Chapter Forty-Four
Caleb
When I arrive, I climb out of the cab and hurry up Kenzi’s path, pounding on the front door. I don’t call out. If Indi is here and she hears my voice, she’ll run before I get the chance to explain anything.
I knock again.
“All right, all right, I’m coming. Sheesh,” Kenzi calls from inside.
The door swings open, and her eyes widen.
Before she can say a word, I push past her. “Where is she?” I call, already moving through the house. “Indi?”
Behind me, the front door closes with a sharp click.
“Well, come on in, why don’t you?” Kenzi says dryly.
I ignore the sarcasm and search every room I can find, throwing open doors and checking each one before moving to the next.
Nothing.
“Caleb,” she calls. “She’s not here.”
I stop and turn back toward the living room, where she is standing with her arms folded.
“Then where is she?”
“She moved into a place with another nurse from work. She didn’t want to stay here because she knew this would be the first place you would look.”
Her words hit harder than I expected them to.
She had planned for me.
Planned to disappear.
I cross the room in two strides and grip Kenzi’s shoulders. “P-please.” My voice cracks despite my best effort to steady it. “Just tell me where she is. I have to explain what happened.”
Her eyes flick briefly to my hands before returning to my face.
“Caleb… I know you love her. God knows that’s obvious.
And I know she loves you too.” Hope flickers…
“But every time she lets you back into her life, she ends up heartbroken.”…
then dies. “You don’t see what I see,” she continues gently.
“I’ve watched her fall apart more times than I can count.
Since you came back, she has cried more than she smiles.
She loves you so much that every disappointment cuts deeper than the last.”
I let my hands fall away. “You’re wrong.”
“Am I?” She holds my gaze. “You don’t hurt her on purpose, Caleb.
I know that. But intent doesn’t change the outcome.
” I look away. “She doesn’t belong in your world.
” My whole body tightens. “She needs peace. She needs stability. She needs a life where she isn’t wondering when the next headline, the next scandal, or the next crazy fan is going to turn everything upside down.
” Every word lands exactly where it hurts.
“You can give her so much,” Kenzi says softly.
“You can love her with everything you’ve got. But you can’t give her a normal life.”
No. I can’t.
Not without giving up everything I’ve worked for.
“Shit,” I whisper.
Kenzi steps closer and rests a comforting hand on my shoulder. “I honestly believe the two of you have the kind of love people spend their whole lives searching for.” Her smile is tinged with sadness. “But sometimes… love isn’t enough.”
The lump in my throat becomes impossible to swallow. For the first time since I stepped off that plane, I stop fighting what I have known all along.
Maybe loving Indi has never been the problem.
Maybe it’s me.
Maybe she will always pay the price for the life I’ve chosen.
I spent six years refusing to let her go. Six years of believing we’d find our way back to each other.
And when we finally did? I broke her heart all over again.
The thought hollows me out.
I look at Kenzi and realize she’s watching the battle play out across my face.
She already knows.
I have to let Indi go.
“You’re doing the right thing,” she says quietly.
I laugh, though there’s no humor in it. “Then why does it feel like someone’s ripped my heart out?”
“Because sometimes doing the right thing hurts more than doing the easy thing.” She steps forward and wraps her arms around me.
For the first time in weeks, I don’t fight the emotion.
I close my eyes and hold on for a second before clearing my throat. “Promise me something…”
She pulls back. “Anything.”
“If she meets someone else…” the words are so painful to say, “… make sure he’s good to her.” The emotion tightens my chest. “Make sure he loves her the way she deserves.”
Kenzi smiles sadly. “I will.” She squeezes my arm. “And you deserve to find happiness too.”
I shake my head. “There isn’t anyone after Indi.” There never will be. “But I’ll figure out how to keep going.”
Somehow.
“I hope you do,” she says.
We walk together to the front door, neither of us speaking.
Silence says more than either of us can.
My legs feel heavy as I step outside, as though every footstep is carrying me further away from the only future I’d ever wanted.
Kenzi is right… Indi deserves a life where she isn’t constantly looking over her shoulder.
A life without photographers hiding behind cars.
A life without obsessed fans.
A life without rumors, scandals, and women like Sasha trying to tear us apart.
She deserves peace.
And if I’m honest with myself…
I have never been able to give her that.
