“You admit it.”
“But when I saw you at the diner, I realized you had never had what we had. I wanted to share it with you.”
“Yeah. Because you wanted to use that to your advantage.” The next revelation hurt the most. No one in his life ever liked him. But he was stupid enough to believe she might be the first. He’d fallen, all right, but not for her. He’d fallen for her trap. Hook, line and sinker.
“You convinced me you liked me.”
“I do!”
Any better and she’d win an Oscar. The woman even managed tears. They puddled in her eyes, refusing to overflow. Clark paid them no attention. They were just another tool in her deception.
“You only stuck around because you had an endgame. Was all of this,” He pointed an accusing finger down to the town. They still sung, the lemmings. “part of it, too?”
“No!”
“Convincing.” Clark laughed derisively.
“Honestly, Clark.” Her small hand flew to his chest, the pleading gesture of a woman broken by her own game. “This wasn’t me.”
One look down the ridge of his crooked nose and he removed the desperate hand. He never wanted to be touched by her again. If Miller’s Point knew about her plan to con him out of his own company, they probably organized this entire thing to trick him. To give him a childish love of a stupid farce of a holiday so he would fall over himself to give them this expensive, two-month long game of Charles Dickens dress-up. Even if she didn’t call this sing-along, she was complicit in it. As the mastermind of this scheme and the pied piper of Miller’s Point and all her people, he felt no guilt in holding her responsible, not when his heart was the prize she’d incidentally managed to seize.
“Maybe not, but it was them. They were in on your plan, weren’t they?”
“It isn’t like that,” she ground out between gritted teeth.
“What is it like then? Explain.”
Her mouth opened and closed, invisible, soundless words came out, but nothing else. For the first time, Clark raised his voice.
“Explain yourself!”
Her shiver of fear would have made him feel like the biggest heel on earth if she hadn’t started it.
“I wanted to get the festival back, yes. But I wanted to help you, too.”
“Two birds with one stone, huh?” He snorted, crossing his arms to keep himself from shaking with cold. A cold winter night to reflect the cold heart of this woman.
“I’m not going to deny that Miller’s Point is always my first priority, but I never lied to you. I want to be with you.” Again, she reached for him. He backed away before she got the chance to touch him. “I’m falling for you. Please don’t let this get between us.”
“You’re just saying that because I haven’t given you what you wanted,” he said, no uncertainty wavering his stern voice.
“No. I’m saying it because it’s true.”
True. She made countless spoken and unspoken promises today, and she’d broken every single one by lying to him. If she would go to these lengths to win back a stupid festival, what kind of person was she really, deep down in her heart? He thought of his parents. The stories he’d told her about them. He kept them so close to his heart no one ever saw or heard about them, yet he’d opened his mouth and blabbed his tightest held secrets. As much as he despised her in this moment, he hated himself the most. His lifestyle of cold calculation wasn’t a bug; it was a feature that protected him from heartbreaking blunders like this one.
Why did this hurt so much? How had he given her so much power? He wanted to crawl under a rock and never re-emerge almost as much as he wanted to sell her beloved festival off piece by piece in front of her just to show her how spiteful and cruel he could be, in spite of her assertions to the contrary.
“I don’t think you know what that word means. I opened up to you. I told you things I’ve never told anyone. For what? So you could use them against me?”
This fight began with his decision to remain rational and unattached, to tell her how badly she hurt him without ever allowing him to show her how badly this betrayal pained him. But the more he spoke, the faster his avalanche of anger grew. She’d quivered in fear when he raised his voice earlier; he wanted her to do it again.
“I did it so you could finally understand what it’s like to have a friend.”
No. He wouldn’t listen to that line again. He wouldn’t be a victim twice. She said this stuff because she needed him. He was nothing more than a pawn in her game, a piece she could move around to get what she wanted. The glory of having saved Miller’s Point.
Did she even like Christmas? Or was her slavish devotion to the rituals and false promises of the season nothing more than a ruse, too?
“I don’t need friends. And I don’t need you.”
“Clark. Please don’t…”
“You know what, Kate Buckner.” He spit her name. It would be the last time it ever crossed his lips and he wanted her to know how much he hated it in the deepest pits of his being. Once it was spoken, he straightened, pulling on the hems of his coat to give him a more dignified, regal appearance. He was once again the Clark Woodward of this morning, the Clark Woodward he would be forever. “You did make me believe in something today. Love or
