34. “Feel Me Now” - If Not For Me
“Feel Me Now” - If Not For Me
Walker
Heath’s in the shower, and—much as I want to join him—I would be smart to use this time to get more research done. Once he’s out, all bets are off.
We spent most of yesterday in bed. I should be satiated, but my hunger only grows every time that lazy smile trips across his face. It’s dangerous, this game we’re playing, but I’d like to be an ostrich and bury my head in the sand.
It can’t last, whatever this is. But I’m stupid or crazy enough to think that maybe there is a way through, one where we end up together and happy and ridiculously in love instead of bitter and angry and separated by pain and hurt and resentment so deep it’ll suck us down if we pause for breath.
I fasten one more button on his shirt, which I snagged from the floor. I don’t have anything on underneath it, but I won’t be wearing it for long. I should be able to take half a page of notes while I wait for him to finish his shower.
If we can stay out of bed long enough, I may be able to convince him to go out tonight. We subsisted solely on takeaway and the puny contents of my fridge yesterday. I’m ready for civilization again.
I open my laptop and fire it up. Outside, the rain from yesterday has switched to thunderstorms. A loud crack shakes the house. On second thought, maybe staying inside is a good idea.
The welcome screen lights up, and I type in my password. Besides me, Heath’s phone pings with an incoming text message. I glance at the screen out of habit and see Maeve’s name.
I swipe to unlock the phone. We really need to have a conversation about his lack of security. The guy is way too trusting.
Maeve’s text is at the bottom of the screen. Is it done yet???
I wrinkle my brow, trying to figure out what she means. Maybe she’s asked him to fix something for her?
As I set Heath’s phone aside and open the notes file on my laptop, it goes off twice more. Damn it, Maeve. At this rate, I won’t get anything done before he’s out of the shower. I unlock the phone again to put it on silent, but Lux’s name on the display takes me by surprise.
I click on it, and the screen fills with a group chat. There are new messages from both Maeve and Lux at the bottom.
Maeve : Celebration tonight if Heath comes through! X
Lux : Yesss! I’m beyond ready to get absolutely hammered!!! xx
What are they expecting Heath to come through on? And why didn’t my own phone buzz with the notification? I grab it from the nightstand and enter my passcode. There’s a text from my mum, but nothing else. I open our group thread. No new messages today.
They must have a thread I’m not part of. I double-check Heath’s phone, and sure enough, everyone is in the chat except for me. It stings a little, but I was gone for two years. It’s perfectly natural for it to be awkward to go back to what we had before.
The others don’t know why I left. They have no idea Heath cheated on me, and I prefer to keep it that way.
It’s easier to wash your hands of a situation than to try to convince people to take sides.
If they’d known, they might have been willing to get back at Heath with me, but my desire for revenge dried up the minute I left Wesbourne soil.
That’s how I knew I made the right decision.
I’m still in the message thread on Heath’s phone when it pings again. This time it’s a text from Rhett.
Has she forgiven you yet mate?
My blood chills in my veins. There’s no question that the “she” he’s referring to is me, unless Heath is out there making plenty of girls angry.
What’s confusing is that they know I was mad at him.
Maybe he told them what happened at the Archives, although using a thread that excludes me seems a little eighth grade.
It’s stupid, but my thumb disregards that fact and starts scrolling backward anyway. I want to know what he told them, and then I’ll put it away. The last messages are from a few days ago. I scroll until I find the most recent one Heath sent.
I know. I just don’t have a plan yet.
I scroll back further. A new conversation started on Tuesday, the day we got kicked out of the Archives. I read the whole thing.
My heart skids to a stop at Maeve’s words.
I need to get this paper sent in before she leaves. x
The phone drops from my hand onto the vintage rug under my feet. I reach behind me for the chair before my legs give out. The room spins as I lower myself to the seat.
Life should come with a warning label: Prepare to be fucked over every time you venture to trust.
Thunder claps outside, and I jump. My blood is pounding so loud, I’m surprised I can hear anything over the mad dash through my veins.
I am the mark.
I am the target.
They are all in on this together, plotting to take me down like one of the many victims we’ve preyed on over the years.
They’ve lumped me in with the likes of Jenny Bailiff, who once sold a picture of Rhett doing a line of coke to the tabloids.
Or that douchebag Maeve dated, who filmed her drunk-dancing while naked, then sent the video to all of his friends—one of whom was Pierce.
And Heath—Heath, who assured me less than twenty-four hours ago that he would never hurt me again. Never betray my trust. Never again give me cause to doubt myself.
He was the inside man.
Fuck him.
Fuck them all.
I reach down and pick up his phone, then hurl it across the room as he appears in the doorway. He jerks backward as it hits the side of the door with a sharp crack. A splinter of wood follows it to the floor.
Heath gives me a wary look before bending over to retrieve the phone, which doesn’t look any worse for wear.
He’s wearing nothing but a white cotton towel.
Normally it would take everything in me to keep from ripping it off him, but right now the only thing I’m aware of is the bleeding heart in my chest.
“Hey,” he says. “Everything okay?”
I gape at him. “How can you possibly ask me that?”
