Lewis jutted his chin out one more time and then left the doorway. I shut the door the rest of the way. My hands were trembling. The indignation that I’d held together in the confrontation evaporated. It was just me again. The woman who had to deal with this all. Who had flown home to Charleston and cried on Amy’s couch while eating frosting all week.
My strength disappeared, and the weakness returned. I put my back to the door and slid down it, dropping my head into my knees.
“Oh my god,” I gasped out.
A sob shook my shoulders. I’d been trying to keep it all together since I got into the city. Since I decided that I was going to make everyone pay for what they’d done to me. But there was a difference between the vengeance that fueled my heart and the brittle reality of dealing with the man I’d been falling for. Seeing him for what he really was and knowing that even he didn’t see it as wrong. On some level, I was just that same obsession for him. The thing that he wanted. And now that he couldn’t have me, he was getting desperate. Acting out to hurt me and then trying to rectify things to make up for it. It was…delusional and insane and made me ache all over.
Penn sank to his feet in front of me. His hand slid over top of mine and squeezed. “Hey.”
I didn’t move. I hated feeling this way. Even more than I hated the deep, dark pit that I’d fallen headfirst into when I found out about Lewis’s file. The yawning darkness that had beckoned when Katherine revealed my pen name. The inky black that had suffused me and called me home after I lost my writing career.
This was vulnerability.
Much, much, much worse than rage.
“Natalie, look at me.”
I shook my head.
His fingers brushed back through the loose strands of my silver hair before lifting my chin. This was nothing like his commanding touch as he’d assessed me last night before he fucked me. This was almost painfully gentle, achingly tender. A different man than the sex god he was in the bedroom.
“He doesn’t deserve your tears,” he said. Then he swiped the traitorous, wet streaks from under my eyes.
“They’re not for him,” I finally muttered. “Not really.”
He angled his head, those liquid blue eyes asking the question he never voiced.
“I hate dealing with him. I hate that he manipulated me into feeling something for him, and then it all turned out to be a lie. That it wasn’t the first time,” I said pointedly. “And yet, I fell for it again anyway. I thought defiantly, naively, stupidly that I could have one foot in both worlds. That I could be the bohemian, wild, daydreamer Natalie while stumbling aimlessly into this Upper East Side world with big doe eyes. I thought I’d seen the worst of this world. I thought I knew all it could do to me. And that, somehow, I could be both people. But you were right. I can’t.”
Penn frowned. “I don’t enjoy being right in this.”
“Yes, well, but you were. Those two things don’t go together. They might as well exist in separate universes. And once I truly realized it, once all the walls came tumbling down, I saw the truth. I couldn’t play by my rules. There are only the rules of the Upper East Side.”
His gaze was steady on mine as the tears ran black rivers down my cheeks. As I mourned that loss right before his eyes.
“So, you see, the tears aren’t for Lewis. They’re for the person I was before all of this. They’re mourning the loss of a part of me so that I could gain the strength I needed to stand up to him. To live in this world.”
“Why would you want to live in it?” he asked in earnest. Not the same question he had asked me earlier. The other one had been disbelief. That I was insane for wanting it. Now, it was curiosity. Like he was seeing the truth in my eyes for the first time. And not just my anger.
“My whole life, I’ve only ever really had one friend, and she’s standing in this room. I never really felt like I belonged anywhere. I needed to jump from place to place to place to find what I was looking for. I was just beginning to feel like I belonged here for the first time in my life.” I swiped at my eyes and cleared my throat. This was the first time I was admitting this, even to myself. “I won’t let Katherine or Lewis or anyone take that away from me.”
Penn sighed heavily, as if coming to some conclusion. “Okay.”
“Okay?” I asked in confusion.
“I’ll help you.”
My eyes rounded in surprise. “Lewis changed your mind.”