Page 71 of Violent Delights

“I know,” I interrupt him. “I know.”

He halts, staring at me with eyes widened in surprise.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“I… I know what happened,” I utter. “I mean, I didn’t know at first, but I’ve known now for a while. I figured it out.”

His facial expression changes from bewilderment to fury.

“You what?!” he yells at me.

I wince at his outburst, pulling the towel further up my chest as if I was trying to protect myself from his rage.

“It’s okay,” I say, raising my hand in a soothing gesture to match my words. “I’m not mad at you. We’re good.”

He raises his eyebrows, looking at me as if I just suggested we jump off a cliff together.

“We’re good?!” he exclaims. “You fucking lied to me! How did you even know? Did you trick me?”

“Trick you?” I ask. “No! It’s nothing like that. It was a simple mistake. You thought I was that Barbie doll at the bar, the woman whose coat I was wearing.”

He looks at me through narrowed eyes, and I can tell that it takes all his strength to contain his anger. He’s clenching his fists and breathing erratically.

“I had no idea what was going on,” I add. “I couldn’t make sense of anything, before I realized-”

“When?” he interrupts me. “When did you realize what’s been going on here?”

Our eyes lock on each other in a tense stare. He’s about an arm’s length away from me. I hate the distance between us. I want to curl up in his embrace and go back to the place where we were just a few minutes ago. A place that was overshadowed by a lie, but a safe and warm place, nonetheless.

“When you called me Ruby,” I say. “That’s when I had a suspicion that you might think I was someone else.”

My words cause a frown to form on his face.

“I mean, I didn’t know for sure,” I try to save myself. “But there were so many things that suggested a mix-up. You always acted as if I should know what was going on, as if I should know how to-”

“But you didn’t know, did you?” he hisses. “You thought I was just a fucked-up criminal who’d rape and kill you.”

I look at him, knowing that his words are true, but it seems like so much time has passed since I was stricken with that terror. He was a different person to me back then.

I was a different person.

“In the beginning, yes, but-”

“You made me a criminal!” he interrupts me. “And I am. What I did to you was wrong, and you knew it was wrong. You lied to me and made me believe that things were happening exactly as they were supposed to happen.”

He pauses, clearing his throat before he continues speaking in that same threatening tone.

“What’s your end game here?” he wants to know. “Did you want to blackmail me? Threaten to sue me so you could squeeze out some money from the twisted wealthy idiot?”

“What? No!” I object. “How could you say that?”

His accusations hurt. Does he really think I was playing him? Does none of this mean anything to him?

“How could I say that?” he barks, scaring me as he straightens up, continuing to pace up and down the length of the room.

I watch him as he tries to process his boiling rage. He’s panting and growling in anger, looking almost as if he was in pain.

He probably is.

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