His To Shatter (21 page)

But still, he had insisted on seeing me, on
making me his. Despite all evidence to the contrary, he told me
that I was not only good enough, but too good for him. I hadn’t
fallen for Girard for lack of trying to talk myself out of it. Even
the first day we met, back in New York City, I’d convinced myself
very quickly not to think of Girard ever again. He’d saved my life
on the train that day, but even so I didn’t let myself entertain
the possibility of fantasizing about him. Even then, I must have
known the power he would have over me if I dared to let myself
dwell on him. How could I ever have resisted him, when he
reappeared before me in the flesh? He shone brighter than the sun—I
should have known that looking at him directly would have blinded
me, that getting too close would have burned me.

I was so naive and so desperate for the
affections of a man, a real man. For the span of our short time as
a couple, Girard had made me forget about everything but the glory
that was him. I forgot about the heartache my father had caused me
as a child, the sting of his abandonment when I’d depended on him
so fully. I forgot about the betrayal of my one and only boyfriend,
and the shame I’d felt after a poorly thought-through one night
stand. He made me forget that sex could be at once mundane and
soul-crushing. He made me forget that he was far too good for me,
that I was just a silly American girl in Paris with a too-trusting
heart. Ashlee and Dara, my best friends, had tried to warn me. When
I told them about his proposal, they had tried their hardest to get
through to me, to knock some sense into me.

The very thought of Girard’s proposal made me
want to hide myself away for the rest of my natural life. How could
I have thought that he was serious? That his wanting to marry would
have anything to do with love? He needed a quick American
citizenship. Ours would have been a marriage of convenience. How
could I not have seen that?

But that wasn’t fair to me. Of course I
couldn’t have seen Girard’s betrayal coming. He’d never been
anything but a perfect gentleman to me. More than that, he’s never
treated me as anything less than an equal, as someone he could
trust with his deepest secrets and desires. We’d talked about
everything together, laid out our pasts for the other to see in
full. I’d told him everything there was to know about me, and he
did the same. I’d opened myself to him in every possible way,
even—especially—where my body was concerned.

Girard had made love to me in a way that I
could never have imagined. I’d put myself entirely in his hands,
submitted wholly to let him know just how much I trusted him. And
he’d taken me, worshipped me in his domination. For the first time
in my life, I’d known pleasure from a man. And oh, there had been
pleasure. But more than pleasure, there had been connection. There
had been something shared between us...or at least, I thought that
there had been. Could he really have been acting that whole time?
Playing the passionate paramour while really he was just securing
my trust so that I’d agree to marry him on the fly? When had he
first thought that marrying me would be a worthwhile investment?
When was it that he started playing me?

It was impossible to say. His act was so
seamless, so convincing, that I had no way of knowing what was true
between us and what wasn’t. I had to second guess every little
thing, and that task was just too overwhelming to face. It was far
easier to shut down from the world entirely.

I have no idea how Ashlee and Dara managed to
get me off the plane and back to our apartment. At some point, I
remember our friend Kyle showing up to help me get upstairs and
into my bedroom. Some homecoming. I could tell how much time had
gone by once I was back home at last. Thank god it was still
August—fall semester classes didn’t start until after Labor Day.
But for all I cared, school could go ahead and start without me. I
didn’t have the will to think about heading back to class, much
less to make the effort of attending. All I wanted to do was stay
in bed, sleep, and let my mind be numb.

But my mind had other ideas. As the shock of
Girard’s message began to wear away, a barrage of memories and
impressions began to make their way back into my thoughts. I could
no longer lay silently, letting the minutes slip away into hours,
then days. Whether I liked it or not, there was nothing I could do
to keep my mind away from Girard. I knew that eventually, I would
have to deal with what had happened between us.

