Chapter 273: Rebecca Trouble’s

He looked at her.

She was still beautiful in the objective way she’d always been beautiful. Dark hair, dark eyes, the composed deliberate quality she’d had since before she knew it was useful to her. She was wearing something that communicated she’d thought about what she was wearing today.

The makeup on her cheekbone was careful but not careful enough for someone who knew what they were looking for.

Business Insight ran its quiet analysis.

She was frightened. Not of him. Of something else, and she was trying to manage the fear by controlling what was in front of her. Sean was something she thought she could control. He’d been the thing she could control for years, in the first life and the early weeks of this one, and whatever had happened between her and Anthony had apparently put her in a position where familiar levers felt like safety.

"Sean," she said again. Her voice had the specific quality she used when she was reaching for something she wasn’t sure she’d get. "I know we haven’t talked. I know things between us aren’t."

"Rebecca," he said.

"Please," she said. "Just. Five minutes."

He looked at her for a moment.

He thought about Anthony Ruiz and a withdrawn police report and the noise complaints and a credit card cycle that looked like a man running out of options and expressing that lack of options in the way men like Anthony expressed it.

He thought about this Rebecca, at eighteen, who hadn’t done what the first life’s Rebecca had done, who had been cruel to him at the party but hadn’t done the thing he remembered, who was standing in front of him now with makeup on her cheekbone and eyes that were doing the calculation of someone trying to find solid ground.

"Say what you need to say," he said. Neutral. Not warm. Just present.

She exhaled. Some of the managed composure fell away slightly, the specific relief of someone who had been preparing for a no and had gotten a maybe instead.

"I know you don’t have any reason to talk to me," she said. "After the party. I know how I was at the party and I know you don’t owe me anything." She paused. "But Sean. What you saw then. That wasn’t." She stopped. Started again. "Anthony has been." Another stop.

"Take your time," said Sean.

"He told me to do those things," she said. "At the party. How I acted. He coached me on it. He said if I acted like I didn’t need you, didn’t care about you, you’d respond better." She looked at her hands for a moment. "He had reasons for everything. For months. He had reasons for why I should act this way or say that or not tell you about." She paused again. "I didn’t know until later what the reasons were actually for."

Sean listened.

"He was trying to break us up," she said. "From the beginning. Since before we even. He wanted me for himself and I didn’t see it because I thought he was your friend and friends didn’t." She shook her head slightly. "I was an idiot. I was completely an idiot and I didn’t see it until he’d already convinced me to do things I." She stopped. Composed herself. "And then when I tried to. When I said I wanted to reach out to you he. The things he said. And then."

She touched the side of her face. The covered cheekbone. Not consciously. The hand went there the way hands went to places that hurt.

Sean watched that.

"I filed a report," she said quietly. "Two weeks ago. And then he." She looked at the ground. "He said things. About what would happen if I didn’t withdraw it. About what he’d tell people about me. What he’d say about us, about things that I." She closed her eyes briefly. "I withdrew it."

She looked up at him.

Her eyes were doing the thing eyes did when someone was holding something and wasn’t sure they had the right to hold it. Sean recognised the look because he’d seen it in the mirror in a different life, in a different version of himself that no longer existed.

"I still love you," she said. Quietly. With the specific quality of someone saying something they’d been rehearsing. "I know you don’t. I know things are different for you now and I know there are." She paused. "People. But I need you to know that what I felt was real. What we had was real. Everything Anthony did, everything I. I was manipulated. He manipulated me into being someone I didn’t want to be and I need you to know that."

She reached out and took his hand.

Both hands. Her fingers wrapping around his with the specific grip of someone trying to hold onto something they could feel slipping.

Sean looked at their hands.

He looked at her.

He felt something that was complicated and clear at the same time. Pity. Genuine pity, not the performed kind, for someone who had been damaged by a person who specialized in damaging people. And underneath the pity, solid and unmovable, something that had no name but functioned like a closed door.

He also felt, clearly and without drama, that she wasn’t telling him everything. That the manipulation was real but it was also convenient. That Rebecca Torres had made her own choices with her own reasons and Anthony Ruiz had made his and both things were true simultaneously and she was presenting one of them as the entire picture.

"Rebecca," he said.

"Sean." Her grip tightened.

"I hear what you’re saying," he said. "And I believe some of it." He held her gaze steadily. "What Anthony did to you is something he’s going to answer for. I’ll make sure of that. Not because of us. Because men who do that don’t get to keep doing it."

Her eyes changed slightly. Something hopeful trying to establish itself.