“It wasn’t you,” he said. “I didn’t want to hurt you. I didn’t want to lose this. But I also can’t lie to you. I told myself that I could. That I could keep it from you and that I could still have everything. But I can’t do that to you, Rue. Because I know about your family. Because I get why you hate infidelity so much. I do. You’re right. What I was planning on doing was shit. But this isn’t better. And if I could go back and change it...” He put his hands over his face. “I would.”
He was lying.
She knew him well enough to see that he was lying.
He wouldn’t change it.
He felt bad, but he wanted to walk away. He felt bad, but he wanted the sex he’d had with whoever this woman was more than he wantedtheirlife. And he couldn’t even be honest about it. With himself or with her. What the hell was that about?
“Are you going to be with her now?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I... I’m really sorry.”
“What issorrysupposed to mean to me? I planned for this. Everything was perfect. I had a bachelorette party.” She started to hyperventilate. “We were supposed to go to that gorgeous lodge for a week for our honeymoon and now... now it’s all nothing. It’s nothing. So what good does sorry do me?”
“It doesn’t fix anything. I get that. I’m not evenasking you to forgive me. I just want you to know. That I regret... hurting you.”
“What good does that do me? You tell me. All these people are showing up. I’m wearing the dress. What good does that do me? What does your sorry mean? It’s... it’s bullshit,” she said. “Can’t you at least accuse me of cheating on you with Justice?”
“You didn’t,” he said, looking wide-eyed and shocked.
Trusting.
“No,” she said. “I didn’t. But can’t you be unreasonable and unhinged, and nothing like the man that I’ve spent the last eight years with, instead of being...you? I want you to turn into a monster,” she said, her voice breaking. “Because it was a monstrous thing to cheat on me, Asher. It was. But you’re standing there and you’re still you. I wish you could make me hate you.”
“I’m so sorry.”
What a bland sentence.
I’m so sorry.
It didn’t fix anything. It didn’t change the moment, or alter her feelings.
She’d thought once that if her parents ever had a moment of self-awareness and apologized to her she’d be healed in some fashion.
But that was a lie.
She realized that now. Apologies were empty when you were still losing everything you wanted. It was empty when the sorry fixed nothing and left you without an enemy to rage against.
“Bullshit.”She closed her eyes and a tear slid down her cheek. She wiped it away. “This is bullshit.”
“I know. I know, babe...”
She wasn’t letting him have this. She wasn’t letting him get off the hook because he was hanging his head and being ashamed. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
“I’m not yourbabe. I cannot believe that I spent eight years waiting for you. Waiting forthis. All so you can have a collapse now? Why couldn’t you have fucked somebody elseeight years ago? You didn’t deserve thistime. You didn’t deserve my love. You didn’t deserve my virginity. My trust. You’re just like my parents and you don’t even have the decency to be... ugly and awful in the middle of all of it the way that they are.” His eyes were shining, the pain and regret there so real. It just made it all worse.
“Rue, what can I do...?”
“Nothing. Take your key, and go to my house, and get all of your things out of it. I know there isn’t much. But I want you to take all of it. I don’t want it. I don’t want it, I don’t want you. I don’t want to see you.”
“Rue...”
“No. I don’t care. I just don’t ever want to see you again.”
He nodded, and opened up the door, walking away, and it took less than a minute for Justice to be right there. He looked at her, and her bright eyes, at the fury radiating off of her. And suddenly, when she looked into those blue eyes, it was murder she saw there.
“Justice...” she said, reaching out and grabbing hold of his arm.
