Something dark flashed in his eyes, followed by a pain so real that I felt it keenly in my own chest. “If you hate me so much, why are you even here? Why did you even come?”
“Because I don’t hate you, Colt. I never have and I never could.” I slumped back in my chair, the wind snatched right out of my sails. “What I hate is your obsession with getting, and staying, out of Rockdale and the fact that it’s so overwhelming that you cannot comprehend how anyone else could want to stay there. You’re so obsessed with the world that you’ve never appreciated where you come from, but you’re right about one thing. I shouldn’t have come here. I thought there might be something here for me, but there isn’t, and so I’m leaving.”
“Go then,” he seethed quietly. “Leave. I’ll even book your fucking ticket back myself.”
“Thank you.” I got up, swallowing my pride and accepting his offer without argument because he’d brought me here. The least he could do was get me back home without it having to cost me an arm and a leg to get there. “I’m going to go pack now.”
Slinging my purse over my shoulder, I ducked my head and hid the tears that started flowing down my cheeks behind my hair. The walk back to the hotel seemed to take forever and absolutely no time at all at the same time. It was only once I got to our room that I realized he was only a few steps behind me, but we didn’t speak.
Not as I got my suitcase out of the top of the cupboard where we’d stored them. Not as I laid it open on the bed and started filling it with my things. Not as the shelves emptied or as I walked to the bathroom to pack my vanity bag.
In fact, not only did we not talk, he didn’t even stay in the room with me. Instead, he stormed out on the balcony almost immediately and stayed there, brooding and pacing around but ignoring me while I collected every trace of myself from the room and stashed it in my bags.
Now that I was sure that whatever had been between us was over, my anger slowly turned into sadness. Both of us had said some things we could never take back, but I was already wishing I could explain myself.
Explain that I knew that they hadn’t had a bottomless pit of money to live from. No one in our town ever had. Rockdale wasn’t a place where everyone was hurting, but it also wasn’t one where people left behind millions when they passed.
I wished I could explain that I knew he’d needed his sister as much as she’d needed him, and that, even if he had taken my parents up on their offer, eventually she would have gone to him anyway because he was her family and nothing and no one could ever replace that.
I wished I could explain that no one—myself included—had really expected him to defer. I was surprised to even find out that he’d tried. The scholarship he’d gotten had been a great one, and it would’ve been stupid of him to let it go.
I wished I could explain that I only thought he was entitled and selfish sometimes because he didn’t listen. He was always so busy formulating his counterargument that he didn’t hear what was being said. Didn’t consider anyone else’s point of view because he was so convinced that he was right.
Colt could be selfish and entitled in that sense, but in general, he was generous, caring, and so sweet that it could make my teeth hurt. He loved with his whole heart and he was fiercely protective of anyone who needed protecting.
All those things went unsaid, though. If I even started trying to explain, I would break down and that wouldn’t be good for either of us. We needed this to be over, for both our sakes, and while this break wasn’t clean, the cuts would heal faster if we didn’t keep scratching at them.
I put the lid of my suitcase down and zipped it up. Colt looked in from the balcony, saw that I was done, and came back inside. “Do you want any help with your bags?”
I shook my head, my voice quivering even after I cleared my throat. “No, thank you. Did you book the ticket?”
“I emailed it to you,” he said as he nodded once. Taking a step back, he cocked his head and looked straight into my eyes, searching for something he wouldn’t find. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I have to,” I replied without hesitation. As much as it broke my heart, I knew it was true. “There’s no other choice, Colt. This isn’t who I am.”
He sucked in a quiet breath but didn’t try to convince me to change my mind again. “Where does that leave us then?”
“Do you really have to ask?”
“No, but I do really need to hear it.”
Looking into those eyes, black as night now and seeming about as miserable as I felt, I gave him the words he needed, but each one shattered me to say out loud. “This is the end for us. We gave it our best shot, but we lead very different lives and we want very different things. I wish it wasn’t true, but it is. We just weren’t meant for each other, Colt Eldridge. I think we both know that now.”
It was like I saw him shutting down on me as I spoke. A sheet of ice went up behind his eyes and he simply nodded, not even hugging me when his phone chimed and it was time for me to leave.
“That’s your ride,” he said coolly, confirming my suspicion that the chime had been a notification signaling that my time with him had officially come to an end. “Goodbye, Emma.”
With that, he turned his back on me and strode out to the balcony again, bracing his hands on the metal railing and dipping his head down low between his shoulders. That was my last memory of him, standing there in his fancy charcoal slacks and stark white button-down shirt that stretched between his shoulder blades, not even attempting to look at me one last time before I left the room we’d shared.
When I climbed into the cab he’d gotten me, I finally let myself break down, stuttering an apology to the poor cabbie who’d probably just picked up the most awkward fare of his life. I hugged my arms across my torso as I cried, feeling like I was literally about to fall to pieces if I didn’t hold myself together.
Heavy, wracking sobs tore through me, and though I forced myself to regain some measure of composure when we reached the airport, I locked myself in a cubicle once I’d been through passport control and cried some more. The sobs came and went, but the tears were there to some extent or another all the way home.
Colt and I might not have been meant for each other after all, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. It didn’t make me love him any less. Even if we were like a square cube and a round ball trying to fit together, part of me would always miss him. Always want him. Always love him more than any other.
By the time I walked into my house on the other side of the ocean, the rage and the disappointment had long since vanished. All that remained was heartbreak, and I had a feeling that was going to be hanging around for a good long time.
That was the thing about a relationship simply not working out. There was nothing to hold against the other person. Nothing they had done you could cling to when you started wondering if you’d done the right thing. No memories that were so bad that you could look back on them and know exactly why you’d done what you had.