Trace of Innocence | Sweet and Sour (Book 4)

Chapter 32

(No Control | Holding Me Ransom - 32 - The Consequences Of Falling Out)

I don't really know what I'm expecting from her by way of a response. She pulls her hands out of mine and drops her head down, staring at the floor in silence.

"Say something," I plead.

"I don't even know what to say," she says, without even a trace of emotion. "This has completely blindsided me."

"I'm sorry," I sigh.

I'm sorry that this piece of information was what blindsided her, when it should have been the most obvious thing in the world.

"You're not," she retorts. "If you were sorry, you would have told me about this sooner, instead of letting me think our relationship meant nothing." 

OK, fair point. I have handled this badly, but I've never been in this situation before. Thankfully I've never encountered a psycho ex-girlfriend with a penchant for undercover narcotics, or ended up under the influence of said narcotics without my knowledge. Neither have I been unfaithful before.

"You wouldn't have let me think I had made a complete fool of myself by throwing myself at you," she continues, her voice rising." 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 shit on the phone the day after Libertine!"

She's yelling at me by the end of this, and I'm ashamed to admit I wasn't expecting to face her wrath after confessing my feelings for her, even though I deserve it for what I did. I hadn't really thought about it in this way before. Her view of things has put a different spin on it.

"I was furious that you'd kissed Louis the night before," I explain. "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..." 

My breath catches in my throat as I relive that moment, and the subsequent showdown with Louis. I remember wanting to hit him, to hurt him. I'm not proud of those feelings. There are some things she doesn't need to know.

"Well, it doesn't matter," I mutter. "I was just upset that you'd ended up sleeping with me but only hours earlier you'd been kissing Louis."

You're all over the internet. You and Louis. Some pap with a long-range camera got a picture of you. It's not a very clear picture, but it's pretty obvious what you're doing.  

It is my own words that come back to me this time.

"I was angry and humiliated and I shouldn't have shouted at you the way I did," I say humbly. "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..." I feel a twist of loneliness in my stomach that I push away impatiently. I can't allow myself to imagine what will happen if she sends me away after all this is finally out in the open.

"When you hung up on me I was a mess," I admit. "I was shaking. My whole world was crumbling around me, just like I'd said it would; like I knew it would. 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..." 

My cheeks flush at this next memory, of sitting in the airport with Niall and thinking she might be calling back to sort things out.

"I thought you were calling to apologise about Louis," I mumble. "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."