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“I’m sorry,” I whisper one last time before stepping through the doorway.
Walking away from pain into pain.
Because that’s addiction.
A never-ending circle of pain and devastation.
If you have the object you crave, you hurt.
If you don’t, you hurt.
No—if you don’t, you shatter.
The pain is crippling.
I barely have time to climb into a taxi waiting outside before the tears stream down my cheeks. It feels like a cruel sense of déjà vu—except the memory of this moment isn’t mine. It’s my best friend’s.
She got in a taxi and drove away from the only man she ever loved.
I’m doing the same thing. Except this is my choice. I made the decision to walk away from the person I love more than I ever knew was possible.
The hotel is no different than the one I was in six hours ago, except this one has no Tyler. It just has me. It’s quiet. Too quiet. It doesn’t matter that I’ve slept since I got here. It just matters that it’s quiet. If you don’t count my tiny sniffles.
It seems like ages since I arrived at the airport, ready to jump on the next flight here, and was directed through first class to Tyler’s parents’ jet. It hasn’t been long, not at all, but that’s the funny thing about time. It never feels like a true representation of the seconds that tick by. It’s either slow or fast… Or standing still.
I cried the whole fucking way here. From the second I got on the plane, I let my broken heart consume me until I climbed into bed with nothing left but the bare shell of me.
Only from a shell can I grow, can I become the person I can need to be.
I get out to bed to grab my phone and climb back in. The picture on the screen stares at me. Me and him, happy and smiling in a goofy-as-hell selfie. I want to smile, but the image only invokes a fresh flood of tears.
Thank you.
I send the text to him, something so simple. I don’t know why he had the plane there ready for me. If I were him, I would have made me fucking walk. Hell, I should have walked.
When minutes pass with no reply from him, I rest my phone on the nightstand and pull the covers up to my chin. I’m aching everywhere. It’s dull but heavy, my heartbreak weighing on me everywhere.
Except my heart isn’t broken. Not entirely. It’s breaking slowly, every piece that chips off shattering and pulsing through my bloodstream.
My hotel door opens, and something in me tells me that I should be looking for who it is. But I don’t. I lie here, staring at the wall.
“Oh, baby.”
I drag my eyes away and they collide with Dayton’s. “What are you doing here?”
She walks over to the bed and perches next to me. “As soon as the plane arrived back in Santa Barbara, Tyler flew to Seattle.”
I swallow.
“Tyler drove straight to our place and told us everything. I was packed and out the door in ten minutes.” She pushes hair from my face. “Tessa is here, too. She’s getting nonalcoholic wine and ice cream.”
I try to smile but it fails. “You didn’t need to come.”
“Of course we did,” she replies as I sit up.
“Your party is tomorrow. I packed my smile especially for it.”
Her lips quirk. “Liv, I don’t give a shit about that. I care that you’re okay. You’re more important to me than some stupid wedding.”
