Uncovering You 9: Liberation (7 page)

“Calm now, Lilly.” Jeremy’s got what he wanted, and now he is the very image of cool, collected placidity. “You’re making a scene.”

“And how did you think I was going to react?” I screech at him. I’m so angry I could claw his eyes out. He doesn’t even suspect the physical danger he’s in at this point. Nobody does. If I had a steak knife, I wouldn’t hesitate to rush at him.

“I was hoping you’d be more understanding,” he says. His voice is full of mocking warmth. “But I didn’t bet on it.”

“No shit you didn’t! You drugged me. Again. Again and again and again you do it! This is a game to you. Isn’t it? Despite your feelings, despite all you confess, your promises will never amount to anything more!”

“Life is a game,” he tells me. “There are winners and there are losers. Then there are the poor souls caught in between.”

“And where am I, huh, Jeremy? Where am I in your twisted assessment of things? Where do I stand?”

“Precipitously close to the edge,” Jeremy murmurs. “Unfortunately, you only have yourself to blame.”

“You’re wrong!” I stab a finger at him. “I have you to blame, Jeremy, for everything and anything that’s happened to me since you stole me from my life!”

“I gave you one better!” He swells to his feet. Even with the table between us, he looms over me like an iron titan. “I gave you one better, Lilly, against all my will, against all my judgment and all my plans. I gave you one better because of the effect you’ve had on me. I gave you one better. And what do I get in return? Lies! Deceit! Unfaithfulness!”

“Unfaithfulness?” I sputter. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“About all the things you hide still, Lilly. All the secret passions you endure. Everything you keep inside yourself, no matter how much I’ve shared with you. No matter what I’ve revealed.”

“
‘All that you’ve revealed
,’ ” I nearly spit, “is how much you covet control. Of how unchanging you really are.”

I turn away.

“No,” Jeremy walks around the table and grabs my arm in a vice, tearing me back.

“Let go!”

“I will
not
,” he snarls. “You will
not
turn your back on me again, Lilly, or so help me God…”

“Or what?” I fire back at him. “You’ll put me in the dark?”

His hand moves so fast I have no time to react. All I know is that one minute I’m standing, the next I’m crumpled on the floor. The whole left half of my face is numb. I taste blood.

“Get up,” Jeremy snaps. He picks me up and all but throws me toward the upturned chair. “Sit down. I warned you before, Lilly. You will
not
make such vile accusations of me again.”

I’m shaking, trembling as I right the chair and sit on it.

I hate you
, is all I can think.
I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.

I glower at him from behind swollen eyes. The pain is radiating from my face down to the rest of my body. It mixes with adrenaline, with the flawed fight-or-flight response that has me frozen in place. Frozen in indecision.

“And now we’re going to talk,” he tells me. He drags another chair close to mine and settles down onto it, hands on its back. “And it’s all going to come out, Lilly. All of it. The whole truth. Because if you try to deceive me again…” he flexes his fist and looks at it, “even I don’t want to imagine what might happen.”

And he’s back
, I think bitterly.
Stonehart is here in the flesh.

It took barely a single provocation on my part.

“Now,” he says, leaning close to me. I can feel his breath on my cheek and I hate him all the more for it. “I’m going to do you the courtesy of explaining things from my perspective. So you might see things as I see them, and judge not me, but
yourself
, in my eyes.

“Because you, dear Lilly, are entirely at fault for everything that has befallen you.

“It starts with your attitude toward me. I know that you foster poisonous thoughts. It is only natural. I am the monster who ripped you from your life. Am I not? I am the one who imprisoned your father, who unleashed Conner on your mother, who kept track of you for so many years until things finally fell to their natural conclusion.

“But that conclusion was only a beginning. Wasn’t it? Your entrance into my life changed things. Things I never imagined it would. And this…” He touches my swollen cheek, almost tenderly now, as I stare straight ahead, avoiding his eyes. “…this is the unfortunate consequence of what you make me do.

“You fire me up, Lilly,” he hisses, his voice low and hoarse. “You build such passion in me, such an addiction, that I can never look away. That’s where we are now, my dear. And,” he clutches the roots of my hair in a tight fist to force my ear to his lips. “I’m afraid the only escape you have is the glorious prospect of death.”

