Ruining My Bully and My Ex

I scratched a lottery ticket my boyfriend bought me and won a million dollars.

I screamed. I actually jumped, both feet off the floor, the little silver shavings still on my thumb.

Damien! We can finally afford to get married!

No more saving for a ring. No more counting pennies for a down payment. Five years of loving a broke man, and it was finally about to bloom into something.

He didn't smile. He clicked his tongue, soft, almost bored.

"You're that desperate to marry me?"

The phone in his hand was still live, and a whole room of people was laughing on the other end.

"Dame! A bet's a bet, man! She actually wants to spend it marrying you just marry her already!"

"What's a wedding gonna run you, like eight grand? That's not even a handbag for Delphine. God, she's cheap."

I froze, the ticket still pinched between my fingers.

Delphine. The rich girl who spent all of high school making my life a thing I survived instead of lived.

I looked down at the ticket, crushed shapeless in my fist.

I dropped it in the trash.

Chapter 1

"Alright. Knock it off, all of you."

"You think I go back on my word? Start saving for the wedding gifts."

The room howled. And then, under the noise, the voice that still walked through my nightmares:

"Damien. Are you out of your mind?!"

"The deal was you mess with her for me. Get her back for me. You're actually going to marry her?"

He wiped the tears off my face while he answered, like he had all the time in the world.

"What, you'd rather I marry you?"

"Princess Delphine. You really think I'm a dog you keep on a leash. Whistle and I come."

The line went dead mid-breath. Just the dial tone left, humming.

He stared at the phone for a long time. Then he looked up and smiled at me.

"What were you crying about a second ago? Found out I'm rich and it broke your brain?"

He didn't wait for an answer.

"You want fried rice? I'll make it now."

He tied on the apron and started cracking eggs, knife moving easy through the scallions, like the thing that had just gutted me in front of his friends had never happened.

I breathed in slow. My chest hurt in small, repeating pulses, and I couldn't stop myself.

"Aren't you tired?"

"What?"

"Five years. Aren't you tired of the performance?"

He didn't answer. The range hood roared into the silence and filled the whole apartment with noise.

It set my teeth on edge.

I crossed the kitchen and shut it off. Then I grabbed his arm and pulled, forced him to look at me.

"You're not going to explain?"

"I already told you the truth. What else do you want explained?"

A pause.

"Delphine's an old friend. Don't read into it."

Stepping neatly around the bet they'd built for me. Skipping, on purpose, the part where she said get her back for me.

I tipped my head up and blinked, hard, against the sting.

Five years. Eighteen hundred nights and then some.

I'd taken my heart out with both hands and given it to him. I thought he was the one I'd walk through a whole life beside.

No money fine, we'd earn it. No house, no car fine, you can rent, you can save.

And now I was being told all of it, every day of it, was a gift wrapped for Delphine. A con built to my exact measurements.

I'm nobody. What did I ever do to be worth five years of theater worth Damien playing the perfect, doting boyfriend at my side?

When he warmed my cold feet, when he washed my underwear by hand, was he swallowing disgust the whole time?

Good acting.

Poor thing. It must have cost him so much.

"So what day are we getting married?"

Casual. Like he was asking whether I wanted scallions in the rice.

I clenched my jaw. My voice came out low and full of hate.

"We're not."

He scoffed.

"Seriously? Over a little joke? You've wanted to marry me this whole time."

"So I lied. Fine. But the outcome's good, isn't it?"

"I'll give you eighty grand to make it right. A house, a car point at one and it's yours. What is there to agonize over?"

"This isn't about the money"

Chapter 2

His hands stopped.

Then he grabbed the bowl and threw it at the wall.

It burst. Egg flung everywhere, yolk sliding down the paint, ceramic skidding across the floor by my feet.

"When you had nothing, you came to me for money. Now there's money, and suddenly you want to talk about something else."

"Annie. Is something wrong with you?"

"Yeah," I said. My voice came out very quiet. "There's something wrong with me."

I pulled up my sleeve.

I made him look at the scars the old ones, the newer ones layered over them.

"I've got problems. Mental ones. There. Are you satisfied?"

The tears came down on their own. I bit hard into my lip and stared straight at him.

"Look at me, Damien. Are you satisfied now?!"

"So tell me why. Why would I marry you?"

"Why would I marry the man who helped torment me?!"

His lips trembled. His hand came up, halfway to me, then stopped and dropped. Something moved through his eyes and his throat worked around it.

And I God help me still thought it was heartbreak.

His phone rang. He picked up.

Someone was yelling, frantic.

"Dame! Delphine's wasted, she keeps screaming she wants to see you!"

"And that's my problem how?"

He dug the first-aid kit out, ready to clean me up.

"She said if you don't come tonight, she's just gonna grab some random guy and"

He knocked the antiseptic over. The brown stain spread across the floor.

His fist closed tight. He looked at me, caught, torn. Then I watched him decide.

"Handle it yourself. I'll be right back."

I didn't say anything. I stood at the window in the quiet.

I watched him sprint out. Watched him reach the little secondhand scooter parked at the foot of the stairwell, the one in his way, and kick it over.

