“You don’t have to wear it,” I told him, figuring reverse psychology might work.

He eyed me as he buckled it up around his wrist. “Why?”

“Well, you took it off. If you don’t like it –”

“I like it just fine, Claire. I took it off to wash my hands. Wouldn’t want this to get wet and all.”

I simply nodded in return. “Okay.”

His pace was slow on his way to the foyer, like he was weighed down my something. When he made it there, he turned to me and landed a soft kiss against my mouth.

“I’ll be back soon,” he told me.

I nodded. “I’ll be waiting.”

He stood still for a few moments, watching me intensely. Then he turned and opened the door. His name was on the tip of my tongue just begging to be let out so I could stop him from leaving, but I kept my mouth shut.

He shot me one last look before closing the door behind him.            

Chapter Twenty-Five

Kill you with my bare hands

As soon as he left the apartment, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and stared down at Hardman’s number. This was it. This was the exchange he’d been waiting for.

My body was screaming to put the phone down. For a short while I contemplated this, tried to rationalize it in my head. He scarred me in the most abominable way, sure, but maybe he truly fell in love with me. Maybe he never felt this way for anyone else, and maybe he hated himself for hurting me.

I set the phone down on the bed and nodded at my desperation. Yeah, when he got back, I’d tell him I knew about everything, and then he’d beg for my forgiveness and have the perfect explanation for all of this. Then I would stop hating him and everything would be alright again.

My stomach knotted as I paced the room.

Body was conquering mind, and I was allowing it. But mind fought back until it was screaming at me internally.

Stop and think, Claire! Think of everything you’ve been through. He was there that night. He sent that man to ruin you.

I stopped and stared at my reflection. I was going to love myself again. I was going to look at the face staring back at me and see someone normal and strong. But the only way that was going to happen was by stepping out of this cage and doing it on my own. Because when you started depending on someone else to make you happy, they had the power to hurt you too.

I turned around and grabbed the phone. I dialled the number and put it to my ear.

“Miss Landon,” Hardman said tentatively. “Any news?”

“Yeah,” I whispered, fighting away the pain. “He made the call.”

******

There was nowhere in my being I could escape the tension tightening with every passing second. I felt helpless, and the silence didn’t make matters any better.

I shook as I gathered my belongings, making sure I left nothing behind. I needed to get out of here. I stepped out of the bedroom and walked down the hallway. It was done and I was numb.

But just as I reached the stairs, the front door of the apartment opened. I froze and held my breath. What was he doing back? It’d only been twenty minutes. Did he forget something? Or did he know what I did?

Fuck! What if he figured it out? I turned around, fear gripping me, and stared into the hallway. There was nowhere I could go to escape him.

I pulled my phone back out of my pocket and dialled the police. My finger lingered on the call button when voices broke through the air.

“Are you sure it’ll be just us?” asked a woman. “I don’t want to be around if Ben’s here.”

“Yes, he told me he’ll be out for a couple hours and had the place to myself,” answered Jamie. “So we can get down to business straight away if you’d like.”

“As long as we’re out of here right after.”

“Sounds good to me.”

I felt confused. Why would Ben tell him he had the place to himself if he knew I was already here? Was Jamie lying?

The sound of kissing and moans followed. Ugh. Not wanting to intrude, I looked back at the bedroom. I couldn’t go back in there though. I had to get out of here as soon as possible.

With a sigh, I went down the stairs just in time to see them collapse on the leather couch, the woman on top of Jamie. My footsteps were heard, and her blonde head shot up to look at me.

“Oh, fuck, Jamie,” she cursed, moving right off of him.

Jamie followed her line of sight and then exhaled exasperatedly. “It’s fine. She’s Ben’s girlfriend.”

“Then he’s here!”

“No, he’s not.”

“And I’m about to go,” I said, plastering a fake smile on my face. “So don’t mind me.” I moved quickly in the direction of the door.

“Wait!” came the woman’s voice.

I stopped and turned around, watching her stand up and straighten her dress. She then came to me. She was tall and remarkably beautiful with long blonde hair and pale green eyes. And she was looking at me like I was the most exciting thing to ever grace the earth.

“You’re Ben’s girlfriend?” she exclaimed in awe.

Not anymore. “Um…” I struggled, wanting to just get out of here.

“Yes, she is,” Jamie answered, moving to stand beside her. He smirked at me. “Unless of course he’s proposed to you, which I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Proposed?” The woman looked shocked. She glared at Jamie and said, “You told me he was having a hard time after me –”

“Well, I thought he did until I crashed here a short while ago and saw otherwise.” He then cringed and said to me, “You know, it would be best if you didn’t tell him about this. Her place is really far away, and I thought since I’d have the place to myself that –”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she interrupted him.

He sighed. “Because you would have reacted like this.”

“Like what?”

“All weird.”

“I’m not weird. I’m happy!”

I eyed the front door. “Look, I gotta go.”

“What’s your name?” she then asked, moving in closer to me. Her eyes flickered to my scars, but she still smiled, radiant as ever.

“Claire,” I said tiredly. “And you?”

She put her hand out. “Melinda.”

I froze. My body roared with the noise of my blood whooshing in my ears, and I gaped at her. “What?”

“Melinda,” she repeated, waving her hand now so I could shake it.

But I stumbled back a step. “Melinda what?”

She dropped her hand and glanced at Jamie in confusion. “Melinda Warren.”

And now that blood drained straight out of me as I hardly withstood the shockwave upon hearing her answer.

