My head swims with confusion and fear. What is this? Did he discover the truth about me? In desperation, I lunge for him and grab his hand, but he shrugs me off. He gives me a look filled with such revulsion, and I feel it like a punch to the solar plexus. It’s like my touch disgusts him. Like I mean nothing to him and never meant anything at all. As though those hands that know me so intimately are strangers to me.
Tears merge with rain and drip from my face as my heart is torn from my chest, leaving behind a gaping hole. It shatters into a million tiny fragments at his feet and leaves me gasping. “Zeke, please?” I hate the desperation in my tone, hate myself for pleading with him in front of all these people while he pretends that I don’t exist. But I’m so confused. I don’t know what else to do.
He dips his head, bringing his face close enough for me to hear his spiteful voice and see the fiery rage dancing in his eyes. “You are a lying, cheating whore, Lily. Nobody wants you here.” He blinks and the fire is extinguished, leaving a void so dark and empty that I’m afraid I will fall inside and be lost forever.
I dimly register him speaking to the bouncers. “Put her in a cab and get her the fuck out of here.” Without another word to me, he strides back inside the club.
The bouncer is looking at me differently now. His eyes are full of pity, and I can’t stand it. He signals a cab and guides me to it. I can hear whispers and not-so-muffled conversations about how embarrassed I must feel and what a disgrace I am, but it all washes over me. I’m practically numb when I climb into the cab, shivering from both the cold and the shock.
When the driver asks where I’m going, I give him Jen’s address. I need to go somewhere that someone won’t pretend I don’t exist. What the hell just happened? Did they learn my identity, and if so, why did he still call me Lily? If they would just let me explain …
Fumbling with my purse, I pull out my cell phone and check for a message from Xander or West telling me that Zeke has lost his mind and I’m not to listen to anything that comes out of his mouth. There’s nothing since the last text from West instructing me to meet them at the club.
I dial his number, and it goes to voicemail. So does Xander’s. I even try Zeke’s. After leaving three equally incoherent voice messages, I grip my phone with both hands and wait for one of them to call me back.
Chapter
Forty-Two
XANDER
“Jesus fucking Christ.” I suck in a deep breath to cool the burning in my lungs, but it doesn’t help. I listen to her voicemail again, and just like all the other times, a fresh welt is sliced across my heart. She’s barely coherent over the sound of her teeth chattering and her sobs. I imagine her freezing and shivering in the back of a cab in her soaking wet dress, wondering what the fuck happened. We should have talked to her. I should have stopped them …
“Stop fucking torturing yourself, Fitch,” Zeke barks as he takes a fresh bottle of water from the fridge.
He’s right, listening to this on repeat is fucking torture. I would rather stick needles in my goddamn ears than hear her cry like that again. The raw pain in her voice makes me want to throw up. Nobody is that good of an actress. “We fucked up. We never should have done that.” I sink to the floor, my head in my hands.
West sighs. “She lied to us, Xander. What the fuck were we supposed to do?”
“We could have fucking talked to her like normal fucking human beings,” I shout. “What if this is all some big fucking misunderstanding? What if there’s an explanation for all of this that doesn’t involve the woman we love, who has shown us nothing but love and kindness, royally fucking us over?”
“Why would we talk to her, Xander?” West shouts back. “She had plenty of fucking chances to come clean about whatever the fuck she’s been hiding, and she didn’t. She lied to our fucking faces that day she met Nico Constantine in his hotel room. So we just let her lie to us some more? Get some juicy sound bites for her article?”
“Fuck that,” Zeke growls.
I glare at them, rage at the injustice of the situation simmering in my veins. I watched Zeke earlier. I saw the pain on her face when he destroyed her in front of all those people. And West held me back from going to her. “You didn’t have to be so fucking cruel, Zeke,” I yell. “You didn’t have to fucking eviscerate her in public like that.”
He crouches down, his face twisted with anger. “No? You think she’s not going to fucking eviscerate us when her article comes out in two days?”