Chapter 14 #4
“Okay,” he said quietly, releasing a breath like he’d been holding it for hours.
“I never sold to Holden. Okay? I never sold Holden anything.” Something inside my stomach loosened at his words, just slightly.
Not relief. Not forgiveness. Just… space.
“And I haven’t sold since the night we met,” he continued.
“Since the drug house. I got out. I told the guy I worked for that I was done. I’d wanted out for a long time, Blair.
I knew it was wrong. I always knew it was wrong.
” His voice cracked. “But meeting you changed something. Because for the first time in my life, I didn’t want to be wrong anymore. ”
The emotion in his voice hit me like a physical force.
It moved through my chest, heavy and relentless, turning my heart over and over like a stone in water.
My eyes burned before I realized I was crying, tears slipping free and tracking slowly down my face.
He watched them fall. He took a step toward me, then stopped, like he’d remembered himself at the last second.
“I never wanted to hurt you,” he said, the pain in his voice unmistakable. “Never. You have to believe that. I never wanted this. And I understand if you can’t be with me. I do. I get it. But—”
“I don’t know what to do.” The words tore out of me before I could stop them.
They sounded raw, desperate, unfamiliar even to my own ears.
Austin froze, clearly just as startled as I was.
“I don’t know what to do,” I repeated, my voice breaking apart.
“I know I should walk away. I know that. But I don’t want to. ”
“What?” he breathed.
“I don’t know,” I said helplessly. “I don’t know.
I’m trying to figure it out. I’m so angry at you, but the thought of never talking to you again—it hurts.
Thinking about walking away from you hurts.
” I shook my head, tears continuing to spill without mercy.
“I’m trying to understand. I’m trying to make sense of it.
” I dragged in a shaky breath. “Fate put me here,” I said quietly.
“Fate put you in my path, and me in yours. She brought us together, and I don’t know why.
I don’t know what she was trying to teach me.
” My voice dropped, softer now. More honest. “Maybe fate knew I wouldn’t trust you,” I whispered.
“But maybe… maybe she was asking me to. Maybe fate was saying trust me.”
“Blair…” Austin started, but I cut him off.
“Fate put you in front of me and I fell for you,” I said softly. “Maybe it wasn’t my plan, but it was fate’s. And it worked. So maybe I’m not supposed to walk away.”
“Blair,” he tried again, but I kept going, the words spilling out before I could lose them.
“And maybe it wasn’t your plan to fall for me either,” I said, meeting his eyes like a challenge. “But you did.”
“I planned on falling in love with you,” Austin said immediately.
The certainty in his voice made my stomach drop.
“I planned on it,” he repeated. “I knew the first time we spoke. I fell in love with you before I ever touched your skin.” My breath hitched.
The weight of his words pressed down on me, heavy and real, and for a second my heart forgot everything else.
Then he shook his head. “But fate?” he said sharply.
“That’s bullshit. Fate didn’t bring us together.
You and I did. We chose this.” His voice hardened, grounded and unyielding.
“And fate doesn’t mean things turn out okay.
It doesn’t mean there’s a plan. Bad things happen, Blair.
They happen without meaning. Without reason. Without anyone watching over it.”
I opened my mouth to argue, to defend myself, but the words died before they ever reached my tongue. I just stared at him, feeling his truth press in on me, crushing the same heart he’d lifted seconds ago.
“And that’s why what I did to you is worse than you think,” Austin continued quietly. There was something dark in his eyes now. Something stripped bare. “Because I planned on falling in love with you knowing exactly who I was. Knowing what I’d done.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, suddenly breathless in all the wrong ways.
“Two years ago,” Austin said. His voice shook, just barely, like he was holding it together through sheer force.
“I sold a kid some pills. He took them. He overdosed.” He swallowed hard.
“He died.” He looked at me as the words finished settling into the space between us.
I felt my face collapse. I felt the air thicken, heavy and suffocating, pressing in on my chest until it was hard to breathe.
“It was the worst day of my life,” Austin said quietly. “But I did that, Blair. I did that.”
