I watch the explosion of heartrending comprehension burst in her eyes.
She takes a step back from me, her head shaking wildly, tremors beginning to rack her thin frame. Her mouth moves silently, forming the word no over and over again. The color is flooding from her face, she's turning into a post-mortem poster child right in front of my eyes. Every fibre of my being screams and burns, begging me to match her step and pool her into my arms. But that cannot be and somehow and suddenly… I have bigger fucking problems.
Autumn.
She's right behind her now, within the spread of a fingertip.
But so is Taylor.
Autumn opens her whore mouth, her filthy eyes alight with malicious victory. Panting and beet red in the face but finally fucking present, Taylor gives me a questioning look. I throw back a curt nod and Autumn's screeches of protest suddenly reverberate around the cemetery. Anastasia jerks in shock and twists around to see the blonde bitch from hell being bodily removed from the leafy graveyard. I glance around quickly to see if there are any shocked bystanders amongst us, ready to call the police at the strange sight unfolding in a place that's supposed to be all about the processing of grief and peace.
Small miracle, there isn't.
It's just me and Anastasia, and the retreating back of Taylor.
With that tramp slung over his shoulder.
He'll keep her contained until I can decide what happens next.
…. or until Anastasia decides what happens next.
She's looking at me as if she's never seen me before in her life, and I realize… she hasn't. She's never known me for what I really am. The coward who turned her world upside down, the bastard who turned her into a biological orphan. This moment is nowhere near as hard as I thought it would be, it's a million times fucking harder. The raw pain that she's in, the agony that embroils her… it makes me sick. It makes me physically yearn to wretch, to try and rid myself of the illness within me.
But I can't.
That shit has been buried far too deep, for far too long, to ever leave me.
Her words are spoken in a voice I've never heard her use.
It's guttural, almost alien.
It's not the voice of Anastasia Steele, that's for sure.
"You fucking liar. How could you use my mother's death as a cover up for the fact that you've been sleeping with that filthy whore?! Who are you? Because, you're not the man I fell in love with. You… you're not even a man at all."
She takes a step closer to me and I can tell she's itching to slap me across the face.
I hope she does.
I hope she knocks the teeth from my skull.
"Anastasia-"
"How can you stand there and lie to me like this? I thought the worst thing you could ever do, was what you did with her. But this… this is the worst thing anyone could do to another human being. You said you loved me, you said I was the reason you turned your life around, but that was all bullshit. That was all to get me into your bed and you into my head. You haven't changed, you probably don't have the capability to change. You come here, on the anniversary of my mom's death and you bring your tart with you… and tell me this little fantasy of yours? Are you bored of her, is that it? You're tired of the blonde diversion and you want to get back to beating the shit out of little brown-haired girls so you can remember your mom, is that it?"
My heart clenches and the bottom of my stomach teeters on the brink of falling out. Her words are bullets, laced in arsenic. They're lacerating my vital fucking organs and I don't know which is way up. The prospect of her not believing me never occurred to me and the extent of my bone crushing stupidity hits me right in the face. How could I not have foreseen this? How could I not have been prepared for this? We never spoke about the death of her mom, she could never bring herself to form the words and now I am here, on the anniversary of the worst day of her life, telling her that some of the best days of her life… were all a lie. A fabrication. That when she thought she was laying with the love of her life, she was actually laying with the locust of her life.
A monster.
The night in question swims before my eyes. I don't remember it, to my utter fucking shame, I don't remember it. I just remember waking up at the wheel, cut three ways from hell. Everything ached, everything was a blur. The airbags were out, they were drenched in blood. The wheels of the car were still spinning as the shards of the shattered windshield sprinkled down around us. I remember looking to my side and being startled by how alert she was, how calm she seemed to be. How she brimmed with the ability to process the scene that I couldn't comprehend.
She took over, called all the right people and I avoided all the legal and moral consequences that should have been slapped down on me. I'd never ever gotten behind the wheel of a car with alcohol in my body before in my life. What possessed me that night, I still don't know. I doubt that I'll ever know. All I know is that I did, I got behind the wheel of my car with alcohol in my body and in doing so, I took the life of another.
The life of one Carla May Adams.
The mother of one Anastasia Rose Steele.
And from that day, I've never been whole.
"Ana, please, I'm not lying. I was drunk. I was so fucking drunk. I don't know why I did it, I don't know why I got into that car and drove it. I wish I did, you have no idea how much I wish I did… how I wish I could give you the answers you deserve. But I can't. I can't remember… I can't remember any of it. I just remember waking up after the crash, with my hands still on the wheel… and your mom…."
My voice breaks.
For the first time in my life, I am freely near tears of shame.
"Her eyes were open, I could see them… both our windshields were completely smashed in… so I could see them. She looked like she was awake, like she was looking for a way out. But I knew, I knew deep down that she was dead and that I was the one who killed her. There was nothing I could do. There was nothing anyone could do. I… left. Help was called, redundant help, and I left. I saw her eyes that night and every night thereafter until you fell into my office and I saw those eyes in the flesh for the second time. And… I thought if I could just get to know you, I could somehow make amends. I was delusional, a delusional coward… but I never in my wildest dreams thought I'd end up falling in love with you. That was the cruellest thing I could ever have done and there can be no apologies…"
She shakes her head once more, disbelief spilling from her eyes.
Her voice is a whisper now, coated in seething shock.
"I never told you this. I never told anyone about this and this is how I know that you're the lowest of the low, that there are no depths to which you will not sink, that you are the filthiest liar I have ever known."
Another step towards me is taken.
"The cops pulled CCTV footage from an abandoned Wendy's near the scene of the crash. The place was closed, but the cameras still worked. And they caught a glimpse of the driver. Not enough to provide a mugshot or a likeness that could be released, but a decent glimpse nonetheless. And that glimpse tells me that you're a fucking liar, Christian Grey, and that you're everything you ever said you were. A fucking monster."
Another step towards me is taken.
"The driver was distinctly more than middle-aged and distinctly blonde."
Another step towards me is taken.
"And distinctly female."
…
TBC
…..