It's between me and you

Chapter 43

Ledger pursed his lips, his nostrils flared. He knew this program would be a trouble someday. Brainless idiot. He exhaled, staring at Elena.

The girl began to shake perceptibly. She almost dropped the phone. She flipped it open and shoved it in Andrew's face.

"I asked you, what is it?" Her voice was disobedient and cracked with anger.

Andrew wanted to draw air into his lungs, but it seemed to get stuck in his throat, not wanting to go any further. He nervously ran his hand through his hair.

"It's a program I installed to get to know you better," he exhaled again, and then wrapped his arms around Elena's face, squeezing her cheeks to the pain. "That was a long time ago. Even before the fire. Listen to me, Elena! I... "

The girl blinked slowly. A viscous lump grew in her throat, and her heart beat as loudly as if a jackhammer had been launched from within.

She jerked her head before she could speak and flicked her finger through the messages she remembered so well, because she'd answered them herself. She clicked on the messenger icon. Crazy! All the texts with Ira, the calls, even the pictures. What was happening seemed impossible, some kind of distorted reality, where all of a sudden the settled life was sucked into. And in this reality, even the air was different. Heavy, thick. Oxygen hardly penetrated the lungs, and the insides were sliced by the ugly truth, pierced like a sharp machete by Andrew himself.

"So that's how you found out about billiards," Elena guessed, coming across a message with the name of the billiard hall. "What was it all for?"

In a second the gap between them became so deep that if the guy flew into it and had smashed on the ground, they would not have heard it on the surface.

In Elena's brown eyes, the recent fire of anger faded and was replaced by colorless disappointment. The cruelest thing he could feel from her was exactly the disappointment. No, please! Not now, when he had found her and was never going to let her go!

"Elena, listen to me! It was a fucking program to find dirt on you, and then use it against you. But I didn't do it! I fucking didn't," Andrew growled through his teeth, hearing his own pulse pounding in his ears and feeling Elena's icy breath on his lips a couple of centimeters away. "I could have. And you know it! I could have used those fucking pictures right after that night at the pool table, but I didn't. I couldn't! Couldn't and wouldn't! You became my everything! And this... this is just... I don't know why I didn't delete it."

"I don't believe you!" Standing with this person suddenly became incredibly difficult.

The guy opposite was saying something, convincing, and Elena remembered his plausible lies both in the hall and at his home, she wondered why he went with Stas to the club if he had his own table at home. All this time, the girl in love to the point of madness was like a fly under a microscope to him. He knew every move, manipulated her like a puppet. Not trusting. Controlling. Like his property. Or was this just another farce? Maybe a rich boy with God's capabilities was preparing something grandiose, and she, like a fool, let sugarcoated words of sentiment pour into her ears, let herself melt in his hands? She believed him. Naively believed that there might be something human hidden in him, and was genuinely glad that she could get to the bottom of it. Could it be that the amorous student then videotaped all their nights and laughed with his buddies when he wasn't with her? That, of course, was unlikely. He wouldn't do something like that. But broken trust is hard to fix.

"You had so much time to remove her, but you didn't do it. Why?"

Andrew chaotically stroked the girl's frozen cheeks, rested his forehead against hers, and shook his head.