“I…” My mouth opened, scrambling for something that might help, something that might soften what he’d just said. “I don’t know what to say.” My voice came out broken. “You didn’t do it on purpose.”
The words didn’t comfort him. They didn’t reach him at all.
Austin’s jaw tightened, his disappointment sharp and inward, like he was angry at the idea of mercy itself.
Not at me. At himself. I tried to breathe.
I tried to make my mind absorb what I’d just heard, to place it somewhere I could understand it.
But nothing prepared me for what came next.
“And that’s not the only person I let die.”
Austin and I stared at each other. It felt like an intense negotiation, like we were both daring the other to blink.
Daring the other to speak. Daring each other to show our cards, to lay our hands on the table.
But I don’t think either of us even knew what cards we were holding.
Hell, I don’t think we even knew what cards were in the deck.
I don’t think we knew anything at all. My body tensed in a way it never had before at his words.
Like my muscles were made of rock and my skin was made of glass.
I was terrified, and for the first time since I met him, I was terrified of Austin.
And he looked just as terrified of himself. I could tell by the way he stared back at me, like he was seeing something he’d spent years avoiding. In this moment, he hated himself. Or maybe he always had. Maybe he had just hidden it well enough that no one ever noticed.
“Blair,” he said at last, breaking the silence.
I couldn’t take the way he was looking at me.
He was looking at me like I was the only one who could save him.
But I wasn’t sure anymore if I could. “Blair,” he continued when I didn’t answer.
“I’m telling you this because if you decide not to walk away, you need to know everything. Finally. You need to know all of it.”
“I…” My voice failed me. My body finally broke free from its freeze long enough for me to step backward. Away from Austin. “I don’t know if you should tell me.”
Austin exhaled slowly through his nose, his eyes closing for just a second. I watched him breathe before he spoke again. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
“If you want to walk away, I’ll let you,” he said.
“We’ll get in my car. I’ll drive you home.
You’ll never see me again.” My heart still crashed painfully against my ribs as he said it.
“But if you think there’s even a chance you don’t want that,” he continued, steady but raw, “you need to hear this. You need all of it. I won’t let you fall any further for me without knowing everything. ”
My heart was racing now, fast enough that it scared me. Austin didn’t say anything else. He didn’t rush me. He didn’t push. He just waited. And that was the problem. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t move forward. I couldn’t move backward. I could only stay exactly where I was.
“Okay,” I finally said, the word barely making it past my lips. “Okay. I’m listening.”
Austin looked at me as I said the words. He didn’t look relieved. If anything, he looked like he wished I’d taken the chance to run when he’d given it to me. “Fuck,” he muttered, turning away.
He paced without direction, like his body had forgotten how to move with purpose. His hand pressed hard against his mouth, fingers digging into his skin as if he was trying to hold the words inside him long enough to survive saying them.
“Eight months ago,” he said finally. He turned back to face me, and for the first time since I’d met him, he didn’t look like Austin. He looked like someone who used to be him. Someone older. Someone heavier. Worn down by something that had never let him rest.
“Eight months ago,” he repeated, pulling in a deep breath. “I was driving to my supplier. He lived on the other side of town, not far from my place. When I was dealing, I didn’t take the highway at night. Too much risk.”
I became painfully aware of my own breathing, of the way my chest rose and fell like it was something I had to consciously remember to do. Austin watched my face as he spoke, his eyes searching for something. Fear. Disgust. Judgment.
“I was alone on the road,” he continued. “I was alone, Blair. Until I wasn’t.” My stomach tightened. “A car came off the highway. I didn’t think anything of it at first. We were coming up around a bend. They couldn’t see me yet, but I could see them.” His voice slowed. “Until…” He stopped.
His eyes unfocused, drifting somewhere far past me, like he wasn’t standing on that road anymore. Like he was watching it happen again, frame by frame, trapped inside the memory as it replayed itself without mercy.
“My headlights must have startled him,” Austin said, shaking his head. “He yanked the wheel too hard, Blair. He couldn’t control the car. He was going too fast and he drove straight off the road. Straight into a tree.” Relief rushed through me so quickly it almost made me dizzy.