No Control | Holding Me Ransom (Book 2)

32 - The Consequences Of Falling Out

I pulled my hands away from Harry's and pressed my fingers to my temples again. For a minute neither of us spoke. I felt strangely removed from the situation, like I was watching the scene unfold in someone else's hotel room.

"Say something," he begged, softly.

"I don't even know what to say," I said, truthfully. "This has completely blindsided me."

"I'm sorry," he said, sadly.

"You're not," I said, bluntly. "If you were sorry, you would have told me about this sooner, instead of letting me think our relationship meant nothing. You wouldn't have let me think I had made a complete fool of myself by throwing myself at you. You wouldn't have let me think you didn't care at all, and you wouldn't have spoken to me like I was a piece of shıt on the phone the day after Libertine!"

My voice was rising, along with my temper. I was hurt, confused and upset and I wanted to lash out at him.

"I was furious that you'd kissed Louis the night before," he said. "I'd not long found out what Nadine had done, and I had wanted to tell you at my hotel. When I woke up and found you gone, I..." He took a sharp breath and looked down at his hands. "Well, it doesn't matter. I was just upset that you'd ended up sleeping with me but only hours earlier you'd been kissing Louis. I was angry and humiliated and I shouldn't have shouted at you the way I did. I just felt like I couldn't trust anyone anymore. Nadine had shown her true colours, and then you'd gone behind my back as well..."

Another memory came to me, this time of something Harry had said during that phone conversation:

"What is it with people suddenly revealing their true colours? Seems to be a familiar theme for me lately."

"When you hung up on me I was a mess," he continued. "I was shaking. My whole world was crumbling around me, just like I'd said it would; like I knew it would." He paused, biting his lip. "I was so angry with you, but it came from hurt, not hate. I'd just about calmed down when you called me back, and I thought... I thought you were calling to apologise about Louis. I was going to apologise too, and ask you if you would see me again, so I could explain things. But you just went off on one. You started accusing me of setting you up with the paps, of hiding my real self from you all along... I couldn't believe you would think that about me. Your words cut deep. I was so hurt. You'd worked it all out, but you were blaming the wrong person. The whole thing had been a set up: Nadine coming to our bar in New York, giving Jason that drug, and also Karen tipping off the paps outside Libertine that night. But it was nothing to do with me, I promise you."

"Of course it was a set up. Everything was a set up. Why are you telling me what I already know?"

More of his words from that conversation were making sense. How had I not understood this sooner? Why had I been so quick to assume the man who had loved me would have betrayed me like that?

"Why didn't you fight for us?" I whispered, more to myself than Harry.

"Because I'm an idiot."

"Well, I won't argue with that," I retorted.

He was still for a moment, looking between his knees at the floor, before lifting his head to look at me.

"I couldn't see what was staring me in the face," he said.

"Which was?"

(I was being a bitch, but I didn't care.)

"That I am hopelessly, helplessly in love with you and I should never have let you go."

I closed my eyes and shook my head. His words were having no effect. I was numb. I had shut down; I had gone into self-preservation mode. Experience told me if I let him into my head I would only get hurt again.