I stop on the front step and turn back. “One last thing.” Kenzi waits. “Just tell her…” My voice catches. “Tell her I n-never stopped l-loving her.”
She nods. “I will.”
“And tell her I only ever wanted her to be happy.”
“I’ll tell her.”
I manage a small nod before turning away.
I don’t bother calling another cab. Right now, I need the walk. I need the cold air, and I need the silence.
As the front door clicks shut behind me, it feels as though some other major door has closed with it.
Not just Kenzi’s.
The one I had spent years trying to reopen.
Indi will always be the love of my life.
And because I love her…
I am finally letting her go.
Indi
I’ve moved into a much larger house with Ingrid from work, which has been a nice change. It’s only a few streets from my old place, close enough to feel familiar but far enough away that, if Caleb ever became desperate enough to go knocking on doors, he’d never think to look here.
I also transferred from the emergency room to the orthopedics ward. If he came looking for me at the hospital, he won’t find me there either.
Kenzi told me he never did.
That surprised me more than I expected.
She did admit he came to her house looking for me, though.
They talked, but she never told me what was said.
Whatever it was, something changed. The constant stream of phone calls slowly dwindled from ten a day to one, and although that’s exactly what I wanted, it still hurt to realize he’d finally stopped trying quite so hard.
Losing Caleb wasn’t new.
I had survived it once before.
This time was different.
This time, there was no misunderstanding to hide behind, no hope that time would somehow bring us back together.
He knew my one hard limit, and he crossed it anyway.
Seeing that photograph of him with Sasha had hurt enough, but hearing her voice on the phone telling him to come back to bed had shattered whatever hope I’d still been clinging to.
I know Caleb wouldn’t deliberately cheat on me.
I believe that with every part of me.
But he still chose to let her into his world, knowing exactly what she was capable of. Whether anything had happened between them or not suddenly didn’t seem to matter. The damage was already done.
It’s February now.
Three months have passed, yet the ache of losing him hasn’t eased in the slightest, and it doesn’t help that I torture myself almost every day.
I tell myself I’m done checking up on him, that I’ll stop searching his name online and finally let him go. Then one weak moment comes along, and before I know it, I’ve wasted an entire afternoon scrolling through photographs of him, interviews with the band, and anything else I can find.
He looks miserable in every picture.
So does Annie.
Seeing them twists something painful inside my chest.
I never see him with another woman, and I hate how relieved that makes me. There haven’t been any more pictures of him with Sasha either, and I’m grateful for that because I honestly think seeing her beside him again would push me over the edge.
Most days, I’m balancing on that edge already. I’m functioning because I have to, not because I want to.
Kenzi finally convinced me to start dating again.
That’s how I met Mick.
He works at a little coffee shop in the city. The first time he served me, he somehow managed to make me smile on a day when I didn’t think I was capable of it. He noticed how miserable I looked, talked to me for a while, and before I left, I realized I felt… lighter.
So when he asked me out, I said “Yes.”
One date became another, and now we’ve officially been together for a month.
He’s a genuinely good man.
Kind.
Patient.
Steady.
Sleeping with him the first time was harder than I ever imagined it would be. Afterward, while he slept peacefully beside me, I locked myself in the bathroom and cried because it felt as though I’d betrayed Caleb.
The second time was easier.
Not because I enjoyed it more, but because it felt less like cheating and more like accepting that my life had changed.
Mick is good to me.
Sex with him is…
Nice.
Comfortable.
But once you’ve experienced something extraordinary, ordinary has a hard time measuring up. That thought alone makes me feel guilty.
I should be giving Mick more of myself because he deserves that. He tells me he loves me—far sooner than I expected—but he means it, and there is nothing complicated about him.
No groupies.
No paparazzi.
No headlines waiting to tear our lives apart.
No chaos.
No excitement. I blink. Did I really just think that?
For so long, I convinced myself that all I wanted was an ordinary life, but now that I have it, I can’t help wondering if ordinary was ever enough.
Life with Caleb was exhausting, emotional, and goddamn complicated most of the time.
It was also exhilarating.
Life with Mick is everything I thought I wanted.
It’s calm.
Predictable.
Safe.
Yet some days it feels as though I’m slowly suffocating beneath the weight of it.
Even moving to the orthopedics ward has left me feeling the same way. I enjoy the work, but it lacks the urgency and adrenaline I loved in the emergency room.
Sometimes I miss my old life so much it physically hurts.