Page 23 of Sleep

My head was still in a mad state, where I couldn’t make heads or tails of what had happened, let alone my feelings. The screaming words played on a loop, and I felt the stabs in my gut, over and over, my constant narrator droning on in the background…

And this was when Mabel Donovan completely lost the plot.

I wasn’t wrong. I rarely was when it came to Mark.

“I have something I need to tell you,” he’d said, proving that the vibe I’d had from the very first second I’d set my perfectly made-up eyes on him today had been spot on. He’d been off for a few days, leaving me to cover his shifts. Nothing unusual about that. But now he was back, and what was unusual was his entire demeanour. He was riddled with guilt, smothered in it, and he turned it on me. Whatever he’d done, I would be made to feel like I’d brought it on myself.

“Finn and I made a decision. It’s the right one, and I need you not to shout at me, Mabs, because at the end of the day—”

“What have you done, Mark?” I’d demanded, crossing my arms—building a fence that would never hold.

“Well,” he’d started, squirming, looking at the carpet, the desk—anywhere but at me. “I wanted Finn to tell you. He’s better at this than I am.”

At least that was true. Finn talked straight—less manipulation—even if it did feel like constant shards of glass being pushed straight into my skin, compared to Mark trying to strangle me with badly constructed lies.

Finn. Finley. The guy I’d married when I’d been barely out of my teens. The same guy I’d divorced two years later, not only a broken marriage but both of us irreparably scarred by our youthful idiocy. We’d fought. I’d cheated. He’d been hurt. Then he’d hurt me. I could still feel the bruises. Twenty years later, we were still hopelessly entangled in each other’s lives. “A lifetime of tragedy,” Miss Adeline had declared, and she wasn’t wrong. Like a Shakespearean nightmare right here in the modern age, it felt like there was a chain around my neck that I could never break, sentenced to have my mistakes follow me until they consumed me.

So it was all self-inflicted. My ex-husband was marrying my best friend—the best friend I had loved my entire adult life. The man who would never love me back, or not the way I’d once hoped. My hope had long faded, and all I had left was a charcoal shell of a heart.

“Mabel, Finn and I went away at the weekend. We got married, just the two of us. In the end, that’s what we wanted. What Finn wanted. And I absolutely, one hundred percent agree with him.”

I’d stared as his mouth moved, struggling to take the words in. Twenty years of friendship, and now this?

“You did what?” I’d shrieked in a weird, strangled voice.

All the talk of me being the bridesmaid, wanting to have me there, that I was the most important person in his life and he would never do anything without me. My permission. My heart. My sanity.

I’d bought a dress. A fancy-arse designer one, especially for the occasion. Showed it off to anyone who would pay me an ounce of attention. What a clown I’d been.

I couldn’t remember much else of what was said, the hateful words I’d thrown at him or the daggers he’d thrown back, but I wished I could just evaporate into the asphalt under my feet in shame.

God. The shame.

“It’s our lives, Mabs. Our wedding. And why the hell would you have wanted to be there? Who wants to go to see their ex get married to someone else? Finn’s been fretting about it for months, and you just wouldn’t take the hint. He didn’t want to put both you and, mostly, himself through that whole fucking circus. Don’t you see how much it hurt him that you couldn’t just let this go? It’s insane, Mabs. You have to see that. You have to move on and let Finn do the same. He’s my husband now. My husband. It’s over and done with, Mabel. Get with it. Move on.”

He’d been shouting in anger, in fear and frustration, knowing he was killing everything we’d ever had, one small word at a time.

Maybe it was for the best that I had no conscious memory of the stream of insults I’d screeched back through the hysterical flow of tears that had almost consumed me. I’d thrown a carafe at him, and I’d intended for it to hit him—I wasn’t going to pretend I hadn’t. At the time, the rage had been debilitating, horrifying, terrifying, so many feelings fighting inside of me that fleeing had been the only option. If I hadn’t, I feared I might have actually harmed him. Thrown something worse than the carafe. Said things I would never be able to take back.

I hated Mark Quinton, passionately and devilishly. I wanted to kill him. Truly squeeze the life out of him. Stab him with every knife in that entire restaurant, gouge out his traitorous eyes with a blunt wooden spoon, then burn down the world.

Overdramatic much? Nah. Not this time.

It hurt. Damn, it hurt.

I kept walking, the steady hand of Jonathan Templar guiding my pace as the imposing building came up on our left. Another pang in my chest at the thought of ever setting foot inside that place again. The hotel logo lit up the dark air, mocking me with its brightness and childish cloud graphic.

I hated it. Hated everything. Everyone inside that place. I truly feared I’d lost the very last grip of my sanity because burning the place down to the ground currently sounded like a terrific idea.

I hadn’t meant to, but I said it out loud, causing Jonny to stop. Oh. I was referring to him as Jonny now. How droll.

“Would be very cathartic, I agree,” he said matter-of-factly. “But a bad idea, Donovan.”

“Donovan.”

“I’m going to keep calling you that until you start calling me Jonny. Properly. I have two options for you.”

Options were no good for me. I couldn’t deal with options. Not right now. I wanted a can of petrol and a match. And for someone to slap the deranged grin off my face.

---