Chapter 40

*Elena*

"Elena, please, just let me come in so we can talk."

"No, it's too late for that." I felt such rage inside that I was almost afraid of what I might do. The tears that I'd been fighting so hard to contain were winning, and I hated that for myself; I hated showing any kind of weakness in front of him.

How dare he show up here like this? Acting so blasé, as if he wasn't the monster who had hurt me in the worst possible way. How dare he think that all the pain and hurt of the last five years could just be swept away and forgotten by his mere presence?

In the past, it was always like that. I was always quick to forgive him and move on from whatever idiotic thing he'd done. Because I believed that that's what love was. Long-suffering, forgiving, merciful. All the things an innocent young girl should believe. But look where that got me.

He made me a laughingstock, something to be ridiculed and laughed at, someone to be pitied. "Damn you, I told you to go away. It's too late for explanations and excuses; I don't care. I stopped caring a long time ago." Lies, all lies, but thankfully he couldn't see my eyes clearly because he'd know. He always knew me as well as I knew myself.

"It will never be too late; please, just let me come inside. Let's sit down and talk. I'll tell you everything; I'll hear you out, whatever you have to say. You can even hit me if you want." He smiled in that boyish way of his, and I wanted to knock his head in.

"Don't tempt me. Besides, I don't need your permission to do anything; you're on my property. Wait, does anyone know you're here?" I have a very lovely garden that needs fertilizing; his carcass might be just the thing it needed.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Like what?" Color me innocent.

"Like you're thinking of where to hide my body." Now it was my turn to smirk, all the while not believing or understanding what the hell was going on. I was standing here half-dressed, having a somewhat civil conversation with Ryder Sumner.

In some ways, it felt as if the years had not gone by, as if time stood still and it was the day after we last met. I should've done more to prepare myself for this happenstance. But I just never imagined that he'd ever be here again, not like this.

I had thought that maybe some years down the line when we were both old and grey, we'd run into each other in some café in town. We'd say a polite hello, and then as if in passing, I'd finally get the answer as to why he'd screwed me over.

By then, I would be over it, over him, already, and it wouldn't really matter; it would just be something to close a door that had been left open. But this, even after five long grueling years, was too soon. I wasn't ready; I hadn't prepared myself for seeing him here like this in the flesh standing before me.

The longer we stood there staring at each other wordlessly, and the more I thought of what to say to him, the venom I wanted to hurl at his head burned a path from my lungs to the tip of my tongue. "Where's your wife, Ryder? Does she know you're here? I don't need to deal with her brand of insanity right now, so if you please, just go."

"Don't call her that." Oy, what's this now?

"Are you high, Ryder? I thought they said you were clean."

"I am clean." He seemed a bit put out by my asking, but what the heck did he expect? He just showed up here out of the blue, asking to come in as if nothing ever happened. What am I supposed to think other than that he's high off his nut?

I knew he was clean, though, because I'd met with Heather Saunders, who just called me up out of the blue, and how could I not meet with the empress of Hollywood? I knew from the tabloids that her husband was working with Ryder on a movie, so when she called, I wondered what she wanted with me. I was deathly afraid that she'd ask me to make a movie with him, which would've been the worst possible scenario.

The truth is I still don't know what that day was about. She'd just asked me out to lunch as if we were old friends, and once we met, things got even stranger. We talked and laughed about the shows we'd been in though she hadn't acted in years.

Then things became personal, and she asked me about myself and how I was doing, very probing questions as if she were checking in for someone. She'd made slight mention of the fact that he was clean, just threw that in there nonchalantly, even mentioning that she knew our history and how sorry she was that things had happened the way they had.

Apologizing to me as if she'd had something to do with it, which I knew she hadn't. Then she went on to tell me that he was working with her family studio, but that was it. It felt like a character reference or something as if she wanted to hear from me what I thought about him, but she never came right out and asked.

And when we parted, she promised that we would do it again. I'd found the whole thing weird but friendly and had put it out of my mind until now. It can't hurt to have a friend like Heather Saunders, but I wasn't expecting much to come of it. I'm good at what I do, but I'm nowhere near the caliber of celebrity that she and her husband rub elbows with. But what was the connection between that and him being here?

"Wait, there's been a strange car following me around for the last few days. Does Janie have anything to do with that?" I'm not sure why I hadn't thought about it before, but I wouldn't put it past her. The way the tides had turned online and in the tabloids, I had no doubt that she was feeling restless.

She'd proven time and again that even though I never said a word to or against her, she saw me as a rival. And now, with everyone clamoring for Ryder and me to get back together and all the secrets this MengeLiNi person kept exposing, I can imagine how out of control she must be feeling; I know I would be very distressed if the whole world was favoring someone else to be with my husband. And if it was now known that I hadn't won him by fair means.

"A strange car?" He sounded spooked, and that only raised my anxiety. What the hell does he have to be wary of? Those two are one and the same now since they exchanged vows. Whatever she does or has done, I lay at his door. Two peas in a pod.

"What did it look like?"

I explained the vehicle I had seen almost every time I left the house. The only reason I hadn't become afraid was that they weren't trying to hide the fact that they were indeed following me, and at the time, I didn't think of her having anything to do with it. My answer seemed to put him at ease which made no sense, and I gave him a squinty-eyed look.

"Is that your doing?"

"You could say that, but that's not why I'm here. I really do need to talk to you; it's very important."

"And I said I don't want to hear anything you have to say. Why the hell are you having me follow Ryder? What I do has nothing to do with you. You're married, remember; she should be your only concern; leave me alone."

