Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Bellamy
I wipe my face with the back of my hand. Mascara stains my skin with streaks of black.
The longer I cry, the more irritated I get at myself. It won’t solve anything. It’s not going to cure my dad or bring my mom back or help me sort out the rest of my life.
Sometimes it hits me out of nowhere. Fear just sneaks up on me and wallops me from behind. It slithers its way into my brain, swamping me with an overwhelming loneliness that I can’t cope with.
I’ll be fine. I know that. I have Riss and Boone.
I’ll find my footing—I’m not scared of that. I’m afraid of losing a connection with my past. I’m terrified of everyone getting busy and forgetting about me.
“Bells?”
I whirl around at the sound of his voice.
Coy is standing only a few away from me. His hair is messy, and his eyes full of an emotion I can’t name.
He peers at me. “What’s going on?”
I wipe at my eyes again and hope that my face isn’t as smudged as my hand. “Nothing,” I say, sniffling. “What are you doing here?”
“I came by to see your dad.” He takes a step closer. “Talk to me, Bells. Why are you crying?”
“I’m not,” I say automatically, even though it’s evident that I am.
He gives me a stern look.
“I’m fine,” I tell him. “Just go home, please.”
There’s a war brewing in his beautiful eyes. It’s a battle I can’t watch. I don’t know what it means, and I don’t have the energy to figure it out.
I turn away.
“Dammit, Bellamy,” he says, the edges of his words rough. “I’m sick of this.”
“It’s a good thing you can just walk away then.”
He grabs my elbow and spins me to face him. When our eyes meet, his narrow. I narrow mine right back.
My heart is tender from our kiss earlier, and it’s broken from trying to read my dad’s doctor’s reports that I have to send to his insurance company. It’s all too much for one day.
“Why are you doing this?” he asks.
“What am I doing, Coy?”
“Shutting me out.”
I want to ask him why it matters.
What good would it possibly do to bring him into the trenches of my life? So he can pretend he cares? So he can feel like he did something before he leaves again?
Nah, I’m good.
“Shutting you out would infer that you were ever inside,” I say, turning away from him again.
“Really?”
His tone—accusatory and sarcastic—is precisely what I don’t need right now.
“Yes, really,” I say, giving him a dirty look. “Thank you for coming by to see Dad. I’m sure it means a lot to him. I—”
“Stop it, Bellamy.”
“Stop what?” I whip around to face him. “Why don’t you stop it, Coy?”
His eyes grow wide. “I’m just asking you what’s wrong. What the fuck?”
“No, what you’re doing is waltzing in my life like it’s your stomping ground,” I tell him, my finger wagging in the air between us. “You just come in with some kind of bravado like I should be grateful you’re here. I’m not. Okay? I’m fine.”
He has the audacity to look bewildered. “What in the hell are you talking about?”
A light flips on in the back of my house. It’s Dad’s bathroom.
I drag my attention back to Coy. “I’m not doing this with you.”
“Yes, you fucking are.”
“No, I’m not.”
I march toward my house. It takes everything I have to sniffle back another round of tears as my emotions well up inside me.
Why does this have to be more challenging? Why did he have to show up here and spark all of these feelings that I had successfully put to bed?
Why did I have to go over there? Why did he have to kiss me?
Why does he keep pushing and probing like this matters to him beyond tonight?
He needs to go back to Nashville and back to his life with people who are as superficial as him.
And stay away from my dad.
I know that’s not fair because Dad probably loved seeing him. A small part of me loved seeing Coy walk over to the house tonight too. But I’d love it a lot more if I thought he’d remember a week from now.
I blink rapidly as I shove my door open. I swing it shut behind me, but it stops … on Coy’s hand.
“Please just go,” I tell him as I square my shoulders with his. “I don’t have it in me to fight with you tonight.”
“I don’t wanna fight with you.”
“Well, I wanna fight with you. I just can’t manage it right now.”
My bottom lip quivers.
The truth is, I don’t want to fight with him either. I’d give anything if I could fall into his arms and pour my heart out in a way I can’t do with anyone.
But I can’t do that with him either. Because if I do, it’ll be that much more bullshit to deal with later. And my limit on bullshit to deal with has been exceeded.
Coy’s features soften. He looks as vulnerable as I feel, and that makes me want to cry.
And that pisses me off.
“Why didn’t you tell me that Joe was this sick?” he asks.
My grin is angry. “Look, Coy, I’m not going to beg you to care.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? That you’re not going to beg me to care? You didn’t give me a chance to care.”
“Yes, I did, and you blew me off—”
“What?”