“No.” I shook my head violently. No, no, no.

NO!

“Claire?” said Jamie concernedly.

I pointed at the fake and moved away from both of them. “She’s not Melinda. That’s-that’s a lie.”

“What do you mean?” Jamie asked, moving to me slowly, as though I was a caged animal that had broken free.

I continued pointing at her. “That’s not Melinda. I saw Melinda Warren, and she… she was scarred, and she didn’t look like her, and…”

“Where did you see this person? Because I promise you, this is her.”

My back hit the wall as I stared between both of them in bewilderment. Tears fell down my face, trying to make sense of what he was saying.

“The same Melinda that use to be with Ben?” I anxiously asked.

The woman frowned. “I was with him for a few months, sure. But we weren’t serious or anything. I broke it off because…” She looked guiltily over at Jamie.

Oh, fuck. The truth was staring at me in the face.

This was why Ben was angry I’d been around Jamie. This woman had cheated on him. With his brother.

“And you two are together?”

She shook her head, but I could see the struggle in her face as she denied her feelings. “No, we just have fun every now and then.”

Jamie was still staring hard at me, inching to me. “Tell me what’s going on.”

I put a hand over my mouth as the shock continued to run through me. Puzzled, I tried to put the pieces inside my head together, but I was so lost. So confused.

Why would they lie to me?

“They said he scarred her,” I choked out. “They said he planned my attack. They said it was all a lie and –”

“Who said this?” Jamie demanded, getting red with anger.

“The police,” I stammered out.

His back straightened, and something dawned on his eyes. “Oh, fuck. Hardman?”

I blinked at him. “What?”

He moved to me and gripped me harshly by the arm, twisting it as he pulled me into him and screamed, “Was it Hardman?!”

“Yes!”

He let go and I stumbled back. The horrified look on his face confirmed what I had been desperate to believe.

I really had been lied to.

“The bastard has done nothing but try and get at him for years,” Jamie said grimly. “Not the first time he’s tried to turn Ben’s own against him with lies.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean they’re desperate. They said these things to you, but did they have proof?”

“They have footage of Ben around the place I was attacked –”

“Did you actually see it?”

“Well…no, but…” The room spun and my stomach churned. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I told him… I told him about the deal he’s on his way to. I’m so sorry!”

“What?” Jamie froze. “You what?”

“We have to go and stop him! I told Hardman he went to make a deal –”

“FUCK!” He raced into the lounge room and grabbed the keys off the table. Then he turned back and stormed straight to the front door.

I took off after him. “Stop! Let me go with you. We have to stop him and –”

He opened the door and faced me. His cold face halted me immediately as he took a step forward and shoved me back. Pointing a finger in my face with stormy eyes, he growled out, “You fucked up big time, woman. You get the fuck out of here before I’m back. And if I don’t have Ben with me when I walk back through this door, I’m going to find you and kill you with my bare hands.”

Then he turned around and slammed the door shut behind him.

Chapter Twenty-Six

You filthy little snake

I collapsed, palms flat on the floor as the world continued to spin.

What just happened?

What have I done?

“I fucked up,” I sobbed. “I fucked up. I…”

I didn’t just fuck up.

I fucked up bad.

The kind of bad I didn’t think anyone could come back from whole again.

When I eventually stood up, I looked around helplessly. What could be done right now? My emotions still hadn’t caught up to the truth, and what the hell was the truth exactly? That I’d been lied to by the police? The people I least suspected had faked the entire thing in order to get to Ben?

Melinda was still standing in the same spot and she was looking like she too was out of sorts. Without a word spoken, we stared at each other for a few minutes. I wrapped an arm around my stomach as the emotional pain turned physical.

“I fucked up,” I repeated out loud in a steady voice.

She nodded. “So I heard.”

More silence.

“Did you sell him out?”

I nodded.

“Fuck. You need to go. You do not want to be Ben’s enemy. I guarantee that.”

I stared at her curiously. “Are you one?”

“Yeah. I fucked up too. Played him to get to Jamie. Since then I’ve been an unwanted entity around these parts. Crossed-off-the-Christmas-card-list kind of thing and what have you.” Her eyes then widened as she looked at me. “Certainly not the kind of fucked you are, but…”

More silence.

She wrung her hands together and checked the time. “I never slept with him, by the way. Ben, I mean. I played him, but I never… In case you think I’m some slut or anything.”

“I’m sort of thinking about my own shit, to be honest,” I replied.

“Right. Well, then, I um… I should really go.” She grabbed her clutch off the table. “If they leave you in one piece, can you tell Jamie to call me?”

I just blinked at her. Really? You seriously asking me this?

She cleared her throat. “See you around… Well, maybe.”

She took off like a bat out of hell, leaving me completely alone in a giant apartment that belonged to a man I loved and just fucked over. I should have left too, because I was certain Jamie was not coming back with his brother. But I couldn’t bring myself to go.

Instead, I wandered back into the lounge and plopped down on the couch. I stared ahead, lost in a sea of regret, going over all the things I’d blamed him for since being fed those lies. I’d misinterpreted everything he’d done in order to use it against him.

I destroyed him.

And the worst bit was I’d never stopped along the way to really doubt him. I believed Hardman’s façade of genuine concern more than the man who’d been treating me like a queen these last few months.

What did that say about me?

*****

I’d decided to lay down, and as the hours passed, I found sleep somewhere along the way.

Then I opened my eyes, my body already tight from the heavy feeling in the air.