Chapter Four #2
She turned slowly toward me, and my stomach dropped instantly when I saw tears sitting in her eyes.
I rushed toward her bed. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
The second I reached for her, she flinched away from me.
Actually flinched.
Fear crawled instantly down my spine. “Did I hurt you?” I asked quickly, panic rising in my chest. “Baby, talk to me.”
“Don’t call me that,” she whispered.
The coldness in her voice hit me like a slap. She sat up quickly and moved further away from me on the bed.
Every instinct inside me screamed that something was very, very wrong. “Okay,” I said carefully, trying not to panic. “Okay… but tell me what happened.”
A tear slid down her cheek. “You upset me.”
My chest tightened painfully.
“What?”
She stood abruptly and walked toward her wardrobe, pulling clothes out with jerky movements while I sat there trying to understand what the hell had changed overnight.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Indi, seriously, tell me what I did and I’ll fix it.”
“It’s not what you did.” Her voice cracked slightly. “It’s what you said.”
I frowned harder. “What did I say?”
She turned toward me then, and the anger in her eyes genuinely shocked me. “You know exactly what you said.”
“No, I don’t.” I stood slowly. “Indi, I swear to God, I don’t.”
The frustration on her face only worsened. “You said you wanted me to be yours.”
Relief almost hit me at first because that didn’t seem bad. Not compared to the horrific scenarios my brain had already created.
I stepped toward her carefully. “You are mine,” I said softly.
“Stop saying that!” she snapped.
I froze.
“What is happening right now?”
“You know what happened to my parents,” she shot back.
I blinked in confusion. “Of course I do. I was there.”
“Then how can you sit there talking about forever and relationships like they are some beautiful thing?”
I stared at her, completely lost. “Indi, what are you talking about?”
“You heard me!” Her breathing became shaky and uneven. “My parents loved each other so much they destroyed themselves. Dad overdosed, and Mum killed herself because she couldn’t live without him.”
My stomach dropped.
Oh. Well, fuck!
Suddenly, I understood.
At least a little.
“That’s not us,” I said quietly.
“But it could be!” she cried and wrapped her arms tightly around herself as tears streamed down her face. “You don’t get it, Caleb. They were obsessed with each other. Completely obsessed. And where did that leave me?”
My heart hurt looking at her. “Indi—”
“No!” She shook her head violently. “I can’t become that person. I can’t spend my life terrified something will happen to you.”
“It won’t.”
“You d-don’t k-know th-that!” Her voice cracked apart completely. “You’re going into music. You’ll be famous eventually. You’ll tour and travel and be surrounded by all the same shit our parents were surrounded by, and what if one day you don’t come home?”
I stared at her in disbelief. “Indi, I would never touch drugs.”
“You can’t promise me forever!” she shouted.
Silence slammed between us, and I moved closer carefully.
“Yes, I can.”
Her eyes met mine instantly. “No one can.”
I reached for her elbow gently. “Baby, listen to me. We are not our parents.”
She looked wrecked hearing me say that. “You believe that now,” she whispered. “But Mum probably thought the exact same thing once.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“Because what happened to them was tragic, Indi. Not normal.” My voice softened. “And if something ever happened to me, I’d want you to keep living. I’d want you to be happy.”
She started crying harder at those words and whispered, “I can’t do this.”
My heart stopped. “What?”
“We’re better as friends.”
The words punched the air out of my lungs. “No.” I shook my head instantly. “No, you don’t mean that.”
“I do—”
“You don’t.” I stepped closer desperately. “Last night—”
“Last night was beautiful,” she cut in quickly, tears pouring down her face now. “But that doesn’t mean we should be together.”
“How does that even make sense?”
“Because I can’t survive… no, I won’t survive loving someone that much.”
Christ.
The pain in her voice wrecked me, so I grabbed the edge of her dresser to steady myself. “Indi—”
She shook her head before I could finish. “I don’t have the strength for this, Caleb.” Then she walked out of the room.
And just like that, she took every bit of air in my lungs with her.
I stood there staring at the empty doorway, trying to process what had just happened. I bent forward, gripping the end of her bed while panic clawed up my throat. Because somehow, in the space of one night, I’d gone from being the happiest guy alive…
To feeling like my entire world had just collapsed around me.
A friend?
I’d just made love to the girl I loved more than anything in this world, and somehow I’d still ended up shoved into the friend zone.
And that hurt worse than the night her parents died.
Because that night, Indi was the one falling apart.
This time it was me.
I felt hollowed out from the inside. Like Indi had reached into my chest and ripped something vital out with her bare hands. Every dream I’d built around her over the years felt stupid and pathetic.
I’d finally had her.
And somehow I’d still lost her.
Living in the same house with her after this was going to be torture.