At First Hate (Coastal Chronicles)

“I would never,” he snarled.

“I know. I’m not accusing you of anything, Derek. I’m letting you know that I don’t believe a word out of her mouth. I never have. She’s rotten and spoiled and festering. I’m smarter than her tricks.”

He breathed a sigh of relief but then realized I was still leaving. “Then why?”

“Because her point was wrong, but the conclusion was the same. We can’t be together.”

“Marley—”

“Please, don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

“Harder than it has to be?” he demanded. “It was hard enough the first time. I don’t want you to go.”

I nodded and bit my lip. “I know. I know, it was. I don’t want it to be like that again. But this just isn’t going to work with the case between us. You know that’s true. It’s why you’ve been avoiding bring it up.”

“We can survive this, Mars.”

I barreled forward, saying all the things I never wanted to say. “We can’t. It wouldn’t be fair of me to ask you to give up the case. You’ve worked all this time to make partner.. It’s your dream. And it’s not fair to me for you to stay on the case. We can’t survive both scenarios. There’s no winning here. There’s only getting out before either of us gets hurt.”

“Too late for that.”

“I know,” I whispered, swiping at a tear.

My heart was being shredded from the inside out, even though I was doing the right thing. I was approaching this as an adult. Looking at it from all sides. I wanted Derek, but it wasn’t that simple. Maybe it never had been.

“We’ve spent fifteen years trying to make this work. If it didn’t work before, it’s definitely not going to work now. Not with this between us. Not like this.”

“So, you’re just going to run?”

“I’m not running,” I told him calmly. I wasn’t. Running would have meant handing the keys to the house to Maddox, getting in the car, and never looking back. This was the sane, rational way to do this. It was the only way to do this. “That’s why I’m here. I’m telling you the truth. It sucks, but it’s still the truth.”

He looked distraught by my words. As if he could make me take them back. Go back to the moment this morning when we’d been pretending like the case didn’t exist. If only I had been able to keep business and personal separate, but that wasn’t realistic. My business was personal, and that was the difference.

“Deep down, you know that I’m right,” I told him. “We were treading water, and as easy as I find it to drown in you, I want to survive this time.”

“What if I don’t want you to go?” he asked, just shy of begging.

I stood on my tiptoes and placed a soft kiss on his perfect lips. “It’s okay.”

“Please,” he breathed against my lips. “We can figure this out.”

“And what happens when I go back to Atlanta at the end of this semester?” I demanded, asking all the hard questions we’d put aside. “What happens then, Derek? Your job and life are here. Mine is four hours away. We can’t do long distance forever. I don’t want to live my life four hours away. It was always going to end. This was just… a summer fling.”

“It’s not the summer.” He brushed a lock of my hair backward, staring down into my eyes. “And it’s not a fling.”

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I really am. But this is good-bye.”

He reached for me, but I backed up. I had to get out of there, or I was going to start really crying. This was the right thing to do. It was going to save us both a lot of pain. Even if it hurt us more in the short-term.

He took a step after me, but I shook my head. This was it. This was the end. No more back and forth. Fifteen years, and nothing had changed. I could want this so bad, but it didn’t mean it was going to work. We’d been living in a fantasy. In real life, it didn’t work out.

So, I turned away from him and ran back to my car. I pulled out of the street and checked my rearview mirror. He stood on the sidewalk, watching me go. It wasn’t until he disappeared in my mirror that the tears started to fall.

Part V

36

Savannah

June 14, 2019

“I can’t believe that I’m going to miss the wedding.” Gran all but pouted from her hospital bed.

“Don’t worry about the wedding. Let’s focus on you getting better.”

I sank back down into the chair opposite her. She had been doing so well. The cancer diagnosis had come in two years ago, and we hadn’t been sure if she was going to make it. But she had recovered slowly but surely. Then, bam! It had hit all over again. Stronger than ever.