After I forced myself away from the front gate, I wanted to walk for a while before flagging a cab. The exertion felt good; each step seemed to drain another drop of emotion out of me in a way that didn’t involve my tear ducts.
By the time I found a cab, there was a subway station nearby, so I decided to take that route instead. I’d missed the New York subway. I’d missed the smells and the people, the sights and the memory of the first time I’d ever taken one, when he’d stayed right beside me the entire time. Even then, protecting me from . . .
Myself.
My worst enemy. He hadn’t been just trying to protect me from Ellis, but from my misguided impressions of the type of man Ellis was. He hadn’t just been attempting to protect me from the creatures he swore lurked in the night, but from my small-town illusion that nothing bad could ever happen to me.
He’d protected me by using himself as a buffer.
By the time I’d crawled up to the sixth floor, I knew I couldn’t wait for a shower and a cup of tea. I had to call him now. I had to hear his voice and feel that film of protection close around me, snug and airtight.
As soon as I shoved through the apartment door, I dialed his number. It rang a few times, which was unusual. He always picked up on the first or second ring. Roaming through the dark, empty apartment, I switched on every light I passed as his phone went to voicemail.
Punching his number again, I stopped when I noticed the glass vase filled with the bouquet of daisies. They were dead. A scatter of petals surrounded the base of the vase. Taking a closer look, I could see there was no water inside. From the look of how dried out they were, the water had been gone for days.
Why was I about to cry all over again over a bunch of wilted daisies?
I didn’t have time to analyze my answer before the other end clicked.
“Hello?” It wasn’t a voice I was expecting to hear.
Checking my phone, I made sure I’d punched in the right number. Soren’s name was at the top of the screen.
“Hell-oo?” The same voice, just the most impatient version of the word.
Before I could reply, I heard some shuffling in the background. “Hayden?”
My lungs released. Okay, this was the voice I’d been expecting to hear.
Those lungs contracted back up when I realized a girl had answered Soren’s phone.
“Who was that?” I asked.
He sounded like he was trying to move somewhere quieter. “I’ve been trying to call you all night. Did you make it into New York?”
My head shook. “Who just answered the phone, Soren?”
From his silence, I knew before he said it. “Alex. That was Alex.”
My hand dropped to the table, needing it to support me. “Why is Alex answering your phone?”
He exhaled. “She wasn’t supposed to answer my phone, but she took that upon herself since I left it on the table when I ran to the bathroom.”
Nothing he was saying was making me feel any better. “Where are you?”
“Some pizza parlor next to the hotel we’re staying at for the night. The whole team came over to have dinner.”
Pizza. Dinner. The team. I repeated that to myself a few times to calm myself down after hearing some other woman answer my boyfriend’s phone. The very woman I already had a thing or two against, based on the fact that she looked at Soren like she wanted to make him hers.
I was trying to figure out what to say next when I noticed something scattered around the table. A big envelope was ripped open, the contents spread out around it. All of it, from the one-way plane ticket to the condo listings to the ball cap, had one thing in common—Miami.
“Are you still at the airport? Your flight must have come in late again, right?”
Soren’s voice drifted into the background as I shuffled through the rest of the papers. One of the condo listings pages had one of them circled with the words “all yours” scribbled by the pending sale box. A list of city highlights, the team’s stats—there was even a demographic sheet of the city’s occupants. Another circle over the ratio of single males to females, the number of woman staggeringly outnumbering the guys.
I crashed into the chair behind me, curling into my stomach for the second time that night.
“Because I need to talk to you about something before you head to the apartment. I need to—”
“Tell me you’re leaving?” My eyes lifted to the one-way airline ticket on top of the pile. “In eleven days?”
On the other end? Silence.
“Why didn’t you tell me? You promised you’d fucking tell me.” My back shook as familiar pain coursed through me. “When were you going to tell me? When I flew home the next time you weren’t here to meet me and I walked into an empty apartment?”
“Hayden—”
“You swore you wouldn’t do this. You promised me you wouldn’t bail on me the way he did. You swore to me!” My back shook as sobs erupted, despite the lack of tears left to shed.
“Hayden, what’s wrong?” His voice was concerned, anxious, not at all the one I’d expected to hear from him right now—the one that accepted he’d just been caught. “What happened?”
My head fell into my hands, my eyes clamping closed. I needed to tell someone. I needed to tell him. But I couldn’t. He didn’t deserve my secrets anymore. He didn’t deserve my dark, and he didn’t deserve my light. I’d given them both and he’d let them wilt where he’d left them.
“What happened is that I just realized what a fool I’ve been for letting myself fall in love with you.”
“Why does that make you a fool?” From his voice, I could tell he had to force his jaw to unlock with each word.
“Because you’re not the person I thought you were. You’re not the man you promised me you were.”
“And you’ve realized all of that from some paperwork scattered around a table? Papers you have no idea what they have to do or not do with me?” Anger was coming through in his voice, which only spurred my own into being.
“Given the name S. Decker is listed on the front of the envelope all of this junk came out of, yeah, I think I know exactly what all of this has to do with you.”
“You think you know,” Soren said slowly, a puff of air coming from him right after. “Ellis told me about Paris. Did you know that? He told me about the flat you’ve put a down payment on.”
“What?” The turn in the conversation shocked me out of my anger. “When did he tell you that?” My fingers rubbed my forehead as I felt my whole life falling down in pieces around me.
“A while ago. Another play to take me out of the game, no doubt.” He paused, sounding like he’d just shoved through some door. “I figured you had your reasons. I gave you the benefit of the doubt that you’d explain your side of it to me when the time was right instead of calling you up and flaming you over the phone.”