It was late into the night when I finally
swung my eyes toward my bedside clock. The red neon digits blared
3:00am at my sensitive eyes. With great effort, I managed to push
myself away from the scrawny mattress of my twin bed. It was hard
not to remember the sumptuous comfort of Girard’s bedroom, the
cloud-like sheets and blankets that had swaddled us as we made
love, the crackling fireplace that had cast long shadows of our
writhing, twisting bodies across the wooden walls.

“Stop it,” I muttered aloud to myself. My
voice was raspy, escaping from my throat in an ungainly croak. How
long had it been since I’d arrived home, since I’d last spoken out
loud? Part of me was too afraid to ask. With a deep, pulsing dread,
I moved toward my luggage, piled in a heap beside my door. I
dropped to my knees beside the pile and dug through my purse until
I found my cell phone. It was still mercifully turned off from the
flight, but I knew I had to face the rest of the world sooner or
later. With a pounding heart, I turned the device back on.

In an instant, a cacophony of beeps and rings
erupted from my phone. I muffled it as best I could against my
chest, lest the ruckus wake up my roommates. I’d be ready to talk
to them eventually, but not yet. Not until I could process what had
happened to me. I waited for the ringtone symphony to fade away
before I peered down at the face of my phone. It was better to see
what the damage was than ignore it, I knew, but my fingers still
trembled as I began to scroll through the backlog of texts and
calls I’d missed.

“Oh my god...” I whispered. The first thing I
saw in the jumble was the date. I’d been lying in bed for two full
days, dead to the world. But that wasn’t even the most shocking
thing on my phone’s screen. There were fifty text messages waiting
to be read, and twenty voice mails to boot. One look told me that
ninety percent of all these attempts at contact were from Girard.
Did I really have the strength of mind to look back through the
history of his reaching out? I had to. I had to figure out where he
stood with everything that had happened. I scrolled down to the
first unread text message and began to read through.

2:34pm GIRARD: Did you land safely my
dear?

3:06pm GIRARD: Call me when you get back to
your apartment.

3:48pm GIRARD: I just got off the phone with
the airline. I was worried, but they said for flight landed over an
hour ago. Is everything OK?

5:29pm GIRARD: Madison, please do call the
minute you get this. I’m sure you’re just wrapped up in the
homecoming spree, but I don’t like not knowing where you are.

10:02pm GIRARD: Did something happen on the
flight, Madison? I’m very worried.

2:42am GIRARD: Have I done something wrong?
Please call me, Madison.

5:30am GIRARD: I really can’t take this. I
really can’t.

I stopped reading, overwhelmed with guilt and
anger. What was I supposed to make of all this? Was he actually
worried about me, or was he just worried about losing his
opportunity at an easy green card? How could I even know what was
true and what was a boldfaced lie, when it came from him? This sea
of communication was certainly convincing, or it would have been if
I hadn’t received a certain other email from him first. He must
have had no idea that I’d seen his little message. Well, he’d put
me through enough—I didn’t have any moral qualms about leaving him
dangling on the hook for just a little while longer. He certainly
deserved it for leading me on the way he had. Thinking about his
manipulation, his convincing stream of lies, was still too
overwhelming. Just considering the scope of his deceit made my
heart ache; getting into the specifics of it all would send me back
over the edge of despair.

As I straightened up, the sight of myself in
my bedroom mirror made me drop my phone in surprise. I looked like
absolute hell. I walked slowly across the room, almost afraid to
discover that the disheveled creature starting back was actually
me. But there was no denying it, really. My face was pale, almost
green-looking. The circles under my eyes were dark and heavy, and a
glazed look had fallen across my eyes themselves. My hair hung in
greasy tendrils across my face, and my cheeks were splotchy and
swollen. The idea that someone like Girard could have been in love
with me at all was suddenly laughable, and a slow, ironic smile
crept across my face. I was such an idiot.

An idiot who desperately needed a shower. I
reasoned that the sound of running water wouldn’t be enough to wake
my roommates, and so I started toward the bathroom. But a sharp
beep from my phone stopped me mid-stride. I looked down to find a
brand new text from Girard waiting for me. Against my better
judgment, I opened up the message to see what he had to say for
himself.