He bought me that scooter in our second year together.

It couldn't keep the rain off. But it meant I didn't have to cram onto the train anymore.

The day it arrived I was so happy I rode him around the complex on the back of it, loop after loop.

What I thought was love. What I thought was happiness.

There it went on its side in the dirt, the side mirror shattered into pieces.

I stared out the window until the taillight was gone.

In the worst stretch of those years, when I'd wake gasping out of a nightmare and come apart, he was the one who used to grab on and not let go.

You think dying makes it stop hurting, Annie? Then what about me?

What about the rest of us, the ones who love you?

That's what he'd say, arms locked around me in the dark.

I used to believe him.

Chapter 3

He used to hold me so tight when he said it, and it sounded so real.

His tears would soak through my shoulder, through skin and muscle and bone, and warm me all the way to the center of my chest.

So I opened up. Hiccupping through it, I told him everything that had been done to me.

The fake rumors. The lie that I'd stolen money. The day a crowd of them poured ice water over me from head to foot, and how my body never worked right again after.

How I had to drop out for a year. How I spent six months on a ward.

How the two syllables of her name could still take me apart, and how I gritted my teeth and held on anyway.

And he would talk me through it, over and over, from dark until dawn, arms around me. Don't be scared. I'm here.

Was he really comforting me?

Or was he sharing the highlights with the girl who'd done it?

I didn't dare follow the thought.

The laptop screen lit up. The messaging icon kept blinking in the corner.

He'd forgotten to log out.

My hand shook as I clicked it open. A small private group. Admin: Delphine.

I scrolled all the way to the top and read every line.

Read that the boy who chased me so relentlessly in college, who wouldn't take no it wasn't love at first sight. It was because she typed:

Delphine: [She got into the same school as you? HER? She actually thinks she belongs there?]

Delphine: [Dame, I hate her so much. Pretend to chase her. Wreck her, then dump her. For me.]

And he typed back, light, almost lazy:

Dame: [You won't date me, but you'll hand me off to someone else?]

Dame: [Fine. You win.]

Every time I let my guard down with him by an inch, the group erupted. Cheering. Egging him on to take it further.

He posted the video of the day he gave me the scooter and let them rate it.

[So cheap. And she's treating that scooter like it's treasure.]

I read them call the watch low-rent the watch I'd saved half a year to buy him.

Each line, cruel and precise, went into me like a needle.

Tears hit the keyboard and broke apart across the keys.

I wiped them off hard with my sleeve and kept reading.

Further down, he started posting less.

Until recently. When they couldn't wait to watch me humiliated, and started planning the final blow the one he'd deliver.

I sank back in the chair. My heart slammed against my ribs.

The air had gone solid.

I could hear my own breathing, clear and shallow, and under it the noise from a video playing in the chat.

"Kiss her! Kiss her!"

"Dame, Delphine's right there throwing herself at you. You gonna do something or not?"

I watched the screen with no expression at all.

Watched Damien scoop Delphine up off her feet, too drunk to stand, and kick a door open into another room.

The whistles and cheering nearly lifted the roof off, like a crowd walking a couple to their wedding night.

I laid my hands back on the keyboard. Typed. Sent.

Me: [You filthy animals. Every last one of you.]

A second later, the app force-logged me out.

Chapter 4

My stomach turned over. I hung onto the toilet and threw up until the room spun.

It turned out the rain of my teenage years had never once stopped.

Damien had just held an umbrella over me for a while and let me believe the sky was clear.

The phone rang. I answered.

"You saw all of it?"

"Yeah."

"Wait till I'm back. I'll explain, I"

"Don't bother."

I sat down on the floor, drained, and looked around the little home the two of us had built with our own hands.

"Don't explain. And don't come back."

"I don't want to be in your game anymore, Damien. Let me go."

"I can't fight people like you. But I can disappear."

The phone kept ringing.

It grated on me, so I just shut it off.

Then I took the deed I'd found while packing and slid it back where it had been.

I used to wonder where he'd found it somewhere cheap, somewhere close to my office.

It never once crossed my mind that he was the landlord.

The moon hung high and lit me, alone, all the way down.

The wheels of my suitcase were loud in the dead quiet of the street.

Louder still was the scrape of tires pulling up in front of me.

"Where do you think you're going?"

He was still catching his breath. His hand clamped around my wrist.

"A grown woman, pulling the running-away-from-home routine. Could you be more childish?"

"Come on. Come home with me."

I turned my face away from the marks low on his neck and yanked my wrist back.

"There's no home between you and me."

He stared at me. I stepped around him. He hauled me back.

"Be reasonable. Can you?"

"Whatever happened between you and Delphine was a long time ago. How many times are you going to drag up one thing?"

"People move forward. You know what I've been to you these five years. Leave me, and where exactly are you going to find another one like me?"

I dragged it up over and over because it hurt. Obviously.

And he took the pain that kept me awake for years and flattened it into one weightless word. Drama.

I looked at him for a long moment. This face I used to be glad just to glance at, gone unfamiliar. My fault, too. I never once saw it clearly.

My head was swelling with a dull ache. I didn't want to argue anymore.

