Chapter 20: The Reckoning
The drive was a blur of streetlights and white noise. Dee’s hands strangled the steering wheel, her knuckles bone-white against the leather. Every red light was a personal insult. The cool, controlled facade she’d worn for Sarah had vaporized, replaced by a seismic rage that made her vision pulse at the edges. Elara’s words looped in her head, a toxic soundtrack. The woman who ‘almost had Matt.’ He gets confused. He always comes home.
She parallel parked with a violent jerk of the wheel, the tires scraping the curb. She didn’t check her reflection in the rearview. She didn’t need to. She could feel the fury radiating off her skin, a visible heat haze.
The elevator ride to his penthouse felt like a cage ascending to an execution. Her breath came in short, sharp bursts. The doors slid open directly into his private foyer.
She stabbed the doorbell. Once. Twice, holding it down.
When the door finally swung open, Matt stood there, shirtless in a pair of gray sweatpants, his hair mussed like he’d been asleep or just running his hands through it. His famous blue eyes widened, shock wiping away any trace of his usual composed ease. “Dee? What are you—”
She didn’t let him finish. She shoved past him, her shoulder connecting hard with his chest, forcing him back a step into the vast, sterile expanse of his living room. The city glittered, indifferent, behind the floor-to-ceiling windows.
“You unbelievable bastard.”
Her voice wasn’t a scream yet. It was low, guttural, a tremble of pure voltage.
Matt closed the door, his face a mask of confusion and dawning alarm. “Talk to me. What’s happening?”
“What’s happening?” The laugh that tore out of her was ugly and broken. “Your girlfriend happened. Your perfect, frostbitten, society-page girlfriend waltzed into my studio today. Booked under a fake name. Just to look me over. To see the novelty.”
Matt went very still. “Elara was there?”
“She wanted the works! A cut and style! From me!” Dee’s voice cracked, scaling upward. She took a step toward him, pointing a finger that shook with the force of her entire body. “She sat in my chair and she told me how quaint you found your little crush. She said you needed to get me out of your system. She thanked me for my charming little life.”
“Dee, I never—” He started forward, hand reaching out.
“Don’t you fucking touch me!” she roared, the sound echoing off the polished concrete. The dam broke. Everything she’d swallowed for years, every hope she’d locked down, every second of pain from finding him in that bed, came flooding out in a scalding torrent. “You kissed me! In this very goddamn apartment! You kissed me and it wasn’t some joke, it was real, I felt it in my teeth, Matt! And then you took me to your bed and you… you…”
The memory was a physical assault. The weight of him, the scent of his skin, the whispered words lost in the dark.
“You said it was a beginning,” she cried, tears of fury now streaking her cheeks. “You said ‘this is real, Dee, we build from here.’ You held my face and you said it. And I believed you. I let myself believe you. And what was it? A fucking pit stop? A bit of confusion before you went back to what you actually belong with?”
“It wasn’t like that,” he said, his own voice rough, pleading. “What happened with Elara, after, it was a mistake, it was nothing—”
“Nothing?” The word was a shriek. “I saw you! Do you get that? I came here that morning, to talk, to be an adult, and I saw her legs wrapped around you in your bed! The bed where you promised me a future! You were inside her, Matt. You were buried in her while I was still tasting you on my lips!”
She was screaming now, raw and unfiltered, every syllable a piece of glass ripped from her throat. The elegant room seemed to shrink, holding the noise, amplifying it.
He flinched, his eyes screwed shut in pain. “It was the worst thing I’ve ever done. It meant nothing.”
“It meant everything!” She was right in front of him now, her chest heaving. “And now she gets to come into my space, my one place that is mine, and she gets to rub my nose in it? She gets to see the wound and pour salt in it because you gave her the goddamn map? She doesn’t get that right! You don’t get that right!”
The rage crested, a white-hot wave with no shore. Her hand, the one that could layer color with precision and twist curls with gentle grace, flew through the air before she even knew she’d moved.
The slap connected with his cheek with a sound like a crack of splitting wood.
His head snapped to the side. A stark, red imprint bloomed instantly on his tanned skin.
Silence. Thunderous, breathing silence.
He slowly turned his head back to face her. He didn’t raise a hand to the wound. His blue eyes were swimming, glistening with unshed tears, his expression utterly shattered. He looked at her like she was the only thing left in a collapsed world.
Dee’s hand throbbed. The pain felt good. Clean.
“You don’t get to touch me,” she whispered, the fight draining out of her, leaving a vast, hollowed-out exhaustion. “Not ever again.”
She turned and walked back to the door, her steps echoing on the hard floor. She yanked it open.
“Dee, please.” His voice was a broken thing behind her.
She didn’t look back. She stepped into the elevator, and the doors closed, severing the last thread.