“Since when?” I demand.
“Trust me,” he says. “I wouldn’t give trash more than an hour of my time. And you, Appleteeny, have taken an entire year of my life. I wouldn’t be here right now if you weren’t worth it.”
“Well,I’mhere right now because you said if I didn’t go, you’d keep showing up. So here I am. Let’s get this over with, and then I never want to see you again.”
“Would it be that easy for you?” he asks, cocking his head to one side, like he really has to ask.
“You’re psychotic,” I say, slapping his hand away and climbing out of the Range Rover. “Of course it would be easy. You spent our entire relationship telling me I was nothing, a worthless whore, and then you destroyed me until I really was nothing. And now that I proved you right about everything you ever said, you’re going to try to convince me otherwise? Is this just another part of your sick game? See if you can build me up and break me down all over again?”
“It’s not a game.”
“Good,” I say, starting toward the building, ready to get this over with and get away from him. I slip my phone out of my purse and into my pocket. I don’t want to get separated from it. “Because it won’t work. You can’t fix what you did. You can’t fix me. And you don’t have to pretend to care now that you don’t have me. You don’t have to put on some fake show of remorse to get me back. If you want me, just take me. You can have me. Do whatever sick things you have to do to me before you get bored and toss me. I don’t care.”
“Is that what you want?” he asks.
“It doesn’t matter what I want,” I say. “You taught me that from the moment we met until the moment you had your brothers gag me so I couldn’t withhold my consent while you shared me with them as punishment. I’ve finally learned my lesson. I don’t matter, so it doesn’t matter what happens to me.”
We reach the tall chain-link fence around the front of the building, and I stop and stand there, staring straight ahead. I’ve been here so many times over the past few years, and yet, no nostalgia rises in me when I look at the plain warehouse building bathed in the orangey glow of security lights. I don’t miss Dynamo standing there manning the gate with his four-fingered hand and his tattooed neck and hollow smile. I don’t miss the stink of blood and sweat, the weight of a fat roll of bills in my pocket. I feel nothing.
Royal comes up behind me and takes my elbow, turning me around. “You matter, Harper.” His eyes burn with that dark intensity that’s more dangerous than the fury or the emptiness. “You matter to me.”
A ghost of a smile tugs at my lips. “The old Harper would have liked to know that.”
“Not you?” he asks, his gaze searching mine, like it can find something that’s no longer there. He hooks his fingers into the links on either side of me, watching me while I stand looking up at him, unafraid though my back is to the fence and he’s caging me in.
“No,” I say. “I don’t care about her, or you, or if you’re lying through your teeth. I could matter to you, or the whole town, or no one, and it wouldn’t make a difference. I don’t matter tome.”
twenty-three
Harper Apple
Royal stands there searching my eyes for a long time, like he’s waiting for the other side of me to bubble up and burst out like it did in the truck last week. But that’s the thing about my bombed out interior. Even I don’t know when he’ll step on a grenade. I can’t predict my reactions, can’t control my hollowness like he can. I don’t know when I’ll be totally numb and calm, and when I’ll burst into uncontrollable rage or sobs.
I just know that when I’m still, when no one is walking around the craters inside my soul, there are less explosions. When Royal lets himself in with the key he stole, walks around and touches the fragments of my soul like they belong to him, they’re likely to blow up, shaking whatever’s left of my foundation. I should know he’s a masochist, that this is what he does, another sore spot he can poke, like when he goes to the bridge or the basement. But now he’s not just hurting himself. He’s hurting me, too.
“What if I could change that?” he asks at last.
I shrug. “You can’t.”
He hesitates a moment, then takes my hand and pulls me to the gate. “Come on,” he says, leading me inside.
I don’t bother fighting. I won’t win, not even here, at the Slaughterpen, where I almost always won. I never win against Royal.
We enter through the heavy industrial door. Inside, instead of the usual—an abandoned chair or two, a haphazard pile of tumbled boxes, wisps of insulation drifting across the floor from the abandoned piles at the edges—it looks like a functional warehouse. Stacks of boxes sit in neat rows, like they’ve just been unloaded from a forklift.
“What the hell?” I mutter.
“Don’t worry,” Royal says. “They left the pit alone.”
“Why?”
He cracks a small, ironic smile. “You think the owners of this place don’t get a cut?”
The owners. He pretty much told me his family owned the Slaughterpen. So that’s what he meant.
“So… This is for the casino?” I ask, gesturing around at the boxes.
He puts a finger to his lips. “Not everyone knows.”