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“You did! You walked into my office so confident you were going to have another night with me. You took a job so you could be with me. You signed on. So don’t give me your shit now that you’re all scared.”
Her breasts were rising and falling with her breath, her eyes bright and fierce. He’d never seen a more beautiful, terrifying thing in his life. She was going to ask things of him. Big things. He could feel it. And he knew he would let her down. Shit, he hated that he would let her down.
“Sure, that’s it,” he said, using every bit of nerve he had to turn and face her, stark naked, his mask firmly in place. He knew this mask. His Caleb mask. “It’s that I’m scared, baby, not that I’m just not that into you.”
“Fuck off,” she said, tugging her clothes on, a tear spilling down her cheek.
Dammit. This was that open emotion of hers. Didn’t she know what she was giving away? Exposed like this. Why was she doing it? Why could she do it?
Why the hell was he too afraid to do it?
“Nah, I think I’m done with the fucking, why don’t you get out.”
He watched her expression change, the color leeching from her face, like the blood had drained from her body. The funny thing was, he felt it in his chest, right where her hair had been, a slash of red over his heart. He felt it all bleed from him, as he saw it injuring her.
And he hated himself. But that was nothing new.
“Fine. Great. I’m out. Enjoy the tuna, asshole, it’s still sitting in the basket in the living room. And I bet the ice pack didn’t hold all night. Oh, and I finished the app, so I’ll just send it all on toFlirtand you can never darken my door again. If you left any crap at your cubicle it will be on the street waiting for you, or stolen and sold on Craigslist by the time you get there. It doesn’t really matter to me.” She held up both hands, middle fingers high, then turned and started to walk away, then stopped. “You know what’s stupid, Caleb? I just figured it out.”
“What?” he asked, feeling like his body was slowly turning to stone, his head, his face, too heavy for his neck.
“The feelings. I knew I had feelings for you, but I wasn’t sure what they were. But now…with all these feelings you’ve just given me with your complete dismissal of me, I know. I love you. I hope I don’t for much longer.” She stormed out of the room and slammed the door behind her. And he listened until he heard the front door slam behind her.
And he just stood, rigid, heavy. A statue. He wanted to crumble. To give in to the unbearable pressure that was threatening to break him apart. But he couldn’t. He just felt like his heart had turned into a hard lump of granite that was going to crack off the veins holding it in place and plummet through his chest cavity, blowing out all his other organs on the way down.
Which would be fine, really. Because it might mean a swifter death.
Which would just be pointless, because it wouldn’t bring Jill back. It wouldn’t fix anything. But then, him being here hardly did.
He didn’t know why he was thinking that way. But he wasn’t really sure why anything at the moment.
He’d looked it all up once. The thoughts he had. The desire to change places with his dead sister. Survivor’s guilt, they called it. Which was stupid because he hadn’t survived anything. He was just breathing still.
He’d gone from worthless asshole to greater worthless asshole because it had seemed like the thing to do. Because…because he didn’t know why.
Because it had seemed like the thing to do. Because he hadn’t known what else to do. If he could do anything else.
He did know one thing, though.
Evie was gone, and he didn’t want her to be. But he didn’t think he had the right to ask her to come back, either.
Chapter Ten
Heartbreak was the worst. It was worse than a cord wrapped around the wheel on your computer chair. Worse than a hangnail. Worse than when a fast food place put half a tub of mayonnaise on your hamburger.
This was what had been missing when Jason cheated on her. What had been missing when she’d ditched the man she’d shared her life with for ten years.
This was, apparently, love. Love blew chunks.
But at least she’d been right this time. At least she’d gone the whole hog. What did they say? It is better to have loved and lost than to be eaten by a velociraptor. Okay, maybe they didn’t say that, but being eaten by a velociraptor was about the only thing that sounded worse than what she was going through now.
Either way, at least she knew this was the real deal. Cold comfort when you were lying facedown on your desk on a Monday afternoon feeling like you were going to die of heart failure.
There was a soft knock on her door and Raj and Cassie appeared. “Evie…we brought you a burrito.”
“Thanks,” she said, “but I’m not hungry.”
“But it’s better than just a burrito,” Raj said. “It’s a unicorn.”