His brows furrow, deep lines forming on his forehead. Another ping sounds from his phone, and whatever he sees there turns his face ashen. “Walker.” He lifts his gaze. “I can explain.”
A high-pitched laugh bursts from my mouth. “Explain? You think I give a damn about your explanations?”
He reaches out for me, even though we’re separated by the entire room. “Please. Just hear me out.”
“I’d prefer you never speak to me again.”
“I wasn’t going to do it.” He tosses the phone onto the bed and starts moving toward me.
I hold up both hands. “Don’t come any closer. ”
To his credit, he stops, but the look on his face is enough to make me want to scream and throw things at his head. How dare he look hurt and miserable? I wasn’t plotting his takedown!
“I’ll admit,” he says, “at first they convinced me to go along with it. But when it came down to it, I couldn’t let Maeve go through with it. Not when I feel this way about you.”
“You gave her my notes.”
“That was over a week ago. You have to believe me, Walker.”
I give another sharp laugh. “I don’t have to do anything. And trust me, the last thing I’ll ever do again is believe you.”
“I wouldn’t have let them send it. Believe that, at least.”
I cross my arms over my chest, as if trying to keep my heart from crashing right through my rib cage and bouncing across the floor like a rubber ball set loose. “Get out.” It’s nothing more than a whisper.
Heath’s face pinches with pain. “I still love you.” Desperation saturates every word.
“When you love someone, you don’t stick a knife in their back every time they turn around.”
“That’s not what I—”
“That is exactly what you did,” I scream, running across the room and smacking my hands against his chest. “You gained my trust, just so you could use it against me!”
His fingers clamp around my wrists like they’re nothing more than twigs. I immediately regret my decision to touch him. “No, Walker, listen.”
“Have they hated me this whole time?” I ask before he can get out whatever it is he wants to say. “Were they plotting revenge on me the whole time I was gone?” I can’t help the keening tone that creeps into my voice. I sound weak and insecure, because I am.
“No.” He shakes his head. “Maybe.” A deep inhale inflates his chest, and he sighs heavily. His breath brushes across my face. “I don’t know.”
“What were they going to do with my notes?” I brace myself for the answer.
“Maeve was going to submit an AI-generated dissertation on your behalf.”
Breath lunges from my lungs. God, she’s an evil genius.
“Walker, I’m sorry.”
“You knew why I left, didn’t you? You knew it was because of what you did.” The image of that skank on top of him fills my mind. Her tits slapping together on her bare chest, the sound of their grunts as she rode him harder and harder. I squeeze my eyes shut. Vomit lingers at the back of my throat.
“I was suspicious, yeah.”
I tear my hands away from him and retreat to the safety of the other side of the room. Away from his heat, his scent, his solid body. “And yet you let them believe I was the guilty one.”
His face contorts with anguish. He skirts his tongue back and forth along his bottom lip. “Yeah.”
“Your father was right after all, wasn’t he? You’re not a man,” I spit out. “You’re a coward.”
I try to relish the devastation that crosses his face, the satisfaction of my words finding their mark, but instead I feel empty inside, like a pumpkin that’s been hollowed out for Halloween.
He runs his hand through his wet hair, pushing it off his forehead. With the other, he pinches the bridge of his nose. I can’t be sure because of the distance, but his eyes look damp.
“Please go.” My voice cracks like a porcelain vase that’s been set down too hard, an ugly, jagged line racing up the side. “I need you to go.”
This time he doesn’t protest. He picks up his shorts from the bed, and since I’m still wearing his stupid shirt, he walks out without it. I don’t want it any more than I want a root canal, but I’m not about to take it off in front of him.
The front door closes, and I trip over my feet trying to get to the window.
I arrive in time to see him open his car door and climb inside, shirtless in the rain that’s still beating down.
The downpour is a solid sheet between us.
I can’t tell if he looks up at me. His taillights glow red as he pulls out of the driveway.
I sink to the floor, my feet boycotting standing any longer. My eyes alight on the potted plant I bought at the same time as my candles. Brown leaves curl around its central stem. I couldn’t even keep it alive for four weeks.
Was everything a lie, then? Every laugh, every story, every joke, every smile? I’ve spent a considerable amount of time with all five of them over the past month, and not once did it occur to me that they may be faking their forgiveness.
Maybe our friendship was meant to die two years ago, when I walked onto that tarmac and didn’t look back.
I rise to my feet and stagger across the room.
The plant isn’t heavy, and something about the weight of it feels good in my arms. I trek downstairs, clutching it to my chest like a prize trophy.
When I reach the kitchen, I open the back door to where the rubbish bin is.
I dump the plant inside it, pot and all, and it lands with a satisfying clunk atop all of the takeaway containers Heath and I threw out.
By the time I slip back inside the warm kitchen, I’m drenched.
Puddles form on the floor beneath me, but I don’t care.
I was wrong when I said people can’t change, that the choices you make define you for the rest of your life. People can change. They can learn and grow and become something different entirely. That’s the beauty of the human race.
That’s also the ugliness of it.
Because while some of us work to improve—to become better, truer versions of ourselves—others simply continue rotting, until they’re only faint shadows of who they used to be.