Shame washing over me as all the little bricks of my persona crumble to the ground. He will never look at me the way he did. It’s no wonder he changed.
“I thought maybe if we started at where you came from then we would have an idea of where you would go.” Alexi comes and sits beside me, slowly, carefully, as though he can sense how fragile I am feeling. So many things in my head drowning him out. I don’t care where he sits anymore. The real danger is facing me in a cardboard box that he has positioned back on the table. The past catching up to me once more, and I’m so terrified if I touch even one of those cruddy, mouldy covers that everything will turn to dust and I will never recover. I don’t want those memories back.
He doesn’t seem like a guy who knows he has an edge over me. He isn’t beaming with devious delight. He’s acting as though I’ve had a major shock and he’s placing himself and his words around me carefully.
Meanwhile, I just want to burn those damn books and never see them again.
“I’m sorry, Cam. If I had known that it was all real … I would never have …” he trails off, his words heavy and raw, reflecting my emotions and I keep staring at that box. Like some numb illiterate mute who has lost all ability to communicate.
Afraid to do anything else as my entire being turns to fragile stones that could crumble if I move one tiny little bit. I feel like all that is holding me up is the lack of air in this room. One little breeze and I will topple into a pile of ashes and blow away like the nothing I am.
I assume he means when he used my past against me to wound me. Truly believing I was lying to him about it all, and now he knows I never did. It’s the apology I had been waiting on, yet it doesn’t really make me feel any better at all. It means nothing to me now, in the new light of things.
It all makes sense though. Why he’s so overly aware of standing behind me, changing how he is towards me these past weeks. The insight I suspected and know for sure he has. The click, click, click as every detail falls into place.
Alexi really has been trying to change how he treats me, because maybe, just maybe, he truly cares about me, and these books opened his eyes to everything about that little voice in my head. The one who tells me I’m not good enough. The story of a lonely, hopeless case who tried to survive at any cost. That I keep everyone at a distance because I’m afraid of how people can hurt me.
“It doesn’t matter anymore.” I’m numb and shocked. I think it’s finally seeing something from my past in the flesh. Like somehow, it’s had this strange effect of slapping me in the face with a lot of pent up pain. I feel traumatised to have laid eyes on something very real, like a portal to my scars I never expected to examine again. It’s all fresh once more. The things I left behind and swore would never touch me again. All here in my lap.
“It does matter. All of it matters. It’s why you feel the way you do about me. It’s why you're sitting here like this, afraid to believe in me.” His soft tone pulls me to look at him, breaking my connection to that box and I shake my head sadly.
“How can you stand to look at me, knowing what you do? How can you feel anything for the girl you read about in those books?” The self-pity oozing, but it’s all I hear as it drowns my head in rushing noise. Blotting out what’s happening between us and I’m just caught in the shame from being exposed. It’s all that matters now. He knows Camilla is not who I am, who I was born. I came from nothing, am nothing and will never be worth anything more than nothing. She’s someone I created to mask where I came from and nothing about her is true; not the posh upbringing, the high-class education, and all my airs and graces are self-taught. I have had my mask ripped off when I least expected, and by the person I never wanted to see behind it.
It’s the worst feeling in the world.
He doesn’t just have the bare facts and minor plot to my existence; he has every thought and feeling and gritty detail. He has the evil things I thought of doing to Rick in his sleep and the times I plotted to make my mother overdose so I could be free. He has the very moments of weakness where I thought about picking up one of her needles and blocking life out the way she did. The times I talked myself off the ledge of becoming another wasted junkie, fucking her life away.
He has the darkest stupid fantasies of a little girl praying for a brave hero on a big fierce dragon to come and burn down the world to save her from her prison. He has it all. It’s like having a massive microscope and blazing light shone on your deepest darkest depths and exposing them to the world.
It doesn’t feel good at all.
“Why would you think I would look at you in any other way than with complete infatuation? You are stronger than I ever gave you credit for. You survived, you kept going no matter what was done to you and look at you now. You are not even a shadow of where you came from, Cam. You are worlds apart from what’s in those books. You are a queen among mere mortals.” Alexi sounds genuine, a strong statement, a hint of pride in that husky voice, his words a bit strange for the man he is, but it all feels like a fake band-aid to cover my bleeding wounds.
“It’s all a lie, I am nothing but a shell and a mask,” I repeat robotically. I think I’m in shock, this feeling of being stuck in an airless void where emotion is suspended, and I’m detached from everything around me. Dreaming.
‘Cam …’ Alexi starts but I hush him up.
“Look at me … really look at me. It’s all fake. It’s makeup and hair dye and expensive clothes and a fake accent I practised to death. It’s tricks, smoke and mirrors and false confidence. Nothing else. Nothing worthwhile. Nothing real. It’s an act to fool people into thinking I am more than I am.” I get up, wrapping myself up again in my arms and pace away from him, but he darts to his feet fast and follows me, oozing that hostile aura he wears well. It doesn’t even faze me. He’s not the worst thing in the room anymore.
“That’s bullshit. I didn’t fall for the fake, Cam, I fell for the honesty in you. The person you are when someone gives you a chance to open up—I see that now. The parts that were trying to reach out to me and show me the real her. I fell for her even when I didn’t want to, and that’s who I see every day. That’s who I see now.”
He follows me around the room even though I try to walk away from him, suddenly penned in and claustrophobic and needing to be free of his scrutiny. I dodge him, changing direction several times but he is relentless and keeps blocking me.
“I don’t know who I really am. I’m definitely not who you see. The voice in my head is still that same stupid girl who had hopes for something more, someone to save her. That moron girl who was naïve and weak and should have let silly hopes and dreams go to hell.” I cry at him in despair, so mired in self-pity and just needing to let it out.
“I’m trying to save you. I’m trying to give you more. So, it’s not stupid. I’m right here offering hope.” He catches my wrist and tugs me gently to face him as I turn to walk off again. Still being cautious even if his demeanour is on the more aggressive side.
“Be real Lexi, how do you go about saving someone like me whose monsters dwell inside her own head? I’m beyond saving.”
You can’t save someone like me.
“By going back and cutting them down at the source. Help remove them from the shadows of your life and free you, for a future where all monsters have to go through me to get to you.” Alexi’s eyes glint and his face twists slightly to hint at anger. The more sadistic side of him peeking out in a micro flash to show his demonic side. Something in his words stilling me in my tracks.
“What do you mean? I don’t understand. Cutting them down at their source? How can you do that?”
His hold on my wrist loosens and he lets my hand drop to my side once more, avoiding eye contact immediately and inhales slowly and deliberately. His whole manner changing so swiftly, and I recognise the evasive behaviour. I know him well enough to know avoidance and guilt when I see it. The journals are not all he hid from me.
‘Alexi? What are you talking about?’ My little suspicion radar pings into effect and this time it’s me who follows him when he moves away. All thoughts of woe and misery held still as that little drama detector in me jumps to high alert. It’s the way he said it. There is something there. That gut feeling of foreboding, and I need to know.
Alexi evades me and paces towards the little unit where we keep the drinks and glasses, but I tug at his sleeve and stop him in his tracks.
‘ALEXI!’ I yell it, this time in frustration, and he stops dead so that I walk into the back of him and jump back from our soft collision. Anxiety and anger kindling once more. I can feel his hesitation oozing my way.
“I went to London. He didn’t mail me those books.” It’s the same tone of confession, and for a second time my insides flip over and my heart stops in my chest.