It’s nearly midnight when Wesley and I are alone once again. I haven’t seen Mona since confronting her and Wesley managed to deliver the dinner he bought to Cece and Holdon before he walked back to our room.
I am tired and frustrated.
I’ve been sitting here for a couple of hours just waiting until the venom that’s filled my body to exit.
I am semi disgusted at myself that I allowed myself to get that bad. It’s been years since I’ve shut someone down the way I did with Mona. It is powerful, but exhausting and something I never thought I would do again.
It’s something I promised myself that I wouldn’t do after Holbrook left. Because I never realised how much I disgusted myself. Loathed myself.
Wesley doesn’t notice because he slips his hands around my waist and I shake my head. But then he starts kissing my neck and I’m telling him no but his hands are shaking and I realise that I haven’t looked at his face when he walked in.
He’s acting odd.
I try to pull him back but he is being forceful now, pushing me back on the bed.
“Wesley,” I groan, “Can you stop? I’m not in the mo-“
He pulls back abruptly and glares at me with this sudden and erupting hatred.
“Is it because I’m not Holbrook?”
I stare at him slowly. My senses begin to come back to me and I know that Wesley is acting completely odd. I speak up.
“Wesley are you ok-“ he cuts me off.
“It’s because I’m not Holbrook? Isn’t it?” He repeats. His eyes are fierce.
I face him, “Holbrook has nothing to do with this Wesley. You not being Holbrook is probably is the better thing about you.”
“So the only thing good about me is that I’m not him? So I have no other traits that make me worthy of you?”
“That’s not what I sai”
“Then what are you saying? Because right now everything you say sounds like you despise me. That you loathe me the way everyone in Ravenswood did when I killed the sports captain. I thought you were different, because you never looked at me like that after being a murderer. But someone deep inside of me I’ve just always been a simple project to you? Because no one sane will ever stand by you, you just had to test me out?”
I’m staring at him, “What is starting this?”
I say it quietly and his face reminds me of Mona’s face in which itself reminds me off how she said that I was destroying Wesley.
And I see it now. That I am destroying him. Because he is completely hysterical and I just don’t understand why I did this to him.
“Why would anything start this?” he shoots.
I stand up, “because you’re acting irrational.”
“Did I ever even have a chance?” He says, but he doesn’t look me in the eye. “Being what I am? A murderer.”
“You aren-“ I start but I’m cut off again.
“I am. I’ve killed people before and I’ll kill them now and further into my life. I will always do that,” he says it simply. Like it’s the simple truth.
He’s gone off the rails.
But he continues, “You don’t look at me like you did before I killed Jason. Like I’m actual human.”
I don’t know what he is talking about but then I do. Because my uncertainty about him is obvious. Holbrook was right when he said I wasn’t sure about Wesley. What he would do. I didn’t understand death the way he did.
Then he says the answer. “My brother visited me.”
I stare at him. “What?”
“He mentioned your helpless visit. You don’t really describe me as a person,” he says and I’m looking at him. His eyes are guarded. “He said that you described as vile and someone you could never love.”
“I never said something like that,” I say. Because I never did. I asked for Ezra’s assistance and he turned me down. That was the end of it.
A fire is burning inside of me. Of utter hatred towards Ezra Fitz and his family.
And there is Wesley, staring at me like he doesn’t believe me because he’s only ever learnt to not trust.
I can feel my lungs burning.
I look at him with fuming eyes,“ And after all this time you rely on your family to tell you what happened and what didn’t?”
“He’s my brother,” Wes spat back. “What am I supposed to do? All my attempts on you have gone to waste. I am more of an escort than a partner.”
There is death in my voice.
“Family. Means. Nothing,” I growl. “ Eighteen years of living and that is one thing I know inside and out. How dare you insult me and everything I ever did for you?”
The tension was blazing.
My parents were dead to me for a long long time. They never showed interest in my and any of my affairs and those years alone in my house were spent erasing them from my mind.
“Not all families are the same Alice-“ He starts.
I cut him off.
“Yes, they bloody well are. Your parents spent years getting rid of you. Your own brother abandoned you. Your family never came to your defence and signed an agreement to send you to prison. Not once you were visited. Not once.”
He looks out the window, “Maybe, if I stayed longer they would’ve.”
And I laugh. This hysterical hysterical hysterical laugh. The dead weight of hope in his eyes because somehow I’ve become the villain here. I’ve never had a problem being the villain before. But this.
“Maybe you should’ve stayed,” I growl back. “Maybe when you finally finished your sentence and headed back you would’ve realised that the loneliness that you felt in prison doesn’t change when you go back home. That you’re still an outcast.”
His eyes pierce mine, “And do you think I don’t feel like an outcast here with you?”
I pause and stare at him. Just stare. Eyes fuming.
“I may be a god damn awful person. But I tried my god damn best for you. Your family hated you and you so easily go to their defence.”
And then Wesley says something I never thought he would.
“At least they left alone a hopeless case when they saw one,” he says quietly. Laced with poison.
My eyes are bleeding water.
My voice dies a little, “I was trying to help yo-“
Wesley is mad now, “Don’t act like you ever did anything for me. Everything was for you and you only. I’ve always known that and it never has bothered me. Maybe it should.”
“God Alice, do you think you are going to get your way when you act like such a selfish whore?” My mother said to me when I was nine. I had a special bed in the hospital from all the injuries I had accumulated throughout my childhood. I accumulated injuries the way I had to accumulate and make up fake excuses about how I got injured.
“There are nail marks on your skin Alice,” The doctor had said once. “Do you have anything to say?”
He gave me the look of a wounded animal.
I gave him the best excuse.
Wesley is staring at me and I still have poison running through my veins and I’m trying my very best not to just break down and cry.
But Wesley see’s through me and he can see my eyes and he softens up just a bit. “Oh god, Alice, I didn’t mean to. It’s just,” he cries out frustrated. “I love you and you won’t love me back.”
And I think. I think very hard about why I can’t love him back. How I didn’t know love felt like all of these hateful words.
Maybe it’s because I’m heartless.
But I think it’s because I’m a hypocrite and I can’t love someone I don’t understand. I don’t understand his actions.
I don’t understand him.
And I can’t let myself the simple pleasure of just being loved.