Page 160 of Wild Thing
"Yes, what?!"
I wasn't sure why he wanted to hear me say it. It felt twisted. I dropped my gaze to the floor and shook my head.
Zack stood angrily, and before I could protest, he grabbed me by the chin, forcing me to look up towards him and into his intense, furious stare. "I want to hear you fucking say it!"
My eyes darted from left to right. I inhaled a sharp breath.
"Okay," I held his stare. "I fucked him."
"More than once?"
I took another deep breath in and whispered. "Yes."
He let go of my chin and snatched his jacket that was draped over the chair. He stomped towards the door.
I called out after him.
“Zack! I’m sorry, Zack! This is not how I wanted this to end! Please, I–”
He stopped in his tracks.
He stiffened, slowly turning to face me. His eyes were raging with anger and disgust.
“Sorry? You’re a fucking liar, Dylan. The whole time you were away, you were telling me that you needed space to think about us and our future…all the while you were fucking your ex-boyfriend and supposedly getting sexually assaulted.”
“Supposedly?”
“Well, how do I know what’s real?” His eyes were slit as he questioned me. “You’re a liar. Maybe you just liked it rough.”
My jaw was wide open as his words struck me, like I’d been punched in the stomach. It killed me to think he'd think I'd lie about being sexually assaulted.
I swallowed a sob.
He turned back towards the door. His hand hovered on the door handle.
“I might love you right now,” he said, his voice jagged. “But one day I won’t.”
I sat there, numb, and waited for the final blow.
He paused, the final, cruel words hitting me harder than anything he had said before. “And when that day comes, I hope you think of what you did… and want to die.”
Zack didn’t wait for me to respond.
He left, but not before he slammed the door so hard the windows rattled. He left me sitting at my dining table, despondent and miserable.
I wondered if it was arrogant of me to have wished for forgiveness. To hope that, maybe, somehow, there was a part of him that could understand why I had done what I did.
Or maybe I was fucking crazy for even thinkng that.
Even though I had been suffocating in his control, Zack didn’t deserve the betrayal. He deserved to have the life he had always wanted. The stable, suburban dream.
Something he would never find with me. I was never going to be capable of giving him that.
And maybe, in some twisted way, I had known that from the start. But knowing it and feeling it were two different things.
Despite the ugliness of the conversation and finality of the breakup, there was something else I felt.
Relief.
