“Emotional.” I huffed out a humourless laugh.
Standing up for myself didn't come as naturally to me as it did to most, and the man in front of me had used that to his advantage one time too many. He knew the things I'd witnessed in my own home. He knew the arguments I ran from daily and how I’d spent my life diffusing wars between my feuding parentsand being the ever-doting people pleaser to those I loved. Which was why him doing this to me after so long together hurt more than I cared to admit.
His betrayal turned out to be the final nail in my formerly weak-arse coffin.
I took a step closer to him until no room remained between us, my chin raised. “I'm not emotional, Rob… but I am done with you.” I searched his eyes, watching the scepticism shine back at me.
He didn't believe I had the strength to walk away. Not fromtheRob O'Connor, the guy everyone wanted a piece of around here, who had, for some reason, chosen good old dependable Phoebe Turner to climb into his bed every night for the last three years. He’d always been as handsome as he was charming, and the world fell at his feet whenever he demanded it to do so. For someone to defy him, to rebel against him, seemed a ludicrous notion to his self-absorbed, ridiculously spoilt ego.
“You don't know what you're saying,” he said softly, reaching up to brush some hair from my face, but I swatted him away like a nuisance fly.
“I know exactly what I’m saying. We’re over. Goodbye, Rob.”
On shaking legs, I turned to walk away, my heart beating wildly despite the way he'd just broken it so easily, but I didn't make it far before he gripped my upper arm and spun me back around to face him.
Big, green eyes stared down into my soul like they'd done so many times before when we'd been making love or spending the nights whiling away in his room, sharing secrets, stories, and our dreams of the future. When I stared back at him now, though, I no longer saw the man I'd spent three years—over one thousand days—with. All I saw was that photograph still fisted in his hand. The look on his face when he'd let another woman ride him.The thrill in his eyes, and how I hadn't been occupying a single thought in his head in that traitorous moment.
I’d been his safety net. She’d been his adventure.
I refused to be that for anyone anymore.
“If you walk out that door now, Phoebe, I swear to God, there's no running back to me once you've calmed down. There'll be nothing left of us once you've realised how irrational you're being. All you’ll have are the memories, because no one walks away from me and gets a second chance. You know that. You've always known it.”
“Rob,” I said calmly, leaning closer. “I don't even want the memories anymore, never mind you.”
The stunned look on his face could have won me an array of worldwide photography awards if I’d had the time to whip out my phone and capture it, but I needed no reminders of this coward’s face now. With nothing left to say, I tore my arm out of his grip and gave him one last lingering look of disgust before I walked away and never looked back.
I didn't let a single tear fall as I ran out of his home on feet that felt incapable of carrying me as far as I needed to go. I’d become so good at keeping my emotions in check over the years, of burying everything down and living my life according to the needs of others, I often worried I’d lost the ability to cry at all.
It wasn’t until I turned the corner at the end of his street and pulled out my phone that I let the reality of my life wash over me.
There were too many things going wrong now. So many uncertainties and what-ifs that made my future too foggy to see any kind of path or light up ahead. Rob had been my one constant, even with his faults, and now I didn’t even have him to lean on because he’d chosen himself over a life by my side.
With a thud, I let my back fall against the red-bricked wall of whatever building I stood outside of, and I sucked in a deep breath, only to let it all pour back out again a second later.“Breathe,” I told myself quietly, pulling the phone up in front of me again as I hit call on the name of the one person I needed more than ever right now and brought the phone to my ear.
“Phoebe?” my best friend answered in a panic. “How did it go? Do you need help burying the body?”
“Bailey, he...” I closed my eyes and let my head fall back against the brick. “I was right. He… He…”
“Oh, honey. You sound broken.”
“Not broken. Just… glitching right now.” I sighed heavily, the weight of everything pressing down on my chest, making me feel like I was suffocating.
“How did you get him to confess?”
“I didn’t need to. The evidence was pretty damning.”
“There’sevidence?”
“I’ll tell you later,” I forced out, unwilling to relive that raw moment right now while still trying to process what the hell had happened within the last thirty minutes.
“Okay. What can I do to help, then?”
With another exhale, I opened my eyes and glanced around the streets I’d grown up in, a foreigner now, trapped in a world that should have felt familiar but felt as alien as Rob. The world spun on its axis, and all I could think about was escaping—me, the twenty-three-year-old woman who never ventured outside of our little town of Matlock.
Now, I had no choice. I had to get away.
From him.
