“It’s not the car, Carson. It’s everything else. I mean, just the fact that I’m seven years older than you should’ve been enough of a deterrent. We’re not good for each other.” She sinks down to sit on the bed with her head in her hands. Her shoulders shake as her muffled sobs echo throughout the room.
Closing the distance between us, I fall to my knees in front of her, begging her to tell me what happened to change her mind. “We’re so good together, Austen. Please tell me why you’re really doing this. What happened?”
Taking a shaky breath, she looks up at me through tear stricken eyes and says, “You’ve got to let me go, Carson. I have to do this. Please. If you love me, you have to let me go.”
My chest cracks down the center as my heart spills out and falls to her feet. This isn’t how it’s meant to end—it was never meant to end at all. I’m not supposed to lose the girl of my dreams for a reason I don’t even know.
But the thing is, I do love her. I love Dakota so fucking much, I have no choice but to let the love of my life walk away. My stomach churns as tears cascade down my cheeks.
Closing my eyes, I drop my head and attempt to plead with her one last time. “Tell me this isn’t real, Austen. Tell me this is just another nightmare that I’ll wake up from with you in my arms right where you belong,” I croak.
With shaky fingers, Dakota cups my face in her hands. “Look at me,” she whispers, and when I do, I can’t help but wipe the tears streaming down her cheeks over the bow of her upper lip.
Bringing her forehead to rest against mine, she murmurs, “I am not being cliché or lying when I tell you, it’s not you, it’s me. This is my problem, and I just need time to figure this out, Carson. I promise you I will fix this.”
She kisses my forehead and I can’t stop the quivering of my chin or the whimper that escapes realizing this could be the last time I touch her like this intimately.
“I thought we were a team. I thought you loved me,” I say as I stand on unsteady legs.
“I’ll never stop loving you,” she sobs as she stands as well. “I just need to go, Carson. Let me go.”
So I do.
I stand by as she gathers her bags before heading downstairs. And when she closes the front door behind her, I sink to the floor of the entryway, wondering if I’ll ever experience agony more crushing than this.
With what little strength I have left in my limbs, I pull my phone from my pocket and dial the only other person besides Dakota I’d allow to see me like this.
“Hello?” she answers.
“I need you,” I choke out.
“I’ll be right there,” she reassures.
My chest squeezes with a debilitating ache, and my head has already brought me under by the time McKenna opens my front door and finds me lying on the floor.
“I’m here,” she says, rubbing my back as I struggle to take air into my lungs.
When she sits me up and encourages me to lean my head between my knees, I can’t help but wonder what the point of it all even is.
“She’s gone,” I gasp between panted breaths, my chest heaves and cracks open all over again.
McKenna doesn’t say anything, she just holds me in her arms and remains the one constant I have in this life.
31
October
My favorite holiday has officially been ruined.
I should be ecstatic that Mack agreed to my costume idea for the third year in a row. Cadence, as usual, looks adorable dressed as Tinker Bell, while Griff and Mack hold her up dressed as Peter Pan and Wendy. I’m in a Captain Hook costume, but I feel more like one of the lost boys.
Dakota left for Texas three weeks ago, and I haven’t heard from her other than a few texts letting me know she had arrived safely. She drove Carol down there, refusing to take the car Brody and I got her.
I’ve kept in touch with Brody these past few weeks, and from what he tells me, his mom says Dakota is just as devastated as I am. So I can’t for the life of me understand why she would break what we had.
“Can I get a picture with all of you?” my mom asks.
I do as she requests because I’m a mama’s boy, even though taking a picture is the last thing I want to do. Cadence doesn’t particularly like my costume, so I don’t blame her when she doesn’t want to be held by me. Instead, Griff and Mack each hold one of her hands and I stand off to Griff’s side. He went all out and is even wearing the green tights I got him mostly as a joke. That sappy motherfucker would do anything to put a smile on his girls’ faces.
