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“Kay Bennett,” she said, smiling. “Wow, you have great taste, I must say. Kay is really one of the most beautiful women in this world. She always has been. Her disability didn‘t stop men from drooling over her. I don‘t blame you. In fact I am jealous of her. I know I‘ll never be like her.”
“That‘s right,” he replied. “You never will.” “However, I also know that she doesn‘t love you…”
“Do you have to rub it in my face every minute that goes by, Starr? Do you really?” He was starting to get angry.
She finished her thought, “But I do. Did you forget everything I‘ve done for you? When you didn‘t have anyone else you could count on, I was there.”
“Starr, please…” His attitude toward her was changing. He started feeling guilty. “Your family died, your parents, your brother, and your so-called friends turned their
backs on you. I was the only shoulder you could cry on. I stopped working just to take care of you and my father had to support us. Not that it bothered him. I mean I am his daughter, and he‘d do anything for me. When I can‘t work I can always count on his help. Besides, he loved you like a son, until you stabbed me in the back.”
Without knowing what he was doing, he sat on the sofa right beside her, his head down and his hands over his head.
She didn‘t dare to touch him and make him turn on her again, after she was finally getting through to him. “I thought you‘d be the father of my children, Constantine. I thought I‘d be your wife, and we‘d be together for life. You swore to me you loved me millions of times.”
He looked up at her and replied, “I did love you.”
“You did? That‘s funny because the day you left me, I thought you never did. He‘s been lying to me all this time, I thought. He never loved me!”
“Starr, please stop it!”
“If you loved me, why did you leave me, Constantine? Why did you shatter all my dreams? Can you tell me what I did wrong? Can you? Did you even have a reason to dispose of me like toilet paper?”
He got up and yelled, “I said stop it, all right? Don‘t make things worse than they already
are!”
“I always ask myself, why do we love those that don‘t love us? Life is a bitch, Constantine. It‘s just not fair. Here I am, I‘d do anything for you, and you don‘t even want to look me in the eyes. Yet Kay Bennett, a married woman, told you that she‘d never cheat on her husband with you, and…”
He interrupted her. “She told me she‘d never cheat on Robinson with anybody, not just
me.”
“You see? There you go! What more do you want? In how many ways is she going to have to tell you that she‘s got the man she loves, the only man she wants, and she doesn‘t love you? Huh?”
“You think it doesn‘t break my heart? Do you think I want to love her as much as I do, when she doesn‘t love me back? Be honest with me, Starr. If I rejected you and you could never get over me, what makes you think I can get over Kay just because I have… because I have you?” He didn‘t intend to say those last words. They just came out and when he realized it, it was too late. He still had feelings for her and what they had, it hadn‘t really ended, but he felt he couldn‘t love Starr as intensely as he did Kay.