Chapter 42
FORTY-TWO
Austin
“ELLE? ELLE, PLEASE … OH MY God. No!”
Desperately, I flung the paperwork covering my desk across the room as if my girl were hiding under it. Stray paper clips bounced onto the floor, magnifying the emptiness that remained in her absence.
Again.
I nearly tripped over myself before peering down the hallway. Left, right, the ceiling, the floor. My neck winced. More emptiness. The narrow corridor to hell couldn’t show me what I wanted to see, what I needed to see.
Her.
Slamming my office door, I immediately searched for the box behind my grandparents’ wedding photo, the vault where my secret lived. Where I’d fallen for her. It was there.
But it was empty.
“Fuck!” I shouted.
Was I being punished?
I pounded both fists on my desk, rattling the surface so intensely that a thin crack emerged in my wake. Adrenaline and anger pounded against my forehead, concocting a rage I’d never experienced. Tears stung my eyes as they found the air.
I wasn’t a crier. I never cried.
But Elle slipping through my fingers for a second time was something I couldn’t handle. Something I hadn’t been trained or prepared for. The rib cage holding my heart in place burned, its grooves infected with red tide as the toxins of Elle’s absence stung my chest.
“I can’t do it. I can’t lose her again,” I whispered, pressing my fingertips to my temples in hopes it would blur my vision enough to skew my reality. It didn’t do a damn thing.
I sank to the floor.
My heart followed.
Then my stomach.
And finally the picture of my grandparents as I threw it. Shards of splintered glass shattered across the floor.
“Fuck the tides. The tides don’t pull people together. They rip people apart!” I cried out, helpless, hoping it was loud enough that Grandpa Joel could hear me wherever the hell he was.
“Trust the tides. The tides will take you where you need to go,” he used to tell me.
Bullshit.
Maybe that fantasy had worked for him, but there was no boat in my case. No anchor, no tides. There sure as shit was no sweet tea or lobster bisque waiting for me at the dock. I was alone, a message disintegrating without a bottle.
Void of her and the lies I’d told to ensure our paths crossed again.
Jagged metal corners lightly pierced my palms, the sharp pain not registering when I brought the box that had once contained the messy road map to Elle to my chest. Emptiness replaced its contents. The same emptiness that filled me.
Five silent minutes later, a quiet resilience cloaked my shoulders while I stared numbly into the nothingness. It was a heavy feeling, reminding me of the very thing I’d told myself the day I found Elle’s letters under Jesse’s bunk.
That giving up on my girl was not an option.
“You’re a crazy bastard—you know that?” I cursed myself.
When would I learn to let Elle Madelyn go?
The toes of my thickly treaded boots thudded together repeatedly, their solid thumps calming my nervous system before a sour reality punctured my denial.
It could take days, months, or even years to experience Elle again. If I chose to wait, what kind of wait was I in for? Could there be an us ever again? Would the years turn into decades? Would she even be open to talking to me in the future, let alone forgiving me? Wanting to be with me?
A lifetime without her meant an eternity in purgatory.
I would never lie to Elle again or push her past the boundaries she’d set. She deserved more respect than that.
I was a better man than that.
A liar was not the Austin she needed, nor the Austin I wanted to be. The Austin I wanted to be was one who honored Elle’s wishes and gave her what she asked for, even if what she asked for was a life without me. I swallowed my instincts, my next thought sinking my hopes like a poisoned anchor.
“If she’s ever ready, you’ll know.” I adjusted my collar before dousing myself in necessary restraint. “For now, you give her what she wants and leave her alone.”