“You’re going to kill me,” I say flatly, refusing to let even a shred of emotion enter my voice.

“Gah!” he spits, and twists away. I gasp as the pain at the back of my head evaporates.

“No, I’m not going to kill you, Lilly. Who do you think I am?” He’s pacing one side of the room now. I see his flashing shape from the peripherals of my vision.

“Then what?” I lift my chin. “Drug me over and over until I’m nothing more than a living corpse? Something warm for you to stick your dick into?”

“
Don’t
,” he warns.

“Don’t what?” I stand and turn to face him. “Don’t tell you what I think? I thought this whole debacle began because of honesty. Well, how’s this as honesty for you?” I point at my cheek. “I am going into work tomorrow, and I’m wearing
this
as a badge of honor. If anybody asks, I’ll tell them the truth. I’ll say that you did it. What happens next, I don’t know, but it will be your shit to deal with.”

“And what makes you think you still have a position,” Jeremy asks. “Within
my
company?”

“The ink of my signature on the employment contract, Jeremy. Or did you burn that one up just like the other?”

“Ah, but you failed to read between the lines, my dear. Your contract lasted only until the day my company went public. Renewal was left at my discretion.”

“What he giveth, he taketh away,” I quote sarcastically. “I would say I’m surprised, but I’m not. Fine. I won’t go to Stonehart Industries. I’ll go to the cops.”

“Oh, no, the cops,” Jeremy shakes his hands in a childish, off-hand gesture of fear. “Look at me, I’m trembling.” He stops and bears down on me, eyes hard as sapphires. “Please. You and I both know that for an empty threat. You wouldn’t risk what you’ve built here.”

“Watch me,” I say. “I’m not your prisoner anymore. I am a free woman, as you say. Or has that right also been revoked?”

“Nothing’s been revoked, Lilly,” Jeremy says. “Nothing’s even changed. I am still the man you were in love with yesterday. And you…” he says. His hands are on the table, and he suddenly looks extremely sad. “Are still my precious Lilly-Flower.”

The shift in demeanor flies away as quickly as it has come. When he looks at me next, his face is a perfect mask, devoid of emotion.

I laugh. I laugh not from humor, but from spite. I laugh because a frenetic hysteria fills me. The contradictions. The shifting moods. The instability.

The utter chaos and unpredictability that is Jeremy Stonehart.

He looks at me, patiently waiting for my fit to finish.

I keep laughing. I don’t know where it comes from. But it continues to fill me, continues to rise from the depth of my lungs.

Is it the laughter of a desperate woman, or of one half-mad? Those distractions mean little to me at this point. No matter what I do, no matter where I go, my life will always be controlled by Jeremy Stonehart.

This evening, he has proven that.

“Are you done?” he asks finally. He sounds annoyed. Maybe my laughter penetrated through the façade and actually reached him.

“You drive me to these places, Jeremy. I am but the unwitting passenger.”

“Poetic,” he says. He smiles at me in a way that, for a second, makes his face look like that of an animated corpse. “But far from the point.”

“Then what is the point, Jeremy? That you are very much insane? That I am very likely, too? It has to be madness, that keeps me tied to you for so long, after you’ve sheared the bonds.”

“No.” He shakes his head. “It’s not madness, Lilly. You’re just too young to understand. You cannot grasp the concept of it all. It’s love. Undeniably, unsparingly, love.”

“It can’t be love,” I say out loud, “If I’ve decided that I already hate you.”

“Strong passions evoked from the same feelings,” he tells me. “You say it’s hate today. But it’ll transform back to love tomorrow. That is how these things go.”

“You think it’s a cycle?” I sneer. “You think I’ll go back to loving you just like the turn of a wheel? That it’s perpetual?”

“No,” Jeremy says. “I did not say it’s a cycle.”

“Then what?”

“Misattribution.”

I narrow my eyes at his. The throbbing of my cheek has stopped. I can’t much taste the blood anymore.

