BREAKDOWN
—Chapter XVI—
For Maria
Melodramatic chapters are our thing
My heart stopped. My fingers loosened their grip and she felt down to the floor. I followed and knelt beside her.
"I loved him" she said once more, her face ashamed of her confession.
The door closed with a loud slam.
I bolted towards it and struggled with the knob for a little while. It looked that the door locked automatically and couldn't be opened from the inside. I gave up.
"It's dead shut. We're locked inside."
I checked my cell phone and it had no signal. I tried yelling through the door but nobody seemed to be on the other side. I surveyed the little room and found no windows or any escape through the ceiling. The extractor fan hole was too small for us to use.
Damn it! It only happened in movies.
It seemed like we had no choice but to spend the night in that tiny room. So I gathered a few piles of documents and books and placed them on the floor. I sat on top of them and rested against the wall right opposite to the door. Beth joined me.
"I promised to tell you everything." she started. "I've been hiding this inside me for too long. I guess need to let it out."
She spoke quietly.
"It was several years ago. I was so young, so innocent; he was my only cousin. Everyone adored him."
I clenched my teeth in anger. I feared what was coming. I could almost believe my head was about to snap.
"He did... he… took advantage of you, didn't he?"
"No… no…" she touched my hardened biceps with her fingers. She must have felt how tense my body was. "No. I wanted to. I've had a crush with him for so long. I thought it was love. He always knew I loved him. So it was bound to happen eventually. I've always been too headstrong for my years and I always knew what I wanted."
She smiled sadly.
"Sixteen is always an excuse for one of Hartley's ostentatious parties, even if it's just a bastard daughter. Everyone was invited. But Matt and I didn't attend. He wanted to make it my special night. I was such a fool but I thought myself so happy. He told me so many promises I didn't care how enraged my mother and uncle were that evening and the evenings beyond that point. We saw each other all summer until…"
She stood silent as if wondering if she should continue or not. She finally gave in.
"Aunt Victoria sent him to study languages abroad, to Paris, far away. I was forced against my will to disappear to Seattle and away from New York society to terminate" she couldn't even dare look at me "the life I had in me."
My pupils dilated as I saw two tears running carelessly through her freckled face.
"I felt so dirty, so broken. I was only sixteen" I could almost feel her ache in her voice.
Her face was fully covered in tears, now. I hugged her and let her drain her pain against my shoulders.
One sided love. I understood the feeling so well. I have been swimming in those seas for several years myself. But I could never compare my sorrows to hers. She had lost something more precious than just a crush from teenage years. Elizabeth Hartley died with that baby.
I let her shake and break and melt inside my arms. She bit my shoulders while tears ran in desperation. It was enough of her to act as if nothing was wrong, to be stronger than her years trying to conceal all the pain that was consuming her. I just wanted her to release everything, at least once in her life.
After several minutes in my arms she finally calmed down.
"I'm sorry. I don't know what happened to me just now."
"It's okay" I caressed her hair while her head rested peacefully in my shoulder. "You don't have to pretend to be fine with me."
"I was supposed to be over this. It was so long ago, I'm Beth Leigh now" she sighed, wiped her tears and finally dared face me, "I've changed."
"But you couldn't stop feeling for him."
She didn't nod but her eyes provided the answer.
"We rarely saw each other except in some few social events, at my mother's funeral. But ever since, I saw Victoria Hartley's eyes in his, looking at me like trash, treating me with scorn. It really was a surprise when Uncle contacted me and offered me a job here in New York, at the same company Matt was working. It was a big mistake to come here."
I guess an average person wouldn't believe that she had spent years shutting herself out because to her past, clinging into the shadows and memories of a forbidden love and a bitter pain. But not to me, I understood her well.
"You should tell the truth to the police."
She avoided my stare and stood silent, resting her head against my shoulders once again.
"You must" I repeated "testify against him."
Fucking Matt! I hated him with all my soul. He always managed to ruin everything and everyone still cared for him.
After a moment I dare speak again.
"Is it worth it?" I whispered. The words stinging as I spoke them, my lips so close to her ear I could almost touch her, "to sacrifice that much for him? Is it really worth it?"
She shook her head and let go of our embrace.
"I didn't know he had done any of this. Maybe I just didn't want to believe in it. I refused the facts. I thought it was all a misunderstanding. I don't know, someone trying to frame him. He—he came to me that morning, acting so innocent, so worried."
Beth told me that he always kept the pistol in his safe box but that once he knew about his father's tragedy he ran to take it out and he noticed a few bullets were used. He panicked. He didn't know what to do because he was certain the police was going to point at him. Very few people knew the combination of that box. He didn't know what to do.
"He begged me for help. He wanted me to help him and I couldn't help myself. He used me… again."
She replied nodding slowly, like a little child.
"I know that if I go to the police, I'm going down for helping him but he mustn't get away with the murder of my uncle."
