Page 115 of Necessary Cruelty

Vin seems patently unconcerned with Sophia’s potential fate, which only makes me feel sorrier for her. She would kill me if she knew I had come close to anything approaching pity.

I drum my fingers on the armrest, trying for a severe expression that utterly fails. “What if she said you’re the father?”

He laughs so hard that he nearly cries.

“Is she the fucking Virgin Mary now?”

I tell myself that I don’t actually care what Vin has done in the past. In fact, I don’t care what he does now. Our marriage is fake, and we’re only being so nice to each other because we both get something out of it.

Lie detector determines that was a lie.

“Obviously not, but I think you know that. And if you don’t remember that day in health class, it only takes one time.”

“One time is still too many where Sophia is concerned. In fact, I’ve only ever had sex with one girl.”

He says it casually, not like a bomb being dropped in between us.

I just stare at him. “I’m not an idiot, Vin.”

“What do you want me to say? I’ve done stuff with other girls, just not that.”

“I saw you leave with her after the Founder’s Ball,” I splutter.

“And if you’d stuck around for another five minutes, then you would have seen me slam the door of the pool house in her face.” His hands are squeezed tight on the steering wheel, but that is the only sign of any tension in him. “For some reason, I wasn’t in the mood for a shitty blow job that night.”

“You’re making me feel sorry for her.”

“Sophia only gets exactly what she asks for,” he grumbles. “The rumors of my sexual proclivities are just that. Fucking rumors. Sorry to ruin any of the fantasies, but I mostly spend my nights getting blackout drunk and hanging out with my friends.”

Unless he was sneaking into my room in the middle of the night.

Of course, no one but us has ever known about that, which means the rumors never had a chance to spread.

No one has ever known about us. Except us.

Every time that I thought he came crawling straight from someone else’s bed into mine, I hated myself for giving in. The compulsion driving him was always obvious, but I assumed he was obsessed with hurting me because of what I’d done. I always thought that it was just another bit of punishment to make me complicit in my own destruction, to remind me that I would always be less than nothing in his eyes.

Now I realize it might have been something else entirely.

I have to look out the window as the million-dollar houses of the Bluffs drift past my blurry vision. My tears are worthless, but that doesn’t stop them from coming. In that moment, all I want is to take back the past and tell him the truth about what my mother did.

I kept silent to protect the person I loved.

Turns out, I was wrong about which love I needed to protect.

I can’t say that the feeling slams into me all at once. My heart is like the metaphorical frog in a pot of water slowly being heated to a boil. I should have jumped out right from the very beginning, but the heat came on so slowly that I didn’t notice it until much too late.

My heart is on fire, and I don’t have anyone to blame but myself.

I love him, and he will never feel the same way about me.

Vin doesn’t seem to notice my struggle to pull myself together as he hums along to the radio. I desperately want to tell him, to spew out proclamations of desperate love that will ensure he steers this Maserati off the nearest cliff. Vin might like to screw me, but he has made it very clear that the only thing I will ever be to him is a means to end. You don’t hate someone for ten years and then suddenly abandon it for the opposite emotion.

I can’t ever tell him how I feel.

Instead, I ask, “Who do you think the father of Sophia’s baby is?”

“Someone who I hope is smart enough to run like hell.”

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