I think he’d hit me less hard than I first thought. Certainly not with his full strength. I think I felt more the shock of it than the actual physical blow. And the blood? That just happened when I bit my tongue. Totally not his fault.

I hear myself thinking these thoughts, and wonder:
Is it utter lunacy? Am I really justifying being beaten?

But the words we’re sharing now? This conversation we’re having? It’s calmed me, somehow. It feels civilized, almost, because that is what it really is.

Besides, he’s piqued my curiosity. “What do you mean, ‘misattribution’?”

“It’s simple,” Jeremy says. “You have these feelings floating around inside you. Many of them—most of them?—directed at me.

“Your feelings give rise to your passions. The intoxication you feel when we make love. The anger when you think I’ve done you wrong. The thrill of battling it out with me, of sparring on a verbal level.”

“I don’t…”

“Don’t deny it. You’d be doing yourself an injustice. I know the truth of these feelings because they are mirrored in me. You are the only one who has ever been able to make them come out.

“There is no cycle, Lilly. You just choose to attach words to these things you feel. Hatred? Love? Both spurred on by the same emotions. Both capable of making you do extraordinary things. That is the shortcoming of human language. It tries to encapsulate all these bubbling, stewing emotions in neat little packages that can be labeled. It is the fallacy of Western thinking. That everything has a meaning. That it should be defined. That it should be dissected piece by piece.

“But the feelings you and I have for each other? The ones we share? They are beyond definition. They are beyond meaning. I feel an immense love looking at you, Lilly, ruffled as you are, angry and pissed off at me as you are. And you, sitting on the opposite side of the mirror, must feel nothing but hate.

“Therein lies the truth of our relationship. That something so ugly can give birth to something so beautiful. I am enchanted by you, Lilly, in all your states. I provoke you into some of them. I tease you into others. I do it all for the selfish reason that I want to experience you and all you have to offer. Not life, Lilly. I’ve already experienced life. Not life, but…you.

“That is our tragedy. That you and I can never move past this point. In a way, we’re stuck together because of what I put you through. Because of the pull you exert on me. Because I know of no other outlet for my love.

“You are all I have and all I want. I’ve tried to push you away, when I thought it best for you, when I thought you might take the lead, but every time you rebounded right back. That is how I know what we have is more than mere words. Love, hate? Frivolous words. Frivolous definitions. This thing between us—this thing I know you feel—transcends all that.”

“That is utter bullshit,” I mumble, but without much conviction. My head is swimming with the possibilities. What if Jeremy is right? What if that is the true reason I’ve chosen to stay?

“I
am
right, you know,” he says.

I realize I’ve spoken my doubts aloud. I gasp and cover my mouth with both hands.

Jeremy sits down in his original seat across the table from me. “You know,” he says, “it’s a damn good thing that Charles is deaf, or else he’d be privy to our every word. We can’t have what we discuss between us leave this little room now, can we? He looks up at the sound of approaching footsteps.

“Ah,” he says, giving Charlie a gracious smile. “Dinner is served.”

Chapter Nine

I chew without tasting. My thoughts are too tumultuous to enjoy the food.

Jeremy Stonehart is an absolute wonder. The cruelty, the thoughtfulness, the beautiful philosophy contained within one man. It is astounding.

The more I ruminate on it, the more I see that he is right. Love and hate
are
simply words. The feelings that give rise to them
are
eerily similar.

So, is that why I found it so easy to slip into loving him? All those feelings of hate have been building toward him the whole time? Only they weren’t hate, as he said, but rather passion. Passions he evoked in me. Some of which were hauntingly beautiful, others maddeningly painful. But they were passions all the same. That is how he sunk his claws into me.

Apathy would be better. Apathy would give me the distance needed for revenge. But now I seek something greater than that. Something more enlightened. Something utterly more fulfilling:

Understanding
.

“Why did you drug me?” I ask. It’s the question that’s been building.

“To give you a chance to come to me,” he says.

I shake my head, “What?”

“To see if I am yet the confidante I need to be for you.”

“That’s a twisted way of looking at things,” I say. “And your verdict?”

“I am not.” The words carry a touch of remorse. But he smiles. “I can’t help but feel my behavior today set us back a few steps.”