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When Wil thought about the trauma that had happened to Katie, there was one mystery that made it easy to know what to ask. “Why is a forty-year-old man still making statements about a relationship he had with a kid ten years later?”
Katie huffed. “Everything is always about Ben. He is the protagonist. And the antagonist. I didn’t say anything, and he told our story over and over again, until there wasn’t any room left for anything but the story he’d made.”
“When did you know he was like that?”
Katie looked at the ceiling, thinking. “He was filmingCreaturesout in the desert about a year after we were together, and he came home the day his costar…”
“Alec Wilde.” Wil supplied the famous actor’s name without thinking. What had happened on that set was still brought up in almost every Wilde interview.
“Yes. That day. The day Wilde insisted on doing the car chase stunt himself, with Lila Watson in the front seat with him, and killed her.”
“God.” It was one thing to read about something like that happening to people you couldn’t imagine. It was another thing entirely to hear it from someone who carried some of its aftermath. “Awful. That’s all I got. So awful. Did you…?”
“I didn’t know Lila. I hadn’t even met her. And Ben wasn’t on set yet when that happened, he was on his way. But he was so excited to tell me.” Katie rose to one elbow, putting herself closer to Wil. “His phone was blowing up. He was reading me every message, putting every call on speaker, and he couldn’t stop telling everyone, telling me, that he ‘should’ve been there.’ I realized he didn’t mean he should’ve been there to save anyone, but because he wanted to be part of it.”
“Wow.God.”
“Yeah. He didn’t care that Lila had died. I could hardly think of anything but how tragic it was, how completely awful for her to lose her life on set, doing a stunt, but Ben would change the subject if I tried to talk about it. He didn’t even care that Alec’s life was probably ruined, and Ben had been friends with Alec since they both came to town when they were seventeen. Ben would’ve taken any role in it. Alec’s, Lila’s, the director’s. He justwanted it. He hated that he wasn’t there. And then I realized he was telling the media, letting it leak, that hewasthere. That meant it was impossible to get at what the fuck happened, this terrible thing that every studio is supposed to protect you against and tell you could never happen.”
“I remember how confusing the stories were.”
“Yeah, because he was making things really fucking confusing, spinning this awful thing that happened to Lila into a way to elevate his own position. He eventually had to stop lying about it after law enforcement and lawyers wanted to talk to him. Even though so much had already happened between us, that was the first time I was scared. That was when I knew I was involved in something I had no control over.”
Wil closed her eyes against imagining that feeling. The sick terror of realizing who one was sleeping with. Living with. “Katie.”
She leaned against Wil’s shoulder, and Almond Butter picked her way up through their legs until she found a place half on Katie’schest and half on Wil’s shoulder to loaf herself. “Thank you, Almond Butter.” Katie stroked her hand over Almond Butter’s fur for a few long moments. When she spoke again, her voice was low and soft. “The two years that came after that were, for me, so hard. So, so hard. But not hard in a way that wasuniqueto me. I’ve learned that what he did to me was very, very ordinary. Because abusers all do the same things.”
She looked up at Wil as if for confirmation, so Wil nodded. She didn’t know from personal experience, but she’d talked to, lived with, and known a lot of people.
“Abusers tell you stories about your friends and your family that make them sound like they don’t have your best interests in mind,” Katie said. “Then they call you stupid for calling those friends and family, and they make you doubt yourself, doubt your people, until you don’t call anymore. They all have so many endless, important, sensitive needs and opinions that it’s just so much easier to make sure everything is done or said or anticipated forthem. Because you just don’t careas much.”
Wil put her hand on Katie’s shoulder. It was hard to know this. Hard to think of Katie Price telling herself that her own opinions, her own wants and needs, were less important than Ben’s.
“They all apologize and are so tender after you mess up and react or do something like you used to, before him.” Katie said this in a bittersweet way that made Wil’s heart hurt. “They all kiss you and keep their arm around you in public, every minute, so you won’t talk to anyone or make them look bad. And they all tell anyone who will listen, when you’re getting kissed in a gown he told your stylist to dress you in, everything that’s wrong with you. Like it’s a joke.”
Katie’s eyes were shining. Wil squeezed her shoulder.
“And they all forget you’re real,” Katie said in a whisper. “But you are. You’re real. You’rereal,and they forget that right up untilthey can’t reach you except through your new agent, and all they have left is the media’s attention.” Her voice had more power now. She gave Wil a small smile that made Wil miss the chip in her front tooth. Made Wil wish she’d been able to keep this from ever happening.
“It’s how ordinary it all is,” Katie said, “that helps me keep him as small as I can in my head. So I can be as big as I will let myself be.”
Wil slid one trembling hand to Katie’s neck and met her eyes. “You have never, not once in your whole entire life, beenordinary. Or small. And I hate that this small and ordinary man tried to make you both, like he ever, ever could.” Wil felt her jaw lock tight, as though it would keep back the flash of rage Katie didn’t need.
“Wil, you look like you’re ready to…”
“I’m just fuckingsaying.” Wil relented to her impulse, and Almond Butter jumped off both of them in alarm. “Let him try to fucking say anything to me. I would like that. That would be so good. I am ready.”
Katie laughed. “Oh, you would lawyer him so good.”
“I would Midwestern shun him so fucking good, is what I would do.” Wil sat up. She was too angry to be prone.
“Yikes. Cold.”
“He doesn’t even fuckingknowhow cold it can get. Where is he from? Jersey or some shit?”
“Pennsylvania. Harrisburg.”
“Exactly. Exactly. He never had to come home in the middle of the night with beer breath with Beanie Greene as his mother to have her turn on the living room lamp where she was lurking in the dark and have her say his whole Christian name, not loud, butsoftly.Kindly.He doesn’t know theterror.”