“That’s not what I’d be doing.” Trey’s jaw ticked. Ambi noticed, but he couldn’t make it stop. “Life isn’t about bets. It’s not about rolling the dice. It’s about making a decision and sticking with it. Growing and changing with someone else. Putting in the time and the effort.”
She swallowed thickly. She obviously didn’t expect him to be so persistent and that cut. He hadn’t fought for her before. He needed to now. She obviously wanted to save him from himself.
“Trey, real life relationships are messy. They’re not about quoting self-help books and thinking that’s going to work. It’s not. We are not meant to be together. We never were. We wouldn’t work out. Our emotions are all over the place. We don’t fit together.”
“I can think of more than a few ways that we fit together,” Trey edged.
“That’s not funny.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be. I didn’t just mean physically. We work. We’ve always worked.”
She raised her head. She looked him in the eye as she dug her knife in deep. Her words were the only weapon she had left.
“Trey, you’re the sun. You’re also the shadow. It feels like when you look at me that you bathe my heart in this golden light. You taught me what it was to feel. To really fall. You were the first guy I ever loved. Hanging on to some romantic, nostalgic memory though- that isn’t love. It isn’t anything but a fantasy and that’s all we’re ever going to be. Just because our bodies fit together and we might fit in- in other ways, doesn’t mean it’s enough.”
“It’s always been there for us. That magic. You can’t tell me that you don’t feel it.” He was growing more desperate by the second and he knew he sounded like it, but that wasn’t going to make him stop. He’d fight to the death for her this time.
“That’s the thing, Trey. I don’t believe in magic.”
Apparently, he’d fight to the death and die trying. That’s what it felt like. Like he was dying a slow, painful, terrible death as Ambi left him at the railing. His lips pressed into a thin, hard line. His jaw clenched up tight. His knuckles gripped the rail so tight that there was no color left in them at all. She left him bleeding out all over the floor. He wanted to fight for her, but she didn’t want him to. She left him like he’d left her all those years ago. With his heart ripped out, lying in tatters at his feet.
CHAPTER 17
Trey
It might be childish, but Trey did believe in magic. He knew that most of it was fake, but there had to be some of it that was inexplicable. Some skills that took a lifetime to master. Some things that just transcended belief.
He wasn’t done trying. He wasn’t giving up. It wasn’t in his nature to just crawl up in a ball and die. He’d done that once already and he’d spent the better part of five years regretting it. He wasn’t going down with the ship again. In fact, the ship wasn’t going down at all.
Which was why he paid John from their HR department twenty bucks to use his personal phone to book a fake appointment with Ambi. She did keep office hours, but every single time he went by her building for four days straight, the door was locked. He decided he couldn’t leave it any longer and he sure as hell wasn’t going to leave it up to chance. Maybe she was avoiding him. Maybe she knew that he’d come by and beg her like some pathetic fool, so she locked her doors to dissuade him.
He almost started to believe that she’d packed up and moved overnight. Panic welled up at that thought, nearly choking him. He couldn’t let her go. He’d hire every single PI in the freaking state to find her if she’d truly disappeared. Any state. Wherever. Whatever it took, he’d find her and get her to listen.
Thankfully, he didn’t have to resort to that. Yet. John was able to set up an appointment for that afternoon at four.
Trey spent the next four hours pacing around in his office, wearing down the carpet in a six-foot square pattern. He’d been in a couple of plays in high school and he remembered pacing back and forth like this, reciting lines. He mumbled to himself the same way, except it wasn’t pre-written garbage he was spouting. If he flopped, it wouldn’t be an embarrassing moment in front of a small audience. He couldn’t laugh it off later. This was it. This might be his last shot at getting Ambi back.
Thankfully, at four, when he tried Ambi’s front office door, the heavy glass gave under his hand and it pulled open. She really was there.