Chapter 3
Serenity
“brADLEY,” I HUFFED, TRYING TO keep up with his long, angry strides as I followed him through the dark parking lot of the bar. “Slow down, please. What’s wrong? Why—”
He came to an abrupt stop by his truck and yanked me around to stand in front of him. I nearly tripped and fell into his truck, but he grabbed me by the upper arms and leaned down to get in my face.
“What did he say to you?” he demanded.
My brow furrowed, and I tried to ignore the heavy odor of alcohol coming off his breath. “Dante? He just offered to get my drink when I told him I was a fan, and after we got out of the crowd, I asked for a photo. That was it.”
“Are you lying?” he snapped, shaking me slightly.
“What? No! Why would I lie, Bradley?”
I tried pulling out of his grip, but his hold tightened. The blue eyes I’d loved staring into for the past eight years searched mine. Seemingly satisfied with whatever he saw there, he blew out a hard breath and dropped his forehead onto my shoulder. His fingers loosened where they restrained me.
“Sorry, Dollface,” he murmured into the crook of my neck. “I saw you typing into his phone and lost it.”
Heart tightening with guilt, I wrapped my arms around him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think about how that might look. I was just too excited over seeing my idol.”
“It’s okay.” He pulled back to look down at me while his arms moved to hold me close. “I just can’t handle the thought of you cheating on me or something.”
“You know I’d never do that.”
He smiled and kissed the tip of my nose. “I know. And you know I wouldn’t either, right?”
I shared his grin, even as pain lanced my heart. “Of course.”
I trusted Bradley. I didn’t think he’d ever hurt me that way, but I also never thought my dad, my hero, would betray my mother like that.
When my dad’s infidelity came to light, it shattered my mom’s heart and our family.
If the greatest man I knew could do that, why couldn’t Bradley?
I tried to smother those meritless thoughts.
They were my own internal issues trying to poison the present, and yet the dark fears remained in the back of my mind. Lurking. Waiting to rush forward.
Bradley squeezed me tighter and tipped his chin at his truck. “Want to get out of here?”
I nodded hard and fast. “Yes, please.”
I released the tense breath I’d practically been holding ever since Bradley called me to meet up with him and his friends.
Because they certainly weren’t my friends.
That group inside was the same crowd he’d been a part of in high school.
Bradley had been the school’s star football athlete, and I was the chubby goth nobody that his friends loved to shit on.
We’d all grown up since then. Some of the guys, like John, had full beards now.
Courtney and Cassidy had gotten toned from strict food and exercise regimens.
My “baby fat” had shifted to gather in the shape of full, thick curves.
Despite all signs of our physical growth, their maturity and snarky comments hadn’t changed.
They toned down a lot of it in front of Bradley, but the jabs were there all the same—especially when he wasn’t around.
Bradley went to climb into his truck, but I quickly grabbed him, stopping the tall man in his tracks. “You’ve been drinking. I’ll drive.”
Bradley chuckled. “You’re the best. Thanks.”
I got into the driver’s seat of his truck and started toward his apartment complex. It was a drive I’d made thousands of times since he’d moved in four years ago. It often blew my mind how long we’d been together.
As two fourteen year olds, we’d been smitten with each other.
After sharing a single art class in high school, I’d developed the biggest crush on the popular boy of my grade, and by some strange miracle, he’d felt the same.
We were each other’s firsts for everything—first kiss, first formal dates, first time having sex.
I went to every single one of his football games, even though the crowds and noise stressed me out, but that unsettledness meant nothing in the face of my feelings for him back then. He was endgame for me. Or at least, teenage me thought that with her rose-colored glasses on.
Older me had doubts.
Older me had changed.
Older Bradley had changed.
And that was evident from the last year’s worth of diary entries I had, detailing the slow falling apart of something I thought was going to last forever.
When we had our big fights, it typically stemmed from those big changes. Not only had interests and attractions changed over time, but personalities had, too. I used to think that being who he wanted was better than being myself. It made him happy, which made me happy.
But now I couldn’t find happiness in his joy alone.
I needed my own love of life, which was why I had slowly started doing the things I liked more and expressing them to him—most, of which, he hated.
