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She jerked her arm away.
“You can’t hate me, it’s not in your nature,” I continued, ignoring the way she was trembling like she was going to explode all over me.
“I can, and I do. I wear the bracelet to remind me what a damn fool I was.” She reached for it, tugging at it until the clasp broke. “You push people away so you never have to feel their disappointment. You make it so people want to just give up on you altogether. I stuck by you, and you tore me apart and crumpled me in your hand like that damn clover…” She dumped the bracelet into my palm. “But even after that. Even after you wrecked me, I still loved you. And I needed that bracelet to remind me not to.”
She loved me…
“But not anymore. I don’t need reminding not to love such a cruel, wicked, reckless man who has no business being around good people.”
Ouch…
“Cait-”
“Get out of here, Aidan. I don’t want to see you again.” And with that, she pushed through the door of her apartment and left me standing in the snow.
The world rippled around me, shock waves threatening to push me over on my ass.
She loved me?
No one had ever said that to me before.
She loved me and I left her.
It was for her own good…
Loving me was a sure-fire way to get hurt.
I’d done the right thing. I was sure of it… I just wished it didn’t have to hurt so damn much.
Saying those things to her… making her out to be some delusional stalker, it had killed me, especially after what we’d done in the Hamptons. The words had tasted like acid on my tongue, and seeing her face crumple and the lights go out in her eyes… well it was about the worst thing I’d ever done.
But I did it so that they would be safer… so my father wouldn’t start a war. So Bree could have her best friend to herself when she needed her most. So Cait would have a safe and stable home because I wasn’t around to fuck it all up with my need for her.
I knew I couldn’t resist her. I knew I wasn’t strong enough to keep her at arm’s length, and I knew she’d have been taken from our family so fast our heads would have spun if the Cullen had suspected there was something between us, so I’d done what was best for all of them.
I’d done it for them.
It had worked, too. Cait had grown up. She’d gone to college. She’d had a good life. Dad was safe, Bree had not been caught up as a pawn in a war she didn’t start… it had worked.
I did the right thing.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Cait
Irushed up the stairs to my apartment, flinging the door open and slamming it shut with my back.
My heart was racing so fast it could probably have run against a thoroughbred and won.
I pressed my hand to my chest, struggling for breath.
My resolve to make him suffer had wavered as fast as it had come. I wasn’t strong enough. I couldn’t take this. He couldn’t be here… if he was planning on staying, I was going to have to move. I thought I could make him feel guilty, but Aidan didn’t care. He didn’t care that he’d ripped my heart from my chest and torn it up, and for years, it had been held together with band aid fantasies that one day he’d come home and beg for forgiveness. When it had become apparent that he wouldn’t, I’d done some running of my own.
I went anywhere and everywhere to avoid him. I let the sun-soaked beaches of Bali and blossom-bathed Paris and the indie rock scene in London and the food in Italy heal my heart, and then I’d locked it up for its own protection. I’d put myself back together and made a career out of running. My travel blog was extremely successful, but I’d avoided making any kind of attachment with anyone new, simply to avoid ever feeling the way he’d made me feel again.
My entire life had been shaped from that moment outside his bedroom door… and he didn’t care.
I could feel the fault lines that still lay beneath the surface of my heart trembling. Much more, and they’d split apart again and I wasn’t sure I could survive that. He’d only been back for less than a day and I was already so confused.
