"Do you have to humiliate me like this?"
"Humiliate you?" My eyes burned red as my palm cracked across his face. "Do you even know the meaning of the word?"
Bertram clearly hadn't expected that kind of reaction. His expression froze.
I seized the stunned silence and walked out without looking back. Another second in that place and I swore it would shave years off my life.
But the man recovered fast. He caught up to me at the corner.
His eyes were dark and dangerous. He seized my arms and pinned me against the wall, every word dropping from his lips like shards of ice. "Prudence, what the hell is wrong with you?"
His grip hurt enough to make me wince.
Before I could speak, my gaze caught something on his neck. A flush of red just above his collar.
A fresh kiss mark. It drove into my eyes like a thousand blades.
The cheap perfume clinging to him was unmistakably Alexis's. I thrashed harder.
"Don't touch me. You're filthy."
The words were barely out before I regretted them.
Bertram's already cold expression turned black as ink, radiating the kind of chill that cut through skin and settled in bone.
After a beat, he looked at me and let out a derisive laugh. "You want to talk to me about filthy, Prudence?"
What he said next plunged my heart into an abyss.
"If you're so clean, why did you throw yourself at me when you were nineteen?"
"If you're so clean, explain how you spent six or seven hours locked in a warehouse with over a dozen men. Who knows whether you lost that baby from a beating or from something else entirely? What right do you have to call me filthy?"
I stared at him, frozen. It wasn't his unhinged fury that terrified me. It was the fact that those words had come from his mouth at all.
So when he'd gone to find those kidnappers, he'd already known what they might do to me. He'd left me with them anyway. He'd convicted me before he ever came to get me.
After venting the rage inside him, Bertram noticed my trembling body and softened slightly.
"Fine. I'll admit Alexis went a little too far about some things. I'll let that slap go. Now come back, put on the mascot costume, and help celebrate her birthday. She said she wants both of us there to wish her well."
Alexis again. I opened my mouth to refuse, but he cut me off.
"The hospital just called. Your father is still in the ICU. If nothing goes wrong, he should wake up in the next day or two."
I stared into those deep, unreadable eyes. My voice came out raw. "Are you threatening me?"
"That depends on what you decide."
He dropped the words like stones and walked away.
Watching his retreating figure, I felt something sharp lodge behind my eyes.
Ten years. I hated that I could decode every unspoken meaning in his words. I hated even more that he'd always known exactly which strings to pull.
By the time I appeared in the lobby wearing the mascot costume, the birthday party was in full swing.
Everything that had just happened might as well have been a minor interruption. No one cared.
Alexis had her hand on Bertram's shoulder, rising on her toes to press a kiss to his cheek.
The pain of watching it ground my bones to dust like a millstone. All I could do was gulp down the thin air inside the costume, fighting to stay calm.
Every breath felt like swallowing a thousand razor blades.
They weren't even pretending anymore.
"Hey, what are you standing there for? Go deliver the rings!" Someone beside me jabbed their elbow into my side.
Rings?
Instinctively, my hand went to the pocket on the costume's belly, because ten years ago, when Bertram had confessed his feelings, he'd hidden his gift in that exact spot.
Through the tiny mesh eyeholes, I saw an elegant red velvet box.
My fingers found the ring on my own left hand. The one whose color had long since worn away. I rubbed it without thinking.
The bitterness wouldn't leave.
Under everyone's gaze, I silently chanted my father's name like a prayer and walked forward like a bridesmaid, presenting a ring to my own husband and his so-called foster sister.
But when Alexis reached for the velvet box, Bertram snatched it away first.
"Don't touch it. God knows how many germs are on that thing. I don't want you getting hurt."
The disgust in his eyes nailed my feet to the floor.
Ten years ago, when Bertram had confessed to me, I'd laughed and told him he actually looked pretty good in that costume. He'd kept those words close to his heart.
From that day on, the man who commanded boardrooms and crushed rivals had personally washed this mascot costume on a regular schedule.
Because he believed it was the token of our love. The keepsake of everything we were.
And now he found it too dirty to touch.
Maybe it was the airless heat trapped inside the costume, but every inch of my skin felt like it was being scorched alive with nowhere to hide.
So this was how obvious love and its absence could be.
When he loved you, everything about you was a treasure. When he didn't, everything about you was just filthy garbage.
