“But you will.”
No! “Don’t do this,” I said. “Please. You have to trust me. Please,” I said again, and I didn’t care how desperate I sounded. “There are some things you can never take back, and this is one of them.”
A terrible stillness came over him. I wasn’t sure he was even breathing. Then he was stomping to the wall, throwing a fist.
Boom! I flinched. Plaster gave, leaving a hole. Dust mushroomed through the air.
Here was the dangerous boy I’d been warned about in the beginning. The one mothers wanted to hide from their daughters. The panty melter, I’d heard a few girls at school call him. The boy others feared. The violent criminal. The hard-hearted machine.
“I’m not going to look at Gavin and suddenly start wanting him,” I whispered. I couldn’t even imagine it. “You’re the one for me. And this isn’t like you,” I added. “You never back down. You never walk away from a fight.” Fight for me.
He pressed his forehead into the damaged wall.
“Cole,” I said quietly. Must get through to him. “Do you want Veronica?”
“No,” he said, and I could have sobbed with relief. “Not even a little.”
“See!”
“Ali, I...” He straightened, turned toward me. I saw the panic a split second before a sheet of ice fell over his features, and that ice was far worse than the fury he’d displayed earlier. “Our feelings right now aren’t the problem. One day I hope you’ll forgive me. I doubt I’ll ever be able to forgive myself. But...we’re done.”
Done.
Just like that.
Over. Finished.
“Cole.”
“We’re done,” he repeated more firmly. “We’re done.”
How finite he sounded. How sure.
For the second time in my life, my heart broke into thousands of pieces. I thought I would die. But this time, I had the second heart, the new one, whatever it was, to pick up the slack, to keep me alive.
Silent now, he backed up, away from me.
“I won’t come crawling after you,” I croaked.
“I don’t want you to.”
With those five words, he shredded the rest of me. Spirit, soul and body. I wouldn’t give him the chance to do it again. I couldn’t. “I won’t take you back even if you come crawling back to me.”
“I know,” he said, despair creeping into his tone. “And I won’t.... I can’t....” He shook his head. “There’s nothing I can say to make either of us feel better about this, and I’m sorry about that. You’ll probably never know how much. But that’s not going to change my mind. It has to be this way.”
He turned and left.
Chapter 6
Welcome to Your Nightmare
I...
Broke...
Down.
Somehow I found the strength to stand. My legs shook. With fury. Sorrow. Helplessness. Regret.
Pain.
I wanted to chase after Cole and tear into him the way he’d just done to me. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to scream at him.
I wanted him to hurt the way I was hurting.
I wanted to cry and beg him to come back to me.
I wanted his arms around me.
I wanted to hate him.
Maybe I did hate him. Today he’d proved he wasn’t the admirable boy I’d thought he was. How could he be? He’d cut me loose the same way he’d cut Mackenzie loose. As if I meant nothing. Only difference was, I’d had a little warning. I just hadn’t wanted to face the truth of it.
I wanted to avoid him forever.
I’d see him again. Of course I would. We would even talk to each other. We’d have to. In a way, he was my boss. He set the nightly rotation schedule. He headed up all training. But the easy camaraderie we’d shared was over. The bantering. The kissing. The touching.
Over.
He’d wanted to protect himself, and me, from further hurt, from fighting a losing battle, from whatever mystery he refused to discuss, from the devastation and shame of falling for other people while we were still together.
I’d been willing to risk it.