Kiss a Stranger (22 page)

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.

It was
the feeling of knowing you weren’t alone.

The room was black, but the moon in the sky offered a bit of light through the tall window. Enough for me to see the silhouette on the arm chair six feet away from me.

              My heart picked up as I very slowly sat up. I should have been happy it was Ben, happy that Jamie had somehow got to him before the police did.

             
But, instead, I just felt sick.

             
I didn’t even know what to say. How do you open your mouth and find the right words to explain how sorry you were after such a betrayal? There were simply no words. I was well passed that point, I knew. It was too late for apologies.

             
Yet I couldn’t not.

             
“I’m sorry,” I trembled out, my throat thick with emotion.

             
He didn’t move, or acknowledge my words in any way. For a second I didn’t even think he heard me. Not until his retort pierced through the still air, gutting me as though he’d stuck a knife in me.

             
“Sorry? You’re… sorry.” His voice was devoid of emotion, but it was hard and scary to listen to. “You lied to me, tried to set me up, and betrayed me, and… all you have to say is you’re
sorry
?”

             
I swallowed, and the tears burned down my face. “But I am. I’m so sorry. They… they lied to me –”

             
“Yes, they lied to you,” he interrupted with a growl, “but that was expected of them. What wasn’t expected was that you believed them.”

             
“What was I meant to believe? I was confused and scared! They said you’d done horrible things to other women. They had photos! Why would I doubt them?”

             
He leaned forward, his face still hidden in the dark as he gritted out slowly, “I have done nothing but worship the ground you walk on. I gave you my honesty, my trust, my
heart
, and in return you threw it all away because of what an obsessed man said to you.” The animosity in him grew, until that devoid voice broke with anger. “And you thought I was stupid enough to fall for it?”

             
“How was I meant to know he was obsessed? You’ve kept me in the dark the last few months about what you do on the side –”

             
“But I told you to trust me! I never gave you a reason to doubt me. And yet you did because of some third party outside of our relationship. I truly thought you above all would not have believed in that rubbish.”

             
I wiped my face, offering no response. I felt like scum. I deserved to be treated like it too.

             
“I might have been in jail right now,” he continued, searing me with those eyes I could feel burning holes through me. “If there’d truly been a business deal, and if you hadn’t given me that fake fucking watch, I’d have been put away.”

             
My brows came together in confusion. He’d known about the watch?

             
He read my face like an open book. “I’ve been doing this for years now. You think it’s the first time I’ve seen a watch like this? I knew the second you gave it to me what it was, and I knew right then and there you’d gone behind my back. But still, the fucking fool that I am didn’t want to believe it. So I orchestrated the whole thing. The phone. The time and place. All a lie in the hopes you wouldn’t really send me out that door. But you did, didn’t you? You were looking to hang me out to dry. And once I stepped foot out that door I discovered what you really were.”

             
“I didn’t know,” I interrupted adamantly. “I’m sorry, Ben! I’m sorry –”

             
“Don’t you dare apologize to me,” he cut back. “I’m the one that’s sorry! Sorry for ever looking at you, for every thinking that you were different, for ever
loving
you. That’s what I’m sorry for. I should have never come back. And to think, I spent months and months abroad ending every business arrangement I had all across the world so I can come back here and start fresh and new with someone I viewed as genuine and beautiful. That’s what I was really doing, you filthy little snake.”

             
His words cut straight through me. I sank further into the couch, wanting to just disappear. There was no fixing this.

             
“No amount of sorry will do,” he continued, leaning back now with ease. “You made your bed, and I’ve learned a valuable lesson in all of this. You’re spineless and weak, and certainly not worth my time. So get the fuck off my couch, grab all your shit, and get the fuck out of my apartment. You’re not welcome here. You will never be welcome here. We are done. There will never be a Claire and Ben. There will be just you and your foolish insecurities that worked to rid you of the best thing that ever happened to you. So get out of here, Claire.
Now
.”

             
He didn’t even leave me alone to get my emotions in check. He crushed me, and I was hardly able to stand without swaying. My head felt light, my body weak and slow, my mind a scrambled mess. And all I could do was cry. Cry like a child.

             
It took me minutes to walk out of that room.

Minutes to grab my things.

Minutes that seemed to drag into what felt like an infinite amount of lifetimes.

