Heartless Lover by Faith Summers
28
Summer
“I’m just going to be out for a few hours then I’ll be back,” Eric rolls up the sleeves to his shirt.
“I’ll be fine,” I assure him, although I feel like hell and I’m on autopilot again, where I just talk and answer questions without really thinking about what I’m saying.
I continue to watch him pace around the room and I can’t believe I feel so weak. So weak I want to ask him to stay, but I know I can’t. I know I shouldn’t do that.
It’s bad enough I’ve been in a semi-catatonic state since my visit with Dad. Eric has literally had to babysit me. That’s why I’m in his room now. He brought me into his room when we came back and every time I try to make it back to my borrowed room, he brings me back here.
This is the aftermath of the disaster. The part where I have to try to be strong on my own and bounce back. Except, I don’t know if I can do it this time.
“I shouldn’t be too long, but Lyssa will stay longer if she needs to.”
“That’s okay. It was nice of you to stay with me.”
“No worries.”
I’m supposed to act like I don’t know he’s been rearranging his schedule to stay with me for the last two days and virtually all of today. It’s nearly five, so the workday is practically gone.
He hasn’t told me I’m the reason he hasn’t left the apartment, but I know. I’ve heard him talking to Lyssa and his men and I know he’s worked from home whenever possible.
He’s taken care of me as if I’m important to him. As if I’m a person who means something to him. No one would guess we’ve only known each other for a day over two weeks.
As sweet as he is, and so different to the control freak he was, I don’t want him to take care of me. He was right when he said I shouldn’t get too attached. I shouldn’t. We’re not anything and I can’t allow myself in my state of weakness to fall for a man who will throw me away when he’s done with me.
He told me so himself. He just pities me and he’s being what he thinks I need him to be until this is over.
Today, I’m just stuck in my feelings and I’m afraid to be left alone to my thoughts.
“Please eat something,” he adds coming over to me.
I straighten and rest my hands on the pillow next to me. I know I’m starting to look thin again and that’s not a good sign.
“Yeah. I’ll try.”
“Good, get Lyssa to call me if you need me to come back sooner.”
“Okay.”
He gives me an uneasy look. The same uneasy look he gave me when I ventured into that dark room that held all those horrific images what the dead that should have terrified me.
He would be surprised to know I felt completely at home in there because I wish I could slay my monsters the same way he annihilated his. He has the means to, whereas I don’t.
With what I saw in those pictures I knew he killed those people. Robert is next. If that was my room, Ted would be on that wall too.
Eric looks away and I watch him go. It feels like if we were an actual couple, he would have kissed me goodbye, but it’s clear we are just screwing around. Like most men, he probably just likes the look of me. I’m just another pretty face and a warm hole to sink into.
I’ve been sleeping in his bed but he hasn’t touched me since that night passion enslaved us on the terrace and spiraled us straight into madness. At least then I felt something other than what I feel now.
I think I sit there in his bed for over an hour staring at the wall.
A myriad of thoughts rush through my mind and I think of the funeral and how final it was. Then I think of how I might have died too if Eric wasn’t there. Dad tried to speak to me, but Eric wouldn’t allow him to.
Given the fact my father threw me out of my own mother’s funeral, and he blamed me for my sister’s death, I’m not sure what the hell he wanted to say to me.
I swear to God if he cast more blame on me, I would have just withered away right there. I wouldn’t have had the strength to come back after. I barely have the strength now. When you blame yourself for something, it’s hard, but when others do it too—especially a parent—it’s enough to push you over the edge.
I didn’t realize how much I was barely hanging on until the day of the funeral when the priest closed the casket Scarlett was in and sealed her away forever. The sound of it locking will never leave my ears. Neither will the sight of her being lowered into the ground and sound of the dirt hitting the top of the casket as the priest blessed the grave with “The Order for the Burial of the Dead.”
None of those images and sounds will ever leave me. Sometimes I still think I’m walking around in a nightmare, and I can’t wake the fuck up.
If I could wake up or go back in time, I’d eradicate the monsters from my life. Robert and Ted.
My life would have been so different if I never knew either of them. One pushed me straight to the other.
Where will I go next?
I get off the bed, deciding I need to walk around.
I want to look through the boxes I got from Scarlett’s house. I want her things in a storage facility until I can get a place and take them—all of them.
We always joked about being little old ladies with our riches and success. If we got to that age and we were alone, the plan was to move in together. Just get a big house on the beach somewhere in the world and live the rest of our days together. So, I’ll take her things and have some version of that life.
Until then I was thinking of organizing what I could keep. That way I keep a part of her with me.
I hear Lyssa in the kitchen as I go by, but I don’t stop, and if she sees me she doesn’t stop me.
Good.I don’t feel like talking to anyone today. I haven’t felt like talking to anyone on any day.
I go into my room and take the box of Scarlett’s things containing her personal belongings from when we were little. She already had them in a box, so it was easy to pick up and go.
I’m starting with this one because if there’s anything to keep with me until I settle down it’s going to be in here.
I start searching through and then I find her journal Grandmama gave her.
