Chapter Sixty
SUNNY
Exiting my apartment building, I head towards Martha’s for family dinner. The cold January evening is bustling despite the frigid air.
Regardless of my efforts, the engagement still hadn’t been called off. To my knowledge, the details had even gone into picking out dishes for the wedding ceremony. It’s a loss I’ve finally succumbed to as I wave my white flag.
I broke you, Tyler.
It’s a sickening feeling, knowing what we could have if life played us different cards. We stand so close, yet so far, knowing one another so well but also not at all. Almost, but also never quite even close. A broken girl who no longer understands what being whole feels like.
It’s hard to grasp that people like the family I met here have learned to love me—my jagged pieces included. It doesn’t matter that these pieces continue to cut them. Every broken part of me loves them.
Ryan spent so much time trying to put my fire out, to contain it. Keep it small so I didn’t burn him. Meanwhile, Tyler fuels it, he encourages me to set it free. He will gladly burn in it if it means my freedom.
Without an update on Ryan, it’s easy to want to stray from the direction I’ve been on. They say no news is good news. Though I know with Ryan, his silence is violent.
The constant worry isn’t as persistent. Some days it’s brief, while others it becomes the very air I breathe. It is suffocating me, despite my labored breaths. On the days where it’s not my very essence, the thoughts like to crawl into my mind. All of them asking what if.
What if I stayed?
It’s hard to imagine all these small moments that lead me here. From a girl who couldn’t even walk out of her apartment without looking over her shoulder to now considering staying in a place she swore she never would.
The words Ryan left me with have somehow embedded themselves into my very skin. It’s altered my brain chemistry, and repeats every day as my reminder. Woven so deeply into my ribs that I feel the stab of them with each breath.
If you walk out that door and leave, I promise I will find you.
I approach Martha’s, hoping the night is as simple as beers and the football game. While it’s only been a few days since the engagement party, I’m hopeful it’s enough time for everyone to calm down. Regardless of the fact my own rage is still an inferno inside my veins.
The wind kicks up, stinging my gold hoops against my skin and blowing the curls that escaped my bun. I tug my black coat tighter, trying to cover the spots my oversized sweater hasn’t.
As I’m walking through the parking lot, Tyler is getting out of his truck. I don’t stop for him though, I just keep walking. He slams his truck door a little too harshly, indicating that he knows I’ve walked here through the growing night.
I pick up my pace, regardless of the fact I’ll see him inside. But at least it won’t be alone. His long legs are a disadvantage to mine as he closes the space between us.
I almost audibly groan. How can a man I’m upset with look so good in jeans, and a long sleeve shirt under a peacoat?
He doesn’t say anything as he approaches my side. We just walk a few paces in silence as I side eye him, noting the fatigue in his emeralds.
“Did you walk here?” he finally asks, his breath filtering in front of him due to the cold air. I don’t answer him, because it’s none of his concern. He has a fiancé to worry about now.
He rolls his eyes at my lack of response. “You’re going to give me a heart attack doing this.”
“No barbie Shelby tonight?” I offer.
He swallows hard, a muscle flexing in his jaw. He doesn’t look at me, he just keeps his gaze straight ahead of us as we walk.
“No.” Is all he manages to get out.
I purse my lips followed by a shrug. “Okay.”
He stops, grabbing my arm and pulling me back. “Why does it bother you?”
The already gray sky grows deeper as night takes over, illuminating the streetlights in the parking lot. The darkness clings to him. It hovers around him and shadows his face, darkening the emeralds that sometimes seem too bright.
His hand doesn’t leave my bicep. I contemplate my words, trying to figure out how I’ll angle this. I stare at him, searching his face.
“Answer me,” he urges, pulling me closer to him. His body heat stretches out in a cry for my own.
“You know why,” I manage to get out. “You deserve someone who makes you happy. And that is not her.”
“You bring me happiness, Sunny. You do.” His grip tightens.
I want to look everywhere, except for his eyes, because I know my own will give away everything I’m feeling right now. I’m tired of keeping the fortress up.
I bite my quivering lip, hopeful he will excuse it for the cold and not my emotions. Once I finally meet his gaze, a brokenness that I know doesn’t belong to me reflects back.
That isn’t from me.
“You slept with her,” I whisper.
He swallows hard and breaks our gaze, indicating a yes to my revelation as he releases my arm and sets me free. I stumble back, as if his words physically hit me.
“Oh my god,” I croak. “Oh my god, Tyler. How could you?”
I don’t give him time to respond. Instead, I’m turning on my heel and trying to run away, like I always do. His large hand wraps around my bicep, pulling me back into him again.
With ragged breaths, he looks down at me. Over the sound of my own frantic heart, I can hear his, too. And I’m almost certain I hear it so clearly with each thump.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
But yeah, that’s what Ryan used to say too.
TYLER
It’s an admission I won’t speak, but one that I won’t refuse either.
She fights my hold on her, trying to get out of my grasp but I keep her close, unwilling to let her go again.
She will never understand. I cannot stop loving her any more than I can stop breathing. And even then, when my last breath goes, my love for her will still remain.
It doesn’t matter, nothing after her matters.
I curse the man before me who destroyed her so harshly that her only means to protect herself is to run.
I spin her around, grabbing her biceps to make her look at me. “You think you can come into my life and do all these things with me just to up and leave? I was doing fine before you, Sunny. But then you came, and I realized I wasn’t. You gave me light when I was content in living in the darkness.”
“You were supposed to find a way out!” She cries, crumpling under my grasp, making my heart ache, pummeling into my chest.
“How do you expect me to find my way out when my light is no longer in my life?” I counter, my voice as weak as I feel.
“That’s not fair.” She shakes her head, breaking our gaze, trying to remove herself from my grip, but it only makes me hold on tighter.
I’m not willing to lose her again. Her reaction to this has told me everything I need to know.
You love me, Sunny.
“And what about you? How is running an out?” I growl.
“Because I’m running away! I’m not sharing a fucking bed with the enemy. I had the courage to leave and stay gone. Where’s yours?” she seethes, pushing against my chest.
I clench my jaw, hating that she’s fucking right.
Her nostrils flare and brows crease together as she looks up at me with those fiery blue-green eyes. Her body trembles, and I’m not sure if it’s from the anger or cold or both. I want to pull her into me and give her all my body heat if it means she will never be cold again.
“Have some goddamn mercy on me, Sunny,” I choke.
“You don’t understand the pressure I live with every day.
It was worth it to fight for you. It was worth it to go against the expectations held against me for you but now you aren’t an option, so it is no longer worth it.
So don’t fucking make me feel guilty for following my duty and the expectations I always knew would rise up eventually and the pressure that is suffocating me. ”
She bites her quivering bottom lip and looks down at the ground while she sniffles.
“Baby…” I say. “Baby if I didn’t do it, I never would’ve been able to. I can’t…” My voice catches because I fucking hate myself for this.
My justification had been so she wouldn’t go running to our parents, crying that her betrothed is in love with another woman. Crying because I won’t give her children when that’s the whole reason we are forced together.
“It’s… it’s too complicated to explain, Sunny. All I know is I’m disgusted with myself for it.”
She shakes her head, refusing to look me in the eyes. I cradle her face, as gently as possible, to brush the tears that streak her cheeks. I want to take her pain away.
“Please, baby,” I whisper, but she jerks from my touch.
Her irises meet mine, and an anger that I’ve never seen sits there, burning in those wide eyes.
She doesn’t say anything else as she turns around and walks into Martha’s.
Now I know exactly what I need to do next.