Twenty-Three
C arter was in a mood. A very dark mood.
Understandably.
I was in one too.
He hadn’t said a word to me after we got home. He just shut himself up in his room for a long while. I showered and got ready for bed, deciding I was most definitely going to leave him alone.
I was just about ready to crawl into bed when his door opened. He came bursting in a few moments later, standing in the middle of my room, staring at me with hard eyes and a mouth pressed in a line.
Hesitantly, I turned to him. The air was charged, that feeling of a confrontation was thick in the air.
“Did you do it on purpose?” he suddenly demanded solemnly, breaking the silence.
“Do what exactly?”
“Make me jealous, Leah. Did you do it on purpose?”
My eyebrows shot up. I was pissed. “I’m insulted you could think that low of me.”
“I’m feeling a little insulted that you thought you could chat some guy up just to piss me off.”
“I didn’t chat him up.”
“You certainly didn’t shut him down, either, did you?”
My body tensed and anger shot through me as I icily retorted, “I did nothing wrong! He came to me, and we talked a little.”
“And you danced.”
“It was harmless. You’ve misunderstood the situation, Carter.”
He chuckled scornfully. “Fucking hell, Leah, you are na?ve. I didn’t misunderstand shit! That guy was all over you because he wanted you to spread those legs wide for him. I saw him sitting there all night looking at you, practically humping the chair he was sitting on.”
“Yeah, well, he didn’t say anything crude to me. He was actually a nice guy.”
“A nice guy?” He looked at me with disgust. “That’s why he was talking about bagging you to his friends, right? Real fucking nice , Leah.”
I froze, and my cheeks heated.
Great, so now I felt foolish.
“Didn’t you fucking notice how he was touching you when you were all over each other, dancing to my fucking song?”
“He lowered his hand a little—”
“He touched your ass and stared down your top, all the while smirking to his friends over your shoulder!”
My heart picked up. “I didn’t know all that.”
“Well, you should’ve!”
“Yeah, because I’ve got eyes on the back of my head, right, Carter?”
His eyes narrowed. “I’m being serious, Leah. You need to be mindful.”
I stared despondently at him, feeling the ache behind my eyes begin to form as I weakly said, “Okay, so you’re probably right about him.”
“Probably?”
I exhaled. “Fine. Completely .”
He nodded furiously. “Exactly!”
“But how could you think that was all a show to make you jealous, Carter? Why are you looking for the worst in me?”
“It’s because of what happened before,” he replied carefully. “At the table, when I referred to you as a friend. Since then, you haven’t been yourself.”
“And why do you think that is?”
“You’re pissed at me.”
I scoffed. “I’m not pissed enough at you to want to make you feel jealous. That’s not me and you know it.”
His chest moved quickly as he let out, “Then I don’t understand! What is with you lately? Why can’t I get a single word out of you, Leah? I’m losing my mind here!”
I stared at him for a long moment, contemplating my next words. I thought of that incident, thought of what Melanie said, and my earlier thoughts about school coming up. All of it compounded into one and I felt crushed by the weight of it.
“I can’t do this anymore,” I told him quietly, staring down at the floor. “I can’t be around someone who’s unable to acknowledge who I am to him in front of other people.”
His jaw tensed. “Who you are? Leah, I already told you I don’t do relationships.”
“I never signed up for you fucking me on the side and letting girls crawl all over you the next.”
He made a face. “I don’t ask them to be all over me.”
“It might help if you told them you were taken.”
He inhaled sharply, and I could see the frustration in him begin to rise. “This is fucked up.”
“Why? Do you enjoy the attention or something?”
“I don’t enjoy the attention at all! You’re the one that dragged me into this band shit, remember?”
“Oh, so I’m to blame for your inability to open your mouth and tell them to go away?”
He scoffed and shook his head. “And I thought I was the only jealous one here! You’ve never told me once until now that it bothers you when girls come up to me. Now you act like I’m fucking them behind your back—”
“That’s not what I’m saying!” I hissed.
“Then what are you saying?”
“I’m saying you can’t have your cake and eat it too, Carter.”
His eyes widened. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
He knew exactly what I meant. I wasn’t going to keep doing this. Not until he took the leap with me. He couldn’t touch me intimately and tell the world I was just his friend, while girls got to be all over him.
No, not anymore.
I was done—fucking done with it.
When there was jealousy in the mix, when anger started to set in and you began to hurt, that was indication enough our friends-with-benefits bullshit no longer applied.
