By the time the place is empty, I’m bleeding and bruised.
I want to wish I never met Gemma DelGado, but that’s not quite true.
I DON’T BEG OR CRY as we leave the hotel. Instead, I steel my spine and walk tall as I follow my brother out to his BMW. I want to collapse into myself in the back seat, but I’m too proud to give in. I don’t want them to know how hurt I am.
How broken.
I’ll save that for my bedroom, when I’m tucked away underneath the covers alone in the silence. That’s when I’ll let myself break. Let the tears fall and the room around me turn to darkness. That’s when I’ll reach for the sleeping pills and a shot of vodka to drown out my sorrows.
I want to see Liam walk out of that hotel room alive but I don’t dare to ask. I’m not naive, I know I may have delayed his death, but it won’t protect him. He’ll leave this hotel with cuts, bruises, and busted pride, but at least he’ll have his life.
I’ll take small victories where I can get them.
I let my mind wander. I entertain the idea of abandoning my family. I wonder what it would be like to live without them. What would life without money look like? I’m surprised that the idea doesn’t appall me, that I can even stomach it. I’ve been teased for so long about being materialistic.
But then an image of Liam pinned to the floor flashes through my mind and I think I could give it all up if it erased that pain.
I wish I didn’t want alcohol to ease my pain. I want to be the type of person that can take the pain and turn it into something productive, but the most I can do is save my pride and sit silently.
Because I do want the alcohol. I’ll take whatever I can get my sticky fingers on. Whatever will change anything, to make me feel anything different.
Because I hate who I am right now. I want to be someone else, anyone else.
I want to numb myself until I am so blank that everything slides right off me.
Gian’s eyes meet mine through the rearview mirror. “You did this to yourself, ya know.”
He’s not yelling, not seething. I think it would be easier to hate him if he was. Instead, he delivers the message in a steady voice. The same voice that asks me about my day at the dinner table. The same voice I’ve known since childhood.
I feel betrayed.
I don’t answer him. I wrap my arms tightly around myself clinging to Liam’s white t-shirt, the last thing I have of him.
Andrew flashes me a sympathetic look, and I hold his gaze. I hope he can see the fire in my eyes.
I’ll never forget this.
I’ll never forgive this either.
Being dragged from a hotel room, from the arms of another man, is the single most humiliating experience of my life.
“You don’t know how to pick ‘em, Gem.” Gian continues, “First Pearce and now fucking Liam O’Connor.”
My blood boils, a steady dose of rage flowing through my veins. He has no right. Robbie Pearce was a mistake, sure. He betrayed my trust, but to throw that back in my face is just cruel.
“You know what he could have done to you, Gemma?” Gian prods. He doesn’t care that this is a one-sided conversation, that I haven’t responded since I begged him in the hotel room, he’ll continue to poke and prod until I fly off the rail. Then, once I scream at him, he’ll tell me I’m being hysterical.
I know his games.
You can’t lose a game you're not playing though, so I sit silently in the back seat.
“They kill women for fun. They dope them up and put them on the street corners to make a quick buck before they slice their necks.” His eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror again. “Is that what you want, Gemma? You want to be a quick fuck on his tally sheet and then find yourself at the bottom of a ditch?”
His words slice through me, he’s being knowingly cruel. He wants to break me, see me cry. That’s what all men want from women, I think, to see them broken.
That way they can be the hero that puts them back together again.
Fuck that.