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His sharp, “Fuck you, Emerson,” still came as a shock. “Or Bentley? Am I supposed to call you that now?”
“I hadn’t thought you would call me anything.”
He shook his head, his gaze meeting mine. The anger and disappointment I saw there stole my breath. “No, you wouldn’t, would ya? That’s why you told me, after all. You didn’t have the balls to acknowledge somethin’ changed last weekend. Hell, the weekend before that one too. You couldn’t handle that I’m more to you than some man you fuck and pay for it, even if it’s only as a friend. You gave me shit last Friday, made me feel guilty for wonderin’ if things could change, made it seem like I didn’t know my dick from my heart when you were confusin’ the two yourself. And instead of talkin’ to me about it, you sent me that bullshit text and tried to chase me away with your past. And seriously, fuck you for not admitting that in person.” He lifted his arm and pointed at me. “You should’ve told me! I shouldn’t have had to read that shit online and let my mind wander, let all sorts of thoughts creep into my head. But then, you probably did that on purpose too. The more you could do to push me away, the better.”
“I—”
“No. I ain’t done with you yet. I’m madder than a mule chewing on bumblebees.” He stomped his way up the porch stairs, flung the screen door open so hard, it hit the side of the house, then went inside.
He’s here. He didn’t abandon me.
He deserves more.
I followed Sam in. If I thought he’d been pissed off last weekend, it had nothing on what I was seeing in him today. “You shouldn’t be here.”
He looked at me like I was an annoying child who kept getting into trouble for doing the same thing. “You don’t get to tell me where I should and shouldn’t be. Also, wouldn’t you just like that? You could pretend you’re okay bein’ alone, that you don’t enjoy havin’ someone around; just keep feeling sorry for yourself until you’re well and good alone. That would make it a whole lot easier to tell yourself no one wants you. Self-fulfilling prophecy or whatever.”
“Because I deserve to be alone!” burst from my chest, through my mouth, a dragon spitting fire. “He was alone when he died! I was out that night, trying to secure a fucking client! Trying to get more and more because it was never fucking enough! It was all I cared about. I put my success before everything, including him! We fought, and I left. And then I came home and slept on the couch so I wouldn’t wake him just for us to fight again, and he was alone! He was in there dying all by himself, and all I thought about was myself. What if I could have helped him? What if I could have saved him? What if I could have at least held him so he didn’t die alone!”
I couldn’t see. Why the fuck couldn’t I see? The world was blurry, like I was swimming with my lids open beneath the water. It wasn’t until I rubbed my eyes, trying to clear my vision, that I felt the wetness on my face and realized I was crying. Pain shot through my chest, a bullet ricocheting inside me, devastating my heart.
“All he wanted was me. And I couldn’t give him that, not really. I couldn’t give him my time. I couldn’t marry him. I couldn’t love him the way he needed to be loved because I was too busy trying to prove myself, trying to feel worthy of…life, and in that, I might as well have killed him myself.”
I didn’t know how it happened. One moment I was standing, the next I’d crumpled to the floor. The wood was hard beneath me, but then there was something soft too, flesh, the heat of another person, a pulse beating against me, breath caressing my skin, strong arms, and Sam whispered, “Shh. I’m here. I gotcha. You’re not alone.”
Didn’t he understand that I should be? That I deserved to be? That I would only hurt and disappoint him the way I’d done with Daniel? That something about me broke the people who cared about me?
Still, I didn’t pull away from him. My hand fisted in Sam’s shirt, and I tugged him close, tried to climb inside him, to tuck myself in the depths of him so he couldn’t leave me and I couldn’t leave him because I was so fucking tired of being alone.
I buried my face in his neck. Breathed him in. Felt alive because he gave me that, didn’t he? These few weeks were the first time I’d felt alive in years, maybe ever. In some ways, I didn’t feel like Bentley anymore. Part of him had died when he left Texas, and the rest had gone up in flames when Daniel died.
