“Chloe, please. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. You can trust me. You can trust yourself. If you just give me time—I’m working on this. I can be better.”
That, finally, garnered a response. Her voice was so gentle, but every word cut him deep. “You don’t need to be better, Red, not for me. Never. I should be better for you. For this. It’s been . . . perfect,” she said, so softly he almost missed the word. “But now it’s over. All right?”
For the first time, he turned around, abandoning the scuff mark that had anchored him. He faced the door he’d been leaning on, the door that hid Chloe, and said, “No.” Because it wasn’t all right at all.
“I’m going, all right?”
“No.” And then, finally, his desperate mind settled on a solution. A possibility. A hope. “I can show you,” he said. “I can show you that this is worth it. That you don’t need to be afraid because even when I fuck up I’ll make it better.”
“Red—”
“You are perfect for me, Chloe,” he said, determination stiffening his spine, strengthening his voice. Finally, his real self returned. He stepped into his confidence like a well-worn leather jacket. “I know you and I want you and I need you. We can do this. I’ll prove it to you.”
“You can’t, Red.” Her voice shook on his name. “This isn’t . . . Relationships aren’t supposed to hurt.”
“Life hurts,” he said fiercely. “It’s unavoidable. But I know the difference between torture and growing pains.”
She didn’t reply. She’d probably walked away, fed up with him rambling like a fanatic, but that was okay. He was okay. He’d made his decision and he’d stick by it: she meant too much for him to let things end like this. Maybe they’d end anyway, no matter what he did, and he’d have to come to terms with that—but not before he’d tried to fix things. Not before he’d done everything he could to earn her trust. To prove that he was there to stay, to show her he was working on himself. For her. Whatever it took.
He stared at her door for a moment longer, pretending she was still on the other side. He told her absence a secret: “I love you.”
Then he left. It was time to prove it.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chloe wanted to believe that Red’s whispered I love you had been simple desperation—another last-ditch attempt to change her mind, to fix everything that had just shattered between them. But the thing was, if she hadn’t been pressed against the door, listening to him as her stung heart held her back, she wouldn’t have heard it at all.
Had he meant it? Was it real? Maybe it didn’t matter either way. Because no matter what he felt, no matter what she felt, he’d still ripped her open and shattered her insides just by walking out the door.
No one should be able to do that to her. Not like that. Not anymore.
So Chloe didn’t allow herself to cry when he was gone. Instead, she got to work.
Her body stiff and robotic, her physical pain at the very back of her mind, she sat down at her desktop computer, grim-faced, to finish his website. She would tie up every loose end there was between them, and then . . . then, she would wait until the end of her lease and move out. She’d be the one to disappear on him. For the first time, she’d be Chloe Badass Brown who walked away from all the dangerous emotional tangles that threatened her.
The thought brought a vicious smile to her face, but it wasn’t the kind of smile that made things better. If anything, it made her feel worse.
It took hours to finish the site. By the time she was done, her stomach cramped violently with hunger, her knuckles screamed with the agony of overuse, and her rigid, aching back brought tears to her eyes. She was hurting herself and she knew it, but she didn’t have room to regret it. As she fired off her last email to Red, the only thing she could feel was relief.
She’d be so much better after this was done. After she brought all these messy feelings, this imperfect, uncontrollable connection, to an end.
She kept the email short.
Red,
Your website is complete and ready to go live. I’ve attached all the information and instructions needed. Please remember to change your administrative passwords in order to remove my access.
Chloe
There. She waited for the pain to fade. Instead, it doubled, a thought hitting her hard: What if Red hurt like this, too? What if he was lost and struggling, still shaken by his earlier loss of control? What if he needed her and she’d turned away?
Chloe shut down her computer with a sharp click of the mouse, and cut off each treacherous mental question just as firmly. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. This was for the best.
She hoped.
*
She saw the notice the next day, on the building’s bulletin board. She almost dropped the post she’d come to pick up.
Superintendent Redford Morgan was leaving next month.
The words were like a fist to the gut. She’d been trying so hard not to remember his words through the door, promises she couldn’t bring herself to believe. So much for that. But she was glad—definitely glad—that he’d decided to listen to her and move on. Good for him. Good for her. Good for them both.
Chloe was shaky and distracted all the way back to her flat. Her thoughts were so busy, she almost didn’t notice the cardboard box waiting on her doorstep. She kicked it, in fact, the toe of her shoe bouncing off it as she went to put her key in the door. And somehow, the moment she saw it, she knew it was from Red.
After all, it couldn’t be anything she’d ordered—in spite of her mild dependency on internet shopping—because it was sitting right outside her front door, rather than in the post room. It had no address, either: just a word scrawled on top in black. She told herself it was some kind of care package from her parents, because they’d been known to do things like this. She could imagine her dad chuckling to himself as he left it by the door. But then she bent to pick it up and read the word scrawled on the box: Button.
She felt like a sack of useless bones after yesterday’s exertions, so she dragged the box into the hall rather than trying to pick it up. Then, once safely inside, she sat on the floor and stared at it and tried not to feel anything at all. It didn’t work. There was a hole in her chest the size of a lovestruck heart. This must be some sort of good-bye.
Good. The quicker he left, the quicker she’d never have to feel this way again.
Inside the box she found a notebook, its cover a beautiful iridescent gold. She opened it to the first page, saw lines and lines of Red’s distinctive scrawl, and slammed it shut as if she’d come across the devil’s Bible.