“Brynne. Breathe.” I hear Fenton’s ringtone and see my phone in her hand. “He’s been calling you today. I took your phone when you fell asleep.”
“I don’t want to talk to him. I have nothing to say.”
She frowns. “Are you sure? It seems like you have a lot of questions to me.”
“He won’t answer anything,” I snort. I stand, restlessness getting the best of me. My phone goes off again. “Turn it off.”
Presley doesn’t look convinced, but she does it.
“Ugh!” I growl into the air, tugging at the roots of my hair. “Why, Pres? Why did he have to be him?”
“I don’t know. It seems so unfair.”
“Unfair? How about asinine? How about the world fucking hates me again? Even after he knew who I was,” I say, still piecing everything together, “he told me he wanted to see where things went with me. He was still leading me on, making me think . . .”
I still, my heart breaking again. I look at my best friend and see the pain on her face.
“You really were starting to love him, huh?”
“Yeah,” I whisper. “But not now. I can’t possibly love him now.”
“You can’t turn love on and off, Brynne.”
“Watch me.”
She stands and heads to the door. “I’m going to grab a shower.” She leaves me alone with my thoughts.
My phone lies on my bed and I pick it up and hold it. I know I could turn it on and call him, but the sound of his voice would break me in two. I already miss his touch, miss the smell of him on me. Miss desperately the idea of seeing him again.
But I won’t.
Because he lied.
Because it’s possible I don’t even know who he is.
I fall onto the bed and cry myself to sleep. Again.
A soft knock raps against my door. I open my puffy eyes, stinging with the tears that have burned them all day, and struggle to sit up in bed.
The sky is dark outside my window and my clock tells me it’s already after eight. My body aches from being contorted in bed, my head feels like I’ve drunk a fifth of whiskey. I’d probably be better off if I had drunk a bottle of something.
I try to get my bearings, to figure out if the knock was real or not, when it sounds again.
“Come in,” I say, rolling over and flipping on a light. The brightness makes me squint, shielding my vision from the assault.
The door squeaks open and I feel the air vibrate with his presence immediately. My body goes on alert, like it always does, when Fenton’s near. I shuffle against the headboard, knowing I must look ridiculous and not sure if I can take seeing him again. Not when the wounds are so fresh. Not when I still haven’t made any sense out of this disaster.
Fenton looks awful. His face is lined, his clothes wrinkled. His hair is a mussed-up mess and I wonder how many times he’s had his hands in it.
He closes the door behind him, but doesn’t move towards me. I’m glad for that.
“Presley let me in,” he says. “She made me promise to not make you cry or she’d blast me with pepper spray on my way out.”
I crack a smile, but barely. My face hurts too much.
“Brynne, I’m so sorry.” His voice cracks with each syllable, each sound pregnant with so much emotion that it nearly drips from the words.
I shake my head, not wanting to hear it. Yet, I do. I want to believe him. I want to wipe this entire thing away. I want Brady home and to have had no links with Fenton at all. I want to be at Fenton’s house, on the deck, with him wearing nothing but his smirk.
The thought rips my heart, tears a part of my soul I didn’t know was reachable for another person. Fenton affects me in ways I didn’t know was possible, made me feel happier, more complete, more wanted than any man ever had before.
And probably more than any man after him could.
But that’s a double-sided coin because for all of the amazing things he can make me feel, he can also destroy me. And I’m afraid he has.
He takes a couple of steps towards me, but the look on my face stops him.
“I swear to you, I was going to tell you,” he says, his voice broken. “I tried to tell you a couple of times, but . . .”
“But you didn’t, Fenton. You just kept me in the dark.”
“Can you imagine what it was like for me for just a minute? I’ve fallen in love with this girl . . .”
I gasp, a shaky intake of air that does nothing to balance me. I watch his face, hoping for a smirk, one of his little chuckles, something to tell me that this declaration was a part of our ongoing joke. But I get nothing but a solemn stare that deepens the laceration in my heart.
He can’t say this now. He can’t go there. He can’t mean it.
My bottom lip quivers and he zeroes in on it immediately. A sharp breath falls from his lips and I can’t fight it anymore. A lone tear trickles down my face. With every centimeter it trails, so does his frown.
“Fenton, I can’t do this,” I whisper. “Will you please go?”
“Don’t ask me to leave, rudo. Please, don’t ask me to go.”