"Stop saying that. You're my concern, no one else. She is, she was…. It was a mistake, okay? I'm here to explain everything, but I'm not going to do it standing out here. Now back up and let me in, or I'll move you."

This son of a demented bitch. If I had something close at hand, I would've brained his stupid ass with it. I started to look around for something large and heavy, but of course, there was nothing but cloth and a table that was too heavy for me to lift.

"A mistake?" I almost choked on my words. And once again, like a kite in a storm, the words of fury just came spewing out of me, untethered and unscripted. "You call marrying her and leaving me standing at the altar while you did it a mistake? You call everything that you two put me through a mistake?"

"Calm down, Elena; you'll make yourself sick." He's going to die here tonight by my hand.

I hopped from one leg to the next, so completely incensed I didn't know what the hell to do with myself. I imagined I looked rabid and all but frothing at the mouth. That's how mad I was. "Don't you tell me to calm down you…you… fucking moron. Do you have any idea what you put me through?" Breathe, Elena, or you'll pass out right here in front of him.

I thought about all of the things his wife had done over the past five years. The putdowns, the lies, the hateful barbs. I thought about the way she'd been copying me in everything I did to the point I thought she was a damn Skinwalker, planning to take over my life.

I thought about the pain, desperation, loneliness, and fear I felt when I was at my lowest. My heart ached with all the memories. I could see her smug smile in the days following their wedding. I could see how she'd thrown it in my face that she had won and how that had made me feel.

I remembered how she and he both had made light of what we once shared. How he'd thrown us away to be with her and that even after she'd won, it was still not enough. I recalled how she'd gone out of her way to mimic all our shared times together. Going to the places Ryder and I had been known to frequent and always with some sly remark when asked about why she thought she was the one he'd chosen. The mockery she'd made of my love for him. A love that I held so dear had been turned into nothing.

I thought of the strange woman who'd approached my mother and me out of nowhere to warn us that someone was working something dark against me. Something I had ignored at the time because I was too caught up in heartache, and besides, I didn't believe in that crap, though I felt there was something more than meets the eye at work there.

It would've been so easy to accept that explanation because what else could be responsible for how he'd treated me? But my rational mind told me that such things were not real, nothing more than old wives' tales.

And then I thought of all the ways she had tried to become me until it was so obvious that even our fans had noticed and made mention of it, giving credence to the old woman's words. I thought of the betrayal from both of them, and calm was the last thing I felt.

"She turned my life into fucking All About Eve, only you're no Bill Sampson because you were too stupid or too hopped up on whatever drug of choice you were on that week to know what was going on. I was the one left hurt; I was the one who was gutted for all the world to see, so you can just fuck all the way off to hell and take that hag of a slut along with you."

I slammed the door even though my heart was shaking and my knees were about to bend. I was dry-heaving so hard I thought I would throw up all over myself. My head spun, and it was all I could do to hold onto my mind before it fractured. This was not good. I needed to calm down before things really did get out of hand. But I was so confused.

I wanted more than anything to open that door and run into his arms like an idiot, but the tears that burned a trail down my cheek were all the evidence I needed to keep going. The heart wants what it wants, but I can't let it win, not this time and not with him.

I didn't know that I would feel like this. That seeing him again would rob me of all my senses. Even with the hurt, I still felt I could still want him. He was my person once, mine, and he'd stripped it away without explanation. He'd torn the biggest part of my heart away, and what was left, he still lived in.

Why is life so unfair? Why do I still feel for him? Why am I so tempted to hear what he has to say? Could there be any reason good enough for what he has done? I would say no. So why? Why am I so thrilled beneath the anger that he's here?

I wanted him to go away, and yet I wanted more than anything for him to stay. Why was he here now? And why was he so affronted by me calling her his wife? Did that mean that they were no longer together?

There had been much speculation about that very thing in the tabloids of late, and though I had a peripheral interest, I'd told myself that it was none of my business, that I didn't care. Nothing about him was of any concern to me. And now I just wanted him to go away, to let me heal from seeing him again.

And then, what my true heart really wanted was realized. I didn't have time to register the sound of the door opening behind me because the loud crashing sound it made as it bounced against the wall was so foreign, but I knew the feel of the arms that came around me from behind.

And just like that, my whole body, my very core, gave a welcoming sigh as if all that I was finally coming home. And at that moment, I realized something that I hadn't known all these years we'd been apart.

I realized that all those times, I felt a hunger that could not be fed; it wasn't food that was missing. All those lonely nights that I blamed on insomnia were something much deeper. All those stray moments when I had the weird feeling that something was missing and blamed it on something else, that it was all lies.

All that was missing was this, him. He's that other part of me, the part that my soul needed to see the light in the dark tunnel. I realized as we stood there in silence with his arms wrapped around me protectively the way he once did that I would never be over him.

And then I broke. I broke because I shouldn't want this. I broke because I felt so weak, and I hated that part of me that still longed for this. I hated my mind and my body for wanting this, for still wanting him. I screamed and screamed until my throat was raw, and still, he didn't let me go.

He held on even tighter, and I felt his body shake as if he, too, was crying, and I felt my own tears coursing down my cheeks as the pain became overbearing.

"Shh, Elena, don't cry. Please don't cry. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." No arms, no words of comfort, had ever felt this good. But I couldn't let this go on. I couldn't let him trample what was left of me into the mud.

I did the hardest thing I've ever done; I pulled myself away from him and wiped my face dry, still keeping my back turned. "I can't, Ryder. I just can't, please." I'm not sure what I was begging for, but I knew I couldn't hold out much longer.

"I'm not leaving you; I can't." I closed my eyes as those words washed over me. Words that were five years too late.