“Real feelings?” I snap, my voice rising. “You want to know how I really feel? I—”
I love you, I start to spit in his face.
But I won’t say it now.
I won’t even let myself feel it.
I’m not him. I can’t use words like that as weapons, unloading them now instead of when they would’ve meant something.
A better time. A better place. A better us.
Because I can’t stand hurling myself against this man’s glacial edges and cut my heart open even more.
“I can’t stand the sight of you,” I bite off. “I’ll come by to get my crap from your place. If you have even a shred of decency, you won’t be there.”
No response.
Just pure stone.
Just that flat, barbed stare, as walled-off and unreadable as ever.
“You’ve made it clear there’s nothing decent about me,” he snarls in a voice that’s barely human.
Holy hell.
I don’t know what to say. I’m vibrating with rage, with hurt, with heartbreak, with humiliation.
So I just stomp back into my office.
I get one satisfying second to slam the door shut in that bastard’s impassive, unfeeling face.
Then I fall to the ground, grasping at nothing, feeling like I just got run over and set on fire.
I wish I truly had.
It wouldn’t have hurt half as bad as falling in love with this cruel joke of a man.
22
A Good Man Feeling Bad (Roland)
I don’t know what the hell I thought I was doing.
What the hell I was thinking.
What did I think would happen if I lost my focus?
If I turned away from my path for this bizarre detour with a woman who’s my total antithesis?
Did I really think if I fell in love with Callie Landry I’d suddenly turn into Mr. Upright Citizen?
An honest man capable of giving a woman like her some kind of stable relationship. Much less a decent life...
Fuck that.
Fuck everything.
I am what I've always been.
And she showed me exactly what she thinks that is when she wouldn’t even trust me enough to fucking tell me she had a new secret interview with Easterly Ribbon.
On the back pier with my beer, I glare out at Lake Michigan and the deep silence of a dark, moonless night. The water looks like black glass with the odd serrated ripple in the starlight.
I don’t want to be inside my house right now.
Not when I hadn’t realized just how much of Callie’s life was encroaching into mine—not until she’d shown up on my doorstep a little while ago.
We didn’t say one word to each other.
She wouldn’t even look at me.
I’ve never seen her so blank, so stony, so chilled.
It made me feel like the worst kind of donkey on the planet. Because I know that look on her face, that cold detachment.
That’s my shit.
That’s the only part of myself I was able to give to her.
Teaching her how to be impassive, tainting her sweetness and forcing her to harden that bold, vivid heart.
I’d let her in silently, then snagged a beer and shut myself out back, sitting with my back to the glass double doors and listening to the sounds of her moving around, gathering the suitcase she’d brought over and her little odds and ends strewn everywhere.
I didn’t look back until I heard the front door slam, and went in for another beer.
Her toothbrush in the bathroom was gone.
Her favorite coffee cup was missing from the kitchen—an ugly oversized mug from some kitschy New Orleans gift shop—but she’d insisted it always made the coffee taste better.
The book she was reading, a fat illustrated hardback of Pride and Prejudice, vanished from the coffee table.
She’d even taken the bottle of oat milk she kept in the fridge because she swore dairy milk made everything taste weird unless it was being served up in a nice French cafe at the end of the Mississippi.
All her little touches everywhere, from the extra phone charger plugged into the bedroom nightstand to the peach-scented face cleanser she used every night before bed, usually on the bathroom counter next to a couple lipsticks she used to taunt my soul...
All gone.
Like they were never more than a fever dream.
My home is back to the palatial cave it was before she invaded.
Yet somehow, it’s just not home anymore.
So here I am. Staring out at the water like I wish it could wash me away to a different life.
Wondering why the hell I let myself get tangled up with a woman who needed me to be someone better than I can ever be.
I don’t even have to ask her why she didn’t tell me about Easterly.
I know.
Because she thinks I only want Easterly’s testimonial for my own selfish purposes. A great headline and a torpedo of a story that would sink Vance Haydn for life.
My long-sought ticket to finally securing justice for Barrett.
A couple months ago, she would've been right.