Broken.
“Jo,” Archer is saying from somewhere very far away. His hands shake me lightly. “Jo, look at me.”
My eyes drag to his. I can barely focus on him.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. There are tears glossing over his gorgeous hazel eyes. “You have to know how sorry I am. How much I’ve hated myself since that day — for agreeing to their plan, for hurting you. Every minute since I wrote that letter, I’ve wanted to take it back. Every second since I lost you, I’ve wished I’d been able to find some other way out.”
I blink at him, incapable of words. If I open my mouth, I have a feeling all that will escape is a scream.
“Jo…” He swallows roughly. “Are you okay?”
“Am I okay?” I laugh. The laugh catches in my throat, turns to a sob. I try to swallow it down, but it won’t budge. “No. No, Archer, I’m not okay.”
I jerk back, out of his grip, and scramble to my feet. I can’t sit still another second. If I do, I’ll fly apart into a thousand pieces, an explosion of emotional shrapnel. I pace in small loops across the tiny apartment, hands in my hair, mind racing ten times its normal speed, pulse thudding like a percussion band. Archer remains on the floor, watching me with wary eyes.
“I should’ve known,” I mutter. I’m not sure if I’m speaking to him or to myself. I’m not sure it matters. “I should’ve realized they had a hand in breaking us apart. Anything I’ve ever wanted that fell outside the parameters they deemed socially acceptable…”
“You couldn’t have known.” His voice is bitter. “They outplayed me. Outplayed us.”
“They’re masters at it,” I say hollowly. Is that my voice — so exhausted? So strained? “They’ve been doing it my whole life.” I laugh-sob again. “They’ll keep doing it forever. It’s who they are. It’s how they operate.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?” I shake my head. “I’ve been treating you like the villain this whole time when you’re the victim in all this. I should be the one apologizing. If my parents weren’t such monsters…” My hands tighten in my hair, tugging the roots to the point of pain. “God, I hate them. I hate them so much. I never want to see them again.”
He sighs. Something in the sound makes me look at him. When I see the expression on his face, my brows shoot up my forehead.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“They’re your parents, Jo.” He climbs to his feet. Walks toward me with cautious, measured steps. “Your family. No matter how you might wish otherwise at this particular moment… they’ll always be a part of your life.”
I shake my head, rejecting his words. But even as I do, I wonder if I’ll truly be able to excise Vincent and Blair out of my life like a fatal tumor. They won’t react well to their formerly obedient offspring attempting to cut ties. Even if I manage to slash my biological tethers… I know them well enough to know they won’t ever let me live in peace without them. They’ll make it their mission to dismantle any future I attempt to build, to derail any business I launch down the tracks. And with limitless funds and infinite connections at their disposal… they’ll more than likely succeed.
They didn’t reach the pinnacle of success by accident. When it comes to their enemies, they’re utterly ruthless.
I begin to pace again.
“You see now… why I didn’t want to tell you…” Archer murmurs knowingly. “I thought I could at least spare you this pain.”
“And what about you? You’d just continue taking all the blame? Letting me hate you?” My rage is nearly blinding. I’m furious — at him for hiding this secret, at my parents for ruining everything, at myself for not seeing the truth sooner.
“I’d rather you hate me forever than see you in this much agony. I’d rather watch you marry someone else than make you this miserable.”
“That’s not your call to make!” I whirl around to face him. “If you really loved me—”
“I do love you, Jo.”
I flinch at his words. Words I was so desperate to hear, only moments ago. Words that now, only cause me more pain.
“I can’t—I just—” I’m standing on the precipice of a full emotional breakdown, mere seconds from falling to the ground and curling into the fetal position. I need space to breathe. I need time to think. Most of all, I need to be alone. “I’m sorry. I have to go.”
Before I fall apart completely, I race for the door. Archer’s voice chases me out onto the landing.
“Jo, wait!”
But I don’t wait. I fly down the stairs, nearly losing my footing on the bottom step. My field of vision is blurry with tears as I race out of the building, into the rain. I’m sobbing in full as I climb into my car and slam the door closed. My hands are shaking so badly, I can barely get the key into the ignition.
I don’t allow myself to hesitate as I pull away from the curb. But as I race down the street, away from Archer’s apartment, my gaze slides up to the rearview mirror. For just a second, I catch sight of him standing in the middle of the road, rain pattering all around him, staring after me with a look of such indescribable loneliness, a fresh flow of tears gathers behind my eyes.
I turn the corner with a sharp jerk of the wheel. But the image of him standing there haunts me long after I’ve driven out of sight.
TWENTY-EIGHT
archer
I knew telling her wouldn’t be easy.
I had no idea it would be so damn hard.
After Jo drives off, I stand beneath the shower faucet until the water runs cold. There’s no washing away the dirty, broken feeling inside me. My soul itself feels stained with regret.
Wishing I’d told her sooner.
Wishing I’d never told her at all.
Wishing I had something to distract my thoughts.
My hands splay against the wall, my forehead coming down to rest between them on the cold, hard tile. I’m consumed by memories of the look in her eyes as I shared the truth about her parents.
Betrayal.
Pure, undiluted.
The broken, bitter sting of it sucked the light right out of her, a poisonous leech. I’ve been there. I know what she’s going through; spent time in the exact circle of Hell in which she now finds herself. I worked my way out, step by anguished step. It didn’t happen overnight.
Much as I want to go after Jo, to support her as she spirals through denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance… there’s nothing I can say to comfort her. Not right now. Not yet. She needs time to work through her thoughts on her own; time to digest the monumentally heavy load I’ve just dropped on her shoulders.
How much time, I don’t know.
How long does it take to process a betrayal of this magnitude?
For someone like Josephine — a girl who is so naturally good, so naturally giving — to experience such deeply personal duplicity… I can only pray the experience doesn’t change her on a fundamental level.
Don’t worry, a self-loathing voice snarls. She has a fiancé to comfort her, remember?