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It's all I can do just to blink at him. To hold my hands against my chest and try to stop them from shaking.
I watch as he tears at the darkness of his hair, pacing from one side of the room to the other. Every word out of his mouth is a curse—mainly aimed at himself, but some at me too.
What changed?
One moment, he was kissing me like his heart would stop beating if he didn't and the next, he's doing...whatever this is.
“Did I do something wrong?” I whisper.
Wild eyes turn to glare at me and I see the answer to my question straight away.
I did do something wrong.
But it wasn't anything I did tonight. It was what I did six years ago. When I left him with no explanation. When I broke his heart for no reason.
Except, I know that there was a reason. The memory of it lives inside of me like a chronic, incurable disease. But I can't make myself tell him. I'm not sure I'd even be able to get the words out if I tried and then afterward? When he looks at me with vile disgust for touching another man, for being unfaithful to him when he'd only ever had eyes for me…I wouldn't survive it.
He doesn't answer me.
Wordlessly, he leaves the room. Then, seconds later, I hear the sound of the front door closing. It's not dramatic, his exit. He doesn't even slam the door.
He didn't need to.
Everything he wanted to tell me was there in the look he gave me right before he left. Every emotion he wanted to convey, every razor-sharp blade of anger. I saw it all.
And god,oh god,does it hurt.
* * *
“Wait, so he kissed you and then he just left?” Leighton asks, dropping a fourth sugar cube into her latte and stirring.
It's been less than twelve hours since Cole gave me the best kiss of my whole life and the pain of watching him leave hasn't eased at all. I might appreciate the irony of the situation if my heart didn't feel like it was splintering.
“Yeah, pretty much.”
She whistles lowly. “Damn, girl.”
I stare sorrowfully out the window of Sadie's Place, my hands wrapped around an enormous cup of black coffee. “You should have seen him, Leigh. It was like he hated me.”
“I don't mean to be a bitch, babe, but he kinda does.” She winces at the harshness of her own words. “I thought you already knew that.”
“I guess. I just thought...” I trail off. “I don't know what I thought.”
Leighton eyes me with sympathy, then reaches out to hold my wrist. “I don't think he hates you in the way people usually hate someone.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Let me fucking finish. Sheesh.” She sighs, then continues, “What I mean is, I don't think he hates you in the sense that he dislikes you. I think he hates the way you made him feel when you skipped town. And I'm guessing he hates that he can't keep himself away from you, even though you hurt him.”
“You really think he can't keep himself away from me?”
She rolls her eyes. “You know he can't. The reason we're even having this conversation is because he kissed you, right?” I nod. “See? He hates you because he can't resist your Hollywood ginger ass.”
I laugh. “Thanks, but for the record, I didn't 'skip' town.”
“I know that,” she says. “But Cole doesn't.”
The last time we were here, when she'd asked me if it was my daddy I'd been talking about during the conversation with Sadie, I'd told her everything. Just standing there, on the paved streets of downtown Tupelo, I'd spilled my darkest secret to my oldest friend.
