Page 50 of Betraying Him
To me, that doesn’t look like someone doing something of their own volition. That looks like someone being forced to do something they don’t want. It looks like hesitation and reluctance.
I can’t fucking believe it.
Whether she was forced into it somehow or blackmailed, I’m not sure, but I do know it was not because she wanted to.
And I’ve spent the last three years tormenting her because of it.
“Fuck!” I scream and jump out of the chair, sending it swinging backward. I grab a hold of it and throw it at the other end of the room, sending it crashing into a glass cabinet. The glass shatters, but that has nothing on the feeling inside me. I feel like I’m being fucking shredded to pieces by my own doing. I fucking—Itorturedher. For weeks, months,years, I made it my mission to make her life a living hell.
Why didn’t she tell me? Why wouldn’t she say something, anything, to make me stop? Why did she make me hate her when it could have been fixed? I can’t make sense of it all. The only thing I understand is that Savannah wasn’t the one deserving of my ire, rage, and intensity.
No, it had nothing to do with her and everything to do with whoever made her do it, the person who must have forced her to go into my dad’s office.
Her father.
I grab something from somewhere—I don’t even know what—and throw it at the wall as I scream out my frustrations. I scream, and I throw, and I fuckingrage, feeling that familiar panic from before bubbling up inside me, and this time, Savannah isn’t here to help me through it. I don’tdeserveto have her help me through it.
A throat clearing has reality coming crashing back to the surface, drowning my panic away. I swing around to find my mom in the doorway, and my legs collapse from under me.
“Mom,” I say, my voice tight. “I didn’t know you were here.”
Her assessing eyes sweep over the room and the destruction I’ve made. “Clearly,” she mutters dryly and approaches me.
I pull my knees up to my chest, resting my elbows on them. Pressing the balls of my hands into my eyes, I try to ease the tension and ward off the tears threatening to fall.
“What’s going on, Harley?” my mom asks, but I can’t answer her. If I do, I’m afraid I’ll break completely.
I hear her heels clacking, but I don’t look up. I don’t move, and I don’t speak. I just look at everything that’s happened in the last three years with a new perspective, and what I see fucking haunts me.
The times when I cornered her in the library or when I fucked her in the alley and used her whenever I pleased. I think back to the time she kissed me, and it felt so good and so fucking right that I let myself slip for just a moment before I came back to myself. How I responded by biting her lip so hard, I drew blood. How I left her there with tears in her eyes and a haunted expression, even though Iknewshe’d already been crying that day.
Fuck, I spat her blood in her face and watched her crumble as though she was nothing.
Oh god, just how many times have I left her to deal with shit on her own? How many times have I made her feel worse than she already did? How has she been living like this when I can barely stomach the thought of it?
I hated her so much and made it known. There have been times when my resolve slipped, and I let myself go back to thedaysbefore,but then something always reminded me of reality, and I went right back to wanting to take revenge.
I guess the only saving grace is that I’ve carefully avoided her for over a year, so she didn’t have to take my shit the entire time. But then I remember the reasonwhyI’ve been avoiding her, and I feel sick all over again.
How fucking stupid and blind could I be?
Now, I can see it for what it really was.
It wasn’t her who was looking for a husband, it was her father.
Is he really planning to marry her off? To trade her in some sort of deal? What the actual fuck iswrongwith that bastard? Clearly, there’s a lot I don’t know about the Marks family, but I plan to find outeverything.
I’m not going to let him keep doing this to her, and I’m certainly not going to let her marry some stranger, all because he tells her to. No, fuck that, over my dead body will I let that happen.
I’m not sure how long I sit there, but a soft hand on my forearm has me coming back to reality.
I remove my hands and look into my mom’s troubled eyes. “You came to watch the video?” she asks, and I nod wordlessly.
“Is that what has you so messed up?”
I hesitate. Yes, in a sense it is, but not like she probably thinks.
“We got it wrong,” I rasp. “I’m not sure why she did it, but I know she didn’t want to.”
