Page 99 of The Hate We Breathe
“I told you that wasyourfault!” The shriek comes fast and abrupt and as soon as it does, she seems to calm. Inhaling sharply, she glares at me as if her loss of control is also my doing.
“And I’mnotobsessed with you,” she corrects me. “I wanted you out of the way.” She shrugs as if the fact that she paid someone to break into my apartment, rape, and then kill me is no big deal. My fingers twitch at my sides as I imagine myself punching her in the face.
“Right—that’s why you’re trying to kill me and blaming me for a murder you committed.” Despite my earlier thoughts that Lex was insane for irritating her, now I’m doing the same. It’s a decent stall tactic. I just hope it doesn’t go too far before the others realize what’s going on.
“Everything he did was foryou,” Roquel hisses, a repetition of her earlier words so precise that it’s clear she’s been holding the grudge for quite a while. “I was the one who loved him. I was the one who did whatever he wanted. I let him record me, let him share me with some of his friends. No one understood him the way I did.”
“What he did wasn’t love. He assaulted you.”
She snorts as if that’s the dumbest thing she’s ever heard. “No,” she huffs out. “He assaultedyou. Iwas willing. He eventook care of me, gave me an allowance and expensive gifts—did you really think I hadn’t been in his house before? That I hadn’t worn those things? Everything he gave you is what he gave me. They were mine first.”
Her statement makes my blood curdle and the next question is meant to be a petty one. “What did Morpheus say that made you stab him? Did he finally reject you?”
Lex’s face is pinched tight with pain as Lex begins to crawl, dragging himself across the roof.
“He gave you an allowance?” I hedge, trying to keep her talking so she doesn’t notice him, hoping she thinks he’s useless now that she’s shot him twice.
“Oh, yes.” Roquel waves her free hand. “Morpheus always gave me a few thousand dollars a month.” Her expression darkens once more. “The mistress fee, he called it. It was our little joke.”
A joke? No. It sounds like Morpheus was stringing along a teenage psychopath not knowing that she was far more unhinged than him.
Roquel’s expression darkens in the next instant. “He would have wanted to marry me if you hadn’t existed.” Her change in tone is sharp and caustic.
“I never wanted him,” I tell her.
“I know!” She looks at me like I’m the one standing on a rooftop in the middle of winter holding a gun on two people all over a guy that’s dead now. Like I’m the crazy one. “You didn’t appreciate him the way I did. He couldn’t see that. But every time I tried to get rid of you, thinking that as soon as you were out of the picture he’d seeme… you just kept coming back.”
“Sorry for the inconvenience of living and existing.” The sarcasm is heavy in my tone.
“You should be.” She sniffs. “If you hadn’t been born at all, everything would have been perfect. No one else understands,but I fucking did everything for him. I kept his fucking secrets. I came at his beck and call. Sucked his cock. Fucked his business partners—men I didn’t even love the way I loved him. Still, he wanted you. Do you have any idea how exhausting and humiliating that was?”
She shakes her head.
“No, you wouldn’t. You didn’t even know he loved you.”
“It wasn’t love,” I repeat my earlier words, not that she seems to listen.
“It would have been for me,” she snaps back, narrowing her eyes on me. “Now—chop-chop. I don’t have all night.”
37
JULIET
Lex’s face is twisted in pain. One bloodied hand comes out, scratching against the ground as he tries to pull himself closer to the two of us. It hurts to watch him, but I don’t want Roquel to see him moving, so I shuffle to the side. She follows me as I kick off first one heel and then the second.
Roquel’s eyes remain on me, curious to see what I’m planning as I take the hem of the shimmery silver fabric in hand. With a grunt, I grip the hem of my dress at the seam, the thin material crinkling under my hard grasp, and yank the two halves apart.
Riiiiiiiiip.The side of the dress splits upward, giving my legs more room. Cold air washes over my freshly bared calf and thigh.
“Nice.” She smirks.
I arch a brow. “You want me to jump,” I remind her. “I can’t exactly climb up there without better movement.”
“You’re right.” She beams. “Thank you. I do appreciate a decent friend.”
Right. A decent friend ready to kill herself…
Surreal.This whole conversation is a fucking surreal nightmare. It’s far worse than the ones I’d suffered afterMorpheus had raped me because instead of fake shadow men, I’m forced to deal with a veryrealanddelusionalwoman.
