Page 89 of Z For Butterfly Man
“DON’T!” I slam my fist into the bookshelf. Books rain down. I pace on them, stomp on the lies she’s been feeding me. “Don’t say my name like that. Like I’ve ever meant anything to you.”
“You did mean—”
“You hired me to kill Blake! That’s all I was. A weapon you pointed at your husband. And I did it. Happily. Because I thought—” I laugh. It comes out broken. Manic. “I thought you’d see me. See how far I was willing to go to make you love me.” My hands shake with rage I can barely contain. “It was never about me. It was about him. The detective. Your precious RJ.”
“I loved RJ, but I loved you, too. I wish I hadn’t, but I did. I couldn’t fucking help it. You think I’d have slept with you if I hadn’t? I gave you myself willingly, Tristan. I didn’t need to. And part of me wanted, will always want, to choose you. I meant every word that night I got drunk when I said I didn’t want you to die. Remember?”
“I knew I was irrevocably bound to him, for better or for worse. He’d be my shield, my savior…and perhaps, in the end, my greatest downfall,” I whisper to myself.
“Yes. I was ready to rewrite that part of our story early on. I gave you an out so many times.”
“Like that promise in the cabin, your infuriating deal.”
“But we both know you’d have never taken it, just like we both know I needed, for once, to choose the golden retriever. I’ve had enough of the morally gray.”
“Everything is a story.”
“And I’m the storyteller. I’m tired of others writing my book. It’s time I wrote my own.”
Except the detective is dead. I’m all she has left. But even as a second choice, she doesn’t want me. “Even fucking now you don’t want me!” Reflexively, I pick up my gun and turn back to her.
Her face pales at the gun. The fear in her gaze isn’t a performance anymore. It’s real. She knows what she’s broken in me.
“Tristan, please put the gun down.”
“If I can’t have you, if you don’t choose me, then what’s the point of your heartbeat?”
She stands as far as the cuffed wrist allows. “You want to kill me? Do it. Prove me right. Prove you’re just another man who can't handle a woman who is smarter than him.”
“Don’t provoke me. The only reason you’re still alive is that I’m not done showing you the pain you’ve caused, the ruin you deserve.”
“I’m not provoking you. I’m proving to you I’ve been right about you all along. In books, villains burn the world down to get the girl. In real life, they kill the girl. I’ve always known you’re going to kill me anyway. That’s why I couldn’t choose you, why I planned to have you killed, Tristan. It was the only way to survive. So go ahead. Might as well get it over with. Add me to your body count. Another justified kill for your sick obsession.”
I point the gun at her chest. “You think I won’t?”
“I’m standing, helpless, unarmed, naked, bleeding, humiliated to the core, and you, the best sharpshooter of your time, hold the gun. Why wouldn’t you?”
My finger shakes on the trigger. If she’ll never learn how to be my butterfly, why can’t I fucking pull the trigger?
“I’ll tell you why you can’t,” she says as if she’s read my mind. “Because if you kill me, what do you have left? I created you. I made this monster who worships at my altar.”
I shake my head. “You didn’t create me.”
“You said it yourself. ‘You’re the one who made me this way. You wrote the blueprint for obsession and then looked surprised when someone built it.’ I wasn’t surprised, Tristan. Who do you think put that dyslexia-friendly edition of my first book in the little library across the street from your place?”
The idol that is Reagan Fletcher tumbles down on me along with everything I’ve believed. “And the books donated to soldiers on base, that conveniently half of them were yours?”
She smirks. “Let’s say I have a friend of a friend in the military. How do you think I learned about the humming thing?”
I chuckle at myself. “All this time… You saw what I could do for you, and you kept feeding the monster to unleash it when it suited you best.”
“Who are you without me to worship? Just a lonely psychopath hiding behind a broken mask and a library full of bibles written by the goddess who created you but will never want you.”
“Take it back.”
“No. No lies, remember? Only the truth. Here’s your truth, Tristan. The only one that matters.”
My aim lifts. A bullet to her head will put an end to her venom. The last line in a fantasy that was never meant to be real.
