When all that dust settled, and I was finally alone, I wanted to talk to Caleb. I called him and instead of returning my call, he'd come to see me. The very first words out of his mouth were about Vena. He brought her to meet me the very next day. He looked content and excited and when he left my apartment with her, I'd cried not for the loss of what could have been. It wasn't about that. Back then I was mourning the loss of my own dream of being with Tom and Caleb's apparent happiness only punctuated the pain I was already in.
"You were happy when you told me that you were getting married." My arms wrap around my waist. I'm trying to shelter myself. I feel it. "You were planning your wedding."
"I was fond of Vena," he admits as he shuffles on his feet. "She was fun and carefree. I'd never met anyone like her before."
I hadn’t probed Caleb for any details about his fiancé at the time but Asher was overflowing with information. He told me that his brother and Vena had a passionate affair that ended when he returned to the States. According to Asher, they missed each other so much that Caleb arranged for her to fly to New York to live with him. It was fast, intense and within just a few months, they were engaged.
"She was beautiful," I begin before I stop to correct myself. "She is beautiful. I only met her that one time but I've seen pictures of her online."
"I haven't seen her in years." He takes a step back before he bends his legs to lower himself into one of the chairs in front of my desk. "I don't keep in touch with her."
"How did it end?" It's a question that has been haunting me since he showed up at my apartment that night after the engagement was called off. "She ended it?"
"Yes." He frowns. "We argued about everything. Where to live, when to have children, what color to paint the foyer; we couldn't agree on anything anymore."
"I know it was hard for you."
He glances briefly at my desk and the bouquet of flowers I bought myself on my way to work yesterday. "Losing Vena wasn't hard. I didn't miss her after we ended things."
"You were upset," I say wearily. "You were upset for months."
"She broke emotionally when she found out I was fucking someone else." He grazes his hand over his chin. "We ended things on a Friday and Saturday night I was in bed with a woman I met at a club."
I'm taken back by the admission. "That's fast."
"Physically, maybe." He half-shrugs. "Emotionally I had checked out of the relationship with Vena months before."
"I didn't know that it had gotten that bad between you."
He crosses his legs as he looks up at me. "I thought that if I married her, I'd satisfy something within me. Part of it was pressure from my mother. She adored Vena and still does. I guess another part of it was my need to fulfill Vena's dreams since she'd helped me overcome a lot of my own bullshit. I pushed aside all of the doubt I was feeling to give it a chance. I was a ticking time bomb. It really fell apart right when we were making plans for the wedding."
"You never told me about any of this." I'm not being accusatory. My relationship with Caleb has always had an ebb and flow to it that neither of us completely understood. There were so many complicated facets to it that I've always just accepted it for what it is.
"Vena was a mess after we split." His breath hisses out between clenched teeth. "I hate talking about this but she fell apart. It took her months to finally get back on her feet and she still hates me to this day."
"You're not responsible for that." I want to sound comforting but that's not how it sounds at all. "Vena handled the break up in her own way."
"She loved me, Rowan." His voice is raw. "She loved me and I let her down."
Chapter 44
"I'm not her, Caleb."
The angle of his face changes. He tilts his head gently to the left so his eyes catch mine. "You're nothing like her."
"You think I'll fall apart the way she did?" I cross my legs at the ankles as I lean back against my desk. "You're scared that I'll be destroyed if things don't work out between us?"
His left brow arches as he considers the question. He pauses before he answers. "No. It's not just that."
I should probably point out that he's wasted the past fifteen minutes of his life explaining his relationship to Vena to me if it has no bearing on his reluctance to let the emotional barriers he's built around himself down. "What is it then? Why do you pull back every time we get close?"
"It's me," he continues, "I'm more like Vena than you are. If things don't work out between us, we'll both be destroyed."
I can't argue with him. I've had a taste of the pain that is born from being rejected by him and it's deep and unrelenting. "It hurts me when you push me away."
A flash of something unfamiliar darts over his expression. He winces slightly before he clears his throat. "I fucked up after we made love. I really fucked up."
"I wanted to talk about things." I realize how pathetic that sounds, but I don't care. I'm not trying to impress a man I just met. I'm not trying to be strong for the sake of saving my self-esteem. This is Caleb and me. If I can't be brutally honest with him, we'll never have a chance.
"I came to the house so I could fuck you," he growls softly as he says the words. "I was in the house for hours before I came to your room."
"What?"
"I got there in the middle of the night. I let myself in." He stretches his legs out in front of him. "I watched you sleeping. I was so hard."