forgive him.
“He hasn’t hurt you, has he?” she asked, like she expected he wouldn’t really.
Another hard question to answer. Was he forcing me? No.
Was he threatening me? Playing with my head?
“The mindfucks are a little rough,” I told her.
She scoffed, sounding like she understood. “Yeah, they are good at that.”
The director was shouting on stage, giving direction, and then the piano started up again as I heard a dozen pairs of ballet slippers hit the stage, the musical number beginning again.
“The only good memory I have of Damon when we were younger was when we were kids,” Rika told me. “I was like three or four—the memory is faint but I remember the gist—and we were at the library. Another kid pushed me down and stole my pop-up book.” She laughed a little at the memory. “Damon stole it right back and gave it to me. He never talked to me, and my mom invited him to come sit with us and read, but he had to leave with his nanny, I think.”
I pictured it in my head, Damon doing what he did and taking control of the situation. I wasn’t sure why she told me that, as if an endearing little story would make up for who he was now.
“I didn’t start to fear him until high school.” Her voice sounded thoughtful as if she were figuring something out herself for the first time, too. “After everything that was happening in that house happened to him.”
“It’s no excuse,” I pointed out.
And she agreed. “No, it’s not.” she said. “It’s a reason. Plain and simple. There’s always a reason why things are as they are.”
I returned to the house late, sliding out of my shoes and unwrapping my scarf as I entered my bedroom. I hadn’t seen Damon for almost two days, and I wasn’t sure where he was or what he was doing, but I was tired.
So tired.
I undressed and slipped into one of my sleep sets, the cool silk of the shorts and shirt refreshing on my exhausted body, and I plugged my phone into the charger, ignoring the notifications from my mother.