Chapter 3 #2
Only I was the last man on earth Georgia Monroe should ever love.
I was nothing. I was empty. Fragmented. Nowhere near worthy of her or her love.
My inability to act was why my sister and father were dead, and my inability to act was why Georgia loved me.
Georgia loved me. A fresh wave of sweat broke out on my forehead, this one as cold as ice. What had I done?
“Lenox?” she clipped out, breaking through my panic, and I turned to her as I slipped my shirt over my head. She had her sheet pulled up over her naked body, her eyes questioning and angry. “What are you doing?”
Do the right thing. Walk away from her. Save her from yourself. You’ll only hurt her more later if you don’t. She deserves better than you. She deserves everything you’re not.
It was true. I knew it. Deep in the farthest reaches of my soul, I knew it.
I didn’t want her love. Her love was pure and good—like she was—and I wasn’t that.
I was as fucked in the head as a man can get, sinking deeper and deeper into the darkness instead of drifting toward the light.
I hadn’t done a thing right by her since I first came to her bed two years ago, and it was fucking time I did.
I used her. I drank from her like a vampire, needing her to sustain life.
“Leaving,” I said, my voice flat despite the riot in my body and mind. It was getting harder to breathe, harder to put one foot in front of the other.
“Just like that? I tell you I love you, and you leave?”
Pain swam in her eyes, and the urge to hold her, to kiss it all away overwhelmed me. I didn’t want to hurt Georgia. I fucking loved her. But loving her was finally doing right by her.
“Yes.” Fuck. “I… I shouldn’t have let this get so far. I should have stopped this sooner.”
Her eyes flared, and she sat up, wrapping the sheet tighter around her chest and tucking it in so it wouldn’t slip. “Are you kidding? You’re ending this because I told you I love you?”
“You shouldn’t love me, Georgia.”
She crossed the room to me and stood boldly before me. “That’s for me to decide. I’ll be the one to judge who I should love and who I shouldn’t. The question is, do you love me back?”
Yes. “No.” The word rang out between us, harsh, cruel, irreversible.
She reared back as if I’d hit her, and I forced myself to look at her, to witness the damage I’d inflicted, all the while keeping my features even, detached. A tear hit her cheek, and it felt like a saw was severing to my limbs.
“Are you fucking kidding me? Two years we’ve been doing this. For two years you’ve been coming to me. What did you expect? That I’d let you fuck me forever without developing feelings? ”
Shame, hot and miserable, rushed through me. “I should have ended it a long time ago.”
She shook her head, her features twisted in fury.
“No. Fuck that and fuck you.” She shoved my chest. Hard.
“Why are you doing this?” Her voice cracked with desperation and emotion.
“You feel something for me. I know you do. I see it in your eyes, and I feel it in the way you touch me. Don’t lie to me and tell me you feel nothing.
” She crumbled before my eyes, her body caving in on itself as she openly began to cry.
“Please. I love you, and I don’t want to lose you. ”
My body vibrated, shaking uncontrollably.
I was barely hanging on. I took a step back toward the door.
“I don’t feel anything for you, Georgia.
” I do. I feel everything . “I don’t love you.
” It’s a lie . “And I never will.” I took another step back and then one final one, reaching the door.
I turned away, my eyes closing and my breathing ragged. “You’ll never see me again.”
“You’re a bastard. You’re a miserable, cowardly bastard,” she yelled. “I hate you. I hate you so goddamn much.”
I nodded, my hand on the door. “Good. You should.”
I made it out to the parking lot and veered to my right before I came to a tree and started punching it.
Over and over until my bones cracked and my skin was pulp.
I sagged against it and stared up at her apartment building.
Was this who I was? Was this the man I had allowed myself to become?
Suzie would have been ashamed. I was ashamed.
I’d been lying, keeping secrets from my best friends for two years, all the while I was fucking their beautiful, perfect cousin, and now I broke her heart.
I was a monster. And I was tired of being a monster.
I was tired of being so hateful to myself.
Tired of drowning in an endless sea of guilt that had become so familiar to me, like a second skin, that not only did I not know how to shake it, I reveled in how I hurt myself because of it.
Only I didn’t just hurt myself this time.
I hurt Georgia.
A surge of something I couldn’t name swarmed up through me and had me running to my car.
My hand burned, swollen and bleeding, but I reveled in that too.
The pain made me sharp. It solidified my resolve.
I drove across town, deep into Boston, and rang the buzzer on Zax’s front door.
Grey wasn’t in town. He was on tour. His first solo album after Central Square was released a few months ago, and it caught like wildfire.
“Yeah?” Zax’s growly voice came through the buzzer .
“It’s me.”
He buzzed me up, and I ran up the steps instead of taking the elevator, blood dripping from my hand, leaving a trail of my crimes behind me. I pounded on his door, and when he swung it open, terror and relief hit me.
“What the fuck, Lenox? Are you okay? What happened?” he asked as he took in my bleeding hand and harried disposition.