All the while I felt him staring at me in the darkness, an
d while he was half a room away we might as well have been on different planets in completely different galaxies.

I didn’t say a word, nor di
d I turn back to look at him one last time. I was too ashamed of myself. I wanted to get away and crawl into a hole and die if it meant forgetting my betrayal.

Stepping out of the apartment was the hardest thing I had ever done.

And the worst bit of all was never getting the chance to say goodbye.
 

*****

I didn’t make it home. I pulled over on the side of the road and lay in the passenger seat of my car. I sobbed my brains out, suffering in the heat and parched beyond belief. I watched the time slowly tick on by. Watched the night sky dissolve. Blinding light followed; another day born, another opportunity in one’s ordinary life to either triumph or fail.

After some point
I’d exhausted my mind and stopped thinking. I felt like I was in stasis. My being stopped. I just existed for a few hours before the sounds of cars jolted me into the now. Life all around me swelled and it was time I caught up to it.

I sat up and climbed back into the passenger seat. I drove the rest of the way home, numb and cold on the inside. This was a different sort of heart break. The acute kind that wasn’t shy to stick its horrid fangs into my heart and suck it dry.

I pulled into my driveway, and I should have been very fucking upset to see Hardman standing there on my porch, looking equally exhausted with his cheap suit wrinkled and sweat-ridden.

But I wasn’t.

I stepped out of my car and stared at him, no emotion on my face as I pulled my house key out and climbed up the porch steps. I passed him along the way, ignoring him to make my point that he was unwelcome.

“I’ve been trying to reach you,” he said, his voice hard and unhappy.

I didn’t reply.

“We went to the warehouse you told us about, and we found nothing, Claire. What the hell happened, darling? Did he find out?”

I kicked the door of my house open and slowly turned to him.

“What happened,” I started slowly, “is that
you lied to me about everything, and you cost me everything too.”

His face didn’t give
way to any emotion. He just stared at me, not skipping a beat.

“You took advantage of someone who didn’t value herself yet,” I said quietly. “You twisted a traumatic moment in her life just so you could selfishly win a case against a man you simply have no case ag
ainst. You lie, you put people through hell, and you throw morals in their faces, meanwhile, you’re worse than the scum you put away.”

I took a step closer to him, so he could see my bloodshot eyes radiating with the deadness I felt inside. “So how about you go fuck yourself, Detective Hardman?”

I turned away from him and went to step inside when his hand grabbed at my arm to stop me.

“Claire,” he said, “we did what we had to do. He’s a horrible, dangerous man.”

“Yeah?” I shot him a look over my shoulder before I whipped my arm out of his grip. “
Prove it
.”

I walked into my house and slammed the door on his face, regretting – just a little bit – that I didn’t spit in it instead.

Then I trudged up the stairs and broke into Emily’s room. I collapsed into her bed, waking her up instantly and grabbed at her. I sobbed into her arms and held her to me.

And Emily fucking Jones, the best friend that ever lived, held me right on back.

Chapter Twenty-Seven
Healing

Four
months later…

Four
months had done nothing to make me feel better. I still felt like shit. Like really old, disgusting, shit-from-a-Camel, kind of shit.

             
But I plodded on through. Because no matter how heart-broken you were, and no matter how impassioned you were with life, the world still turned. You had to keep putting one foot in front of the other and take it one day at a time.

             
I sobbed. I ached. I fumed. I barely ate. I couldn’t sleep.

             
But I still moved.

             
Because moving was a way of healing, and I was healing in my own way.

I drew a lot of ske
tches. I went out for fresh air. I went to the movies with Emily, and we ate horrible take-out every single day.

             
I gained five pounds.

             
Then I gained ten.

             
Then I joined the gym and tried to get into shape.

             
Then I barely went to the gym because, well, who the fuck hasn’t abandoned their gym membership at some point in their life?

             
I graduated from school and Mom was there to cheer me on. Then I joined the real world and churned out resume after resume. For every twenty resumes I got one call back, but I was yet to get a job.

             
And through all of this, there wasn’t a moment –
not one single second
– that went on by that I didn’t think of him. I yearned for Ben Costigan more and more each day, but he was gone, and I didn’t know where to.

