“You just want me to stay, Gunner.”
His hand runs through his mass of curls. Why is he so devastatingly beautiful? It’s really unfair.
“Everly.”
“Stop saying my name,” I yell.
A door opens and a neighbor sticks her head out.
“Get back inside,” Gunner says without looking.
I turn back and see he’s watching me intently.
“I don’t think I can do this. Thank you, Gunner. Have a good life.”
The minute I turn, the tears start. They fall hard and fast like a thundering waterfall gushing with force and ferocity.
My heart is breaking, tearing into shreds. I’m not sure how I’m putting one foot in front of the other. But I am. I am walking away from him. Hopefully leaving the love-drunk part of me behind.
I walk past the club where it all started. The place where I met him.
It’s where my story with him started, so I guess it is fitting it ends so close to it.
14
My blurry vision glances down at the beautiful ring that’s still on my finger. The ring I don’t want to take off. The ring that offered so much promise. What am I missing? I don’t understand.
I try to piece everything together. From meeting him to him finding out who I am. And nothing adds up. Does this ring mean anything? Or is it simply a gesture of something he was meant to do?
I thought he was different with me. He’s told me he’s never been like this with other women. So what should I think? People see how he is. Surely, that couldn’t be some sort of act. Or could it?
I finally arrive at my place and May’s standing out front. She smiles when she sees me. Somehow, through everything, I forgot we were meeting today after I finished visiting my parents.
I’m a shit friend.
May zooms in on me and automatically walks over, wrapping herself around me. “What’s wrong?” When she pulls back, I show her the ring on my finger. She yelps, loudly. “Am I meant to be happy or sad? Because, honestly, you don’t look all that happy, Ev.” She reaches out and covers my hand with hers as she looks up at me.
“He h-had it p-planned. It w-was all p-planned out.” I stutter the words leaving my mouth, and when I look back up, May looks just as confused as I feel.
“Well, that’s how proposals are meant to go. Now, you know I’m not the biggest fan of Gunner, but I will be for you.”
I shake my head at her words. “No. He was m-my a-arrangement,” I manage to gasp out through the tears that seem to be still falling. We haven’t moved inside but I realize we probably should because I’m making a spectacle of myself out here.
“I don’t understand. Your arrangement is who your father chooses for you, right? How’s that got anything to do with Gunner?”
“He didn’t tell me. He didn’t tell me that he was m-my arrangement.”
I notice the minute it all falls into place.
She looks down at the ring then back to me. “So, why are you wearing the ring?” she asks, a confused expression plastered all over her face.
“I didn’t know when he asked. I didn’t know.” I shake my head as a car pulls up and a door opens. I hear footsteps but don’t turn around as May steps in closer to me as if she is protecting me.
“I think you should leave,” May says in a stern voice.
“Everly,” he says my name and a piece of me crumbles immediately.
Why am I so weak around him?
Family tradition is everything, it’s what I grew up on. I was going to break that tradition for him. I was going to tell my father I wasn’t going to marry the man he chose for me because I fell in love with someone else.
Somehow, someway, that someone else is the man he chose anyway. So Father wins.
“She needs time, don’t you get that?”
“Everly,” he says my name again ignoring May.
I squeeze her hand, and she pulls me in the direction of the front door. Taking the keys from my hand, she opens it.
“I have a key, Everly.”
I ignore his words, heading inside, and just before the door shuts, he speaks again, “I’ll give you a day, then I’ll be back. Don’t run, Everly. You won’t like the outcome. I will find you.”
May shuts the door.
“Gosh, that dick is cocky.” She shakes her head. “And hot. Fuck! He’s so damn hot.” She laughs trying to lighten the mood. He is, but I don’t laugh. “Have you asked them? Your parents?”
I shake my head in answer to her questions and then say, “I couldn’t stay there.” I walk to my room, which smells of him, the bed a mess from the last time we were together only a few hours ago.
“This room smells of sex,” May says turning up her nose. “You can come to mine if you want.”