He wanted the version of me that always smiled, made nice with his friends, and catered to his likes.
He didn’t want the version that strived to be an author, who got tattoos, and who liked staying home to read her “slutty little books.” He especially didn’t like the girl who wanted more than the kind of sex we’d always had.
Meanwhile, Bradley was much quicker to anger than he had been in his teenage years, especially when he’d been drinking.
When he got riled up, he aimed to hurt with his words, and sometimes, he caged me in and wouldn’t stop shouting as the alcohol permeated the tight air he’d made between us.
He’d never laid his hands on me, but the anger was there all the same.
It was that same anger that had started to shine through tonight.
His behavior toward Dante—my freaking celebrity idol—still made my face burn with shame and remorse. I wished I’d had time to apologize to Dante for Bradley’s behavior.
I pulled up to Bradley’s apartment building. When I turned the truck off, he reached over to grab my hand. “Wanna come up while you wait for a driver to take you back to your car?”
I stared at him, my brows raising before I could keep the surprise off my face. “I-I thought maybe I could just stay over. It’s late. How about I stay the night, and you take me back to my car in the morning or something?”
Bradley leaned in to rest his forehead on my shoulder. “Dollface, you know I like to sleep in on Saturdays. I don’t want to do that. We can just hang out while we wait for your driver, can’t we?”
Hurt rose up like a flood in my chest, so to hide it, I teased with a light-hearted smile, “Trying to get rid of me?”
He lifted his head and rolled his eyes. He hopped out of the truck, and I followed after him, trailing behind as we went up the flight of stairs to his third floor apartment.
The space was every bit Bradley—a brown suede couch, football memorabilia hanging on the walls, a display case of old trophies and a football, boots and shoes by the door, dishes in the sink, blankets and pillows tossed haphazardly around.
It was a scene I’d come to expect in the small one bed, one bath apartment.
Bradley walked past me as I turned on the light, and he flopped back onto the couch. He draped an arm behind his head and tracked me as I picked up the pillows and blankets on the floor.
“You gonna call for that car to take you back?”
I’d only been teasing when I said he wanted to get rid of me, but now the joke wasn’t keeping my hurt feelings away. The joke didn’t seem like a joke anymore.
My arms were filled with soft linens as I straightened to stare at him. “You don’t want to hang out for even a little bit? You invited me out tonight, saying you missed me. We didn’t get to stay at the bar long. I basically just got here.”
He sighed and shut his blue eyes. “I know. I’m just so beat now that I’m home. It was a long week. I’m thinking I’m just gonna go to bed.”
I dropped his things on the other end of the couch. “And I can’t join you?”
“Not tonight, Dollface. You’re up too early for me. I need to sleep. You know how drained I was after work this week.”
I squeezed my lips together, fighting the urge to snap that he hadn’t been too drained to go out drinking with his buddies.
Because it was true that he’d had a long work week.
He was one of the lead contractors at my dad’s construction and real estate company.
He’d finished a huge custom home project this week for a trauma surgeon, which meant getting up early and coming back late.
Today had been the first day he’d finished before the sun set, so he’d gone out to celebrate that limited free time with his friends.
I’d been an afterthought.
I wanted him to enjoy the little spare time he had, so when he told me he was going out with everyone else, I’d tried to ignore the burn of rejection.
That was part of the reason I did go out when he finally asked me to—I wanted to be with him.
It didn’t matter that his friends were assholes who made fun of me or that I felt anxious in overly packed spaces.
Getting to spend time with him was worth it.
But now I wasn’t even getting to spend that time with him.
Although, it wasn’t a complete loss. I got to meet Dante, after all.
Clearing my throat, I finally smiled. “I get it. I’ll call a car to take me back to mine.”
Bradley grinned and played on his phone while I got on my own to order a car to drive me back to the bar. Silence stretched. There wasn’t an effort to talk to me in the little time we had left. He’d rather play on his dumb little phone.
“It’ll be here in 11 minutes,” I told him flatly when I finished.
Bradley perked up at the news. When my eyes met his, he stood and closed the distance between us with a salacious smirk. “11 minutes? We can have fun in that amount of time.”