She shook her head, and he had the impression that she may burst into tears. “No, but can you come in for a minute? We need to talk.”
He tucked his keys in his pocket. “Yeah, of course.”
She walked back into her living room and he followed, shutting the door behind him. She curled into the chair and tucked her knees to her chest. He had to stop himself from going over to her, picking her up and holding her. He’d never seen her look so miserable.
He sat on the couch. “Look, before you start, I just want to tell you, I am so sorry for being late. I got hung up and couldn’t get away. And I tried to call, but then I couldn’t reach you. And I feel like a dick.”
She looked up at him, her face emotionless. “We’ve got to end this.”
The words hit him like an anvil to the gut and halted his rambling. “Wait, what?”
Her eyes went watery, and she quickly swiped at her face with her sweatshirt-covered hands. “I’m sorry, Reid. But this—us—has to end.”
“Us?” His heart began to pound in his ears and panic edged in. Where the hell had this come from? “No. I don’t understand.”
She looked down, staring at the now damp sleeves of her shirt. “You knew this had an expiration date. We agreed to have a summer thing. Summer’s over. I’m leaving.”
He sat forward on the sofa, hope entering his voice. “But it doesn’t have to end. That’s what I was going to tell you tonight. There are ways we can work this out. I can go to Austin with you.”
Her head snapped up, her reddened eyes wide. “You want to move?”
He smiled. “Yeah, sugar. I want to be with you. Wherever that is.”
She shook her head, her tears returning. “No, you can’t.”
Screw the flu. He got off the couch and went to crouch in front of her chair, laying a tentative hand on her knee. “Baby, sure I can. I don’t know what the future holds. But all I know is I don’t want to let you go. Nothing is holding me here, and in Austin, we won’t even have to worry about anyone seeing us. We can just be together—wherever and whenever we want.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and stayed that way for a moment before taking a deep, shaky breath. Her voice came out flat. “There’s someone else, Reid. I have a boyfriend waiting for me in Austin. This was just supposed to be a fling. I love him.”
All sounds in the room suddenly seemed painfully loud. The ticking clock above the couch, the used car salesman on TV, the hum of the box fan on the other side of the room. His hand slipped off her knee, and he sank back onto his heels.
A lump the size of a grapefruit lodged in his throat. “There’s someone else? Why didn’t you tell me? Why—?”
“The same reason why you didn’t tell me about Vanessa.”
He sucked in a sharp breath. “It’s not like that, she’s not—”
“So that’s not who you were with tonight?” she asked, her voice more sad than angry.
His stunned silence gave her the answer.
“How long would it take for you to get tired of me? To want someone who fits into your life. We come from different worlds. This just wasn’t meant to be.” She rose from the chair and gave him one last lingering look before turning her back to him. “Please just go. I won’t be returning to work. I wish you the best, Reid.”
And with that, the only girl he’d ever loved walked out of his life.
Brynn locked herself in her bedroom and waited until she heard the front door close before crumpling into a ball on the floor, wishing she could shut her eyes and not wake up again. But every time her eyelids closed, the feel of the monster’s hands crawled over her skin, and images of Reid’s brokenhearted face tore through her.
There was no escape. No safe corner in her mind. Maybe never would be again.
So she cried and stared blankly at the peeling paint on the baseboards, letting the sobs wrack her abused body well into the night, until she was only a husk of the person she had been a few hours before. Until she felt dead inside.
SEVENTEEN
now
Brynn nestled deeper into the crook of Reid’s arm, the bed squeaking beneath her, and he ran his palm over her hair. She’d told him everything, dragged out the nasty innards of what had happened to her, and laid it out there unedited.
He’d listened to every word—shock, sympathy, and anger crossing his face at different intervals. But to his credit, even though she could tell he’d had questions, he’d held his tongue and had let her finish without interruption, as if sensing that if she’d paused, she wouldn’t have been able to get it all out.