“Eli cheated on me. Multiple times. Which you know.”
His eyebrows raise, and I see a new side of Cade. The one that wants to hurt me because he’s hurt. “Look, I don’t know what you two had. What was between you two. Maybe the cheating was just some great interlude that brought you two back together, even stronger.”
My eyes sting, but my throat burns. “What are you saying right now? Cade, I am withyou.” I touch my chest, over my heart. “I love you. I don’t love him. I’m not with him. You… you cannot be serious right now.”
Now his glasses actually slip a little down the bridge of his nose, but he doesn’t nudge them up. His nostrils flare, and his lips thin, and hurt Cade is breaking my goddamn heart. “Oh that’s right, I can’t possibly understand my feelings because I haven’t slept with a bunch of other people before, right?”
I shake my head, even though inside, it’s spinning out of control. This is getting out of hand, so fucking fast. “I’m not trying to devalue your feelings, I promise. All I’m saying is that I wanted to spare your feelings until you were… stronger.”
“Stronger,” he repeats, but he says the word like it’s sharp and hurts his mouth. Hurts him. Fuck, I’m not saying anything right.
Maybe I don’t deserve him.
But fuck if I’m letting him go.
“Baby, I’m sorry about all of this tonight.” I let out a breath but feel no relief. His eyes are so serious, his face so sallow and pale.
“I think you’re better off with someone more suited to your speed.” He tries to smile, and I want to throw up that he’s trying to soften this raw, painful, sharp moment. It’s our moment, damn it. I don’t want him to force a fucking smile. I want him to fight for us. To not give up. To not be too scared to want me more than he’s scared. “I think it’s over with us. It has to be.”
His breath hitches, eyes glassy with unshed emotion. The hallway feels too fucking small but also too exposed, yet perfectly intimate for this agonizing little reckoning we’re having.
“Eli is the past,” I continue slowly, my voice raw and every bit desperate. “His chapter closed a long time ago, long before you let me in. We shared years together, good and bad. But tonight? It’s because we’re here, with Dr. Pratt and everyone else. Yes, I smiled at him. I wore my suit and played the part of a colleague, for my career, for the department, for the symposium. It's an obligation,” I explain, grabbing his wrists, trying to haul him into me. He’s suddenly a wall of immoveable muscle. “But the way I look at you, I adore you.”
He shakes free of me, like I’m something sticking to his suit, like lint or a virus. And I gasp.
Audibly. A terrible, awful noise jerks free from my throat and lands between us, and now I really do feel sticky. Like a virus. Because he edges around me, walking away from me and that broken noise I made.
Cade walks down the hall without looking back.
And I only have myself to blame.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
CADE
The silenceI’ve wrapped myself in for the last five days at first felt good, like a buffer or warm blanket protecting me from a stinging cold. One that kept me insulated or isolated, depending on how you look at it. But that cozy feeling lasted less than one full day and now? Day five? The silence feels like I’m living in a coffin. One I built around myself.
I miss him so fucking much that my bones actually ache. I wake up in the morning with a deep throb running through me,soul deep, and I can’t drink enough water, or take enough Advil. The ache doesn’t go away because it’s the absence of something so great, it’s irreplaceable.
I haven’t stepped foot in our office since the symposium. Haven’t answered Noah’s calls. Haven’t done much of anything except haunt my house like a ghost, if ghostscould take the form of depressed slugs that eat from cartons and keep the lights low. And cry. A lot.
I ignore his calls and messages.
I sit on my couch, the same one where we graded papers side by side, where his legs draped over my lap and his deep, sexy laughter filled the air.
I thought maybe… I don’t know. That we were permanent? That sounds so stupid now. We aren’t fucking markers.
I grab a pillow and press my face into it, inhaling deeply and yes, a little pathetically. The pillow still carries the faint trace of him—his warm and woody scent that makes my chest physically throb with longing every time I breathe it in too deeply.
Rain lashes the windows, a slow and steady drumming that echoes the storm in my head. Humidity nudges the glass, turning the world outside into a Gaussian blur. Inside, my thoughts are sharper, much more definitive.
You’re too inexperienced. Too broken. Too late.
Eli—Dr. Eli Morton—keeps resurfacing in my mind, a chapter I woefully can’t quit rereading. The way he sauntered across that stage and named Noah. Called Noah out by name.My boyfriend.
Or was my boyfriend.
