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I, however, was not safe while breathing the same air as that man.
Walking out into the lot and heading for the back path, I was just about to walk past the garage when a firm grip grabbed my arm and pulled me to the side.
“Let go of me!”
Creed opened the garage door and pulled me in, closing it behind us. Then he stood firmly in front of my exit out.
“You’re pathetic,” I added, my heart racing but my rage for him overpowered my common sense because the fact that the roller doors could be opened had escaped me. “So, what, your plan is to lock me in the garage?”
“Seeing as you won’t have a real conversation with me, fucking oath I will.” He crossed his arms, his ripped muscles bludging—the tattoos on display that I once ran my fingers over. I could barely take in the new ink on his arms. All I could think of, over and over, was that he left. He fucking left. He never answered his phone. He never answered one of my million voice messages. He just left my life—completely.
“Holly—”
“Don’t Holly me!” My hands balled into fists at my side. “You got on that bloody bike and rode out. Not just out of town but out of my fucking life!” My frustration, my boiling red pain, flooded my body. “You never replied to a message, one of the many miss calls!” I scoffed. “Fuck, it wouldn’t even surprise me if you hadn’t even listened to the voice messages!”
So standing in a garage where Creed and I had spent most of our time together, I broke.
“Holly—”
“You nearly destroyed me,” I hissed, staring into his eyes, my voice cracking, and if he couldn’t hear my pain in those words, then he was as cold as I thought he was. “And now you want to have a conversation?” I scoffed, wiping tears off my cheeks. “Fuck, Creed, I can’t look at you—let alone talk to you—without wishing I had never let you in!”
When it came down to it, the anger I felt, the loathing—it was all directed at myself.
I felt my body trembling.
I felt my blood swirling with the cold truth.
I shook my head. “I take that back, Creed. You didn’tnearlydestroy me…”
I stared into his smouldering ash-grey eyes. My eyes filled with tears, then blinking, the tears ran down my cheeks. The months after he left now replayed in my head.
“Youdiddestroy me. But it wasn’t when you rode out, no—it was three months later.”
Was this what he wanted to hear? Was this the conversation he wanted? Well, it was the only one he was getting.
“It was when I was sitting in my father’s bar, feeling like a hollow mess. Not being allowed to be by myself. I had to be there.” I wiped my hands across my cheeks, inhaling sharply. “After I had spent the last three months praying to feel again, to want to live”—I took a step closer to him—“when a visiting club girl was boasting to Red that she had just locked down the VP of the North.”
I smiled, sickly, remembering how I felt at that moment.
“I listened to her go on and on about how much of a great guy he was. And how the sex was amazing.” I just continued to stare at him, feeling the hollowness I’d felt in those moments years ago flood me. “And that’s when I stopped praying for myself to feel something. That’s when I realised I wasn’t the one to be falling to my knees, praying. No.” I locked my gaze on him, the tears slowing. “After everything, Creed, I realised—youare the one that needs fucking help.”
He was staring at me, deadly silent.
I inhaled sharply.
“You are fucking toxic, and I doubt God can even save you from your ways.” I wiped the last tear away from my cheek and dropped my eyes. “I can barely control my monsters. The last thing I need is a toxic person giving them power and feeding them.”
My eyes flashed off the grease-stained concrete and back to him. Creed Winston. He didn’t have one emotion on his face.
“Do you want me to say I forgive you? Because I do, Creed.”
The rage I felt, it wasn’t under control, but I knew. Once I walked out that garage door, he wouldn’t want to have another conversation with me. This, right here, was it—the end of the line for him and me.
I let out a sigh. I felt exhausted.
That was when he did the last thing I would have expected. He took two steps towards me. My eyes flashed back to him.
There was nothing he could say that would undo how I felt back then, and now? No soft sweet words would smooth the damage.
