“You want me? Take me.”
Dom stared at me, and the room stood frozen in time. The air opened, and the energy all around us pulsed … and waited.
It waited for what exactly our next move was going to be.
For once, I was ready to make mine.
“I can’t be some hidden secret you keep in Barnett while you get to live out your fantasy life with the house and the family. Because doing that isn’t mine. I won’t be an afterthought or a wish you have but don’t act on. I’m whole, and I am stunning, and I deserve it all. I deserve the love and the romance, and—dammit—if you can’t give that to me, I deserve to find it even if it means I have to let you go.”After all this time.
“What?” Dom’s voice cracked.
“Once and for all,” I croaked out, feeling the tears brim over my lashes, sliding down my cheeks. I didn’t flinch as I watched Dom step towards me to reach up and wipe them away.
“You do. You deserve all that and more,” he whispered.
I nodded. We both knew what we were saying. We’d been saying it in so many ways all along.
And I knew exactly how empty the bed would feel in the morning when I turned into the sheets that smelled of him and sobbed.
28
SUMMER
Icried for days after he left until summer nearly became fall.
He had left and left nothing behind. It was as if he had never existed at all, and my mind rebelled at the assertion. It wanted to believe that maybe it could’ve just been a dream. Long and winding and hot.
Eventually, however, my coven—so stubborn—made their way through the door.
Or at least, Lu did.
I had been half in bed, the rest of the apartment a complete disaster zone. I couldn’t bring myself to clean up. To do so would be to open the windows and clear out the air and, with it, the memories. Everything.
Because for a short time, he was everything to me.
I knew how dramatic it sounded, yet I couldn’t help the longing or the painful heartbreak that settled in my chest, as true as any knife.
The apartment was disgusting, truly. Yet Lu didn’t comment on any of it the moment she strutted through the door and slammed it behind her as loud as she did any other day she stopped by, which wasn’t exactly often, but often enough. She kicked off her black lace-up shoes and climbed into the mess of sheets that desperately needed to be washed, next to me.
“Ana, it’s been nearly three weeks.”
“I know how long it’s been,” I told her, my voice void and empty.
It wasn’t as if I wasn’t doing what I had to. I was going to work. I was doing what was necessary to make sure I didn’t end up on the floor or on the side of the road when all I wanted to do was sit down and cry on my walk home. I was even checking in with a text here or there so they would know I was still living my momentarily gross existence. They couldn’t ask me for much more.
Not Lu. Not even Faith, who had called me once the other day. Of course, she had ended up rambling the entire time, not letting me get a word in edgewise. Which, all in all, was fine. I didn’t have much to say, and it was nice to hear someone else’s voice other than my own and my clients’, trying to describe the perfect auburn brown they wanted—though half of them couldn’t pull it off.
Another thing I had kept my mouth shut about.
I shut my eyes as I rolled over.
Lu blinked at me, pressing her lips together. “At least you stopped crying.”
“It was never very much my look,” I mumbled.
“That’s when I knew it was bad.”
I snorted, though it wasn’t with much humor. “I’m just so angry.”
