Manic

I stop, because even though this is Ronin and I know he's one hundred percent on my side, admitting that I allowed this monster to do these things to me is so hard. It makes me feel so weak and stupid.

Ronin strokes my cheek. "He tried to what?" he asks softly. "Just tell me, Rook. I'm not gonna judge you and I know it must be hard to talk about, but we need to know what we're up against."

"I didn't want to marry him." I look up at Ronin, pleading with him to believe me. "I didn't. But he took me up to this island in the lake near Michigan, some stupid island where they have no cars. And he told me it was for my birthday, when I turned eighteen. Before that we sorta had to hide because he was already twenty-one when we started dating." I stop and meet Ronin's worried eyes. "I was only sixteen. But I was in a bad foster home and I ran away. I'm not even sure how it happened, but next minute I was on the streets homeless, just wandering around. And I begged enough money to go inside this diner and get some food, and he was sitting next to me at the counter. I knew it was stupid then, but I was desperate. So I let him take me home.

"It was OK for a while. I turned seventeen a few months later, and he moved us to that dumpy house his uncle left him when he died. And then all the violence and weird shit started. He was always talking about marriage and at first I said no, I'm too young. But after a while that got me a smack and a long lecture about how I belonged to him. So I just agreed. Then he booked this trip to that island for my eighteenth birthday and when we got there we were staying in the honeymoon cabin at this crappy campground on the lake. And—"

I shake my head as I remember it.

"Tell me, Rook."

I look up at Ronin and just blurt it out. "He tried to drown me. He held me under the water that night, he choked me. I thought I was gonna die, Ronin. I swear. He said he'd kill me if I didn't agree to marry him and if I ever tried to leave him, he'd torture me. And I believed him because he had already done so many terrible, terrible things to my body by that time, drowning and torture were just the next logical steps."

Ronin brings his hands up and scrubs them across his face a few times but he says nothing.

"Please, Ronin, tell me what you're thinking right now. Do you hate me?"

He leans down and kisses my forehead one more time. "No, Rook. Hating you is the last thing I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about how easy it would be for us to kill that motherfucker."

"Us? As in me and you?"

He's got a far-off gaze now, just staring out into space. "No, Gidge. Us, as in Spencer, Ford, and me." He looks down and his eyes are blazing with anger. "It would be so easy, you have no idea."

I think back to what Ford said earlier. I'm sure Ronin's going to ask for favors when he comes back. "What do you mean by that, Ronin?"

He sighs and ignores my question. "You wanna stay here tonight? Or you wanna go home? It's only an hour and a half drive home. Wanna go home?"

"What about the footage we need for the show?"

"Fuck the show. We can do that another day."

"But we have to do it though, right? So let's just stay here and do that tomorrow and then it can be over with."

He gets up and takes my hand, pulling me up with him. "Come on, then. Let's wash your face and get something to eat. You hungry?"

I nod and let him take care of everything. There's nothing about this night I want to be responsible for, I just want him to do all of it.

After I splash some cold water on my face and wash off the dirt and tears, Ronin leads me out to the fire pit near the shop where the crews have a big BBQ going. Everyone is standing around joking and drinking. Even Spencer and Ford have eased in with the crowd. No one seems to know that I had a major meltdown or that my ex is a piece of shit woman-beater and is looking for me so he can come back and finish the job. So I just pack all that bad stuff away and quietly stick to Ronin's side.

It feels normal.

Ronin does this.

Ronin makes me feel normal.

Chapter Twenty-Nine - RONIN

We finish filming late the next day and then we all pile into our vehicles and go back home. Spencer stays one more night since the frame came in from painting and he wanted to start the assembly, but he's back on duty with us bright and early this morning.

Ford has given in to Rook completely. She gets to stay with me. No cameras in the apartment.

Ford is weirdly affected by all this Rook stuff. It hits us all pretty close to home, watching her fall to pieces. It brings back a lot of very bad memories of Mardee and how all that shit went down in the end.

How Ford lost and I won.

But really, no one won. We all lost.

I got Mardee, I took her from Ford, and I lost her anyway.

Rook was wrong the other day when she asked what Ford did to start our fight. It wasn't Ford who did anything. It was me. I'm the one who took Mardee from him, brought her into the studio, then let her get caught up in the life, the money, the drugs, and the sex—only to discard her and leave her to find her own way back from all the scumbags that hover around the periphery of the modeling and entertainment worlds.

He never forgave me, and up until right now—maybe even right this second as I run all this through my head again—I never gave a f**k. I could always take or leave Ford, he was barely an acquaintance and never a friend.

But despite that he was a partner in the business the three of us ran during college.