AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He rests his temple against the door, looking up at me through his lashes. His answer is in his silence. I wince because it hurts, the knowing without knowing.
“I should…” He nods down the hallway.
“Listen, Lake,” I start, walking towards him. He stiffens against the door, so I stop, staying in place. “I know today was”—I pause, searching for the words—“heavy and hard. But you must know, I'm here to—”
“I can't work with you anymore, Dylan,” he interrupts.
His words force me to suck in a breath, feeling the hit directly in my gut. I haven't even taken my purse off my shoulder from meeting his mother and he's already ending things.
I thought I knew what it was like to have your heart break. The pain of losing yourself to someone, only to have it thrown in your face. But nothing compares to the pain of the person you've reluctantly opened yourself to in the most intimate ways becoming the coldest version of themselves before you, especially when you know it's not really them.
“What do you mean?”
“Dr. Shelby talked to Coach. They are setting me up with a new therapist to finish up my therapy on Monday.”
I can barely hear anything amid the loud pounding of my heart echoing inside my head. This wasn’t just about his mom. No, he’d been sitting on this all day.
“I knew it. You lied to me earlier.” I choke out.
He runs a hand along the back of his neck.
“I didn't want to—”
“Ruin the day. I get it,” I say, rolling my lips into my mouth and biting down, attempting to take this pain away.
I take a deep breath, trying to make sense of this. I'm a fish out of water, and the inability to breathe on this side of the lake is nearly impossible.
“So I get fired, and you get a new therapist. That's that, huh?”
“I'm sorry, Dylan,” he says, shaking his head with what sounds like no sorrow whatsoever.
I simply stare at him.
There's no explanation. No,let's figure this out together. No,we can still find a way to be together. No,however I can get you. None of that. Just I'm sorry, and that's it.
He's not acting like himself, looking at me with that tortured, pained expression as if I’m the one who did him wrong.
“How can you do this?” I ask. “How can you just leave us like you don't care at all?” I fight the urge to yell, but lose it as I continue. “You're different, Lake! You said you'd take me any way you could get me! You told me what you wouldn't do was let me go! You made promises!”
He swallows, running his hand along his jawline as his forehead creases, unable to look at me.
“I have to step away, Dylan.” His voice cracks at that, and for a second, I think maybe he does have a heart in there. “My focus hasn't been where it should be. I need to keep my attention on getting back to what I do best, and you need to focus on your career and Colin. I think we can both agree, this just...got too messy.”
He’s saying things he doesn’t mean.
“Messy,” I breathe out in disbelief.
He turns and walks out into the hallway, where he paces for a second. I'm just stuck where I am. Stunned.
“I-I'm sorry,” he says one last time before he turns and walks away.
Standing there with nothing but confusion and hurt wrecking me, I fight the urge to cry. After everything we've fought through, how we've opened up—this is how it ends?
I make the decision without even thinking, tossing my purse from around my shoulders onto the couch, and run after him. He's just walked into the stairwell, so I catch the door before it closes and call out to him.
“Lake, wait!” I jog down the few cement stairs, my eyes already brimming with tears about to fall, and catch up to where he stills on the landing, his back to me. I grab him, twisting him around to face me. He's got red eyes that look as if tears were freshly wiped away.
“I know you're not doing this because you want to,” I choke out, tears falling freely down my cheeks. “There's more to it than that. There has to be. There's something you aren't telling me. I know what you're doing. You don't want to walk away. Tell me you don't want to walk away,” I sob.
