Obsessions ⇢ Tony Stark

19 | The Last Laugh

"How are you feeling?" 

Eleanora wanted to laugh. The fucking audacity. 

"I'm okay," she said instead, sitting on the bench with her legs crossed, hands in her lap. "I guess I just... want to understand." 

Tucker gave a slow nod and let out a breath. "You know I never meant to hurt you, right? I fucked up...  a lot. I don't want to lose you but I also can't lose Hannah." 

Eleanora knew she would have to be subtle about this, she couldn't start by asking where she worked, that'd be really weird. "How long have you two been together?" 

Tucker gave her a weird look. "You, uh, really wanna know about her?" 

"I need to understand," she responded, looking at him pleadingly and letting tears burn at her eyes. "I need to understand why. It's... it's a lot, but maybe if I just understood where you were coming from then it would be easier." 

His expression softened and he placed his hand over hers, thumb brushing over her skin. Before she realised what she was doing, she'd turned it over and intertwined their fingers, holding his hand in her lap. 

What the fuck. 

Bile rose in her throat as he shifted closer to her, but it would be weird to let go of his hand after that and now she was stuck like this. However, then she inhaled the scent of his cologne and felt a faint pull towards him again. It was like she was being torn in two, two diametrically opposed forces pulling her in different directions making it feel as though she was about to implode into herself like a star undergoing gravitational collapse. 

"We've been together for about four years," Tucker began to explain, oblivious to the hurricane inside her. "It was great at first, but then a couple years back she got a job as a personal assistant for the CEO of some big pharmaceutical company in the city and it's an amazing job, but she has to follow the woman around everywhere, meaning she's away quite a lot. It just... it got pretty lonely, I guess." 

Eleanora nodded slowly, trying to look sympathetic. 

"That's why I needed you... I was alone, longing for comfort and affection, and then I met you and you were.... everything I needed. You still are." 

She tensed when he lifted his hand to brush her hair behind her ear, once again torn between repulsion and the temptation to lean into it. Why was this so fucking hard? He had turned her heart into putty then ripped it into pieces and yet she still couldn't cut him off. He was a stain, and it seemed no matter how much she scrubbed and scrubbed, there was no getting rid of it. 

Would it feel like this forever? 

"If this is going to work, you need to be really honest with me," Eleanora said firmly, and Tucker smiled softly at her, nodding his head. She was almost there, just one little piece of information and she could get away from this. "Where does Hannah work? Because if you want to keep this-" she gestured between them "-a secret, I need to know where she'll be." 

"Nektar Therapeutics, it's based in San Fran." 

Eleanora pulled her hand away and tilted her head slightly. "I can't fucking believe you." 

Tucker's face dropped in confusion, eyebrows furrowed, "El?" 

"You really thought that after everything that you did to me that I'd really come back to you? After the lying, the cheating, the manipulation, the bruises, you really thought that I'd prefer that over being single?" 

The expression on his face was fucking priceless. "Wait, what?"

"You actually think that I would settle for being your secret side bitch when I can do astronomically better than you? I loved you, Tucker, but you- you treated me like shit and I deserve- and always have deserved far better. And I would rather shit in my hands and clap than to even entertain the idea of getting back with you."