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I forced myself to keep looking into his eyes. If you stay with me, I’ll only ever hold you back. I’ll keep using you to feel good and you’ll never know what you’re missing if you stay. “Nowhere. Why does it have to come from somewhere else, Ty? I thought about it and this is how I feel.” Lies.
“I don’t believe you,” he said, his tone softer now with sadness. I figured he would be sad. But only for a little while. Then, he could be happy again. And someone who wasn’t me could make him infinitely happier than he imagined.
I pursed my lips for a moment to gather my thoughts. “It was fun fooling around, Tyler, but we can’t really be together.”
“Why?” he demanded.
Because I don’t deserve you. I’d rather see you hate me for the rest of my life and be happy with someone else. “Because I don’t want it,” I lied. “I…I need to go,” I whispered. My voice was going to give me away and ruin the whole thing. I had to get out of here. I had to get away.
Tyler brought his face closer to mine, eyeing me with anger. “Why are you letting him get to you?”
Because I’m a coward. “Because he’s right. I made all the wrong choices, Tyler. Every single one. Northwood. Hockey. Jennifer.” Do it. Just fucking say it and be done with it. “You.”
Tyler closed his eyes and pulled back from me. That last word rang in my ears. I could see it on his beautiful face, the heartbreak. The loss. But he didn’t know it. He didn’t know he wasn’t losing anything. What he believed me to be was far better than who I really was. And on the day he realized that, a part of me would die, but he would be free.
I was silent, my legs turned to stone, my hands cold, and my face bloodless. I’m sorry, I wanted to say. I was desperate and heartbroken. If I couldn’t get out of this quicksand, at least I could push him out of it. What was the alternative? To keep him close and leech onto him like a vampire? The worst of all was that I wanted to talk about this. I wanted to tell him what it felt like to break his heart. Who else could I ever tell that to?
“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” he said.
I said nothing to that. I wished I could move my feet and get away, but I couldn’t. They were glued to the ground. My brain controlled nothing but the tears I held back and the quiver that wanted to pass through my lips. Those cost me more effort than I had to spare. Somehow, I managed to whisper, “It’s better this way.”
“And I don’t believe a word that is coming out of your mouth,” he spat, looking into my eyes with something too close to hate for my heart to bear. “Either you’re lying to me now, or you’ve been lying for months.”
The stiffness in my neck was such that a headache throbbed in the back of my skull. I deadened my eyes as best as I could, looking at him, and said nothing.
“You don’t mean it,” he said, panicky now. God. Couldn’t he just stop? Seeing how upset I made him left me feeling two opposite things at the same time. I felt relief that I was freeing him of this as much as I grieved that he was heartbroken. But when my expression didn’t change, Tyler seemed to see me in a new light. His eyebrows rose. “You’re serious.”
Again, I said nothing. I could no longer trust my voice not to crack.
We had been together since we were born. We had been inseparable all our lives, and we rushed into a wild, wonderful thing without fearing the consequences. Our carelessness had cost us our friendship.
Tyler stood abruptly. “If you have nothing else to say, I think I’ll go now.”
The knot in my throat tightened so much that it hurt. Just go, I wanted to shout. Don’t look back.
The hurt he felt at my silence rippled over his face and he turned away from me. I couldn’t watch him leave, but I heard his footsteps receding, fading, disappearing far behind me.
When I was sure he was gone, I looked over my shoulder to check anyway, and then I buried my face in my hands. And I wept.
EIGHTEEN
Tyler
My consolation prize was an empty house to cry in. Dad was still at work when I stormed inside and slammed the door closed behind my back, then stomped up the stairs and shut myself in my room.
By the time I reached my bed, a growl was rising in my throat, and I wanted to scream. I wanted to fight him. I wanted to march over there and force him to tell me the truth. Which was it, then? Had he been lying to my face all along? Or was this some stupid idea he had concocted on the go for…what? I didn’t know. But this wasn’t like him.
And I should fucking know! I had known him for over twenty years. If anyone in this world knew how Sebastian acted, it wasn’t his fanatic father or his distant mother. It was me.
I was too furious to cry and too hurt to rage. In the end, I merely wrapped my arms around a pillow and panted like I was running out of air.
When I shut my eyes, all I saw was Sebastian. And when I opened them, the room was tilting and spinning around me that I wanted to vomit.
I kept them open.
I couldn’t face the mental images that ran through my mind. I couldn’t stand to remember him with paint smeared all over his face when his biggest problem in life was whether or not he dared to bottom for me. I couldn’t let my mind take me back to the basement of our team house, to the drunken night when we’d talked about soulmates, and I realized with unshakable clarity that he was mine.
For all the good it did me.