It has a different picture of the three of us on the front cover, but the book’s design is the same as mine.
She treated hers like a diary and I suppose I did the same until I started putting newspaper articles about Ted in there. Out of respect, we never read each other’s scrap books.
Now she’s gone, I’m curious to see what’s inside. So, I open it.
The first few pages are a little similar to mine but then it changes. She’s got pictures of her and Mom at one of her plays. There are a number of images of her with Mom and Ted or Mom and Dad. Those would have been taken when she really started doing well. All while I was being abused and had to stop doing what I loved.
I stopped and weltered away while she bloomed and blossomed.
When I look at Ted’s fucking smiling face and Mom, they look so proud of Scarlett. So fucking proud. Mom was a monster too. She cheated on my father because he couldn’t give her the wealth she craved then she brought that evil bastard into my home and he ruined me.
Scarlett bloomed and blossomed and I’m not jealous of that. I’ve never been jealous of my sister. I’ve always been proud. Most of all I’m glad she never had to go through what I did, and she never suffered at the hands of Ted.
Those first few times he abused me were rape. After each incident he told me it was my fault for wearing my leotards after I came back from dance class or wearing short tight clothes when I went out. He went after me because I was the first twin to have a boyfriend and that made me look like I was sexually curious when I wasn’t.
That boyfriend was no more after Ted started his daily abuse. I remember so clearly. My boyfriend’s name was Levi and never understood what was wrong with me and why I suddenly lost interest. He didn’t know it was because I felt dirty and disgusting for sleeping with my mother’s husband. I was trapped with no way to get out.
Then when I tried to get out, Ted used to threaten me with Scarlett. He said he’d go for my sister if I didn’t let him fuck me and he’d make sure Mom lost everything, including us, and went to prison for her drug misuse. When he didn’t think I was scared enough, he told me he’d kill my mother or leave her to die. At the time Mom was at her worse and needed a detox almost every week.
When I got a little older and tried to defend myself, he said if I told anyone he’d deny everything and make me look like a liar. No one would believe little old me when he was the States Attorney.
The worse though was what happened after Mom died and he thought the big secret would come out. That was the last push. He sent those assholes after me to kill me. That was how I lost my baby.
I push away the thought of another life lost because of him, but remembering the past weakens me.
Remembering everything weakens me, but what hurts is the fact that my father still doesn’t believe me.
Scarlett told me Ted made Dad believe Mom spent all the inheritance Grandmama left us and her own money on drugs. But we both knew it was lies. She found receipts in his name for the same drugs he gave to our mother and high-end prostitutes. It was only when she showed Dad he got off his high horse, but he still blames me.
I put the journal down and bring my hands up to my cheeks.
When I look around the room and take a look at my life, I realize just how pathetic I am.
I have nothing. I’m no one and everything I valued is gone.
When Dad dies it will just be me.
I am alone and I will always be alone because I’m the person everyone forgot, and no one cared about me.
No one cared unless they needed me for something.
God, I’m so fucked up.
I need something to drink. Something strong to help me forget.
With that in mind I leave the room and go back to where Lyssa is. Eric keeps the drinks in the living room by the terrace. It’s where he entertains guests.
Lyssa offers her usual good-natured smile when she sees me, but I can’t return the smile. “Can I get you anything, Summer?”
I stop to acknowledge her. “No, I’m fine. I’m just going to get some air.”
“Do you want me to join you?”
“No. I just want to sit alone for a while. I’ll call you if I need you.” I don’t wait for her to answer, I just continue to the living room and open the cupboard with Eric’s wine collection.
Fuck knows how much it all costs, but I grab two bottles of the Russian wine that’s easiest to open. The others look older and need a corkscrew. There’s no way I’m heading back into the kitchen to get one.
I make my way out to the terrace with the wine tucked under my arm and I sit by the balcony and gaze out to the city.
I know Lyssa’s going to be worried if she sees me out here drinking, but hopefully I will have bought myself some time by telling her I want to be alone. That way I can get drunk, and I won’t care what anyone thinks when they find me.
I open the first bottle and start drinking. Just like I knew it would, the drink takes effect by the time I down half the bottle.
By then the edge is gone but I’m seeing things in a different way. Instead of wishing Ted and Robert had never been in my life, I think of myself.
What if I’d never been born?
Would everyone have been better off.
Scarlett would still be alive.
If I died now, Dad might feel more at peace.
When someone harms your loved one and you blame them it means you want them to pay.
He wanted me to pay for my part in Scarlett’s death. That’s why he launched his attack on me.
It worked because I want myself to pay too.
The bullet was meant for me.
Not her.
I drink the rest of the wine in the bottle and start on the next.
When I get to the halfway mark I remember Mom would be alive too if not for me.
If I wasn’t such a whore people who are dead now would be alive.
I was such a whore I couldn’t think of anything better to do than sell my body when I was in trouble. Only a fucking whore would think that way.
Her body is the first thing she’d think to sell. That’s what I did.
Ted wanted me dead.
Maybe it’s not too late to die.
