She’s talking about breaking habits, but she’s breaking me. I had the touch of an angel again, and now the darkness is sucking her away, reminding me I don’t deserve such a bright light in my life. I want to speak, defend myself somehow. Though the distance and coldness between us tell me that whatever I say now is too late.
“You’re the only person in the world who can turn me upside down, the one guy who I can never shake.” I hear the tears in her voice, even if I can’t see them. “But this has to stop, because in the end, I know you’ll destroy me. I know this, because you have a power over me that no one has ever had. I feel so alive when I’m with you that it becomes addictive. I wait for your call, and then I hang on your every word. Why do I do this? Why do I need you so much?”
She’s asking these questions, but I don’t have any answers, because I need her the same. All I can do is feel like I’m free-falling into the shadows as she goes on, “I can’t let that happen again. I can’t let you send me into a place of darkness that takes me years to crawl my way back out of.” She pauses. Then, “When I do crawl out, I find myself in messy relationship after messy relationship, somehow trying to fix all these broken men, because, somehow, I think that if I do, I’m vindicated.”
I shut my eyes, the air is thin, missing the oxygen I need.
She sounds so done with me, so very final. I want to say something. I want to scream at her that she can’t push me away and I’m sorry and I’m falling without any net to catch me.
But the words don’t come.
“You never made me any promises,” she continues, voice softer now. “And you’ve given so very much to me. Without you, I wouldn’t be where I am right now. I wouldn’t have my confidence back. I wouldn’t have a job. I wouldn’t be in a better financial situation. I wouldn’t feel beautiful and sexy. And I don’t want to mess that up. I want to look at you and be thankful for all that you’ve done for me. But I know that means walking away now, because, today, I felt it.” The pain echoing through her voice shatters me. “I felt that same feeling I experienced all those years ago. It’s the emptiest, darkest feeling that I know I can’t free myself from. It’s scary and raw and so very dangerous, because it’s the darkest place in my soul that I can go. And only you can send me there.”
I’m shaking, vibrating with something inside that needs to be unleashed. And yet the punishment I’m sure I cannot survive continues.
“You do something to me,” she says gently. “You can bring me so high. Yet you bury me completely. And I know it’s because you astound me. Your confidence overwhelms me. I’ve never seen anything like it. You walk into a room and you own it. You never ask for anything, you take it. Your intensity sizzles across me in a way that I must absorb it. You take me to a place so addictive that I forget how combustible we are together. But today, I was reminded that we just can’t be. Not because we don’t love each other. I know you care deeply for me. But because I need more to survive than you can give me. And somehow when I’m with you, I become so desperate, like I’m clawing for the attention that you can’t give me. Then when I don’t get it, I spiral into a darkness that cripples me. That’s not your fault. It’s not mine either. It’s just simply a truth that lies between us.”
I’m empty standing there. I have no voice, no words to fix this.
“I love you, Darius,” she continues. “God knows I love you with all that I am. But today, in that second when I realized you purposely shut me out, instead of sharing whatever is going on with you”—her voice cracks—“I can’t go through that again. It makes me feel so weak. And that vulnerable woman I turn into is a woman I hate, because I feel so lost.”
I’m lost in the truth she’s laying at my feet, and I want to scream at her that I can fix this. That’s what I do: I fix. I can walk into any broken business and turn it around. I can overpower the most influential businessman. But with this woman, I am bare.
And I realize she doesn’t even know it when she adds, “I wouldn’t be where I am right now without you. I’m really, truly grateful to you, Darius. You will never know how much I appreciate everything you’ve done, but this, us, it has to end now.”
Why? screams in my mind.
She answers my unasked question, “Because I’ve realized you’re right—I deserve the world and it’s about damn time I go out and get it.”
I want to give you that world, my heart roars. And yet the words don’t come. I need to run. I can’t endure this anymore. When I turn to the door, my throat tightens and tightens more. Words I don’t know how to say won’t come out. I want to go to her and beg her to have me as I am, yet it feels like I have to cross the most dangerous ground to get there.
I hear her breath hitch, and I assume tears flood her cheeks when I open the front door and step into the hall. I shut the door behind me and press my back against the wood, somehow able to breathe again, yet feeling more empty than any other moment in my life, when the dinging of my secured phone snaps me into the present.
I grab it from my pocket on the second beep, finding a text from Ryder:
Memorize the lines that follow this text. Tomorrow, be ready at 0800 for a 4-way call. Meet at the pub at 0900.
Chapter 18
Darius
Wednesday morning, I arrive at Gabe’s pub right on time, exiting the backseat of my Jag, spotting Micah, Ryder, and Gabe waiting outside by the pub’s door. The sun is shining and its rays warm my face, but my mood is cold.
When I reach the group, Micah gives me a long, hard look, finally asking, “Have you even slept?”
“Not much,” I admit. It’s also not something I want to talk about either. I’m raw, and there’re wounds bleeding in places I didn’t know were ever cut. “Are you ready to do this?” I ask, focusing on a task that I know how to control.
Ryder examines me too, but keeps quiet on my appearance, and asks, “Ready?”
I nod, having memorized the entire conversation that Ryder had scripted for us.
He waits for Micah and Gabe’s nod before he says, “All right, let’s do this.”
After he opens the pub’s door, Micah enters first, then Gabe, and I follow behind Ryder, thinking of all the things I have to say. Today has a purpose, and that’s to get any remaining heat off Taylor and also to provide whoever is hunting us down with a new story. But at the same time, we have to ensure that we can easily prove the story false if need be.
Today, Gabe’s bartender McKenna is nowhere in sight, and I assume it’s because it’s so early. Too bad, I decide, settling into my seat at the round table. I could use a shot of something hard right about now, and I eye the bottles behind the bar from across the room.
Ryder takes the seat next to me, giving me a quizzical look. “Everything all right?”