51. Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-One
Jordan
Rain pelts the pavement just outside the glass I’m perched in front of for what feels like the thousandth hour and does nothing to dispel the crease in my brow or the burn in my chest.
All I see is Mac. Standing there with the tears in his eyes mixing with the moisture from the sky. All I hear is his voice begging me over the sound of the storm.
This one is worse than that day, but it’s still there. Clinging to my subconscious as a reminder of what I fucked up.
It hit me square in the chest the next morning when Mac didn’t come home, to his own apartment. I waited for the pain to be about sleeping with a man for the first time, for the panic to sink in, but all I felt was the emptiness Mac left behind. A hole shaped just like him that was left gaping.
But then my mind flashes to the opening of a treehouse where he yet again begged me to open up and I just … couldn’t.
So here I sit, counting down the hours until my shift is over, while he’s out there being his exuberant self somewhere overseas. With someone else as his protector on another continent. Someone else watching his back.
Someone else having movie nights in and greasy midnight drive through.
It’s better this way. For him to find something better, somewhere far away from me and the dark cloud that has followed me since that night my parents, my house, blazed beneath the night sky.
At least that’s what I keep telling myself. Maybe one day I’ll finally believe it.
I check my watch and frown.
Less than an hour until I can go.
The closer it gets, though, the more that burn in my sternum becomes a full-on stab right to the center of my chest.
Because what I plan to do when I leave here feels like a betrayal of everything Mac and I had.
Like I’m breaking all the promises I made him along the way.
I’ll be here when you get back—
Except I won’t. I can’t.
For two and half weeks I have waited. And each day since I gave that up, I have reached out.
All but begged him myself.
Only to be completely ghosted.
Texts and calls not responded to.
Comments and voicemails left unchecked.
I can’t let you use me. Not anymore.
It hurts to know that’s all he thought it was.
But to me, our connection is what drove me. That invisible tether stringing between us that kept us closer than anyone else I’ve ever known.
Did it though?
I shake my head and push to my feet.
“I’m going to do a walk,” I say to Aria in passing. I feel her watch me warily more than I see it but I don’t let it stop me. “Call me if you need me.”
“Jordan,” she calls after me and it’s only when I hear the pattering of her feet that I stop.
“Yeah?”
She’s much closer when she speaks next, yet that does nothing to prepare me for what comes out of her mouth.
“He does love you, y’know,” she says gently.
I stiffen, that stabbing pain becoming a gaping wound, festering inside me.
Other people can see it?
“I know,” I mutter back through my clenched jaw. “He … told me that much.”
“Then …” When she pauses, I let my heavy sight meet hers. “Can I give you some advice?”
I swallow, and lift a shoulder.
What other choice do I have?
“Love him back—” she grabs my arm with a reassuring squeeze. “Or let him go.”
My chest pinches painfully.
I already care about him and look where that’s gotten us. Me. Him .
So why does the idea of letting go hurt so much worse?
Eyes burning, I nod.
“I know.”