To Regret a Raven (Evermore #1)

Not Okay

“We should break up.”

The words had left his lips in that exact order. Drie was certain. She heard Fisher’s velvet voice continue, his soft mouth moving as his troubled blue eyes bounced between her own, but the meaning wasn’t coming through. Not after that first sentence.

The textbook stock image of a wide-eyed soldier in shock from her critical care nursing unit came to mind, and she objectively wondered how close her expression would have come to matching that soldier’s if she’d had a mirror to compare.

Her phone vibrated in her pocket, but she barely registered the feeling.

“I’m sorry?” she said, moving her hands to her lap before wrapping them around her middle. “I nee—can you just repeat that?”

“Which, uh…part?”

“The first bit.”

Fisher nodded, swallowing hard. “I don’t think we should continue dating.

” He reached across the console and grabbed her left hand, holding it tightly between his warm palms. “You’re so amazing and sweet and kind.

You’re the best person I know. But you deserve more than me. More than I can offer you.”

Her eyes snapped up, confusion the first emotion to break through the numb fog that shrouded her mind.

Fisher may not have had a degree, but he worked hard.

He held two well-paying jobs—one as the city librarian’s assistant, and the other as a weekend mechanic.

And two jobs were a lot more than her zero jobs.

Not to mention the student loan debt she was racking up to put herself through nursing school.

He worked more than sixty hours on a light week and still managed to make time for their dates twice a week at his request. For six months, they’d been perfectly fine. Fisher had never once given her an indication that he was unhappy or felt unworthy.

“I don’t need you to offer me anything, Fisher. I can take care of myself.”

“That’s not what I mean.” He shook his head solemnly, the devastation in his eyes telling her that she was missing something vital—something he didn’t want to say out loud.

She couldn’t stand the idea that he could think of himself so poorly. “I hope you know that I don’t care where you work. You could pick up trash for a living, and I would think that’s noble. I love you for who you—”

“Stop!” Fisher shouted in the too-small truck cab, his eyes shut tight at the uncharacteristic outburst. Drie jerked back, yanking her hand from his tight grasp, and his fingers twitched to follow before he dropped his own hands to his lap.

“I’m sorry.” His breathing was shallow, too fast, when his eyes rose to hers once more.

“I know those things already. You’re misunderstanding me. ”

Her eyes scanned his defeated posture—his dark hair, overdue for a trim and wet from the rain, falling into his pleading eyes. Pleading for what, though, she wasn’t sure. Forgiveness? Understanding?

It took her back to a night nearly a decade past; the last time she’d stood before a man with that exact expression.

The night her disappointing, absentee father had offered his final goodbye on the evening of her twelfth birthday.

Drie hadn’t known, at the time, how final it would come to be, but she’d been distraught nonetheless, knowing only that he planned to travel for a bit.

Knowing only that she loved him despite his irregular hints of affection and utter lack of parental responsibilities.

Drie had begged him that night, the only parent in her life, not to leave her.

She’d begged him quietly in the kitchen, where he broke the news over plates of her eldest sister’s homemade cake.

She’d begged again through her sobs in the yard with her heartbroken sisters at her back.

And she’d begged one last time to the stars illuminating his old Dodge as it squeaked its way down the gravel drive, the taillights disappearing around the bend.

She imagined that the shock she’d felt the night her father unceremoniously walked out of her life wasn’t that far removed from her current emotional state. And with that realization, true understanding began to dawn.

Drie was a forthcoming individual. She didn’t hide her emotions.

She wasn’t sure she even knew how. Drie loved easily, and she was proud of that.

Until it hit her that she’d been telling Fisher she loved him for weeks, and he’d never once returned the sentiment.

She’d not been in any rush to hear it back until that very moment, when his heavy silence rang loudly with unspoken truth.

She turned back to him, noting the shine in his eyes and the grey tint to his skin, even beneath the yellow streetlights.

“You don’t love me,” she stated, proud that her voice held steady.

His jaw tightened as he slowly shook his head in confirmation.

“And you don’t believe you ever will.”

He broke her gaze to look out the window toward the entrance of her cheap apartment building, probably wishing she’d take the hint already and end this awful conversation.

“Say it,” she barked.

He jerked. “No,” he gritted out, his voice rough. “I don’t think I will. And I can’t listen to you keep saying those words to me when I can’t say them back.”

She sucked in a deep breath, letting the words spear her, absorbing them and allowing them to settle into the void of numbness to unpack again later when the shock subsided and feeling returned.

She wasn’t sure how Fisher had managed to blindside her so thoroughly.

One thing Drie did know for certain, though, was that she was never again begging a man for his love and affection.

“Alright,” she finally said, reaching for the door handle.

She jumped when Fisher turned abruptly in his seat and grabbed her hand once more.

“Listen to me, Drie. You are truly, truly my best friend. This is killing me.” He paused to flinch at her scoff, then plowed forward.

“I don’t want to lose you completely, but I couldn’t keep us going in a relationship when I wasn’t feeling the same.

It was unfair to you. And I know it’s something people say all the time and don’t mean, but I do mean it.

I am your friend, always, and I hope you will still be mine. ”

“What you’re asking is unfair,” she whispered around the realization that he was right. He was her best friend as well. But how could he want her to accept a friendship, knowing that she had deeper feelings? The idea alone was humiliating.

He nodded jerkily. “I know that too. I’m an asshole, but I’m an asshole who is still shamelessly asking you not to cut me out entirely. I want to be friends when you’re ready.”

“You mean if.”

“When.”

She took in the determined pinch to his lips and furrowed brow and nodded, if for nothing else than to simply escape the absolute nightmare of their conversation. Her tone was monotonous as she agreed. “Sure, Fisher. When. I’m going inside now. Get home safe.”

“Drie—” he started, but the rest of the sentence was cut off by the snap of the truck door shutting behind her. Drie heard his door open as she punched in the code for the building, and it spurred her into a near sprint as she crossed the lobby to the elevator.

Taking what felt like her first deep breath since she’d sat down in his truck, Drie glanced over her shoulder to spot him standing on the other side of the locked entrance, looking as lost as she felt.

She held his eyes as the ancient doors slowly creaked shut.

Then she pulled her phone out of her pocket with trembling fingers and returned the missed call.

“Drie? You okay, babe?” Her eldest sister’s voice was soft and warm, splintering the numbness and causing the tears to rise swiftly.

She swallowed a sob, leaning back against the paneled elevator wall.

“No,” she answered brokenly. “I’m not okay.”