“You saw me as nothing but a prize.”
“I saw you as mine,” she whispers, voice cracking. “I’ve waited for years. I’ve watched you fall for people who didn’t deserve you. I thought if I just, if I just showed you, ”
“You showed me who you are.”
Delilah’s sobs deepen. Her body trembles as she presses her forehead to the floor.
“I’ll do anything,” she cries. “I’ll beg her. I’ll go to her house. I’ll fall on my knees on the porch, in front of her dad, I don’t care.”
“She won’t care.”
“She has to,” Delilah says, her voice climbing. “She has to know I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean to hurt her. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“You meant to win.”
“I meant to be loved,” she whispers, voice breaking. “I meant to matter.”
I stare down at her. She’s collapsed now, palms pressed flat to the floor, sobbing into the hardwood.
“I’ll disappear,” she pleads. “I’ll leave town. I’ll never speak to you again. Just, please, don’t hate me. Please.”
“I don’t hate you,” I say quietly. “I just don’t love you.”
Her head lifts, face streaked with tears and snot. “But I love you. I love you so much it hurts.”
“I know. That’s the problem.”
Delilah crawls closer, hands trembling. “Please. One day. One hour. One minute.”
“You can’t have even that.”
Her voice sharpens, desperate. “I’ll make you forget her.”
“You don’t get to rewrite this.”
“I love you,” she says again, clinging to the words as if they could erase the truth.
I shrug her off. The leather collar of my coat slips from her reach.
Unfortunately for her, she overlooked one crucial detail in her scheme: her mafia brother.
“Calvin knows,” I say, voice like ice.
Delilah’s face drains. Her lips part, but no sound comes.
“What?” she breathes.
“He knows everything. And he’s pissed.”
She stares, frozen. Her mouth opens, then shuts. Her hands fall limp in her lap.
“I didn’t think he’d find out so soon,” she whispers. “He wasn’t supposed to.”
The flaw in every plan: the piece you forget. If I were Delilah, maybe I’d have assumed Calvin would keep his blood ties quiet for months, maybe years. But Calvin ties up loose ends faster than she imagined.
To twist the knife, I state the obvious. “He did.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” she says, voice small.
