“Something certainly did,” Julian answers.
Fuck. Is he truly that messed up? I guess I should have expected it. Between the way he freaked out when I didn’t call him and how he said onlyIcan make the sadness retreat, I figure he grew pretty dependent on me.
And that would typically make me feel like a god, larger than life, but it’s falling short this time. All it’s doing is serving as a reminder that I can’t be those things anymore. That he is stuckremembering the safety in them, only to drown in the betrayal that followed it.
“There’s nothing I can do now,” I finally reply, looking between the four men in front of me with a hint of vulnerability.
“There is always something you can do,” Cameron insists, and it’s the first thing he’s said since they walked in.
“He hates me.” As I say it, it’s a steel blade to my heart. A truly miserable punishment that I most definitely deserve.
“I thought that once, too,” Julian tells me softly. “But he didn’t. He was just hurt and scared. Landon may appear tough and unbreakable, but at his core, he’s as emotional as the rest of us.”
I don’t mention that I’m definitely not included in thatrest of usstatement. Mostly because Julian is right, and I’ve seen the emotional side of him. I saw it when I hurt his feelings during the weekend of Atlas’s party, and I saw it as he had his gift ripped away.
No one here understands the depths to which my betrayal runs. Not a single one of these people can see that if Landon were to hate anyone, it would be me.
“I’m not sure what you want me to say,” I admit. “Yeah, I hurt him. Yes, I regret it. But so is the way of life, and I can’t spend forever dwelling over it and remembering—”
I cut myself off, unable to portray the agony in his screams. The way he completely crumbled.
My goal was to destroy him, to dismantle him. I succeeded. Case closed.
“Do you love him?” Atlas asks.
“The fuck?” My head snaps up, meeting his gaze with an angered shock.
“Watch it,” Atticus sneers, glaring at me from across the room.
“I just meant, do you want him back?” Atlas clarifies.
“Clearly, love is a sensitive topic for him,” Julian mutters to his boyfriend.
“It doesn’t matter if I do,” I insist. “I won’t chase somebody who wants nothing to do with me. I won’t demand he see me if the sight of my face makes him sick.”
And that’s the reality, isn’t it? Landon is infuriating and annoying, but if I thought for a single moment that he’d forgive me, I would chase him.
I’d find it somewhere inside of myself to admit my feelings. I’d do anything.
“So you’ll give up then?” Atticus asks, and I can hear the judgment in his tone.
“No, I—”
“That’s exactly what this is, isn’t it?” he continues. “Deciding how he feels for yourself and taking the easy way out?”
Atticus is being a brat. He’s doing that little trick of his where he pushes you until you explode, and I’m genuinely falling for it.
“I’m not taking the easy way out, Young Master Atticus. I’m simply respecting his request not to bother him.”
“He asked you to do that? To leave him alone?” Atlas asks.
“Well, he said… he said goodbye. To have a terrible life,” I confess.
Sitting here, confessing secrets with a bunch of guys in their twenties feels weird, if not a little degrading.
“So hedidn’tsay you couldn’t contact him?” Julian questions, and I blink at him in confusion.
Is that not what“Goodbye. Have a terrible life!”means?
