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Thirty One
“You know, this feels eerily familiar,”Reed says.
I glance over at him, narrowing my eyes. “What do you mean,familiar?”
He shrugs, taking another pull from his beer. “I mean, I’m pretty sure this is the same shit I did when Holland and I went through everything. Pretty sure I didn’t shower for a week and I survived on leftover burritos and beer.”
I grunt in response.
Three days have gone by that I’ve been camped out in Reed’s guest room, wallowing in misery. Three long, miserable, torturous days that I haven’t seen Olive… or Maddison.
Yet every waking moment I’ve thought of them both. Still so fucking angry and still so goddamn hurt that every time I close my eyes, all I feel is the pain.
Even Holland took pity on me and slid a pop-tart under the door. Evan even gave me his stuffed octopus, and it almost made me fucking cry.
I’m a goddamn mess.
And all of this has done nothing but dreg up the past, rearing its ugly head, beckoning me to give it another second of thought.To let it consume me, once again.
My brother. Conrad.
Two people who I trusted with fucking everything, literally every aspect of my life, who betrayed me. And then I think about how far I’ve come in the past three years, and how even though I’m a better man, I still feel so goddamn angry that I’ve found myself in a situation like this again.
Lied to by someone I love.
Betrayed by the person I trusted.
I stopped being angry at Beau a long time ago. More like I accepted the fact that because of his lies, and his betrayal, that we’d never have a relationship again. One, because I had no desire to, and two, because I could never trust him again.
But, lately? It’s been easier to think about forgiving him for fucking up because, in the end, he did me a favor. He helped me, even if it was in a shitty way, to realize that I never really loved my ex. Not by a long shot. She was never who I was meant to be with and we had fooled ourselves into believing that what we had was real.
All Beau did was wake me up and force me to realize that I wasn’t happy, I was just… breathing and not really living.
It took falling from grace to realize how much more there is to life than partying and wasting my time with someone who was never meant for me.
He led me to Maddison and Olive.
And, well, Conrad… He’s just an asshole and letting him go was the best thing I ever did. I couldn’t have someone with such shitty morals and standards on my team, and even though I still want to punch him in the dick for what he did, I’m glad that what happened in the dark came out in the light.
But still, fuck him.
I couldn’t take another day away from Olive, so tomorrow morning, Maddison and I will be meeting up, so I can see her. I went to Reed’s to give us both the space we needed, even though she chose to stay with Ty and Kyle.
The truth is, I couldn’t imagine coming home to an empty house where every corner I turned reminded me of my girls.
My girls.
Olive will always be my girl, no matter what happens. She’s the reason that I wake up each morning and breathe. She's the reason I want to be a better man, to make her proud, to be the kind of dad that stands on the sidelines and cheers his baby girl on in whatever she decided to do. The kind of dad that stands by her side, no matter what.
I want to be better, better forher.
“Fuck, I just hate this man,” I say, “I feel… empty.”
Reed nods. “I know. Kinda feels like your heart is living outside your chest, huh?”
It does, and I hate it. I hate missing them, I hate being apart from them. It doesn’t feel right.
Even though I’m hurt and angry, I hate that I’m still so fucking in love with her that I can’t see straight.
