Breaking Her (Love is War #2) (33 page)

"My God, that is some justice," I said reverently, my mind on how much I still worshipped Gram.
 

"Time will tell if it will stick, though Leo
has
been holding his own more than usual."

"Let me know how it turns out."
 

"Oh, I will.
 
Believe me, I will."
       

My phone dinged a text at me, and I checked it, assuming it was an alert to get back on set.
 

It was not.
 
It was a message from Farrah.
 

I showed it to Dante.

FARRAH/SEXYASSBITCH:
 
I just put in my two weeks at the airline.
 
I'm over it.
 
It's no fun without you.
 
Shopping day soon! xoxo
 

"Well, I guess we have our spy."
 
His tone was resigned but almost pleased.
 
He was relieved to finally know.

I wasn't sure what to feel.
 

CHAPTER

TWENTY-NINE

"Being in love shows a person who he should be."
 

~Anton Chekhov

PAST

SCARLETT

I thought I was fine at first.
 
I pretended—even convinced myself— that I'd bounced right back, returning to school as soon as I could, acting as though nothing had happened, talking about it to no one, not even the people I
could
talk about it with.
 

But I was not fine.
 
Every day I got up, it felt harder.
 
It was a struggle to shower, to put on clothes, to eat, to do anything but sleep, or lie in bed and wish I were sleeping.

Wish for something more permanent.
 

It affected me in strange ways.
 
My stutter disappeared almost completely.
 
I had almost no problem ignoring insults from the usual bullies.
 
That sort of thing just rolled off me.
 

I started trying harder in school.
 
Not because I liked it, or because I felt better, but because I wanted to finish and leave.
 
Dante would be heading east for college the following year, and I was planning to go with him.
 

The rest of the school year felt like it passed in a thick, gray fog, but pass it did, and at the end somehow I rallied enough to actually graduate.
 

Dante left for college just two weeks into the summer.
 
He had a nice apartment already set up for him for his freshman year at Harvard.
 

I went with him because I could not conceive of doing anything else.
   

It felt wrong right away.
 
He was instantly busy, and I felt aimless, listless, shiftless.
 
Pointless.
 
I had nothing to do.
 
When he was home with me, which wasn't often, he was tirelessly studying, whereas I was just watching TV, or reading book after book, feeling useless.
 

And worse, I was afraid when I was alone.
 
Irrational fear.
 
Debilitating.
 
If I let the fear rule me, I'd have never left his side.

But I couldn't do that.
 
Pure stubborn pride prevented it.
 
And an instinct to do more than survive.
 
I needed to thrive again.
 

And in order to thrive, I needed to find my own identity.
 
My own life.
 
My own purpose.

I started with something normal.
 
As small of a change as I could stand.
 
I got a job.
 
Another waitressing gig.
 
Dante hated it but he'd have done anything, agreed to just about anything by then just to cheer me up.
   

He was attentive.
 
And he was loving.
 
Possibly more so than ever.

It took a very long time before I wanted his touch for anything aside from affection and comfort, and he never showed one sign of losing his patience about it.
 

To the end of my days, I'll appreciate that.
   

He never even brought it up.
 
When we talked about it, it was because I was worrying over it.

And even then he found the words, just the right ones, that I needed to hear.

The only ones that helped.

"This is not about me," he told me tenderly, "and what my body asks from yours.
 
This is about you and what you need.
 
I
need
to be what you need.
 
That's all that matters right now.
 
The rest will come later.
 
We have time.
 
All that you require.
 
We have it.
 
And when you're ready, I'll be here.
 
Every second of every day.
 
That'll never stop."
 

CHAPTER THIRTY

"Hear no evil, speak no evil, and you won't be invited to cocktail parties."

~Oscar Wilde

PRESENT

SCARLETT

"You're seeing somebody, aren't you?" Farrah asked me, not for the first time.
 

We were shopping (her idea), and it was her first official day of unemployment.
 
"How are you planning to make rent?" I responded, trying not to feel as hostile as I felt.
 

I'd become resentful as I pondered all of the ways she must have betrayed me over the years, and it only seemed to grow, until it was difficult to hide even though I knew that I absolutely had to.
 

Because if this spy for Adelaide had any clue that I was onto her there would be questions that led to consequences that I was not yet prepared to deal with.
 

"Waitressing.
 
Every role I can find.
 
The usual.
 
They assigned the crew a new lead when you left.
 
She was beastly.
 
I just couldn't take it, so I quit.
 
I bet Leona and Demi won't be far behind."
 

We were on the hunt for a new sexy little dress for Farrah's hot date that night.
 
It was really just an excuse to shop.
 
Farrah always had a hot date and enough sexy little dresses to cover it, I was sure.
   

I was helping her because she'd asked, it was my day off, and I was trying to act how I normally would.
 
Normal me rarely said no to shopping.
 

We'd been at it for a few hours, and Farrah had circled back to the same question five times.
 
I knew she wasn't going to let it go, and I knew why.
 

Now that I was looking at her with nothing but suspicion, it occurred to me that she was always asking me too many questions, always curious, prying, nosy, with friendly nudges about everything in my life that I'd always just thought was part of her outgoing personality.
 