She shook her head.
"Gio," she said and her gaze was deep and sincere, almost like an apology "I don't love him anymore."
I caressed her hair. The red strands gliding smoothly in between my fingers spoke of danger. I didn't care. I didn't trust redheads but I believed in her.
"I'm so sorry" she said softly.
"Sorry for what?" I asked her.
Her eyes fixed intently in mine for the longest moment.
"I wish I'd met you in other circumstances."
Her clear gray crystals were shaking with emotion.
My sight drifted from her eyes to her lips and lingered there while I realized right at that moment —I had fallen in love with her.
"Please," she begged me, her voice cracked like glass, "kiss me."
And so I did. Her lips opened up to mine in a soft moan.
But I didn't stop there. Her mouth was just the prelude. My lips longed for her since that day I saw her cry for love in the solitude of that corridor at MODE.
I kissed that place under her earlobe, that heart shaped tattoo that marked her since the day she was born —I need you.
My tongue tasted her skin and I whispered words against it, words of passion and reassurance. I took her in my arms and lay her down on the floor. My hands sailed freely across her stunning legs. I felt her shiver at my contact and I wondered how long since she'd felt the touch of a man, if she'd ever been touched by a real man; not a scumbag, like Matt.
I don't know if it was her need to feel loved after all the pain of these many years or maybe my longing desire for someone who finally welcomed my affections; all I know, we kissed and made love right there, with no shame, inside those four walls.
Desperately. Hungrily. Silently.
I woke up feeling alive and checked my watch. It was pass midnight. I recollected myself. Beth was sleeping by my side, resting in my arm.
I got up and wondered if I could open the door just like Beth did with Wilhelmina's locked office. I grabbed the knife and the moment my hand touched the knob, the door opened before me effortlessly.
Could Beth have opened it?
I looked back but she was still resting asleep in the floor. I was so tired I didn't want to think too much. I was glad we were free from our imprisonment and that she was safe with me.
I kissed her forehead and woke her up. We tried to fix the archive room as much as we could and went back to my place.
We made love again in my bed, our bed, and I slept like I haven't done in years.
The morning came and found my little Hartley princess making breakfast in the kitchen. I tiptoed towards her and embraced her skinny waist with my strong arms.
"Ah!" she startled, "you scared me."
I liked to see her react like that. She was usually cold and distant with the rest of the world but she was so different when she was with me. I guessed I made her feel alive.
"Wait, wait. What is this?" I pinched her stomach with my fingers. "Ah… look at that. You're gaining some weight, finally. I told you would."
"How can that be possible? I've known you just for a few weeks."
"Deli food is magic and I'm your miracle man. You just wait because I have a plan."
I kissed her back, her shoulders, her neck, her seductive spot in her cheek —I want you.
"Giovanni… a plan… for us?" she said in a soft voice that turned into a whisper that unveiled the emotions I was arousing with my kisses. "Do we even… have a future?"
"Of course we do" I said, very seriously. I grabbed her face with both my hands and made her look at me. I tried to convey in my eyes everything I was feeling inside me "we do."
"Yesterday… all I said… the weapon…" she stepped away from me, exploding the bubble of fantasy we created around ourselves since the moment we kissed for the first time last night.
"Not yet, Beth" said. I didn't want to wake up to reality, to the murder cases, to her pain. "Not yet. Could we just…"
I tried to kiss her rosy lips again.
"We will have to talk about it, eventually" she said, twirling a strand of hair in anxiety. "I'll definitely go to the police and tell everything. I guess I'll have to face the consequence of my actions. You're right. I can't think of any other choice."
"Listen, Beth," I took the strand of red hair between my fingers and put it back into place behind her earlobe. Then, I held her hands, her delicate beautiful hands "I'll be by your side. No matter what happens. We can survive this together. You're not alone."
She'd been searching for Matt; I'd been searching for Betty and we ended up finding each other. To hell my five year plan! I already could picture the foundation of my future: a new life with her.
"Matt can't hurt you anymore. I'm with you."
"You don't have to do this" she hesitated for a second then said, "I'm not Betty."
Her self-esteem had been shattered years ago, she had built herself an artificial one made of ice and scorn but inside she was nothing but a frightened girl that nobody ever cared for, that nobody ever loved.
"I know that" I held her tight. She was so fragile inside my arms, too skinny, too many freckles, too much red in her hair, too many lies, but still… "You're Elizabeth Leigh and I'm in love with you."
She kissed me back and merged with me in a passionate hug, in silence, only the faint noise of the morning news on the TV.
Then, suddenly, Beth flinched in a spasm of surprise and moved away from me, her hands clenched to my arms, her face lost all her usual colors and disfigured like a horror mask.
I heard a familiar name and made a quick turn just in time to hear the correspondent on the TV tell the latest breaking news: like his father, exactly two weeks ago, Mathew Hartley was just found dead in his office.
To be continued
