Chapter 10 #2
His hand cupped my cheek as he tipped my head back, looking down so our eyes met. His voice was low, and raw. "Do you know how much it fucking hurts me to know that you could even think I might be happier without you?"
I blinked again.
"Do you know how many nights I've spent sitting in my truck in front of this fucking house, trying to come up with an excuse to knock on the door? To beg you to forgive me? To tell you I will do any fucking thing you want if you will just let me in?" His eyes almost... watered.
I'd only seen him cry once before, and that day was one I would never forget.
"Do you know how many times I've thought about the fact that you never wanted to bargain with me? How many times I've considered that you never even imagined I could be your fated mate? That you never even told me about it until you were throwing me out of our life and our home?"
Shock vibrated through me, rattling me to my fucking core.
I'd hurt him.
Not just when I was sad and furious and kicking him out of our house, but by keeping the truth from him for so many years.
He let out a slow breath and stood up, stepping out of the hot tub. I squeezed my eyes shut instead of watching him go.
The sound of his footsteps as he padded to the door were nearly silent, but at the same time, so loud they felt deafening.
"I've never been as happy as I was with you, Liv. Not even close." He stopped at the door for a long moment with his hand on the glass. "Don't swim alone."
Pushing the door open, he left the room.
My breathing grew shallower.
Faster, too, as panic and sadness and regret and horror crashed into me like a fucking freight train.
I managed to get myself out of the hot tub and onto the floor around it before the anxiety possessed me completely, my arms wrapping around my head as I struggled just to breathe.
I'd hurt him.
I'd fucking hurt him. Badly.
When I forced myself to think about how everything had gone down between us, I didn't feel any more anger.
There was only guilt.
That night and everything that followed might have broken me, but I might have broken him too.
How was I supposed to live with that?
By the time I managed to peel my trembling body off the floor and make my way to the shower, the sun had risen. If someone was looking for me, I wouldn't know. I'd forgotten my phone at Merrily's house.
I couldn't imagine they were.
My current view of myself was too fucking bleak.
I made it through the shower and managed to put some clothes on, then shuffled into the kitchen to find something to eat.
When I opened the fridge and saw six Ziploc bags full of leftover pizza, I slammed the door and turned around, leaning over the countertop as I fought to work through more panic before it consumed me for a few more hours.
"Worst case scenario, he never speaks to me again," I said, sucking in slow breaths of air. "I end up fated to Jonah and never have peace or happiness or good sex again." Another deep breath. "I return the couch. And the bed. And the paintings."
The paintings I'd hidden safely in the back of the studio I'd filled with plants to stop myself from sitting on the floor in there and sobbing for hours. After I'd done exactly that every night for a month after we broke up.
No.
After I kicked him out.
Why didn't he hate me?
He should've hated me.
Instead, he got a tattoo on his neck for me. A raised tattoo, so he could feel it any time he wanted.
"I go back to spending every night dancing at the club.
I finally fuck someone other than him or Jonah.
I move to a different house, and I move on.
If Jonah's not my mate..." I shook my head.
"Maybe I turn into Dare. I start trying to make bargains with anyone I meet who I find even slightly appealing.
I'll probably be horrible at it, but I'll adapt.
Maybe. I can put the house in his name as an apology, and erase his phone number so he's free of me, and it'll be okay. "
It felt like a lie.
Doing the thing helped, though.
He was right. It always did.
Niall and Larson hadn't had an easy childhood. When he taught me the thing, he'd known it worked because it worked for him. He and Larson had done it for years, until they were old enough to get away from their abusive shapeshifter father and their uninvolved spellcaster mother.
The hell Niall had been through was why he coped so well with my panic. Because he'd been there too. In a situation far worse than mine.
Something caught my eye on the kitchen island, and I saw a sticky note that hadn't been there the night before.
I leaned over and read it.
There were only five words.
I miss you
-Your Friend
"Maybe I should just go to his studio and have a real conversation with him about what we want, first," I said aloud to myself, quietly. "After I figure out the Jonah thing."