His feigned innocence infuriates me.
“Yeah. Please excuse me for not wanting to talk about this because you feel compelled to express your emotions. I have to live with them every day.”
“How was I supposed to know he was this sick? Why didn’t someone tell me? Does Boone know?”
I roll my eyes. “Of course, Boone knows. I see him every day. And I don’t know why your mom or Boone didn’t describe the depths of my daddy’s sickness so you could gauge whether it was worth your time or not.”
Coy’s jaw sets, and his demeanor cools. “That’s not fair.”
“You’re damn right it’s not.”
We glare at each other.
“I’m not around every day, so I’m blackballed? Is that what this is?” he asks.
My laughter is abrupt and loud and causes him to flinch.
“You are so precious,” I say, releasing years of frustration. “I try to tell you what’s going on, and you blow me off—”
He balks like he has no idea what I’m talking about. “What?”
“And then you decide you’re the victim?” I laugh angrily again. “That’s not how this works.”
I leave him standing in the living room and walk to the kitchen. I need fresh air. Space. Room to calm myself down.
My emotions were so high before this—before he caught me crying. God knows that I’d never let him see me cry on purpose.
I’m not alone for long. Coy enters the kitchen with a flurry.
I close my eyes. “I really don’t want to do this,” I tell him, exhaustion sinking deep into my bones. “Please, go.”
When he doesn’t respond for a full minute, I lift my chin and look at him.
He’s standing in the doorway with a sober look on his face. There’s no ego, no cockiness—none of the self-importance I expect to see.
Instead, there stands a man who wormed his way into my heart so many years ago. I can’t shake it or deny it, even if I want to.
My shoulders slump as my will to argue melts away. I cried myself tired.
“What did you mean that you tried to tell me what was happening, and I blew you off?” he asks softly. “And don’t get snarky or start yelling. Talk to me, Bells.”
I exhale long and loud. “I texted you. You ignored me. Well, until you called me like two weeks later.”
He furrows a brow. “Bellamy, that’s not true.”
“Yes, it is.”
He holds a hand out toward me like he can ward off an eruption of anger. Lucky for him, I’m too defeated right now to get angry again.
“I found out from my mom that your dad was sick,” he says. “I never got a text from you.”
I shrug.
“I swear to you, Bells. I didn’t know until Mom told me.” He takes a cautious step forward. “Did you really reach out to me?”
“Yes. The night I found out.” My lip trembles again as I think back on that fateful day. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to tell Riss or Boone yet. I didn’t want them coming over here and babying me. I just wanted to talk …”
I walk backward until the back of my knees hit a chair. My weight drops to the seat, and I sink into the wood.
Coy doesn’t move. He doesn’t even blink. He just watches me sit in front of him like a caged animal.
“I know it doesn’t matter right now,” he says. “Not to you. And I get that. But do you know what day you found out? What day you texted me? Because I swear to you, Bellamy, that I didn’t get it.” He lowers his head. “I would’ve responded. I swear it.”
“It’s okay that you didn’t. I’m fine. I’ll be fine. I—”
“Dammit, Bellamy. Listen to me.” He steps toward me again. “I would’ve responded.”
But you didn’t.
“You don’t owe me anything,” I tell him. “We were friends a long time ago. That’s it. You have no responsibility to me.”
He shakes his head. “I’ve always had a responsibility to you. Don’t be dense.”
My eyes nearly fall out of my head.
“Remember Bodhi? That fuckhead you dated when you were seventeen? I didn’t just crack him because I was jealous—although I probably was. I busted him in the face because I caught him out with another girl, and he had the nerve to say some unflattering bullshit about you.”
I stand. “Why are you telling me this now?”
“So you realize that you meant something to me even then,” he says, his eyes growing wide as if he’s as surprised to hear the words as I am. “So you understand that I would never, would never, Bellamy, not be there for you.”
My jaw hits the floor as I try to absorb this information. I don’t give a crap about Bodhi now. I didn’t even really care about him then. ‘So you realize that you meant something to me even then’—that’s a lot to digest.
I can’t process all of this right now. Not when my brain was already mush when this whole thing started tonight. The only thing I can pick out—the only thing that I know for sure—is that Coy has had many opportunities to stick around, and he never has.
Our relationship could be enemies-to-lovers, but it’s always heavy on the enemies and light on the lovers.
“I texted you the night you won the Honors award,” I tell him, my voice staying nice and even. “It was a couple of hours before the show went on air. I just got home, and I got Dad settled inside, and I came out here and had a breakdown.”
He bites his lip.