And he wouldn’t want to . . . not when the luster wore off and he got a good look at the girl he’d caught. Then he’d see me for what I really was . . . toxic. And he would want nothing to do with me.
I sat at the top of the stairs at the end of Cade’s hallway. I wrapped my arms around my middle. The muscles of my body were tense, once again trying to hold myself together by sheer force. I remember the way his arms had wrapped around me tonight and that time on Thanksgiving when he’d been the one to hold me together.
And I lost it. My vision swam with tears, and I held my breath, like that would keep the tears at bay, too. I shuddered and pressed my face into my knees. For the first time in nine years, the first time since Alex, I couldn’t push the tears down. I couldn’t control them. I cried. I sobbed. The emotions ripped free from my chest, taking pieces of me with it.
It was four in the morning. If I couldn’t cry now, when could I?
So, I let the guilt wash over me, and I said good-bye to something beautiful and terrifying and delicate that I’d held in my soul for a few short hours. I said good-bye to something that should never have been mine.
A door swung open on the floor below me, and laughter floated up the stairs. I tried to wipe my eyes, but I was too far gone and not fast enough. Cade’s friend Milo and a pretty girl were at the bottom of the stairs, staring up at me. I ducked my head and scooted close to the wall so they could get by. The girl walked past me in silence, but Milo sat down beside me.
I pressed my lips together and tried to concentrate on breathing.
“It’s Max, right?”
I didn’t think I could speak without crying, so I nodded instead.
His eyes took in my appearance, and I knew I must have looked like a complete wreck. He sighed. “Did you at least leave a note?”
I looked at him in shock.
“What? You’re out here at four in the morning, crying, with major sex hair. It doesn’t take much to put things together. All I’m asking is if you told him why?”
God, I didn’t think I could feel lower than I already did.
Wrong.
My phone buzzed. Spence.
I knew it was terrible, but I wasn’t changing my mind. I looked at Milo and shook my head.
“Tell him I’m sorry.”
Then I ran, leaving behind the best thing that could never happen to me.
I stayed in bed the next day until the sun was on its way down again.
He didn’t call.
It wasn’t that I wanted him to, but I just thought . . . I don’t know what I’d thought.
He let people go. He’d told me that. He didn’t fight for the last girl, and he didn’t fight for me. If I was honest, a small, terrified part of me had been counting on that. If he came for me, I didn’t think I would be able to say no. And this was for the best. I had to believe that or I’d never be able to get out of bed again.
I was saving us both.
So I kept busy, passing the time as best as I could.
I hadn’t told Mom and Dad anything about “breaking up” with Cade. It didn’t matter anyway. By the time I’d battled off the depression enough to call Mom, they’d already booked both of our flights.
I would tell them something when I got there—he was sick or a family emergency or something. Hell, maybe I’d just tell them the truth.
What did it matter anymore?
I didn’t have that much longer until I left for Oklahoma, and this all came crashing down. The important thing was squeezing in as much rehearsal time as possible before then, especially now that we had to find a new drummer to replace Mace.
Music was what mattered now. The only thing that mattered.
29
Cade
The bed was cold when I rolled over, and already I had a sinking feeling. I didn’t know if it was how quiet she was as we went to sleep or the way she’d clung to me in that hug, but I just knew something wasn’t right. Though she’d lay right beside me, she’d felt miles away. Even so, I got up and checked the bathroom.
Empty.
I tried the living room and the kitchen.
Empty.
I called her name, and it only echoed back at me.
Empty.
That was how I felt, too. I sat on the bed, numb, but not really surprised. I should have listened to what my brain had been telling me all along. It was obvious just from looking at Max that we came from different worlds. I was naive to think she could ever be happy with someone like me. And I was naive to think it had only been physical attraction. It was so much more than that. All I knew was that I was pretty damn tired of having my heart handed to me in a blender.
Eventually the emptiness was filled up by anger, and I ripped the sheets off my bed and threw them down. They still smelled like her, and I refused to let her linger in my life the way I’d done with Bliss. If she didn’t want me, fine.
I was probably dodging a bullet anyway.
I stayed calm as I stripped the bed. I grabbed a laundry basket and dumped the dirty clothes already in it to make room for the sheets. I checked the clock.
7:21 a.m.
That wasn’t too early to go to the Laundromat.
The sooner she was out of my life the better. I had to keep moving forward. One foot in front of the other.