But my heart wasn’t controlled by such things.
So there was something with him. However small. I’d magnified it out of desperation. First, because I was desperate for something that didn’t hurt as much as me and Heath. And then because I had no other choice.
I had a choice now.
“We had something, Craig,” I continued. “But that was all shattered with you showing your true colors. And thank god that happened when it did. Before I could put down roots with you. Before it was too late. And it’s too late for us, now. If we really ever had a chance.” I observed him. “You might have a chance. If you get therapy. Explore the reasons why you feel the need to be violent toward women. Everyone has the power to change their direction in life. Even you.”
Silence followed my words.
Maybe they took a second to penetrate Craig’s alcohol-laden brain.
It was an instant change, the cliché flip of a switch version of a temper tantrum. Granted he’d come over here in one, but I’d thought he’d settled. Maybe sobered up. Wisened up.
And I still held something for him.
Because there was a part of him—no matter how small or false it may have been—that held me when I cried at sad movies, that got me the exact chocolate I loved when I had PMS, who went to restaurants he hated because he knew I loved them. He did all those things, whether or not he had an ulterior motive—to make me fall in love with him enough to make it so there was no way out.
He just underestimated me.
And the women around me.
All of whom hated him, obviously. Lucy and she didn’t even know the full story.
They hated him because they loved me.
And they expected me to hate him too.
I’d discussed this with Rosie when she’d urged me on this disastrous date.
“I’m sending him love, and happiness, and I hope that he finds a way to have a beautiful life, despite the fact he has an ugly soul,” I said, sipping my wine.
Rosie snorted. “Okay, you have fun with that peace and light bullshit, I’m sending him infertility in the form of a bullet to the dick, which I’ll deliver personally.”
The worst thing was, she was serious.
And though he purposefully and viscously caused me emotional and physical pain, I didn’t want the same for him. I didn’t work that way. I wasn’t wired that way.
Which is what I told Rosie. What I didn’t tell her was because my heart didn’t work that way either. That my wretched and traitorous heart didn’t know how to forget all of those little things that made me fall in love with him in the first place. It sure knew how to forget the bad.
It was always the way.
So that’s why I’d softened slightly at the table. Not enough to want to ever see him again, let alone entertain any kind of cordial relationship. But enough to bask in the revisionist history that the heart created to explain why love didn’t go away.
Then of course, the present tore through that.
Or more accurately, Craig tore through that.
And the table.
We were sitting there, in almost contentment—as much contentment as two ex-spouses—could be, and then he stood, flipped the table.
Like completely.
Glass flew everywhere.
And I stayed completely still.
It wasn’t what one would expect. For me to calmly sit there while my ex-husband literally upended a table in the middle of a bar, with bulging eyes and a fury turning his handsome features ugly.
“You fucking self-righteous bitch!” he roared.
The man I’d promised to love forever, who I’d planned on spending my life with—however naive that was—and the man I’d been so sure who’d loved me, was now throwing tables around restaurants and screaming at me.
And I sat ramrod straight, my expression flat, blank, outwardly unamused.
Even on the inside I wasn’t exactly freaking out. Which was weird, as he was now crossing the distance he’d cleared with his little outburst, with violence in his eyes.
People around had noticed. And were staring. But this was L.A., you could be literally bleeding on the street—as my sister had been two years ago—and the majority of people would watch like it was some live sitcom, they were that desensitized to violence.
Surely someone would come to my aid when Craig started hitting me. A quick glance to the side had me seeing my white knight waiter rushing around the bar with panicked eyes.
He wouldn’t get here in time.
Not to save the damsel.
So I reached down into my purse, luckily my hand circling the object that I’d forgotten was in here since I hadn’t used the purse in question for over a year, lifting it out and switching it on, holding it to Craig’s body just as he reached me. He was still yelling, but when the taser hit his body, he stopped.
His mouth still moved and horrible garble stuttered out of it as his body stayed upright, jerking violently in a way that made me sick.
This was necessary. I knew this. But I didn’t like it. Causing another human being harm. No matter he meant me harm.
But I couldn’t always be the damsel. I couldn’t keep expecting other people to dole out the violence.
He collapsed.
I dropped the taser beside him as if it were scalding my palm.
People still watched.
The woman across from me was filming on her phone.
As was the man in front of me.
Another woman at the bar sipped a martini, eyes on her book, barely fluttering her eyelashes at the scene.
The waiter arrived.
“I’m afraid I seem to have ruined another margarita,” I said dreamily. “Maybe I’ll just get the check.”
He regarded the carnage. “How about a tequila shot and it’s on the house?”
Only in L.A.
Chapter Nine
It was after the promised tequila shot from the waiter that didn’t save me that I made my way home.
No one called the police.
Because, well, this was L.A. The police had better things to do. And if the police went to every fight a couple had in the middle of a trendy bar, they’d never do anything like catch murderers and drug dealers.
I was thankful for that.
Because the cops coming would mean Rosie finding out at the very least. If I was lucky. If I was not, it would mean Keltan finding out which would mean Heath would find out. Not that he would care, I guessed.
He’d made it painfully freaking clear that he was making true on the promise he’d made me the day he left.
“You walk away from me now, that’s it, we’re done. Period. I don’t know you, you don’t know me.”
I should’ve been more worried about Lucy finding out through Keltan. She might be pregnant, but she was scary. Especially if she found out what Craig had really done, instead of thinking my flight of fancy had expired, hence the reason for the quickie divorce.
It was her small and powerful strength that I was guessing was behind the banging of my front door, and I opened, bracing for Lucy fury.
I froze at what I got.
“You’re opening the fucking door?” he hissed, pushing past me almost violently to storm into my living room.
I stared at the empty space he’d occupied for a moment, unable to fathom that he was here. And that another man I had been in love with was yelling at me for the second time in less than two hours.