I mulled it over for a few seconds before I nodded and turned back to the fridge.
I didn't plan things the way Merrily did, but I did plan. Sometimes. Loosely.
My eyes were in a permanent state of burning as I made a fruit smoothie to go with my cold pizza, but that was fine.
I was pretending it was fine, at least.
Another panic attack was exactly what I didn't need, so I'd just keep pretending.
There was a knock at my front door, and I listened. If it didn't open immediately, it was someone I didn't consider family.
Part of me hoped it was Niall, but I knew it wasn't. Whatever the mess between us was at the moment, he wouldn't be ready to talk this soon.
He'd want at least a few hours to process everything. He'd spend that time in his studio, lost in his work and his thoughts.
The door opened without me answering it.
I flipped my blender on again, just to hear it rage the way the rest of me did.
"Niall was here," Callum said flatly, when he saw the massive ziploc bag of leftover pizza sitting on my countertop.
I smoothly folded the sticky note in half so he couldn't read it. "Maybe I just ordered pizza."
His unamused expression told me he knew I'd avoided pizza for the last two years, the same way I'd avoided the entire Spellcaster Sector, where Niall's studio was located.
"We brought breakfast, and your phone," Kat said. "Merrily said she'd found it, and hadn't heard from you. Are you okay?"
Callum set bags of takeout food on my table, and put my pizza back in the fridge. At least he didn't try to throw it out.
I dumped my smoothie into a cup and carried it over to them. They were annoyingly close to each other, some part of their bodies always touching. If I wasn't so jealous of them, I would've thought it was sweet.
"I'm fine," I lied.
"Your eyes are red," Callum snapped. "He made you cry."
"Fuck off."
"What did he do?"
"Fuck off, Callum."
Callum grabbed his phone, but Kat quickly plucked it out of his hand and slid it across the table so it was within my reach.
"Calling Niall is not necessary," Kat said.
I scowled at my best friend. "I texted him when I was drinking, and he showed up to talk about it. We talked. I realized I was a dick to him after everything that happened with Larson. He left. That's all."
Callum relaxed slightly. "You weren't a dick to him."
"I literally threw his stuff out onto the porch in trash bags and shoved our bedding into the dumpster. Shifters have a thing about their bedding, as I'm sure you're aware. Even the ones who don't go through heat."
Their identical grimaces told me they were.
"Alright, you were a dick to him. So?" Callum asked. "He's not your fated mate. It doesn't matter."
"I love him. Of course it matters. And if I'm wrong about Jonah, Niall is just as likely to be fated to me as anyone else in the city." I let out a long breath. "I'm going to bargain with Jonah for the pack's debt today. It's time to put it to rest, one way or another."
"That's good," Kat offered. "At least you'll know."
"Do you want us to come with you?" Callum asked. "We can abduct him, if he's yours."
"No. I don't want him to realize it's anything more than a normal bargain, and I don't want to abduct him. I appreciate the offer, but I know what I deserve, and it's not Jonah. If fate made a mistake, I'll deal with it."
"You're not willing to put up a fight for your fated mate?" Callum asked, his eyes narrowing.
"I'm putting up a fight for myself now."
He clenched his jaw but nodded once.
It was my choice to make. He knew that.
I drank my smoothie alongside the food Callum and Kat had brought with them. Kat talked about a new dessert in her cafes, and I participated in the conversation for the most part, because the alternative was spiraling into my anxiety.
When we were done, I leaned back in my chair, enjoying the solid thirty seconds of relative peace my magic would give me before my anxiety spiked.
"You need to get out of here. We'll clean up your mess." Kat waved me toward the door.
"Thank you. And thanks for breakfast," I managed a small smile before I got up, grabbing the sticky note on my way out to the garage.
"Don't forget your shoes!" Kat yelled.
The joke was on her, because I always kept two extra pairs in my car.
Some of us took running seriously, and had the blisters to prove it.