3:04am GIRARD: I’ve just booked my ticket. I
leave for New York in two hours.

My blood ran cold as his words sunk in. He
couldn’t come here! He was the last person on Earth that I wanted
to see then, if ever again. I had to stop him before he came to my
city. With quaking fingers, I finally typed in a response to the
man who’d been my fiancé just days before.

3:05am MADISON: Don’t come to New York.
Please stop trying to contact me.

I tried my best to walk casually into the
bathroom, despite the fact that my heart was pounding against my
chest like a hammer. As I closed the bathroom door behind me and
flicked on the light, my phone began to ring. He was trying to call
me. That simply would not do. I hit “ignore” on his call and fired
off another text.

3:06am MADISON: Again, please stop trying to
contact me. I do not want to speak to you. I’d appreciate it if you
left me alone.

I turned on the water and held my hand
beneath the stream, waiting for it to get warm. My phone beeped
almost immediately after I put it down. Another text.

3:07am GIRARD: Madison, what’s going on? What
is this? I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for days. What’s
happened?

I could hear my blood pounding in my ears as
it boiled with rage. How dare he be indignant with me? This whole
charade had to end, right there and then. I wasn’t going to suffer
any of his manufactured worry and heartache. All he really cared
about was keeping me in his stable of lovers so that he could
become an American citizen with less paperwork. Well, I wasn’t
going to give him the satisfaction of thinking he’d played me any
longer. I opened up my email and located that single message that
had driven a wedge between us, severed our relationship in two
measly sentences. I forwarded the message to Girard’s phone and
slammed my own down on the tile. The water had turned hot, burning
hot—exactly as I wanted it. I was about to step into the stream
when my phone beeped again. I glanced down at Girard’s latest
message.

3:09am GIRARD: What the fuck is this? I
didn’t write this.

My heart fluttered against my ribs for the
briefest of moments, and I let myself hope that he was telling the
truth. But the plain fact of his betrayal was there in writing, an
no amount of backpedaling on his part was going to convince me of
his innocence. He was just trying to cover up a badly executed lie.
I wasn’t going to let myself fall for this French snake oil
salesman again. However tempting it may have been to believe him,
to chalk this whole thing up to a terrible misunderstanding and
resume our fairytale life, it was impossible. Whatever had existed
between us was tainted by his ulterior motives for good.

Without responding, I shut my phone down once
more and hopped into the shower. The hot water scorched my skin,
ran in rivulets down my weary, sore body. I ran my fingers through
my unkempt hair, glanced down at my body. I could see faint bruises
scattered across my hips like constellations. It took me a moment
to realize that they were actually Girard’s handprints on my skin.
The sight of that souvenir, that branding, finally let loose the
deluge of emotion that I’d kept dammed inside of me since reading
that message.

I sank to the floor of the shower as my salty
tears mixed with the shower water. My legs could no longer support
me as the full sorrow I felt at Girard’s callous betrayal hit me
like a sledgehammer in the gut. I pulled my knees into my chest
under the hot spray and wept uncontrollably, my pathetic moans and
sobs drowned out by the sound of the water. How had I let myself be
swept away by Girard’s act? How had I let myself get fooled so
roundly, so exhaustively by this one person? I’d always sworn to
keep my heart safe from just this kind of anguish, but the first
attractive man who had paid me any notice knocked down all my
defenses as if they were made of construction paper.

I’d always thought of myself as strong,
independent, and intelligent. But there I was, sobbing in the
shower over some despicable man. I was no better than my pathetic
pushover of a mother, who had weathered my father’s abuse, worn the
bruises he’d given her as a badge of codependent honor. I
understood her too well at that moment, as I glanced at the marks
Girard had left on me in his passion. Despite the awful ordeal he
was putting me through, I looked down at those bruises with pride.
It was absolutely sick.

“Maddie?” said a voice from beyond the
bathroom door. It was Ashlee. “Maddie, are you OK?”