CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
LINA
M inutes ago, my life was finally back to normal.
Minutes ago, I had finally accomplished the goal I had set for myself when I came back to Yale.
Now, it’s all over.
I’m right back where I started.
Sunken by the pain of love and heartbreak. It makes me think they must go hand in hand.
Grant was the first person who understood me, the first person who got a look into who I truly was. He was the first person who made me feel loved.
But all of that? It was temporary. It was always meant to be.
I didn’t want to believe it at first, but now it’s all coming to an end. The sleepovers. The midnights at Sal’s diner. The trips to The Atlantis.
I thought love would be enough. That we would be enough.
It all meant nothing.
The glue that held our hearts together was finally coming undone. And, honestly, I’m shocked I hadn’t noticed it sooner. I had loved him—I do love him. I thought he loved me too. But it doesn’t matter, because it wasn’t enough to make him stay.
And as I stand in front of our apartment building, after racing out of the wooded trail, the full pain of what I have endured over the last fifteen minutes finally hits me.
He lied to me. He went behind my back. He cheated on me.
Grant Vandenberg has manipulated me to the greatest extent, and it’s impossible for me to hold back my tears at the thought of all the things he’s broken between us.
He promised. He promised me that he would never intentionally hurt me. He promised not to hurt me in the way Gage did.
And technically, he didn’t. Because this feels so much worse.
I’ve been sleeping in his bed every night while he lay next to me, knowing how he’d betrayed me.
The thought of just not bothering with Grant did cross my mind on my way back from the park.
It sounded a lot easier to just block him, forget his number, and never speak to him again.
It sounded cleaner. Easier. Like I could somehow rip out the infected part of my memory before it spread any further.
But I couldn’t.
Because even when he’s shattered my heart, I still love him.
And I know— God , I know—I need to do the thing I never did with Gage. I need to confront him in order to survive this. To look him in the eye and tell him just how deep he cut.
So I do. I take a breath, and I climb those four flights of stairs like I’m dragging the weight of everything he’s done behind me.
I knock on his door, prepared to make him feel as awful as I do. It’s my entire reason for coming here. Rain hellfire.
I knock. I wait. And when he opens the door, when I see his face— that face, the one I used to love so freely—I realize something in me has already changed. I don’t even want to look at him. Not for a second longer than I have to.
Here I am, holding the unused key to his apartment, while he smiles at me as though nothing happened.
“Hey, pretty girl, why’d you knock? Was your key not working?” He takes a step forward when he notices I don’t make any advances to move into his apartment.
I hold the key out so he can grab it. “I won’t be needing this anymore. We’re done.”
His eyebrows furrow, like he hadn’t heard me correctly. “What do you mean we’re done , Lina?” He doesn’t take the key either.
“I can’t be with someone who doesn’t want to be with me. Take your key, Grant.” I go to place the key in his palm for him, but before I can, his hand falls limp to his side.
“What are you talking about? I never said that I didn’t want to be with you.”
“But you showed it when you cheated on me.” I take a step away from the doorframe when he makes a move to grab my arm.
Grant freezes, eyes wide like I slapped him. His mouth opens, but nothing comes out. Then he exhales—sharp, broken—as if the weight of my words knocked the air out of him.
Please! I silently beg him. Tell me it’s not true. Tell me it’s all a lie. Tell me you meant it when you said you’d do anything for me.
You don’t have to do anything . Just this. Just let me believe you didn’t let me get in this position twice. That you didn’t make a complete fool out of me.
My breath trembles. I feel like I’m stuck in a block of cement. I don’t want to see Grant any longer, yet I can’t move.
It takes a minute for me to get my bearings, to realize I’m borderline hyperventilating. It must be Grant taking a step forward that finally makes me move. His eyes are wide with guilt, and his face is drawn with the devastation of knowing he broke something he can’t fix.
I just keep backing up. And backing up.
Grant keeps moving forward in swift motions, in the way an arrow would shoot from a bow, barreling straight toward my chest. “Lina?—”
I can feel my lungs start to constrict with the fear of not knowing what to do. I know that I have no power when it comes to him.
My heart’s racing. My head’s spinning. My lungs are tightening. And I know he’s capable of talking me down from this. That he could convince me to stay if I gave him five more seconds. I’m too emotionally weak.
But I won’t.
I can’t .
I don’t want that. I refuse to let my perseverance abandon me now. I continue backing up all the way until my back hits the wall opposite of the door.
He steps towards me again.
“Lina,” he sounds genuinely hurt, his face housing a guilty expression. “Let me explain.”
Quickly, I shake off the thought that maybe I should hear him out. “I don’t want to hear another word from you. Ever.”
“Evangelina, you don’t mean that. I swear it’s not?—”
“It’s not what I think?” I cut him off. “You’re seriously going to pull that as I tell you that we’re over, all while you wear the guiltiest expression I’ve ever seen?”
“Lina,” he utters, attempting to reach out for me yet again.