"Key's under the mat. I didn't take a single thing you gave me, except what I'm wearing. You tore it."

"Tell me what it costs. I'll pay you back."

"You can't afford it."

He laughed like he'd heard a joke.

"You think I bought you some flea-market knockoff? That was custom, hand-made. What are you going to pay me with?"

"Your little salary? Or that pitiful pride of yours?"

"If you've got the nerve, then take it"

He didn't finish.

Because I'd already started on the buttons. One. Two.

"Fuck!"

He wrapped his coat around me, swearing through his teeth.

"Annie, you've actually lost it!"

I let him do it. I didn't pull away, didn't cover up, didn't drop my eyes from his face for a second.

"You're the one who told me to take it off," I said.

I was dragged into the car without a say in it.

It tore through the streets, all the way to where Damien actually lived

a mansion so big I'd only ever seen places like it on TV.

"You're sleeping here tonight."

He walked me into a room.

Every piece of clothing in the closet was my size. The toiletries were all the brands I always used.

Even the giant stuffed bear I'd wanted once and never bought because of the price it was sitting there on the bed.

What was this supposed to be?

Sugar wrapped around poison?

Or a short numbness, to set up the next, worse round?

The nausea climbed again.

I gagged a few times, hair stuck to my face with tears.

He watched me, frowning, and started, unsure:

"Annie, are you"

Am I what?

I caught the flash of delight on his face before the fast click of heels pressed it back down.

Delphine stormed in, shot me one venomous look, and raised her hand to slap me.

A shudder climbed up from somewhere deep. I flinched before I could stop it.

Shut my eyes on reflex.

But the pain I braced for never landed. Damien had caught her wrist.

"What is this?!"

Her voice went shrill.

"I told you to mess with her. Not marry her!"

"Dame. Did you actually fall for her?!"

"She's been a little slut since she was a kid, luring people in! Don't let her play you!"

He didn't answer the question about love. He was quiet for a few seconds.

"The moment you handed me off to someone else, you lost the right to question me about anything."

I sat on the floor and watched them tear into each other, all that history and heat.

My head got heavier. My skin burned hotter.

Through the haze I heard her say it:

"This is my room. Why would you give it to her? Isn't it just to make me jealous?!"

The rest of what they said, I couldn't really hear anymore.

I only smiled, a little.

At how pathetic I was.

Pathetic enough to still think Damien felt one honest thing for me.

When the truth was he was a liar, start to finish.

Chapter 5

When I woke again, I was in a hospital.

Damien had been at the bedside the whole time. The skin under his eyes was bruised dark.

But he couldn't keep the smile off his face.

"You're pregnant."

He touched my stomach, light, and opened the calendar on his phone.

"There are a few good dates coming up. Want to pick one?"

"We'll do that garden wedding you wanted. I'll have the dress custom-made you start looking, see if anything catches your eye."

"After the wedding I'll take you on the honeymoon. You always wanted to go to"

He had so much to say. Planning a future without stopping.

I didn't make a sound. I just stared at my phone.

HR had messaged me. I'd been let go. Orders from upstairs.

I didn't have to ask. If it wasn't Damien, it was Delphine.

Five years.

I bled for that company for five years.

And they decided whether I lived or died there with a single sentence.

There was a trending post on my screen, too. About Delphine.

I tapped in.

Turned out she ran an account. Millions of followers.

Just daily little glimpses of the rich-girl life, and a crowd falling over themselves to praise her.

What had she done to deserve it all so easy?

Did she deserve any of it?

The video that was trending it was her, tearfully mourning a love that had quietly died.

She said she and Damien were childhood sweethearts.

That every birthday, growing up, he booked out a whole venue and set off a private fireworks show for her.

That over the years he'd given her more gifts than she could count, luxury and jewelry, enough to fill a room.

And I was the one variable between them.

In a few sentences she painted me as a scheming homewrecker, and a mob of strangers started screaming to dig up my address and post it.

My hands shook a little. I glanced at Damien, busy on the phone with the wedding planners.

Slowly, I typed. Attached the proof. Sent.

I watched the likes on my comment climb. Watched people question my depression, question whether Delphine had ever bullied anyone.

Then watched other strangers, the ones who believed my evidence, fire back.

The thread grew. And then my comment was gone.

She'd deleted it.

Damien stepped out for a call. When he came back his brow was knotted tight.

"You're being reckless, Annie."

"Delphine's an influencer. A little theatrical, it's normal. And I'd never let her actually do anything to you."

"We're all in the same circles from here on. You'll keep running into each other. Don't make this ugly."

A silence. Then:

"Go apologize to her. Get this whole thing between you two out in the open, finally."

I tugged at the corner of my mouth. I looked at him, quiet. The hollow where my heart had been couldn't raise a single feeling.

And I let him set it up. Let him lead me by the hand into the private room.

Because I knew exactly what she'd do in front of an audience. My phone sat in my pocket, the screenshots already saved, already in order. I just needed her to give the room a reason.

Damien pressed a glass of juice into my hand.

Across from me sat Delphine, makeup flawless, chin high.

She tilted her head.

"Go on. Apologize. The way you did in high school on your knees"

Chapter 6