Page 77 of You Can't Hurt Me

Nate’s eyes are ablaze as he turns toward me. “Anna. I’ve read and reread Eva’s journal, all of it now. In the flap at the back, she’d kept all the old invoices from anA.T. At first, I thought it was you, Anna Tate, until I saw the signature. Anthony Thorpe. Your stepbrother’s full name. I wanted to believe you, but until I saw that, I couldn’t trust you.”

“You’re a fine one to talk about trust. You lied about everything in the end. Eva and Priya’s affair. Being with Eva on the day she died, that she was pregnant by you. You didn’t even want me to be your ghostwriter, it was Priya all along. You both manipulated me.”

“When’s it going to stop, Nate?” says Tony. “First Eva and then my sister?”

Nate flinches but keeps his eyes on me, his voice urgent and resolute.

“Anna, I was torn. I liked you right from the start.”

“Please, spare me,” Tony interjects but Nate carries on.

“It was a minefield. This mysteryAnthony Thorpethat Eva confessed she had an affair with, then you drop the bomb. Your brother. I couldn’t get my head around it.” He shakes his head at the memory. “I was horrified but intrigued too. I could have been repelled, I wanted to be. Somehow that would have been easier. But then I fell for you,” he reflects, giving me a strange, lost smile.

“Please tell me you’re not going to buy this? Nate could never love you, Anna,” Tony’s acerbic drawl cuts in. “And I’d never let my sister be with you. Eva told me what you were really like. How cold you were. You’re incapable of loving anyone. She couldn’t bear you anywhere near her.”

Still Nate focuses only on me. “I know what happened to your father too. It’s all in that journal, once I went back and reread it. Tony told Eva everything and she was seduced by the idea that she could be his salvation. I know what you did that night, Anna, the price you paid, how Tony has held it over you ever since.”

Tony opens his mouth but then stops himself. A white-hot energy burns through me as the truth of Nate’s words takes hold.

“You’re right. I did it for both of us, for me and Tony. I took his inhalers that night knowing there were no spare ones in the house. Tony, you remember the row, I know you do, before his asthma attack. How he dragged me down the stairs, slapping and punching me, turning on you too while I lay on the floor...”

Tony nods, lost in the memory of that night. “I never told a soul, Anna.”

“Except Eva,” says Nate.

My brain fizzes, folds over for a moment. I’m back there now in my father’s house. My head spinning after my fall, stumbling upstairs to the bathroom. I sat on the floor, my cheek against the cool tiles. That’s when I saw both of them, on their sides on the glass shelf above the sink. In a dazed state, angry, I grabbed them. I walked downstairs, found the last one I knew he kept in the kitchen drawer too, and stuffed them all deep into the refuse sacks that the garbagemen would take away the next morning.

“You took his inhalers. I took her phone. I guess we’re not so different after all. Doesn’t that make us level, sis?”

“I never wanted my father to die, I just wasn’t thinking clearly,” I say to Nate, ignoring Tony’s mocking tone. “My greatest mistake was confessing to Tony a few days later because I couldn’t bear the guilt. I wanted to go to the police buthewouldn’t let me.”

It looks premeditated, he’d said.They’d lock you up. I can’t let that happen to you.

So I became a prisoner of a different sort. Owned by my brother, the worst sentence of all. Unable to confide in anyone else, I could never move on, ruined by my own actions.

“Tony punished you, held you to ransom, instead of getting you the help and support you needed,” says Nate, softly.

“I can see what you’re doing,” Tony says to Nate. “You lost Eva to me and now you’re trying to win over Anna. It’s pathetic. Separate beds. How humiliating,” he hisses, triumphant, and the ghost of a smile flits across his face. Tony turns. “I swear, Anna, if you forgive him, if you buy this bullshit and go back to him...if you go to the police about me and Eva... I’ll tell the police about your father. I won’t keep your secret anymore.”

“I doubt it,” says Nate. “It’s only your word against Anna’s and who’d believe you?”

“The police. You know I found the inhalers. I guessed what had happened, the state you were in after Dad attacked you. I took them to protect you, Anna. If anyone found out, it’s a scandal that could destroy everything you’ve worked for, your journalism, your promising career.”

“Please, no more, shut up,” I scream, bursting. Nate swallows hard, features tightening.

“You destroyed Eva, Tony, and I won’t let you do the same to Anna.”

Tony stares at him, begins inching forward.

“Nate, he’s got a knife,” I shriek. Too late. Tony leaps toward Nate, the blade cuts through the air. Nate runs at Tony, who trips and falls, taking Nate down with him, and the knife drops to the floor. They struggle, both on the ground, tangled and enmeshed. Tony has split his knuckle open; there’s a deep gash on Nate’s forehead.

I am briefly immobilized. I hear a crack as Tony’s fist connects with Nate’s cheekbone. Nate falls back and Tony straddles him, slams his head on the marble tiles. “Do something!” Nate’s voice is a strangled growl. The words are like a touch paper, galvanizing me.

I won’t let Tony control me anymore.

Nate shrieks, twists his head in my direction, spitting blood on the floor. I run toward the knife and pick it up. Something else catches my eye.

Hedone. There she is, leaning against the wall as if she’s been waiting all along. I grab the sculpture.

---