LISA
When she starts to cry, it becomes much harder to keep a neutral face. I don't know what would happen if I told her that I've been through hell, too, that I felt pain that I wasn't sure I could endure either. I think she'd run into my arms and tell me it's okay. She was listening to me talk to Smith, I know she was. She's sad, just the way the obnoxious little boy claimed, but I know how this ends. If she forgives me, I'll just come up with some other fucked-up thing to do to her next. It's always been that way, and I don't know how to stop it.
The only option here is giving her a chance to be with someone much better for her. I believe that deep fucking down she wants someone who is more like her. Someone with no tattoos, no piercings. Someone without a fucked-up childhood and anger issues. She thinks that she loves me now, but one day, when I do something even more fucked up than I already have, she'll regret ever speaking to me. The more I look at her crying in this driveway with the snow falling down around her, the more I know that I'm not good for her.
I'm Tom and she's Daisy. Lovely Daisy, who is corrupted by Tom, and she's never the same after. If I beg for her forgiveness right now, on my knees, in this snowy driveway, she'll be the awful Daisy for eternity, all of her innocence will be gone and she'll end up hating me, and herself. If Tom had left Daisy at the first moment of her uncertainty, she could have had a life with the man she was destined to be with, a man that would have treated her the way she deserved to be treated.
"It's none of your concern really, is it?" I say and watch as my words rattle her to her core.
She should be inside with Taehyung, or back home with Kai. Not with me. I'm no Darcy, and she deserves one. I can't change for her. I will find a way to live without her, just the way she must live without me.
"How could you even say that? After everything we've been through, you just toss me aside and don't even have the decency to give me an explanation?" she cries.
Headlights appear at the end of the dark street, casting her into silhouette and creating new shadows across the land.
I'm doing this for you! I want to shout. But I don't. I just shrug my shoulders.
Her mouth opens, then closes as a truck stops in front of us. That truck . . .
"What is she doing here?" I croak.
"Picking me up," she says with such offhand finality that the news nearly brings me to my knees.
"Why would . . . why is she . . . what the fuck?" I pace back and forth. I had been trying to push her away from me and trying to let her move on so she could be with someone like herself—not fucking Rosé, out of all people.
"Have you . . . have you been seeing that piece of shit?" I say, glaring at her. I'm aware of how frantic I sound, but I don't give a shit as I step past Jennie and walk over to where her truck is stopped. "Get out of the goddamn car!" I shout.
Rosé surprises me by climbing out and leaving the engine running. She's such a fucking idiot.
"Are you all right?" she has the nerve to ask her.
I get up in Rosé's face. "I knew it! I knew you were waiting for your moment to swoop in and make a move on her! Did you think I wouldn't find out?"
She looks at her and Jennie looks at her. Holy fucking shit, this is really happening.
"Leave her alone, Lisa!" she insists . . . And I snap.
One of my hands wraps around the collar of Rosé's jacket. The other connects with her jaw. Jennie screams, but it's barely a whisper, lost in the wind and my rage.
Rosé stumbles back, holding her jaw. But then she quickly steps back up toward me. She and her death wish.
"Did you think I wasn't going to find out! I fucking told you to stay away from her!" I move to hit her again, but this time she blocks me and manages to nail me right in the jaw.
Anger mixes with the adrenaline of being in a fight for the first time in weeks. I've missed this feeling, the energy flowing through my bloodstream, getting me high.
I hit her in the ribs. This time she falls to the ground, and I'm on top of her in seconds, pummeling her again and again. I'll give her credit: she's managed to get in a few punches. But she has no way to overpower me.
"I was there . . . and you weren't." She eggs me on.
"Stop it! Stop, Lisa!" Jennie pulls on my arm, and reflexively I knock her backward onto the driveway.
Immediately, I snap out of my rage and turn to her as she backs away on her hands and knees and then stands and puts her arms straight out, as if to ward me off. What the fuck did I just do?
"Don't you fucking go near her!" Rosé yells behind me. She's by her side in no time, and Jennie's staring at Rosé, not bothering to even look at me.
"Jen . . . I didn't mean to do that. I didn't know it was you, I swear! You know how I see red when I'm angry . . . I'm so sorry. I . . ."
She stares straight through me. "Can we just go, please?" she asks calmly, and my heart leaps . . . until I realize that she's talking to her, to Rosé.
How the fuck did this happen?
"Yes, of course." Rosé drapes her jacket over Jennie's shoulders and opens the passenger seat of her truck for her and helps her inside.
"Jennie . . ." I call again, but she doesn't acknowledge me as she buries her face in her hands and her body is racked with sobs.
I point a finger at Rosé and threaten, "This isn't over."
She nods and goes around to the driver's side before looking at me again. "I think it is, actually." She smirks and climbs inside her truck.