Page 7 of Heal Me, Love Me

I hadn’t.

I’d chosen fear, my reputation, and the version of myself everyone expected me to be. It wasn’t the same. Keaton hadn’t lied about me or let everyone believe the worst about me. But now I was the one waiting for him to choose me.

But standing there watching Devon kiss him, it felt like I couldn’t get past the fact that Keaton hadn’t pulled away.

He’d chosen someone else.

He didn’t need to yell or throw the past in my face. This was worse. He’d let me feel it instead, and the pain cut so deep it hurt to breathe.

I grabbed my fight bag and headed for the exit to the service area behind the arena. People were smoking near a barricade, talking loudly and laughing. A security guard glanced my way, probably because I looked half out of my mind, but he didn’t stop me.

I opened the rideshare app with shaky hands and requested a car. The driver was four minutes away, which felt too long. I paced the area by the back door until my reflection appeared in the dark glass of a parked SUV.

My hair was still a mess from changing too fast after the fight, and a faint bruise was forming near my cheekbone, but otherwise I looked annoyingly normal. No blood. No split lip. Nothing that showed my heart had just been cracked open.

Then I caught the blank look in my eyes and turned away before I kept staring.

A black sedan rolled into the service area a few minutes later, and I climbed into the back seat and leaned back against the headrest as we pulled away from the arena.

The driver glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “Rough night?”

I let out a humorless laugh. “Something like that.”

“You win?”

“Yeah.”

“Then it couldn’t have been that bad.”

“You’d think.” I stared out the window as the arena lights faded behind us.

By the time we reached the hotel, my thoughts had stopped making sense. Devon kissing him. Keaton not pulling away. The stupid hope I’d carried that maybe he’d forgiven me for what I’d done four years ago. I walked through the hotel lobby with my head down and headed straight for the elevators. A couple of women in sparkly dresses glanced at me, then quickly looked away. Getting punched in a cage didn’t bother me, and losing the fight wouldn’t have bothered me as much as Keaton ripping out my heart did.

Once I got to my room, I shoved the key card into the slot twice before the light finally turned green.

Inside, my duffel sat open on the luggage rack, with some of my stuff already tossed in from when I’d changed earlier. I stared at it for a second, then moved.

No thinking.

No slowing down.

No waiting for Keaton to show up and make me feel stupid all over again.

I shoved clothes into the bag, then my shaving kit, chargers, and anything else that was mine. My hands moved on autopilot, just as they had every time I packed for training, deployments, or another temporary place that never felt like home.

My phone vibrated on the bed, and I grabbed it to see Keaton had sent me a text:

Where are you?

I froze.

For a moment, everything in me wanted to answer, to ask him why, to tell him I’d seen him with Devon, and to hurl every ugly thought in my head at him until he felt even half as bad as I did. Instead, I stared at the message until the screen went dark.

No.

He didn’t get to kiss Devon, then ask where I was like he cared.

I zipped my bag and opened the airline app. Only a few flights were left, but one was headed to Sacramento with seats still available. It departed in a little over two hours.