Page 124 of The Ring
I’d been roaming around London with no real destination until I found myself at Cornelia’s. I used my key to let myself in. First time ever since we broke up. I was afraid it wouldn’t work—that I’d have to ask one of the guards to let me in. Luckily, it did. I don’t want to talk to anyone. Only Cornelia.
I head straight to her room. She isn’t here. I sink into the white chaise longue, waiting. Waiting for the hardest conversation of my life.
I’ve tried not to think about… that night. Tried to bury it so deep in my mind that I wouldn’t have to feel it again. But when she pleaded with me earlier to tell her, I almost did. No matter what I would have said, it would have hurt her—one way or another.
Now, I can’t stop thinking about it. Maybe it’s better if she knows the truth. Maybe it isn’t. But she deserves the truth, and I want to talk about it, and the only person I want to talk about it with is her.
I hear the door open. Someone enters. I don’t know who—it might be her. I have my back to the door.
“What are you doing here?” Cornelia asks, her voice cold.
I turn, and her expression instantly softens. Whatever anger she had melts away. She rushes to me, wraps her arms around me, and I… can’t hold it in. My body shudders. My hand clutches one of hers. I try to look at her, but my eyes slide down, unable to meet hers.
I finally realise how much I have been holding back. How much I—I have been crying without knowing it. Only twice in my life have I cried like this—now, and in the hospital the day I found her unconscious in her dorm.
She holds me, whispers soothing words I can’t focus on, rubbing my back until I feel a fraction of calm. Then I tell her everything.
I tell her how, when I arrived and remembered she wasn’t there, I ran into her mother on my way out. How… how she offered me a drink—then another one—and then a pill. How I… I stupidly took it. I shouldn’t, but I did.
I tell her how everything after that is black. How my memory skips from taking the pill to waking up with her in the room, watching me in bed with her mother.
How… how I only knew what had happened because it was painfully obvious—but I had no recollection of the act itself.
How I can’t ever imagine hurting her intentionally… but what if I did? What if I did and I don’t remember?
I haven’t told anyone—because who would actually believe me? Who would believe I had sex with Cornelia’s mother without wanting it? Especially when sometimes I don’t even believe it myself.
I could have easily said yes… and just forgotten.
The doubt gnaws at me. I don’t think I did—but I don’t know. And maybe I never will.
Cornelia holds me through it all. Her tears mix with mine. And then she chokes out the words I thought I might never hear:
“I believe you.”
Part of me feared she wouldn’t. That it wouldn’t change anything. That she’d feel repulsed. That she’d still blame me, as if it did happen. That she’d never look at me the same. It was one of the main reasons it was so hard for me to tell her. But I don’t know why I ever doubted her. She’s beautiful in every way someone can be. Anyone can see how beautiful she is on the outside—but inside, she’s ten times more.
Chapter 74
Cornelia
Iget out of my bed carefully, not to wake TJ. What he told me last night haunts me, and I feel like the full height of it hasn’t even hit me yet. I… I should have been there for him. I should have tried harder to get him to open up. Instead, I abandoned him. There’s nothing I can do to change that now. I just know I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to him for not being there.
I walk down the stairs, reaching the first floor. She’s there—like I knew she would be—stepping out of the lift. I get notifications when the front door opens. Usually, I have them off, but last night I turned them on. No one else is walking into the house at five in the morning.
“I need to talk to you,” I tell her—more like demand.
She barely glances at me. “Whatever this is,” my mother does a hand gesture, signalling me as if I’m an inconvenience rather than her fucking daughter, “can we do it another time?” She attempts to walk past me to get into her bedroom.
I block her path. “No, we’re going to do this right now.”
She almost died, you know. When I was five, she hadan operation for bladder stones, and there were complications. She was in the hospital for almost three weeks. My family flew in specialists from all over the world. Everyone thought she would die. But she didn’t. I think about that a lot. About how sometimes I wish she had died. If she had, I would have been sad, I would have grieved her, and at milestones in my life, I would have wished she were there. I would have grown up imagining what an amazing mother she could have been. I would have loved her. I would have loved a fantasy. But that would have been better than the disappointment she is now.
I normally get off that train of thought quickly, because how horrible is it to wish your own mother dead? What kind of person does that make me? But right now, I don’t. Right now, I wish nothing more than for that to have happened. So she would never have met TJ.
I hate her more than I have ever hated anyone in my life.
“You raped my boyfriend.” Saying the words makes me instantly want to throw up. Words I never thought I would say. Words I wish I didn’t have to say.
