“Are you engaged to him or not?” His eyes are on the ground now.
“It’s complicated,” I plead, trying to move closer, to close the distance between us. He steps back.
“It’s a yes or a no. Are you going to marry him or not?” His eyes find mine again and a sob leaves my throat. I force it down and try to push on.
“I don’t have a choice,” I whisper across to him, and his tortured eyes move to Mickey’s direction as he takes an aching step away from me. The devil’s spawn preens as he steps closer to me. Without realizing what he’s doing—because my focus hasn’t left Caleb—Mickey wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me against him. The touch has me snapping out of my haze as I push against him. It aches in a whole new way when the arm that saves me from Mickey is Ethan. That Caleb still stands where he was.
“Say something,” I plead again.
“You knew this whole time.” His face drops slightly, like he’s discovered a secret. “That’s why you always said you can’t.” A sob cracks my chest open, but I force myself to face him and not look away. I force myself to watch the torture and the pain through Caleb’s expression. He seems to track my tears and takes a few steps closer to me. I thought he was going to grab me. Kiss me and make it all better…but apparently, in my panic state I’m prone to hallucinations. Instead, he stares down at me, longing and pain warring with each other.
“You knew this whole time, and you let me fall in love with you anyway.” I suck in a breath at the admission.
I did know.
My heart feels like it knew longer, but I knew from last weekend. I knew what he was going to say. And I was still a coward. I still hid behind my secrets.
“Please, Caleb, let me explain. I didn’t want to hurt you; I didn’t want it to be this way. I thought…I thought?—”
“It doesn’t matter though, does it?” he interrupts, his hand reaching to tuck a curl behind my ear, his face now a picture of calm as his eyes search with a hollowness across my face. “Because you did hurt me. And it’s humbling, really.”
“What is?” It feels like nails pressing the words out of my throat.
“That you were right from the start. We were never going to be.” He drops his hand and his eyes look a little watery as he breathes his next words. “I wish I trusted that voice in my head now.”
He turns, his back growing distant from where I watch him leave. The air feels frozen. It feels stuck. I think I call for him, I can feel his name burn the back of my throat, but my heart pounding an empty beat and the blood rushing through my ears is all I can hear. Until the irritating sound of Mickey’s voice cuts through the haze of my heartbreak.
“It’s for the best this way. At least he’ll stop sniffing around you now.” The bastard has the audacity to sound proud, like he’d just done a good thing. That blowing up my life was an easy feat and he’d do it again if he had to. But I don’t really have the time to think through anything else, because a red hazy rage overtakes my vision. I feel my blood boil under my skin. Skin that feels too tight, and there is a scream stuck in my throat I long to let out. I slowly turn from watching Caleb retreat to finding Mickey standing a few feet away.
I hear someone muffle a curse, and another whispers an “Oh shit” as I take a few steps to close the distance between me and Mickey. Reeling back, feeling the fire of anger driving my motions and not having time to think anything through, my fist flies through the air and it lands square in the middle of Mickey’snose. I feel him fall back, but then my whole world flips around and it’s like I’m floating on air.
I realize that I’ve been flipped over and carried, and then when the fresh air hits my skin and my feet hit the pavement, it’s Ethan who stands in front of me.
“What the hell, Rosie?” He looks down at me, hands resting on my shoulders, but I can barely focus on anything other than the intake of breath and the panic that grips my chest like a vice. I look around, trying to find him but he’s…he left. He walked away, he’s gone, and all of that…that was real. That actually happened and everything…oh my god.Everything is ruined. My whole life blew up in a matter of moments.
“All right, breathe. In for four, hold for four, out for four. C’mon, Rosie.” Ethan’s deep voice coaxes me out of my head, his intense brown eyes searing into me as he holds my shoulders and forces my eyes to remain on him. He begins the breathing, gesturing for me to try, and I do. “Good.” His eyes dramatically set behind a permanently frowny brow and long dark lashes, he continues to watch me, encouraging me to breathe. I feel my breath slow, but I can’t stop the quiet tears that drop down my face. I hate even more that Ethan’s eyes openly track them, his expression turning from assured to sympathy. And then a sob leaves my throat and Ethan pulls me into his arms. I can’t help but make the comparison. He’s as tall as Caleb, but where Caleb is lean, athletic muscle, Ethan is bulky, broad, and just…big. He envelops me completely, and normally this kind of thing would make me freak out. It would make me want to retreat, but I’m really struggling to feel anything other than the loss of Caleb’s touch. It’s not that I’m being held. It’s that it isn’t Caleb holding me.
I push off Ethan. “I need to go after him,” I whisper as I swipe at my cheeks. He watches me for a beat and then gestures behind him where the street keeps going. It’s pitch black, save for thestreetlights and lights of the buildings surrounding us, but when I look closely, in the distance I can make out a form that is one I’d recognize anywhere, storming away from the bar. I don’t let myself have a moment to think about it, I just run after him.
I call for him, too, but it isn’t until I’m a lot closer that he stiffens and then turns in my direction. And then I’m in front of him, and his eyes are looking into mine, and it feels like my chest is going to explode with how badly it hurts to see the pain on his face. Pain that I put there.
“I…” Oh shit, I am so unfit. “Hang on.” I lean forward, my hands on my knees, and I drag in a few deep breaths. “Caleb, please,” I pant before straightening. “Please, don’t walk away from me.”
“Why? You’ve been planning to walk away from me for months.”Ouch.I flinch at his words, but I can’t blame him. He’s right, I have been. And I deserve this…and worse. I take a steadying breath, squeezing my eyes closed and willing the tears to just fucking stop for a moment so I can get my words out.
“You don’t understand, it’s my dad…my family. This has been planned since before I could walk. It was meant to be sooner, I bargained for it to wait so I could live my twenties how I wanted. So, I could make a life for myself.”
“A life you never planned on keeping?” He moves in closer, his brows puckering with pain and confusion.
“A life I planned to escape into,” I breathe in response, my chin lowering to my chest, not able to keep looking into the depths of those eyes.
“So, you’re not going to go through with it?” he asks softly. It’s like nails down my spine the hopeful way he asks it. I let my eyes find his again, he deserves someone to look him in the eye. Not the coward that I’ve been.
“It’s not that simple.” I speak the words through a new round of tears, a sob racking my chest as he takes another step closer, until we’re toe to toe.
“But itis,Rosie. Do you want to be with him, or do you want to be with me?”
“I don’t ever want him. Not like that.Neverlike that.” I swipe a hand through the air as if to emphasize that Mickey and I have never and will never be intimately connected. Caleb seems to see the meaning in my eyes and dips his chin, letting a heavy breath go from his chest, though his eyes still hold a world of hurt that only seems to intensify as he gazes down at me.
