His gaze assesses me, scrutinizing my expression.
“I’m not lying, Carter. I have no reason to lie to you.” I let my voice soften, to show him the vulnerability. “I love you. Even through all this, I can’t stop loving you. Yes, I had a chance to run, and I didn’t take it. I wanted to stay with you.”
My heart flickers in my chest, barely holding on to life as Carter’s expression doesn’t change, then another second passes and another.
“You don’t believe me?” I say weakly with disbelief.
“You’ve hurt me once. Right there,” he says then gestures with his hand behind me, to the hall that leads to the room where I held a gun to his head. “How can I believe you?”
“If you didn’t think you could believe me,” I say to try to numb the pain growing inside of me, like a ball of bile that drops in my stomach, “then why bring me back here?” All I can think is that he doesn’t love me. He doesn’t anymore.
Silence.
It’s unbearably silent as my stomach churns while Carter walks off, leaving me without an answer. Without telling me that he loves me, even though I’m the fool who spoke those words to him.
Carter
My phone is constantly ringing, pinging, vibrating. Constantly distracting me from life itself and reminding me that I’m in control. It never lets up. Even now, the instant I turn notifications back on I’m flooded with alerts.
Every second the car moved and she said nothing—my Aria said nothing at all, not one fucking word to me or anyone else—every second of silence that passed only made the hate for what she’d done grow. She may not have been with her father or his men. But she sided with him nonetheless.
My phone goes off again, vibrating in my hand and it rattles against the cut crystal tumbler. With the adrenaline and anxiousness still ringing in my blood, my grip tightens, feeling the hard metal of the phone digging into my flesh as I open my bedroom door.
I need a fucking minute. One goddamn minute to take control again.
The incessant buzzing in my hand mocks me and I slam the door shut behind me, feeling my muscles tighten and the air thin as I struggle to keep my breathing steady.
Setting down the tumbler and bottle of whiskey on the dresser, I glance at my phone, unable to simply shut the fucking thing off.
It’s Sebastian.
The intensity dims, the heat subsides. He always has a way of showing up when I need him most.
I heard what happened, his message reads and as I stare at his text, another comes in. I know you’ll probably say the same as always, that you don’t need me to come back, but I have to ask. Do you want my help?
I stare at the last line, taking in the word “want.” When Sebastian left, it was a while before we talked again, given everything that changed the very next day. The day I had my unfortunate introduction to Aria’s father.
I thought you were busy with Chloe and work? I write back then press send, still staring at the word “want.”
He’s asked a few times, when shit got rough over the years, if I needed him to come back.
“Need” being the operative word. And back then, knowing what happened between him and Romano, I never would have allowed him to come back and risk a damn thing. Not with a girl by his side. The girl who is now his wife, not to mention very much pregnant.
The guard job is over; it was just a summer gig.
He never stopped traveling. They moved from place to place when they ran from our hometown. He had enough money to keep them afloat until they found a bed and breakfast to hide away in, located on a huge cattle farm. He’s been there for a while and it took him a long time, not until last year, nearly ten years after leaving this place to come back. The farm’s shut down, the land’s sold, and Chloe’s pregnant. He has no reason to come back, not with the money he still has and the extra he makes doing security detail work. But I know he longs to come home, especially given Romano has no control here anymore. Even if he doesn’t want to admit the one thing that’s really held him back is Chloe.
I thought you said you and this city just don’t mix. I can’t help asking, pushing him away further and knowing full well what I’m doing.
Do I want him back? Yes. I need him now more than ever. Every piece of what I’ve built is crumbling and a part of me, the part that’s very much alive, wishes desperately that I could do what he did. That I could take Aria and simply run. To leave this shit behind, and make it just Aria and me. No one else, no problems, nothing but what we pack in a car before taking off. If I could trade places with him, I would.