Page 83 of Bitter Rival

If it was so easy for my own mother to leave me, what would compel anyone else to stick around?

But Finn was there for me—he wiped away my tears and assured me that everything would be okay, and I was still young and foolish enough to believe him.

“He got me out of a bad situation, no questions asked, and I will always be grateful for that. Finn was there for me when no one else was. We were still kids, you know?”

Looking back, it’s a miracle we didn’t end up dead. We took so many risks. We were reckless and careless. We got drunk. Got high. Drove too fast. Ran from the cops.

Finn’s specialty was dine-and-dash. I still feel bad about all those restaurants and servers we stiffed. I always tip extra now. My guilty conscience demands it.

At the time, I thought we were brave and daring. Now I think we were just plain stupid.

“I’d just turned seventeen, and I guess I romanticized the whole thing. Painted a picture of two rebels on a cross-country road trip, stopping along the way to pick up odd jobs. Like a Kerouac novel in reverse. Instead of heading west, we were eastbound.

“We eventually made our way to New York City, and we both worked crappy restaurant jobs to pay the rent.” I stop myself. “Actually, in the beginning, we didn’t pay rent. We squatted in a rundown cockroach-infested building and slept on a mattress on the floor.”

“Jesus,” Beckett says under his breath. “Daisy. Why?”

“It got better,” I promise. “I worked on my art. I did a lot of street photography and freelance work, and Finn got gigs as a drummer for different rock bands that played at seedy basement clubs. When he formed a band with three other musicians, things turned around for him. They were on the cusp of hitting it big when they left to go on tour. They lived out of a van and were still playing seedy clubs, but he was a drummer in a rock band now. So you can probably figure out where this story is going.”

“He cheated on you?”

“Yeah.” I swallow. “But I kept taking him back.”

“Why?” he asks incredulously.

This is the part of the story I should probably leave out. It makes me sound weak and pathetic. A doormat who let a hot boy walk all over her. But it’s part of my story, a big part of what shaped me and made me who I am, so I tell him the truth.

“Because I loved him. Because I knew that none of those girls really meant anything to him. Because I was so scared of losing him that I told myself it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that he always came back to me.”

It sounds even worse when I say it aloud. Like I have no self-respect or boundaries whatsoever. I can only imagine how this must sound to Beckett.

I muster up the courage to look at him, but his expression is inscrutable. I’m not sure why I expected to see shock or outrage on my behalf.

This is Beckett, after all. His poker face is second to none.

I pluck a loose string from my scarf and wrap it around my finger until my skin turns white. “Those are the lies I told myself, anyway.”

He’s quiet for a moment, then asks, “Why did you think you deserved so little?”

He sounds like Anna. But it’s the last question I ever expected from Beckett.

No, that’s not true. I saw how angry he was that night at Ledger’s bar.

And when he was young, he was always so protective of me. Even though he’s gotten better at hiding it, I think he still cares.

Deep down, where it matters most, he cares a lot.

“I don’t know.” I unwind the thread from my finger and tie it into knots. “I guess I believed the myth.”

“What myth?”

“That true love conquers everything. But it doesn’t. Sometimes, you fall in love with a person who is bad for you. Someone who is so damaged that no matter how much you love them and no matter how many times you try to prove your love, it will never be enough. They’ll try to sabotage everything good in their life, and if you’re not careful, they’ll take you down with them. So after we broke up, I had an affair with my one true love.”

“Your one true love?”

I took all my pain, heartache, flaws, and weaknesses and turned them into strengths.

I got stronger. Wiser. Smarter. Happier. And I did it mostly through my art.

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