I’d showed back up at his apartment a week after he told me to get out.
I was desperate and ready to crawl on the floor, kiss his feet, and grovel to give me another chance. But it was Jamie that opened the door, and it was Jamie that told me he was gone.

             
“When’s he coming back?” I’d demanded.

             
Jamie looked at me coldly. “He’s not coming back, Claire. He’s left the country. Left the apartment to me. Left
everything
to me.”

             
“I need to get a hold of him.”

             
“Not happening.”

             
He shut the door on my face and that was the end of that.

However,
that didn’t mean I was giving up. Four months may have passed since that horrible day, but I was just as in love with him as ever, and all I wanted to do was tell him.

             
I was full of unsaid words, and if I couldn’t voice them to his face, I would just have to pen them down on paper. So I sat down and wrote him a letter – a letter I wasn’t even sure he’d ever read.

             
But I needed it out of my system.

*****

Ben,

I’m not going to tell you how sorry I am. I know you don’t want to hear it.
I know it’s not enough to fix this.

I hurt you, and it kills me to have done it.
You were right. I didn’t stop to doubt what I was being told. I think I was waiting for something to ruin us from the get-go because it had always felt too good to be true. I didn’t value my worth, and it cost me you.

But this letter isn’t about that. This letter is to say thank you. You may have been in my life for a brief amount of time, but you’ve touched it in a way that’ll last a lifetime. You taught me to love myself, to accept who I am, and to let go of the past that dragged me down.

While I still wake up in cold sweat some mornings, the heartache of our breakup has eased it remarkably. My soul weeps for you. My body aches to touch you. My ears yearn to hear your voice. My lips beg to be kissed.

I should wish for
the panic attacks than relive the pain of losing you every morning, but I strangely find it bittersweet. Because they remind me that I did have you once and that you still pierce my soul. I don’t think a day will come when that pain will lessen, and I don’t want it to either. I’m merely learning to live with it.

I’m lonely without you. But at the same time I’ve learned to accept that loneliness isn’t all that bad. It’
s taught me a lot about me. I’ve learned to connect with myself, and to fight the insecurities that held me back. I sketched myself over and over again, remembering every line, every indent, and every curve of every scar. And in doing so, I learned to appreciate them. Because if someone loved them once, I ought to as well.

I regret hurting you, but I don’t regret the journey I went on without
you. The past no longer haunts me. I’m a different person, shaped by the fragments that people like you have left behind in me.

So thank you. For loving me
once. For looking into my soul. For giving me lightness in dark times. For simply giving me a second look.

I love you unequivocally, unimaginably.

You have my heart, and you will forever possess it.

But I’ll always be left wondering if I still own any part of yours.

-
       
Claire

*****

I put the letter in an envelope and went back to Jamie, pounding on his door in the early hours of the morning. To say he was pissed to see me was an understatement.

Bare chested
and looking like a rougher version of his older brother, he gritted out, “What the hell do you want, Claire?”

             
I pressed the letter against his chest. “Give that to him.”

             
“Ben’s not here!”

             
“Then mail it to him, I don’t care! Just get it to him. And stop looking at me like that!”

             
He made a face. “Like what?”

             
“Like you hate me,” I retorted. “Because you crossed him too, and I bet it was a mistake you wish you could redo all the time. So don’t pretend you’re any better than me because you’re not. Everyone’s the same in some way. We’re all fucked up people in this fucked up world, and the last thing we need do it is fuck each other over as well.”

             
Stunned, he didn’t say a word as I turned back around and stormed away.

             
I poured my heart out in that letter, and if he still rejected me after it, I would just have to accept he didn’t want me. I wouldn’t be bitter about it. Because maybe, somehow, I was
his
haunted past he wanted nothing to do with again. And maybe he was right to put me behind and move on.

             
When I made it home after dropping the letter off, I found Emily sitting on the porch steps with Miles. While I’d been nursing my wounds, Emily had spent a little more time with Miles. He was no longer weird around me, and I was pretty sure it was because he’d developed a new obsession with Emily.

             
But he was friend-zoned, and it was awkward being around them sometimes when he stared at her like a puppy dog seeking affection. Poor guy.

             
“Hey guys,” I said, taking a seat next to Emily.

             
“Did you deliver the letter?” she asked. I’d filled her in on everything that had happened, so she was just as emotionally invested as me.