“You need to decide what you want,” I told him shakily, swallowing hard as I realized the weight in my words. “You can’t expect me to just wait around for you.”
He ran a hand through his hair, staring in astonishment at me. “At this point, I didn’t think you were. I thought we liked how things are.”
“I don’t want to like how we are,” I expressed to him with a knot in my throat. “I want to love it. I want to be invested in a person that is invested in me too. Instead, I feel like some spineless moron that’s taking you however way you’ll give me. I can’t keep doing that, Carter! You need to decide what you want.”
He was shocked. I’d never seen him look this way. His body froze, and his hands closed into fists as he fought to contain his composure.
“You’re not thinking straight,” he said. “It’s been a hard few days. We’ll go to bed –”
“No, I’m not going to bed. I want you to decide right here and now, Carter—”
He rushed to me then in two long strides. His hands flew to my face, forcing it up to him so he could kiss me. His mouth harshly pressed against mine, but I shook away from it and pushed him back. I wasn’t going to allow him to distract me with his touch. That wasn’t going to work anymore. I wouldn’t allow it.
“Don’t do this,” he whispered just then, hands still on me. “Don’t force my hand, Leah.”
I crossed my arms and looked away from him. My eyes ached from unshed tears because I knew exactly where this was going. “I am doing this,” I replied, surprised by how certain I felt. “We’ve been together in a way that you can’t call ‘just friends’ for months now. Either you want me, or you don’t.”
“Of course I want you,” he immediately replied.
“Then be with me,” I pleaded.
“I am with you.”
“No, you’re holding back, Carter. I want all of you. I want us to be together. I want more . Why is that such a leap for you?”
His hands fell to his sides.
There was a lost look on his face. He looked like a man at war with himself, still offering no response.
I felt my anger levels begin to rise. I couldn’t understand this. “Why can’t you commit?” I demanded, reaching the end of my rope. “I don’t understand! What has happened to you in your life to make you so…”
His eyes pierced into my own like daggers. “So what? Just say it.”
“So unfeeling !”
That was all it took for his fuse to blow. He took a step back, pointing at me as he harshly claimed, “I told you right from the beginning not to expect more from me!”
“You started this by kissing me, Carter! By filling my head with your words, by touching me the way you do! You wanted me to want you, and when you have me falling over my own two feet to have you, you just keep me at arm’s length, and I can’t keep living like this anymore. It hurts too much to be in love with someone that doesn’t want me as much as I want him.”
Tears fell from my eyes. It was like a dam had burst. I’d swallowed up the pain and it had sat there, swelling and swelling behind my eyelids, until it couldn’t hold back any longer.
I wiped them away. I’d revealed my emotions entirely. I said the L word, something I was sure he wasn’t prepared for. But it was true, and I was sick of pretending.
I loved him.
Fuck, I really loved him.
I was in love with him.
He was my whole world.
Oh, my God, what was happening?
Carter was stunned speechless, to say the least. For a second I considered taking my words back and forgetting this whole thing happened, but the easy way out seemed like a coward’s thing to do, and I didn’t want to be that for another second.
“You already know my answer,” he whispered through his shock.
I just stared at him, unmoving, and my heart stopped, too.
He let out a heavy breath. “So that’s it then, huh? You’re going to break this off because of some expected commitment I never ever gave you the illusion of giving.”
I just shook my head at him. “You’re lying to yourself. You know you want more too. You know we have something. You know it could be even more amazing. You know I love you. You’ve always known it.”
He stilled again, swallowing hard. He didn’t look me in the eye as he backed away to the doorway slowly. “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
My mouth fell.
I felt like someone had punched me in the gut.
Or burned my insides until there was nothing left.
He was sorry I loved him?
“You’re a lot more broken than I ever thought you were,” I muttered lifelessly.
He turned away just then and left the room. He didn’t come back. He didn’t say another word to me for the rest of the night.
I stood in the centre of the room for the longest time in a complete daze. It was sheer force that made me crawl into bed. Even then my mind couldn’t let go of his words, and I was fighting back another dam of tears.
That was it? We were done just like that? Because I wanted more?
It almost didn’t feel real. I kept waiting for him to come back to me. To wake me up in the middle of the night and tell me he’d made the wrong decision.
But he didn’t.
Instead, I was more confused than ever. My hopes had been squandered. I’d spent so long believing in him and thinking he would realize what I meant to him.
But no.
Everything after that night went to shit.