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I didn’t pause to think about what I was doing. To have a wistful look around the apartment that used to be Lucy’s, then Rosie’s after Lucy got her ever after, and then Rosie got hers too so it was mine.
I didn’t say happy ever after because despite what the world thought, I knew that endings, even the best ones—like what Rosie and Lucy got—they were never completely happy. Even when they involved love. Especially when they involved love.
I wasn’t getting my ever after, happy or otherwise. The world had taken care of that. But I couldn’t put my blame on the universe. No, the universe was not to blame for this.
It was me.
I didn’t pause as I walked toward the door.
Didn’t think about what I was doing.
I couldn’t.
Because then I’d falter.
Then I wouldn’t find myself at the airport.
I’d find myself at the door of the man I was running from.
And I couldn’t do that.
I’d done enough harm.
And he’d made it clear that we were done. That there were no more chances for us.
As it turned out when I opened my front door, the universe had other ideas.
I sucked in a harsh breath when I was confronted with Heath. He didn’t look like he was poised to knock before I’d opened the door. His hands were fists at his sides, his body rooted into the ground with such a force it was a surprise not to see chains on his ankles. Every inch of his body was taut.
His eyes were marble as they rested on me. Then they flared when they focused on my back. More accurately, what was on it.
“Going somewhere.” It wasn’t a question. It was an accusation.
I adjusted the pack on my back, suddenly it wasn’t heavy enough to distract me from the weight of the blame settling on my shoulders with Heath’s words, with his gaze, with his very presence.
I couldn’t answer. I wanted to. I needed to. I needed to paint a smile on my face, needed to inform him of this wonderful adventure that I was going on by choice. Not by force.
“You’re seriously fucking leaving?” he spat the words at me when silence had stretched on for too long between us.
I nodded once, still unable to say anything when everything I needed to say was clogging up my throat, my lungs.
More silence as his eyes turned cruel, hard and angry. It was familiar, since that was the way he’d stared at me since I’d announced I was marrying another man.
It wasn’t present on my wedding day, of course.
No, it disappeared that day to show the vulnerability underneath.
But then I’d stamped on that, shredded it like I shredded my own heart and that horrible empty gaze was now permanent.
Because. Of. Me.
“Jesus,” he muttered, shaking his head violently. Everything about him was violent now. It didn’t used to be. Not on a night that turned into a weekend that seemed like a thousand years ago. The night that started it all.
He had a little violence in him then. Staining his skin. In a way that might just wash off, if things changed. If he found peace instead of the war he’d committed to.
But now it wasn’t staining his skin. It was etched into his very soul. And I was adding to it. Because it seemed like every time we were in front of each other, there was another layer to his violence. Until it came with every movement, every glance, every breath.
And it was at its peak right now.
“You expect me to ask you to stay? To not let you leave?” he hissed. “To fuckin’ demand you to stop running from this shit because it’s evident whatever it is between us isn’t gonna let us go, despite how fuckin’ much I want it to?”
His words and the true frustration behind them hit me like bullets. It was a miracle I was still upright. Since I was expending all my energy just doing that, I didn’t have anything left inside me to speak.
“Is that what this is?” He nodded to the pack. “You runnin’ ‘cause you want me to chase you? Because I’m not gonna do that.”
He stepped out of the doorway, leaving it open to me.
“So if you leave, that’s it. That’s us. Finally fuckin’ over. Because I won’t chase you. I fuckin’ can’t. One of us has to stop this shit. And I gotta do it for my sanity. I won’t ask you to stay either. Because you do what you want, regardless of what I say. Of what I fuckin’ beg. We both know that. And I’m still fuckin’ standing here. It’s the last time I will be. So what are you gonna do, Little Girl?”
Something left his eyes when he uttered the last two words. Something that seeped into me. Tugged at all those frayed and torn threads in my soul. Teased me with a lie that maybe this could be fixed. Maybe like the two previous residents of this apartment, I might get an ever after.