             
I nodded. “Yep.”

             
She wrapped an arm around me and gave me a wet kiss on the cheek. “I’m glad. You’ve got it out of your system. No more ‘what ifs’. Time to see whether to move on or fight hard.”

             
“Yeah.”

             
“You’re not talking about that asshole, are you?” Miles asked with a scowl. “I haven’t forgotten him. All creepy and weird.”

             
I raised a brow, looking wryly at Miles. “The irony right now of you saying these words…”

             
“What do you mean?”

             
I broke out in a laugh. “You’re the king of weird and creepy, Miles.”

             
“No, I’m not. Emily, tell her.”

             
Emily simply stared between the two of us, her answer loud and clear. But she stood up immediately and declared, “I’m going to order some pizza. Cough up some money, bitches, because I’m broke and you need to feed me.”

             
Miles stood up too, immediately digging his hand into his pocket. “I’ll pay for the whole thing, and it’s too early for delivery, so I’m more than happy to run out and pick it up.”

             
I rolled my eyes.
Oh, my God, this guy
. “I’ll pass. You eat pizza every damn day. No wonder you’re broke.”

             
“So do you,” she retorted.

             
“And that’s why I’ve gained ten pounds.”

             
“I can tell. Fat ass.” She laughed and took off before I could smack her. Miles followed, of course, right on her heels.

             
I stayed seated there for a short while longer, glancing up and down the neighbourhood, reflecting. Immediately, I saw a taxi come bounding up the street slowly, and my heart tightened as it got closer. I watched intently as it continued to slow down near the house. I didn’t want to think his name, didn’t want to think it could be him, but my body seemed to be thinking for me. I angled my body to the taxi and held my breath. It drew closer and closer and…

             
It passed on by, turning into the driveway of a house a few doors down.

             
My heart took a nosedive, but I didn’t let the sadness show on my face.

             
I simply stood up and went back inside.

*****

A week later – on a Saturday – Emily burst through the door and shook me awake. I pushed her hand away from me, cursing for her to leave me alone. Late nights had me crashing in the early hours of the morning, and I desperately needed some sleep.

             
“Babe,” she said excitedly, “some sexy ass man is at the door asking for you.”

             
My eyes whipped open. I immediately sat up and looked at her. She was still in her house shorts and singlet, her blonde hair a mess – clearly she’d been dragged out of bed to answer the door.

             
“What does he look like?” I asked, even though I already had an inkling of who it was.

             
“Tall, black hair, blue eyes – has this wicked smirk and bedroom eyes.” She paused, recapping his image with a look of lust on her face.

             
“Jamie.”

I jumped out of bed, uncaring about my own state of undress and ran past her. I hurried down the stairs and met him on the porch. I was a little awed by the way he looked, dressed in a black pinstriped suit with his hair slicked back. Filling Ben’s shoes had him looking like a dynamite businessman.

              “Hey,” I said, opening the door and ushering him inside.

             
He stepped inside, replying with, “Hey, yourself.”

             
Too excited to make small chat, I immediately asked, “What’s going on? Are you here because of him? Did you give him the letter? What did he say? Did he get it? Is he alright? How’s he doing –”

             
“Slow down,” he cut in, chuckling. “Just relax. Take a deep breath. In and out –”

             
“I don’t have time to breathe. I need you to talk!”

             
His blue eyes roamed me, and that smile intensified as he turned on that charm. I couldn’t give a fuck about it. Nor did I care that I was in a pathetically small nightgown, looking like a tousled caveman. None of that mattered to me. What mattered right now was the words that were about to come out of those lips.

             
“Alright,” he said, talking slowly on purpose, “I did send the letter. Not physically, mind you. I faxed it to him. It was quicker that way. You just never know how long sending something across the world will take, you know? It’s… very long.”

             
I nodded repeatedly, wanting him to hurry the hell up.

             
“And,” he continued, clearing his throat, “he told me he received the letter, and that he read it.”

             
“And?” I urged.

             
“Aaaand that’s it.”

             
I froze, knitting my brows together in confusion. I was instantly disheartened and on the verge of tears. My soul started to douse itself with petrol, getting ready to burn at this awful, anticlimactic ending. That was it? He just read it? He didn’t…
care
?