Page 81 of Shattered Queens: Veronica
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lie, keeping my voice flat.
Disappointment shadows his face. “You wouldn’t.” He sighs, the sound sharp with frustration. “It was years ago. I found you high and drunk, confessing your secrets to the flowers.”
The memory resurfaces, cold and stinging. I remember some of that night. When he humiliated me. “You mean the night you called me desperate?”
“Yes. I was angry.” He takes a seat on the ground next to me. “Do you remember we kissed?”
I snap my head to him. “Yes, at first I thought it was a dream.” I look at the flowers. “I remember going to a party with Tabitha.” I may as well admit it. “My ex, Tony, was there. He’d been begging me to take him back…We…we were fooling around, but then I stopped and left.”
“Did he hurt you?” he asks.
“I can’t remember,” I admit with shame. “I’d been drinking and smoking. When I got to my parents’, things are a bit of a blur. I just remember the humiliation of you calling me desperate. It triggered me because of Tony; maybe that’s why I can’t forget. When I felt like I wasn’t proving my love for him, he would make me feel like the only way for him to love me was ifIdid whatever he wanted.” I can’t believe I just admitted that aloud. I’ve never told anyone.
“I had no idea.” He looks into my eyes, and I see the storm in his. “You kissed me after being with another man.” He reminds me, “You were high and drunk. I could’ve been anyone.” He looks at me and then stands up. Before he takes any more steps. “When I said ‘beautiful,’ I wasn’t referring to the flowers.” Then he walks inside the house.
I don’t join him and Susana for dinner that night or the following night. I’ve been eating dinner late and alone. I wait for them to either go to bed or, in Miles’s case, lock himself in the office and work.
All I’ve been doing is lying in bed, imagining the photographs of me. I need to see them. I hear a door slam so hard it makes the walls of the house vibrate. I get up and make my way outside my bedroom. It’s so quiet. The only sound is my stomach grumbling. I head downstairs to the kitchen and see the moonlight illuminating the kitchen. I look out the window and find the dark jungle staring back at me. I turn and jump. Miles is leaning against the wall, watching me. He’s wearing a pair of gray sweatpants, a gray hoodie, and his glasses. He’s so sexy.
“Are you hungry?”
I can’t lie to him. He’s been around me and seen the changes I’ve made. “Yes.”
He moves to the refrigerator and grabs what looks like lemonade and a plate covered in foil.
“I cooked earlier and saved you some food. I figured you’d come down, like you have all week.” He moves to heat up the meal, pours some lemonade into a glass, and hands it to me, his fingers grazing mine. “Try it.”
I take a sip. “It tastes like coconut.” He smiles. It’s limonada de coco. My mother’s favorite. He finishes heating up my meal and sets it in front of me. “Now eat. You’ve barely been eating.”
I do as I’m told. I hate to admit that I miss him taking care of me. I hate how much I’ve gotten used to him being around. “Miles, your aunt doesn’t want me here. It’s obvious. I don’t even know what I did.”
I can see his inner turmoil. “She’s not fond of strangers. I didn’t tell her about us until we boarded the plane. So it was very sudden.”
Us. What does that mean? “Us?” I ask.
“I brought you here to keep you safe.”
Right. I’m the job. That stings. I stupidly thought we were at least friends. That we…I can’t go there. But I do need him to do something for me.
“Miles…I need to see the photographs. All of them.”
“No,” he says. The word is a flat, uncompromising wall.
“I have a right to see them. They’re of me, aren't they?” I step closer, desperate to bridge the cold distance he’s suddenly placed between us. “If I’m the ‘job,’ then I have a right.”
Miles looms over me, casting a long shadow. He looks less like the man who tucked a blanket around me on the plane and more like the monster who drugged me.
“You think you want to see them,” he says, his voice dropping to a low grumble. “But you don't.” His hand hovers near my waist before he catches himself and curls it into a fist.
“I brought you here to keep you safe,” he repeats, his eyes burning into mine with an intensity that makes my heart stutter. “And that means keeping those photos, and the person who sent them, as far away from your head as possible. Don’t ask me again.”
“Miles, I can’t let this go. Knowing that those photographs exist is driving me out of my mind.” My lips begin to tremble. “I know I can handle it. I have to because I can’t live like this anymore.” I place my hands on his chest. “I want to live my life without the ghosts of my past having power over me.”
“Veronica, I don’t know if I’m strong enough for you to see them,” he admits, and my heart breaks.
“You won’t always be there to protect me.” The words shatter my soul. Because he can’t and I don’t want him to.
“All right.”
