“Say something,” Meredith says softly after my tears finally subside and I’m able to breathe again.
I open my eyes and look up at her, my best friend, the only person in the world aside from Eli who knows me inside and out and saw what I went through when he left. Saw what his leaving did to me and what I allowed to happen to my life when he was no longer in it, hating everything about myself because I just couldn’t stop loving him more than I hated him. I gave up my life to protect him and I’d do it all over again without question, but if I had seen these letters, if I had known what was going on in his mind after he left, I would have done all these things without losing everything of myself in the process. I would have done it in remembrance of his love for me and not out of some twisted sense of duty toward his honor and his family’s good name.
“How could you keep these from me?” I mutter brokenly, the tears threatening to come back when I pull the letters from my chest and look back down at Eli’s words. “How could you do this to me when you knew? You knew how much it killed me when he left. You’ve been sitting on these letters for six fucking years!”
Tossing the crumpled pieces of paper into the box and setting it down on the table in front of me, I shake my head at my best friend, questioning everything about our friendship. I wrap my arms around my waist, hunching over as I choke on a sob, never thinking in a million years my best friend would betray me and do something like this.
“Forget the last six years; you’ve been here for over a week. You’ve seen me wrestle back and forth with Eli being here and determined to get back in my life. Even though I didn’t come right out and say it, you knew I’d given everything up for him and how hard it’s been thinking I’d done all of this for a man who just threw me away and you STILL waited to give them to me. Why?”
Meredith’s eyes fill with tears and I have to look away from her face before I do something stupid like give her a hug and forgive her immediately. She’s the one who lied. She’s the one who hid things from me and let me feel so twisted and confused.
“I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t make up for anything, but I am. When the first letter came, you had just been in your accident and I was on my way out the door to the airport to get to you,” she explains, swiping a tear from her cheek. “I didn’t even open it, I just tossed it on my counter and left. When I got back to New York a few months later after spending time with you and seeing you so broken and hurting and losing everything you’d worked so hard for, and then finding a stack of more letters from him in my mailbox, it pissed me off. I thought he was going to hurt you again. I was afraid of what was inside of them and I didn’t want you to hurt anymore.”
She moves around the coffee table and squats down next to my legs, resting her hands on my knees.
“I didn’t trust him, Shelby, and I just didn’t want you to hurt anymore. I wanted you to heal and move on.”
“Did you read them?” I whisper angrily.
Her eyes widen in shock before they quickly fill with hurt as she shakes her head.
“No, of course not.”
I scoot away from her on the couch, her hands dropping from my knees as I move to stand up, putting as much distance between us as I can. I want to understand what she’s telling me and try to put myself in her place if the situation were reversed, but I can’t right now. It’s too new, too raw, and hurts too much that she would do something like this to me. That she would keep these letters in a fancy shoe box in her closet all this time and never say one word to me about them. Never let me know that Eli wrote to me after he left, regardless if what was in those letters was just something else that would hurt me. I deserved to know that the man I loved, the man I grieved and the man I did everything for, tried to fight for me. I deserved to know he thought of me as much as I thought of him. I deserved to see those letters for myself and make up my own mind about my well-being. I don’t know if I’d still be in the same place, living the same miserable life, if I had seen those letters years ago, but I deserved the chance to know the truth.
“Shelby—”
“Don’t.” I interrupt her, avoiding her eyes as I slam the lid on the shoe box and lift it into my arms. “I can’t do this with you right now.”
I see her nod her head out of the corner of my eye. I hug the box to me and walk out of the room and down the hall, slamming my bedroom door shut behind me and wondering why everyone in my life seems to think they know what’s best for me and why they all think it’s okay to make my decisions for me. Tossing the box onto the bed, I clutch my hands into fists, tip my head back, and scream at the top of my lungs. I let the anger, the betrayal, the hurt, and the disappointment come pouring out of me until my voice is hoarse, my knees give out, and I sink down to the floor, out of breath and out of giving a damn.
The walls have officially crumbled on this house of lies and I’m finished. I’m done being taken advantage of and used for everyone else’s agendas. This is my life and it’s about damn time I start living it again and making my own damn decisions.
Chapter 17
Eli
Tell me why we’re doing this again? I had a lot of important things on my schedule today, like taking a nap,” Rylan complains as I pull my new black Ford truck into the drive along the side of the stables.
“I didn’t force you to come with me. You’re the one who jumped in the truck without asking where I was going,” I remind him, shutting off the engine and glancing around the property, hoping to catch a glimpse of Shelby.
I’ve been sneaking into the stables every night for the last week after the workers have gone home, hoping to talk to her, but she’s been a no-show. I know she’s avoiding me after what went down in the tack room the other night, and I knew it would happen, but I’m still pissed about it. I’ve had plenty of things to do that should have kept me too busy to think about her, but she’s been the sole focus of my thoughts for six years. Now that I’ve touched her, tasted her, and held her in my arms, there’s no way I can push her out of my mind, no matter what I have going on.
“I only got in your truck because I needed a break from being your bitch. I’m glad you finally rented your own place and I don’t have to suffer through judgy looks from your sister anymore, but unpacking all your shit was exhausting,” Rylan complains.
“You didn’t unpack anything. You sat on your ass and told me where everything should go.”