I tried to behave as if I didn't know how she'd hurt me and found every good memory I'd ever had with her had turned sour.
 

Some part of me, the part that gave too much of myself to friendships, was still trying to make excuses for her.
 
Maybe she needed the money.
 
I had no doubts Adelaide could afford to pay well.
 
Maybe she'd agreed to spy before she'd known me, and maybe she didn't share everything with Adelaide.
 
Maybe she'd come to care for me.
 
Maybe she felt bad about what she was doing.
 

When I wasn't making excuses I was still trying to deny what was becoming more apparent, more undeniable, with every exchange, but even I could only rely on denial for so long.
 

"Come on!" Farrah nudged me playfully as we sifted through dresses.
 
"Who is he?
 
Dish it!"
 

I sent her a weak smile and tried to lie convincingly, though I had no energy for it.
 
"Me and Anton, but listen, it's nothing serious.
 
We're just killing some time.
 
It's not worth going on about."

I could tell that wasn't the answer she'd expected, and she gave me a strange, probing stare for it, but at least it got her to drop the subject.
 

We were done and driving home before she brought it up again.
 
"Does Demi know you're hooking up with Anton?" she asked me, tone careful.

I thought it was a strange question, but I was preoccupied so I just said, "No.
 
Like I said, it's not a big deal."

The irony was I'd been avoiding Anton lately.
 
He'd always been an overprotective friend, and I knew he'd never understand that I was currently shacking up part-time with the enemy.
 
I barely understood it myself.
 

When we arrived home, I went straight to my room and locked myself in.
 
Since I'd found out there was a spy amongst my roommates, I'd come to hate the apartment.

I felt trapped there whenever I had to stay, because it was simply not a choice anymore.
 
On top of that, I felt like I was being watched all the time, that everything I did would be noticed and reported to someone I'd despised my whole life.

All of that was bad enough, but add to it my pathetic heart, my incessant, weak longing for all the time I was missing with Dante (hadn't we missed enough?), and it was damn near torturous to put in time at the home I'd once found comfort in.
 

I'd pilfered several soft white shirts of Dante's to sleep in, and like a deranged addict I made sure that they smelled like him.
 
I wanted reminders of him even when I slept.
 
Needed them.
 
Needed, when I woke up in a panic alone, to have some sort of proof that I wasn't still existing in that old hell where he was completely lost to me.
 

It used to be that when he was away I could talk myself out of him.
 
We'd gotten way past that point.
 
It was scary how attached I'd become in such a short time.
 

If I was honest with myself though, and sometimes I was, we'd never really been unattached, not even at the worst of it.
 
I'd hacked at that attachment with a machete more times than I could count, but that didn't mean I'd severed it.
 

Far from it.
 
Obviously.
 

I had just changed into one of my stalker Tees when the doorbell rang.
 

I went to get it myself.
 
If it was someone for me, I preferred to beat Farrah to it.
 
I'd become almost obsessive about keeping as much as I could private from her.
 

No such luck.
 
She hit the entryway just a beat behind me, which was not good.
 

I opened the door to find a tired-looking Bastian.
 

He glanced behind me at Farrah, then back to me.
 
"Have time for a cup of coffee?"
 
He cleared his throat.
 
"Down the street."

"I do," I said without hesitating.
 
I didn't want Farrah to overhear one word of whatever he had to say.
 

I stomped into some Toms and left the house as is, baggy T-shirt, cutoff shorts and all.
 

"Mind if I join you?" Farrah asked behind me, sounding frankly curious.
 
Nosy.

How had I not seen her for what she was before?
 
It was so obvious to me the longer I knew the truth.
 
She wasn't really even trying to fool me.
 

"Sorry, but we need a bit of privacy," Bastian replied because he didn't know who or what she was.
 

This is going to blow up in my face, I thought as we shut the door on her.
 

"She's a spy for Adelaide," I said quietly when we'd been walking for a few minutes.
 
I glanced behind my shoulder, paranoid enough to check if she'd blatantly followed us.

"Your
roommate
?"

"Yes.
 
It goes way back, apparently.
 
Trust me, I was as shocked as you are, but Farrah doesn't know I'm onto her.
 
I'm trying my hardest to keep it that way."

"Dante told you," he observed, tone neutral.
 

He didn't know, or at least I doubted that he did, that Dante and I had started playing house again.
 
"He did.
 
I guess Adelaide has been getting information about my day-to-day life that only someone living with me could have known.
 
Farrah unwittingly outed herself as the one that must be doing it a few days ago.
 
It hasn't been fun, let me tell you."

"I can imagine," he said, tone so warm and sympathetic that it made me shiver.
 
If the Durant men could bottle their voices and sell it, they'd be rich.
 
Oh wait.
 
"You know Adelaide hates me, obviously," he continued.
 
"She despises all of Leo's bastards, but the loathing she has for you is on another level.
 
Don't you find it strange?"

We were still walking, side by side, but I managed to send him an eloquent look out of the corner of my eye.
 
"She
always
has.
 
But then again, I've always been in love with her only son, so maybe it's just that simple.
 
It had to be her worst nightmare, him falling for the town trash."
 
No one got the joke more than I did.
 
The town's golden boy and its trashcan girl had never made sense to anyone but us.