I flinch as a response. “I don’t want your explanation. It’s already written across your face.” I push myself off the wall, trying to show that I’m stronger than he is.
I take one step away and proclaim, “And so we’re clear, I want nothing to do with you, Grant. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t even want to breathe the same air as you. So, believe me when I say that I am done with you. Completely. Please, accept that.”
“You have no idea what actually happened.”
I stop walking my path down the hall, turning around one last time to face him. “And you think I want to know? I don’t need the specifics. You cheated on me. We’re done.” We have to be.
This time he succeeds at grabbing ahold of my wrist from behind, and before I can manage to yank away, he says, “I know it looks like I fucked up, Lina. But you’ve got it all wrong.”
“She was my best friend , Grant.” My eyes are leaking profusely now, and I know I look as pathetic as I sound. “I became best friends with her. I trusted both of you. You’ve made me look like an idiot!”
My voice cracks as I force the next words out. “And what kills me is…losing her hurts almost as much as losing you. Maybe even more.” I shake my head, blinking through the sting. “You didn’t just take us down—you ruined the only friendship that made me feel like I wasn’t hard to love.”
“Eva—”
“ Don’t!” My voice ricochets off the walls of the hallway as I hold a hand up, pulling it from his grasp. “I tried to convince myself that my initial reaction to you was because I was still upset about Gage. The more I got to know you, the more I convinced myself that I was wrong about you.”
He reaches out again to grab me when my voice breaks into a sob. I don’t have the energy to push him away.
“ Please ,” he pleads, his own voice breaking. There are tears welling in his eyes now.
“But God , Grant. I should have just listened to my gut and left you the hell alone.”
Ripping my arm away from him, I continue walking. I ignore his attempts to gain my attention as I continue to make my way down the hall to the stairs.
I’m not going back to my apartment, where he can so easily walk down the hall and try to continue this conversation. I can’t.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt so much rage in my life as I sprint down the stairs. I don’t even have the worry that I’m going to fall, because the only thing going through my head is the thought that the person I love most in this world didn’t even flinch when it came time to risk losing me.
But against my best efforts to keep my composure, I get to the last flight of stairs, and my eyes are burning, sobs wracking my body in a way they never have before. I can barely even see the stairs I’m running down.
I’ve never been a big crier. I have always been more immune to my emotions than in tune with them. When I do cry, though, it’s more commonly out of anger and frustration rather than complete and utter misery.
By the time I get to the parking lot, all I want to do is physically rip his kiss out of my brain, taking every other thought of him with it. Every memory. Every moment.
My car feels like it’s a mile away, and when I get inside, the only thing I want to do is sit here. I can’t even start the car, let alone gain the courage to drive in the state I’m in.
I rest my head against the steering wheel. Heaving breaths take over my mind as I feel the tears fall onto my thighs. I so desperately want to get out of this parking lot, to get out of Grant’s premises, but I don’t want to get in a car crash.
I’m not stupid. Especially after what happened to my mom. I’m not stupid enough to drive in the middle of a panic attack—just stupid enough to let Grant Vandenberg be the reason I’m having one.
It’s the first time I’ve thought about how she died since it happened. The first time I’ve acknowledged it.
It takes over my entire body. The tears. The heaving. The ache.
It only hurts if you let it. I tell myself over and over. It only hurts if you let it.
And what guts me—what absolutely wrecks me—is knowing that the two people who once felt like my rescue were just a rerun of my ruin.
That I didn’t escape the betrayal. I walked straight into it. Again.
I used to think they saved me.
But maybe all they really did was sit me at a new table, smile a little brighter, and hold out their hands with a little more warmth before carving out the same hollow spaces the last ones left behind.
Only this time, I offered the knife.
And smiled while they took it.
Grant has cut deep in my soul, and at first, it was the way I wanted him to. I wanted him to embed himself into my heart. But now that I sit here, regretting everything I ever gave him, I realize that he wasn’t putting himself in my heart.
He was ripping it out.
All along, I saw myself as the girl he loved. The girl he cared for.
There were more, though. More girls. Who even knew how many?
Everything I knew of him was gone. Every piece of myself I had poured into Grant was gone. Every single thing we had.
Gone.
And I want to say it’s for good. I want to say it, but I can’t, because I know I won’t believe it.
He is forever engraved in my vital force, and I know now that I will never fully recover from the damage that he has done.
I’ll look for him everywhere I go. I’ll mistake people for him at the grocery store.
If I’m ever able to sleep again, I’ll dream of him.
It only hurts if you let it. It only hurts if you let it. It only hurts if ? —
I have let it.
Because Grant is a house of cards.
Carefully constructed, effortlessly charming, and seemingly untouchable—until the wrong breeze comes along.
He makes everyone believe he is perfect, but beneath the polished exterior, there is nothing keeping him upright.
If loving Grant Vandenberg has taught me anything, it’s that even the most impressive facades can collapse with the slightest push.
And Grant and I?
We were built to fall.