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“I’m serious. It takes a lot to leave that life behind.”
She shakes her head but doesn’t speak.
I wait her out. The woman has always loved to talk, and in the time I was working for the Blairs, she chattered on incessantly. I’ve wondered more than once if she did it to annoy me. What she doesn’t understand is I love the sound of her voice. I learn so many things about her when she opens her mouth.
“Leaving wasn’t hard,” she finally says. “Staying gone is the challenge.”
I hum in agreement.
“I should just leave St. Louis. There are hundreds of other places where it would be cheaper to live.”
Her eyes never leave her phone which means she doesn’t see the knife she just rammed into my chest.
“Leave?” She doesn’t look up. “What about me?”
Her head snaps up, her pretty mouth twisted in distaste.
“What about you? Why should I concern myself with you? You didn’t have any concern for me when you fucked me and left without a word.”
“You did the same to me last night,” I remind her.
Her eyes narrow, but she doesn’t justify her actions by speaking.
Fuck. I guess we’re doing this now. The confrontation back at the office when she first showed up in town replays in my head, but I was stunned by the sight of her, unable to say all the things I was feeling.
“I thought—” I clear my throat when a lump threatens to form. “—I thought I could get you out of my system.”
“Did it work?” She hisses as if she already knows the answer and is going to hate hearing it from my own lips.
Is she blind?
“No, because when I walked away, I left a part of myself behind.”
Her eyes search mine, and I don’t know what she sees or if she’s interpreting all the things I need her to know just from the look in my eyes.
“Get out.”
“What?”
Not exactly where I need things to go.
“Get. Out.”
“You’re not going to get rid of me, Remi.”
“Just don’t.” Her hands cover her face, but the emotion I need isn’t there. She’s pissed, not heartbroken. Anger is hard to console. “I don’t need your flowery words any more than I need you looking at me like you feel sorry for me.”
I don’t move a muscle as I sit here and debate the best way to approach this. She wrapped her arms around me as if on instinct when I lifted her earlier today. She buried her nose in my neck and breathed me in, her fingers clinging to my shirt like I was her savior. She may be angry now, but her first intuition was knowing I’d protect her from everything that threatens to do her harm.
“Remi.”
“Enough!” The roar of her voice startles me, causing my head to jolt back, skull smacking the wall behind me. “You wanna fuck? Is that what this is about? You want my body? Fine, you can have it. We can fuck, give each other mind-blowing orgasms, but this emotional shit isn’t part of the deal. The sex is good enough to override the shame I feel when it’s over, but you won’t get anything else from me. Being used and manipulated isn’t new for me, Flynn, but at least be open and honest about it. That I can live with.”
“That’s not what—”
“Get. Out.”
There’s no getting through to her when she’s this angry, so I collect my untouched plate of food from the floor and stand. Turning my back on her, even if it’s just to leave the room, guts me. She doesn’t see her value, doesn’t understand her worth, and the fucked-up part is I contributed to that. In her eyes, I used her, got what I wanted, took something valuable from her and walked away.
“You can stay as long as you want,” I whisper as I open the bedroom door. “A night, a month, the rest of your life.”
I don’t know how I manage to walk out of the room when she whimpers in pain.Chapter 36Remington
Crying isn’t a new discovery. I’ve shed tears my entire life, sometimes forcing them out for attention but more often, they fall because of disappointment in people, for disappointment in myself for not seeing bad intentions before it’s too late.
This evening, I can’t get them to stop. The front of my Paddy’s uniform top is soaked with my salty pain, my throat sore from sobbing for what seems like an eternity.
I cry for caring about him, for pushing him away when it seems he genuinely wants more from me than what I offered in anger. I cry for the little girl who grew up not knowing or experiencing what real care and affection were. I cry for the woman who feels like she doesn’t deserve love. I cry knowing that being on my own is just too hard, realizing that my parents were right to tell me that I’d never make it without them.
