Page 49 of Fighting Fate
“Well…you don’t do relationships, and I’m not…or I wasn’t looking for anything serious.” Dropping my gaze to his chest, I try to make sense of all the noise in my head. “Thing is good,” I tell him, hoping that he doesn’t push for more.
Being a thing without a label is safe. For now, at least.
* * *
Script run-through endswith the production team going through the usual health and safety guidelines. I wait for everyone to rush out ahead of me so that I don’t get caught in the bottleneck.
“Wait, Willow, the press office has all of these for you,” the casting director calls after me as I head out of the door. I take the clear sealed bag with the theatre branding from her. Before she tells me what it is, my stomach is already knotting tight with apprehension. “Someone is popular…”
“Yeah,” I scoff with a grimace.
“It must be nice getting all this fan mail.”
Never thought I’d dread it, I think to myself as I smile at her. “Sure.”
Shannon perches herself on the table with the spare scripts from today. “We’re still auditioning for your understudy,” she tells me as I start for the door, stuffing the mailbag into my handbag. “The last round wasn’t as great as we expected it to be, but we have some decent names lined up for next week.”
“Brilliant… If there’s anything I can do to—” I freeze in my tracks as I reach the open doorway.
What the fuck?
“Peter!” Shannon sings from behind me. “I’m so sorry we ran over with the script rehearsal today, but I’ll be with you in just a moment.”
“No rush,” he croons back at her while I remain glued to the spot. A wicked grin spreads across his face as he looks me up and down. “Willow…”
I don’t know what I expected to feel when he said my name, but there’s just this overwhelming anger twisting my insides. The smarmy smile on his face has never made me want to hurt someone as much as I want to hurt him right now. At the same time, all I want to do is get out of here and leave him behind. Because all the feelings I ever had for him seem so flimsy now. There’s no real want. No deep need. There’s nothing.
Taking a breath, I push past him with a wave to Shannon. “I’ll see you Thursday for the costume fittings.”
Of course, he follows me as I stride through the corridor, rushing to the exit so that I can catch my breath. Just being in the same room as him makes me feel sick. I hate that I ever let him near me. Hate that I ever felt anything for him when all he did was barefaced lie to me.
“You can’t run from me forever,” he says while I wrestle with the rickety door leading to the back exit stairwell.
My heart is in my throat with the sound of his footsteps coming closer. Before he can get within touching distance, I warn, “Stay away from me.”
I’m not tipsy this time. I won’t let him lay a finger on me. Still, fear angles its head, making it hard to escape the fact that he has hurt me before in more ways than one. While I’m not afraid to fight back, the prospect of coming to physical blows with him makes flight a lot more appealing than anything else right now.
“I miss you,” he murmurs, looking behind him when Shannon’s footsteps sound around us.
While she’s here to witness the exchange, I drag in a deep breath to steady myself. With her around, he’ll have no choice but to listen to me. Maybe this way he’ll realise that it doesn’t matter how long he stalks me and tries to fix what he did to me, I’m not stupid enough to buy any more of his lies and take him back.
“I’ve moved on, Peter, and you need to stop chasing me. Stop trying to win me back. It’s not going to happen. You lied to me…humiliated me, and you…you hurt me.”
“Because you won’t listen!” he spits under his breath. Anger flares in his eyes, burning blue in the muted light. Pressing my back against the door, I make ready to escape if he flies off the handle, and as if he knows the plan I’ve formulated in my head, he grasps my wrist, hardening his grip when I try to pull free. “Listen!”
“I don’t want to. There’s nothing you can say or do. That ship sailed when—” I stop myself from speaking the words aloud. The thought alone has my insides pulling apart. I’m ashamed of myself in every possible way.
“Everything okay?” Shannon asks from the doorway of the production office.
“Fine,” I tell her, yanking my wrist free too brusquely so that it clicks funny. Shaking off the stab of pain, I push back into the door, standing in the stairwell. Far enough away from him that he can’t touch me again. “I was too embarrassed to do anything last time, but if you come near me again, I won’t hesitate. Leave me alone…go back to your wife…stay out of my life or—”
“Or what? You’ll have the American threaten me again?”
Visions of him and Rory on my doorstep come to mind, and even though my anger and frustration have me on the verge of tears, warmth spreads through my insides. The thought of Rory alone makes me feel safe, knowing that he’s already chased Peter away more than once, makes it impossible to ignore the magnitude of my feelings for him.
“You’ll never be his.”
Of all the shit he’s said, that’s the one thing that spears me right through the soul. The weight of the letters in my bag threatens to overwhelm me.