Page 280 of Face Off

“It was one drunken night in Detroit,” I continue. “I was back in Michigan for a game, fucked up over everything being close enough to touch again, and looking for a few hours when I didn’t have to feel any of it. Temple approached me. She told me no strings, we fucked, and I left.”

“So, she meant nothing.”

“Nothing.”

“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

“No. It’s supposed to answer the question.”

Charm presses both hands against her face before pushing them into her hair. “How many?”

“Don’t.”

“How many women were there?”

“That isn’t a conversation we’re having while you’re looking at me like I cheated on you.”

“I know you didn’t cheat.”

“Do you?”

“Yes!”

“Then stop putting me on trial.”

“I’m trying to understand what the last fifteen months looked like for you.”

“No, you’re trying to hurt yourself with it all while using it to get the answers of my fucking suffering that I’m not handing you.”

“I never let anyone into my bed.”

I stare at her.

“Not once,” she says, striking one hand against her chest. “Even when you were icing me out of your life, even when you made sure I couldn’t call, write, or reach you, I remained loyal to you.”

The laugh leaves me before I can stop it and Charm’s face changes.

I clap slowly, each strike of my palms loud enough to sharpen the humiliation already burning across her cheeks. “What a fucking martyr you are.”

“Fuck you.”

“I never claimed to be some romance-novel hero, Charm. I didn’t move to Milwaukee, sit beside a window, and preserve my body in the hope that one day you would come rescue me from my misery.”

“I didn’t say you had to.”

“You brought up your loyalty like it makes you morally superior because I didn’t spend fifteen months alone.”

“I loved you.”

“So did I!”

My shout strikes the walls hard enough to silence both of us.

“I loved you when I fucked them,” I continue. “I loved you when I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t think, and couldn’t walk into my own apartment without feeling the silence crawl up my fucking throat. I loved you every time I put my hands on someone else and knew before it started that she wouldn’t remove you from me.”

Tears gather in Charm’s eyes.

“I fucked plenty of women,” I tell her. “No emotion. No promises. No ties. I’m not a fucking saint, and I never pretended to be one. You had already destroyed me to the point that I had to crawl my way off the fucking floor, knowing I had done it to myself because leaving you was the only way I knew how to survive loving you!”