I was about to lose my best friend, but it was no less than I deserved. But I couldn’t fix myself until I wasn’t hiding this from him anymore. “I fucked Georgia.”
He stared at me, unsure what to make of that before his features visibly hardened and his jaw locked. “When?”
“For two years. I’ve been fucking her behind yours and Grey’s back for two years.”
His fist launched, knocking me straight in the cheek, just below my eye. I flew back, slamming hard against the door as searing, white-hot pain shot through my face. I forced myself upright. Forced myself to face him, as I’d forced myself to face Georgia.
“Fuck!” he yelled, backing away, his hands in his hair as he started to pace. “Georgia?! You’ve been fucking Georgia like that behind my back? Why?”
I didn’t have answers for him. None that mattered. What was I going to say? Because I needed her. Because I couldn't breathe without her. They were useless things to say, and they didn't make anything better. I had no excuse for what I had done with Georgia.
“You should know, she told me she loves me tonight,” I said quietly.
He was about to rip me apart. Knock me out where I stood.
He’d just barely been holding himself back.
“I suppose I don't have to ask what you said in return. I can see it all over you.” His gaze hit my shifty body and fucked-up hand.
“Two years, huh? I hope it hurts, you stupid motherfucker. Giving up a girl like her. I hope it hurts like hell.”
I lowered my head and stared at the floor, and Zax fell silent.
If anyone understood the misery and pain of guilt and loss and self-loathing along with it, it was him.
He was like my brother and Suzie’s death had destroyed both of us.
He hadn't dated since her. Two years alone and as fucked in the head as I was about her death. He also turned into a miserable, angry prick, hating on the world as much as I did, only he was less self-destructive than me. He hadn’t lost all that I lost and not the way I did .
“Why are you here? Why tonight? Why now?”
I backed up into the door, my hands on my head.
“I want…” I trailed off, but I found it surmised everything.
I wanted. It was the first time in two years, but I wanted.
I wanted things. A life. Potential. I wanted to not hate the skin I was wearing.
I wanted to feel worthy of Georgia’s love, even if I never had her again.
He looked at me, really looked at me, and said, “I see.”
My hands met my hips, and I started shaking.
“I won't forgive you for hurting her. I don't want you to forgive yourself either, if that’s what it’ll take for you to crawl your way out of this. Still, I'm fucking furious with you, and Grey will be too. Possibly worse. I want to kick the shit out of you and hug you at the same time. Do you know what that’s like for me? Do better. Be better. I love you. Go. But stay the fuck away from Georgia . You will never touch her again. And you will never lie like that to me again.”
Scrubbing my hand up my face, I slip my phone out of my pocket and dial up Zax. “Hey,” he answers quickly, as Zax always does. “Everything okay?” Because I text and rarely ever call unless it’s something that shouldn’t be texted.
“I’m merging in Grey.” Without waiting for him to say anything, I hit the merge button on my screen and then dial up Grey, who also picks up quickly.
“Lenox?”
“I’m patching Zax in.” And when we’re all on the line, I start to pace my kitchen. “Georgia was just here,” I start without any preamble, and then I proceed to tell them everything. By the time I’m done, I’m sitting on my couch with my elbows digging into my knees and my head in my hand.
“You’re doing it then,” Zax states, and I chuckle humorlessly at his surefire tone. “You wouldn’t have called us otherwise. You would have simply told her no, and that would have been that.”
“How do I say no?” I ask, genuinely curious about their thoughts.
“You don’t,” Grey shoots out because he is the emotional brother, whereas Zax is the methodical, pragmatic one. “If that’s what she needs right now and you’re willing to do it, then what is there to question? ”
Everything.
“If anything, she’s right,” Grey continues, building steam. “You fucking owe her.”
My eyes pinch shut, and I exhale a silent breath.
“ Are you willing to do it?” Zax presses.
“Because what she needs right now is someone who can help her and look out for her.” While keeping their hands to themselves, he doesn’t say, but it’s spelled out in his tone.
I’ve known Zax since I was five. He dated my sister for eight years.
I know him better than any other person on the planet.
Still, I don’t plan to touch her this time, so it won’t be a problem.
Am I doing this? Am I going to marry Georgia? I’m not sure I ever had a choice.
I was a piece of shit who lied to them and used their cousin and subsequently broke her heart.
Because of that, because I do owe everyone involved, I say, “Yes. I’m willing to do it.
” My voice is even, masking the raging inferno inside me.
Unlike my ability to read Zax, no one can read me unless I allow them to.
There is no place for feelings in this. No desire for them either.
They’ll do nothing but complicate an already complicated situation.
“Okay,” Zax finally says with a resigned breath. “But remember the promises you made to us.”
“I do.” And I’ll abide by them.
I’ll keep my hands to myself. My eyes where they belong. My thoughts on lockdown.
And everything I ever felt for Georgia Monroe will stay where it is… buried six feet under.