Chapter 22 #2
The first thing I notice when I pull into the driveway of our Crystal Bay home is the moving truck, and the second is her car with the keys in the ignition, as if she was about to leave, but ran back inside because she forgot something.
This is not what I expected to find, but part of me questions whether I’m actually surprised.
She was going to leave Orlando without saying goodbye; why wouldn’t she do the same now?
I search downstairs, but she’s nowhere to be found, and there’s no response when I call her name—not until I’m halfway up the staircase and she appears at the end of the hallway, carrying a box.
“You’re supposed to be on a plane,” she says.
“So are you,” I say, taking the final steps up to the second floor. “Savannah, don’t do this. I love you. I’m sorry—”
“You don’t even know what that means!” Her voice carries through the house that suddenly feels empty, the way it used to, before her. “You don’t love me.”
Her words hit me like a brick wall. How can she say that?
“You love the idea of me, Brooks, but that’s not…that’s not enough for me, and it shouldn’t be enough for you.”
“That’s not true, Sav. I love you, not some idea. You, and only you.”
Wetness coats her brown eyes. I want to reach out and comfort her, but I can’t stand the thought of her pulling away from me one more time. “I wish I could believe that, but I don’t feel like I even know you. How can I?”
“You do know me, Sweetheart. You knew me well before all of this. Before EWE. Don’t let him get in your head, Savannah. Please.”
“I haven’t known you from the moment I met you,” she says, swallowing back her tears, but those ten words break my heart. “How do I know what was real and what wasn’t?”
“It was real. All of this was real, Sav! Every bit of it. I may not have told you about that stupid fucking bet, but I never lied to you.” Relief floods my system when she doesn’t retract from my touch against her cheek. “I can’t lose you, Savannah.”
“You can’t lose something you never had.”
“I love you, Savannah,” I say, because it’s the only thing that feels right. “Despite whatever you think—”
“You don’t lie and manipulate someone you love, John. You don’t keep things from them or pretend—”
“I didn’t lie!”
Savannah scoffs. “You didn’t lie? What do you call taking a wager to start dating your girlfriend, then? You’ve been in control this whole time, pulling the strings of our relationship, telling me—”
“What are you talking about? I did it to protect you! I told you. It was me or them. Drake and his merry band of idiots were going on and on, so I told them to back off, and it turned into this. I know it’s fucked up, I know it was stupid, but I couldn’t sit by and let them talk about you like that, Sav. I didn’t want you to get hurt.”
“And look where that’s gotten us, Brooks.”
“This…Us. It was all real. My feelings, my love for you—”
“No, it wasn’t,” she says. “You manipulated me, used me…and for what?” Her eyes pierce mine, and her words echo what she said moments ago.
You’ve been in control this whole time.
Shit, is she right?
“What did you get out of the bet?”
“This wasn’t about winning or losing for me, Savannah. This was about protecting the woman I love.” I take her face in my hands. “I don’t care how many times I have to say it before you believe me, but I love you. This wasn’t just about a bet.”
After a heartbeat of silence, she takes a deep breath and steps back out of my grasp. She wets her lips, her gaze never leaving mine. “I can’t love someone I don’t know.”
Did she just say she can’t…she can’t love me? No. That’s not possible. She wouldn’t…She couldn’t…Her gaze never wavers, and the words begin to swirl around my mind in a never-ending echo. I can’t love someone I don’t know.
“You don’t—You don’t love me?” I ask.
For the first time, she breaks her stare, glancing down at her feet. “I don’t—I don’t know, Brooks. I don’t know what I’m feeling right now. There’s too much to process, too much to try and understand. I just…I need some time.”
“Say it, Savannah.” I want her to say the words, not skirt around them.
I need to know if she means it. If she really doesn’t think she can love me.
If she won’t say them, then I know she doesn’t believe that.
“Tell me you don’t love me, and I’ll let you walk out that door, but until you say those words…
until you say that you don’t love me anymore, I’m not going to stop fighting for you.
Fighting to make you see that I do love you. I’m in love with you, and—”
“Savannah?” a deep voice calls up from the foyer. I recognize it instantly.
You’ve got to be kidding me. She called her brother?
And not just any of her brothers—she called Crew.
I can only imagine how pissed he was when he got that call.
Fuck, did she tell him about the shit with Drake?
She would have to, otherwise he would never understand why she was leaving so suddenly.
I am so fucked. If he knows the truth…there’s no stopping what comes next.
“Y-yeah,” Savannah calls. Her voice breaks. “I’m coming!”
“I saw the truck, and—”
“Crew, I said I’m coming!”
“Is he up there with you?” I can imagine Crew’s chest puffing up; all it would take is one word from her to send him up the stairs to start a fight I don’t want.
“Just go outside,” Savannah demands, and I hear Crew grumble under his breath before his footsteps retreat out the front door. Savannah closes her eyes, taking a deep breath.
“Do you love me, Savannah?” I ask the question I’m most scared to know the answer to.
But I have no choice. I have to know what she wants.
It was never my intention, but if she truly feels like I’ve been controlling her, controlling our relationship, then I’ll do the right thing.
I’ll let her go. I won’t keep her trapped in a relationship she doesn’t want…
even if it will kill me to watch her walk out that door. “Yes or no?”
There’s a small beat of silence before she opens her eyes, tears welling as she looks straight at me. “I don’t love you.” Savannah shrugs. “I can’t.”
A harsh sting immediately floods my vision, and nausea claws at my throat, but I refuse to let the emotion overtake me. I know she doesn’t mean it—she can’t mean it—but she said it. She said what I needed to hear to let her go, and that’s what I’m going to do.
“You don’t love me? Fine, then get out.”
Savannah gasps. Her mask falls, deepening the crack in my heart. Normally, I’d reach out and pull her into my arms, tell her everything will be okay. We’ll make it through whatever is going on.
Not this time.
I stand here, arms glued to my sides, and watch as she takes a shaky breath and picks up the box she’d been carrying. With one final glance, she walks away.
The front door slams moments later, and my entire being jolts as if struck by lightning.
Whether it’s from the impact or the adrenaline pumping through my veins, I can’t say.
Everything in me screams to run after her.
To stop her. To not let her leave, not like this, not at all… This is not how our story ends.
It’s better than coming home to an empty house.
How could she pick up and leave as if the last four and a half years meant nothing?
Hell, longer than that.
The thought brings a wave of anger over me. How could she do this? How could I?
Part of me hopes—prays—that I’ll hear the door open. That she’ll walk back in, saying she didn’t mean it, saying she still loves me. But a bigger part of me knows she won’t.
Savannah was right. I was controlling everything—the man behind the curtain of our entire relationship—right up until the very end.
I pick up the nearest object—a picture frame with a photo of us from a trip to Asheville two years ago—and throw it at the wall.
The glass shatters into pieces. The frame splits apart at the seams. Should I have done it?
No, but it was the only way I could think to relieve the mounting pressure building inside of me before I explode.