“I love you more,” she said.

CHAPTER 15

4th January

London

THE charity my father championed when he was alive sent out a notification whenever a donation was left in his name. The amount of the gift in the message I’d just read made my eyeballs bug out. I checked it again, counting the digits to make sure. All six of them.

The second shock was the message left from the donor in the comments section. Please let me make it right, Brynne.

Lance.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Lance had done this? He had made an obscenely large donation in my father’s name to the Meritus College Fund? Assisting disadvantaged, but motivated kids to get a university education?

Why would he do it?

I really couldn’t imagine why he would, but I knew I needed to find out. So I went to my purse and dug around in the side and end pockets until I found the card he’d given me. I flipped it to the back and read the message he’d handwritten with blue pen, just to make sure. Please let me make it right, Brynne.

I sent him a text with shaking hands and a pounding heart, afraid to hear what he wanted to say to me, but knew the time had come for me to know.

Ethan was at the offices, preparing for his trip to Switzerland the next day. I’d not told him about either of Lance’s attempts to meet with me, at his hospital bed, and after my pre-natal check-up. I’d found the more time that passed, I just didn’t want to dredge it up. What purpose would it serve? I needed to move on and deal with the here and now, instead of dwelling on the shit that had gone bad years ago.

I didn’t tell Ethan, even though I knew I probably should have given him a warning. He wouldn’t be comfortable with me seeing Lance alone, and he’d be over-the-top territorial to the point any meeting, including his presence, would be made useless. No, I needed to meet Lance on my own. This was my history. My past. And I was the one who needed to face up to it, and put it to rest.

So I left a short note for him on the kitchen counter instead. In case he made it home before I did, he would find my note saying I’d gone for a walk.

IN favor of some exercise, I did walk down to Hot Java, the coffee shop just around the corner from the flat.

Lance arrived before I did and was waiting window-side, at a table for two. He looked as he had the last time I’d seen him—completely and totally different from the boy I’d known a lifetime ago. In so many ways it was true. He was now a political celebrity, the tatted-up, war-hero son of the Vice President-Elect. He had an escort waiting for him too—Secret Service most likely, considering the terrorist risk. For someone like him, it must be enormous.

He looked miserable sitting across from me, and I wondered if he was still in any physical pain from his injury.

“I’ll be heading back to the States very soon. Command performance for the inauguration.” He tapped his leg with a tattooed finger. “But, I’ll miss London. It’s a good place to fade into.”

Yes, it is. “Why did you send that huge donation in my father’s name? Is it something you truly want to spend your money on, Lance?” I asked, pushing the raspberry tea bag in my mug into a mini vortex from over-stirring. No matter how much I’d thought about it, I could not for the life of me, see his motivation for the money. So, all I was left with was the unimaginable idea that he could really be sorry. Mind. Fuck.

Lance looked out of the café window, staring at the busy street traffic, and the equally busy foot traffic, managing the winter drizzle to go about their business. “Thank you for meeting me, Brynne. This is something I’ve wanted for a very long time…and also, very much dreaded.” He turned his eyes back to look at me when he finished speaking.

“You said…you said you wanted to tell me what really happened that night at the party.” I could feel my heart thumping erratically deep in my chest.

“Yeah.” He shifted in his seat and seemed to brace himself for what he wanted to say. “But first, I want you to have my deepest apology for how I treated you, the things I did to you, for how I hurt you so very badly. I have no justification for anything that I did, no excuses, only regrets.”

His eyes flickered over me, a hint of longing in his expression—for what, I wasn’t sure. Longing for me? About what might have been with us?

“So, before I tell you the rest, I wanted you to at least hear that part.”

I felt something strange glimmer inside of me, like a crack feathering out on a frozen lake. I couldn’t speak just yet, but I managed to acknowledge his apology by nodding my head.

“You saw the video, Brynne?”

I nodded my head again and kept my eyes on my mug of raspberry tea. “Once. That was all I could watch—” My mind went black at the remembered images that flashed in my head. The other guys, me being used, the laughter, the song lyrics, the torment of my body with objects, how they spoke to me like I was a whore who wanted what they were doing to me.

“I am so sorry…I didn’t mean for it to go that far,” he said.

“What in the hell did you intend by filming us then?” I spat back, lifting my head. “Do you even know what that video did to me? How it changed my life? That I tried to kill myself because of it? Are you aware of all of that, Lance?”

“Yes.” He closed his eyes and winced. “Brynne, if I could take it back—I just—I’m just so very sorry.”

I sat there and stared at him, nearly unbelieving at what I was experiencing. For so long I’d understood my dark place for what it was. An evil deed, done to me by evil people, devoid of remorse, or even humanity for their actions. But with Lance before me, apologizing so sincerely, he didn’t seem evil at all…and it was a very hard concept to accept.

“So…what was your intent that night, Lance? If you feel you must make things right with me, then I guess I’ll have to try to hear it.”

“Thank you,” he whispered, tapping the table top with his hand softly, rhythmically, only his fingers lifting up and down. The tattoos that decorated him covered the whole surface of his right hand—a skeleton of the bones of the hand interspersed with spider webs in between the individual finger bones.

I wondered what Daddy-O thought of all the goth ink on his son.

After a moment, he started talking.

“I was a complete prick to you,” he began, “I know that, and I have no excuses, but when I went off to Stanford and found out you were with other guys when I was gone, I got insanely jealous that anyone else would have you. I wanted to punish you for it because that’s how my mind worked back then.” He started flicking his thumb onto the side of his coffee mug. “I got you drunk at the party with the intent of filming us having sex, so I could send it to you as a reminder that you were my girlfriend, and nobody else got into what was mine when I was away at college.” He cleared his throat and continued. “That was the extent of what I intended for the video, Brynne. I would never have posted it anywhere, or shown it to people. It was a reminder of me…for you.”