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“I…” I dipped my head back and groaned. “I have to. Your dad wants me back at the office.”
“But…” She paused and glanced around the room. “What about…what about us?”
I wasn’t sure how to word it. I didn’t know how to tell her that there couldn’t be an us. She was the last person in this world that I wanted to hurt, but we couldn’t be together. There were too many barriers in our way. My boss was her dad. She was twenty-two years younger than me. And she’d always be in danger. You couldn’t have a weakness when you worked undercover, and that was what Belle was. She was the weakness people would target, and I wouldn’t allow that to happen.
“There is no us,” I ground out, trying to put on a front, and from the way she grabbed her stomach, I knew she felt it in her gut. “There can never be an us, Belle. Look at what’s happened. Look at what we caused.”
“But that wasn’t our fault. We didn’t—”
“No.” I stepped toward her door. “We’re better off ending it now before it gets too complicated.” My back was to her as I placed my palm on the door handle, and the breath whooshed out of me as she slammed her body against mine and wrapped her arms around me.
“Please don’t, Ford.” Her voice cracked on each word. “Please don’t leave me.”
A lump formed in my throat, one I wasn’t sure would ever disappear. She was causing cracks in the mask I’d slipped on. “Let go, Belle.”
“No.” She held on tighter. “This isn’t how this ends. It can’t be, not after everything.”
I placed my hand over hers, giving myself one second to remember the way her skin felt against my palm, and then I pried her hands off me. I turned around and stepped her back a couple of feet. “It is,” I told her. “This is the end for us.” Her beautiful face contorted into something I couldn’t look at. I wouldn’t stand here while she broke apart, because I didn’t have the energy to walk away when all I wanted to do was fix her.
“It’s for the best.”
I pulled open the door, intent on walking out, but paused as she shouted, “I love you!” My body jerked, my entire being floating outside of my skin. “I love you, Ford. I love you. I love you. Please don’t leave. Not yet. Please.”
I turned my head to look at her and gave her a sad smile. “I have to leave now, Baby Belle. Because if I don’t, I never will.”
“Please,” she begged, and I almost gave in. I almost spun back around and reached for her.
But I couldn’t.
I was protecting her. She wouldn’t understand that right now, but she would eventually. She’d soon realize that with me around, she’d never be safe. She’d always be in danger. I stared at her for another second, then walked out of her room and shut the door behind me.
I leaned my back against the flimsy wood, hearing her cries coming from the other side, and whispered, “I love you, too.”
* * *
BELLE
It was said that if you acted normal, eventually you’d become it. That if you pretended you were fine, you’d feel it after a while. But it had been three days, and I still felt just as broken as I had when Ford walked out of my door.
Logically, I knew he couldn’t stay. He had a job to do, and he hadn’t been home for over a year. But he wasn’t just going home. He was leaving me. The moment I’d stared into his eyes, I knew there was no going back to how we’d been. I knew that. But it didn’t mean I had to accept it.
I’d spent the entire day curled up o
n my bed, thinking about the losses I’d had in such a short amount of time. I was trying to process it all. I was trying to be an adult and not let it all get to me.
But it was getting to me.
I hadn’t been able to keep anything down. I was sick several times a day, and I was so tired, yet I couldn’t sleep. My body was refusing to work because my brain was broken. But nothing compared to the way my heart was bleeding out. It had been torn apart, ripped to shreds. And I had no idea how to fix it.
So I did what every other student on my floor did. I went to class. I did my work. I came home. I ordered takeout. I ate. I threw up. I lay on my bed. And then I repeated it. For three days, I’d been doing the same thing, walking around campus like a zombie and not talking to a single person.
My cell rang off the hook with calls from my mom and dad, but I didn’t answer a single one of them. I ignored everyone and anyone, simply because I didn’t have the energy to take anything else.
I walked with the fray of students down the hallway after my last class of the day. As soon as I was outside, I halted, taking in the sun as it beamed down on me. Spring was turning into summer, and usually, I’d have been excited to go to the pool with Stella or sit on the grass in the quad as we waited between classes.
But it was all gone now. Every good memory I had was destroyed with the image of that night.
Someone knocked into me, and I stumbled to the left. They turned and threw an apology over their shoulder, but I didn’t take any notice of it. I needed to get back into my dorm room and wait until I had to come outside again.
