“You’re sorry.” Sebastian leaned into my space, fury radiating from him like a physicalforcefield. “That’s just perfect. That makes it all okay.”
My tears dripped faster, spurred by his stinging words and the sharp pain I felt inside. I’d struck a deal, and this was the price, I reminded myself. Choices had consequences. I thought I’d mastered that lesson seven years ago, but it seemed I still had some learning to do.
“You nearly had me fooled a second time.” Sebastian’s voice dripped with disbelief and his eyes flashed with outrage and pain. “I can’t believe you almost drew me in again. Your talents are wasted here — your true calling is clearly as an actress, since you’ve mastered the art of deception.”
I averted my eyes as his words landed against me like lashes, each one slicing deeper into vulnerable flesh.
“Tell me, is there anything but ice beneath that pretty exterior?” he whispered, his face inches from mine.
My gaze lifted to stare at his face, my spine straightened, my shoulders un-hunched and, for the first time, I felt it flutter to life, deep down at the depths of my soul — my own anger at this situation, finally coming alive. I was being treated as the villain here when, in actuality, I was as much a victim as he was. We’d been screwed, the both of us, by the same situation seven years ago. And yes, I’d played a role in the terrible end we’d come to that fateful June. But I couldn’t undo what had been done to our love, anymore than I could bring my brother back to life or travel through time to make my parents quit drinking so my teenage home wouldn’t be seized by the banks and debt collectors.
When I’d worked atMinnie’sas a teen, many nights found me in the back kitchens with Minnie herself, stirring soups or helping her wash and cut vegetables for big recipes. I remember one night, when the diner had been particularly slow, we’d set ourselves up at the stainless steel prep table and peeled about fifty potatoes for a huge shepherd’s pie someone had ordered for some kind of family event — a wedding reception or maybe a reunion. Minnie, wielding a razor sharp knife, had stopped peeling in the middle of a potato and held it up for me to examine.
“See that?” she’d asked, gesturing to the dark brown rotten spot on the side of the potato. “Some people’d throw this one out, thinkin’ it’d spoil the whole pie. But potatoes are hearty — you cut out the rot, the rest is just fine.” With a practiced swirl of her knife-tip, Minnie expertly removed the brown portion. I watched as it dropped to the tabletop, landing in a pile of discarded skins.
“Some people, baby girl, they’re your brown spots. And some of us got more spots than others, a’course. But, point is, they don’t spoil you forever. You cut ‘em out of your life, you gonna be just fine.”
She’d winked at me and gone right back to peeling.
I liked to think that Minnie had been right that night — that if someone or something awful entered your life, you could cut it out cleanly and move on, as though that spot had never been there at all.
But what if you didn’t have just one — what if you were full of brown spots?
How many people could you walk away from? And how much of yourself could you cut away before there was nothing left behind?
No matter how much you wish it, you can’t rewrite the past. It’s set in stone — unshakeable and uncompromising. So it made no difference whether Sebastian blamed me or badgered me about our history — I couldn’t make things better for him. The only thing I could do was vanish, cut myself out of his life completely once more, and hope that someday he might forget me all over again.
“Say the word and I’ll go,” I whispered in a broken voice, my watering eyes locked on his furious ones. “Say the word and I’ll fade away, and this, right here, will be the last time you see me.”
His eyes lost a little of their fury, but his jaw remained tightly clenched. I tried to gauge his emotions, but his expression was guarded. My throat constricted, and I thought I might choke on all the words I wanted to say but couldn’t ever voice.
“You brought me here; you can send me away.” I forced myself to go on. “Let me go back toLuster. Back into your past. You and I both know it’s where I belong — and where I’m supposed to stay.”
He stared at me for a minute in silence and for just a moment, I caught a glimpse of the boy I’d loved beneath the surface — he was there in the flash of sadness in Sebastian’s eyes, in the tense fists his fingers curled into when those words left my lips.
I hiccupped for air, the choked sobs rattling my chest and finally breaking free. Tears blurred my vision, appearing faster than I could wipe them away.
“I’m sorry, Bash. You have no idea how sorry I am.” I looked up at him with wet eyes, wishing I could tell him all of it — every secret, every false truth — but knowing I couldn’t.
He opened his mouth to speak, but I took an abrupt step backward and cut off his words with my own.
“Let me go,” I pleaded, feelingan unpleasant sensation of déjà vu as I told the man I loved, the man I’dalwaysloved, to watch me walk away.
I turned and darted for the elevator which, for once, opened almost immediately. I boarded and pushed the button that would carry me down to the lobby, my shoulders heaving with sobs as I wept. I didn’t — couldn’t — look back at Sebastian before the doors closed.
“Goodbye,” I whispered into the empty elevator, pressing my eyes tightly closed against the tears.
Regret was an emotional cancer, destroying you from the inside out. Eating at your most vital parts until there was nothing left but scar tissue and sorrow. It chipped away at you in small increments, shattering your defenses and tiring you out. But, unlike a physicalcancer, which might eventually go into remission or be cut out with a few careful strokes of a surgeon’s scalpel, regret would stay with you forever. It was chronic, but not terminal — a constant companion that would haunt you until your deathbed. And there were no cures to diminish its influence. No salves to counteract its effects.
Regret didn’t break your body. It crushed your spirit.
Mine had just been broken beyond repair.