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“Was this your plan all along, Alissa?” Leon’s quiet voice seethed, and my head came up with a deep frown. “You hated me that fucking much?”
The room blurred; my pulse frantic under my skin as my head shook. “No,” I denied. “I—”
A loud snort interrupted my words, and I shook my head harder, my heart breaking as everything inside of me screamed in anguish at the sight of tears sparkling in Leon’s eyes. It shattered me into a million shards of stone cold, fucking ice.
“I’m a fucking idiot.” He gave his head a shake, pushing a hand through his hair.
“I—I’m sorry,” I gasped on a strangled breath.
His eyes slammed right into mine. Hard. Unforgiving. “No. I am.” He inhaled through flared nostrils. “Sorry I made it so easy for you to break my fucking heart.”
I flinched, and Riley’s fingers tightened around mine. I gripped with every ounce of strength I possessed, clinging for dear life, because she was the only thing keeping me standing.
Leon stalked past me and out the door. It rattled on its hinges with the force of the slam, the pictures on the walls shaking, and my eyes drifted closed.
“We need to get him to the hospital to get checked out,” Danny said quietly.
I nodded silently, breathing in a bid to contain the pain slowing filling me inside.
But it was stupid to even try. I couldn’t keep it out. I couldn’t keep Leon out.
And now the pain of loving him was going to bury me.
THIRTY-ONE
LISS
“What happened back there, babe?”
I frowned down at my entwined hands as Riley’s question filled the car. The lights from an approaching ambulance flared red and blue across my thighs, and I glanced up at Riley’s face, her expression radiating confusion and sadness.
“Why did you…?” Her words trailed off; her green eyes confounded as she blew out a breath of air.
I didn’t answer at first, diverting my gaze out the window, taking in the red emergency sign stretched across the width of the brick building we’d just vacated. Jackson’s face was pretty busted up, and he needed a couple of butterfly stitches to close a cut above his left eye. I’d managed to steal a second alone with him to apologize. To try to explain. He’d just nodded and looked away.
I pressed my fingernails into my thighs until the pain became too intense to bear, and then I looked back over at Riley.
“Liss,” she soothed, her brow pinched tight as she reached out and took my hand from my thigh. “What’s going on? Please talk to me. I know you. And I know how you felt about Leon. I know you didn’t do that without a good reason.”
I exhaled, my body folding with a bone-deep weariness I couldn’t hold in check any longer.
“My mom was diagnosed with young onset Alzheimer’s disease a couple of years ago,” I said with a weary sigh.
“What?” Riley breathed, eyes immediately welling as her head shook.
“I didn’t find out about it until New Year’s. She’s probably only got a few good years left before I lose her.”
Her hand tightened around mine.
“They think she got it from her dad. I never met him; he died before I was born. But I found out this morning that I might have inherited it from her. A family tradition.” I shrugged, blinking as I trained my gaze out the front windshield. I was sure I appeared calm on the outside, but my heart clenched, eyes squeezing closed as fear choked me and sped through every cell in my body. “She
’s forgotten so much already… little things that shouldn’t matter, but every single thing matters, because it’s all part of her. All part of what makes her who she is, and it’s all slipping away.” My throat tightened, a sensation like fingers wrapping around my neck and squeezing. Moisture pooled in my eyes as I continued, my voice barely carrying, “It’s only a matter of time before she forgets me. One of these days, she’ll look up and she won’t recognize me. She’ll look in the mirror, and she won’t know the person staring back at her. She’ll be here, but she won’t be. An empty shell. And one day…” I broke off on a quiet sob. “One day that might be me, too.”
“Liss—” Riley’s tear-soaked voice barely formed my name as her hands encased mine and held on tight. “I don’t—” She tried again, stopping when her voice cracked.
Everything around me distorted, my head spinning as nausea climbed up my throat. It felt like the inside of the car grew smaller. I pulled my hand from Riley’s and swiped it over my face. It was too much. It was all just too much.
When it came to an end, my life could be narrowed down to a series of losses. People who left me, people who were stolen from me, and people I had to push away. And I should have been fucking prepared for it. I would have been prepared for if people hadn’t fucking forced their way inside my heart.
