And that broke me even more.
Because that meant he’d tried to love me and failed.
He’d attempted to give me his heart and couldn’t.
Gasoline added to my shattered pieces and caught fire, incinerating the final shards of hope.
I looked at the heavens, then looked down at hell and nodded. “Okay, Jacob.”
He didn’t even apologise. Didn’t say a word.
But I had enough for both of us.
Curling my hands, I studied him, committing him to memory. “You won’t see me again. All I ever wanted was to be there for you, but you were never there for me. I left my life, my work, my boyfriend the moment Cassie asked me to find you. I gave up everything for you, over and over again. I let you trample my heart. I allowed you excuse after excuse for your behaviour. I nursed my patience and schooled my annoyance and believed that one day, one day, I would be rewarded because you’d finally see that no one will love you the way I do. No one will understand you the way I do. But I have nothing left to give. You truly are alone now, aren’t you? Just like you always wanted.”
Brushing aside awful tears, I held my head higher. “I want you to know—it wasn’t your moods or temper that pushed me away. It’s this. Right now. Your indifference. Your cold-heartedness when I’m pouring out my soul to you.”
Backing up, I shook my head. “I actually feel sorry for you. Sorry that you’ve already died before you’ve experienced life. You’re happier to live a life of solitude than be brave enough to try. But that’s on you now because I’m done.”
I cried openly, unable to stop the thick wash of grief. “I’m leaving you, Jacob Ren Wild. And I’m never coming back. You’ve gotten your wish. I’m dead to you. Just another person you used to know. A memory that will slowly fade.”
I trembled so badly my teeth chattered as I hugged myself before him.
I hugged myself because he would never hug me.
I comforted myself because he didn’t know how.
And I waited for a single moment.
For one sign that he’d been affected by what I’d said. For one hint of redemption.
But he just stood there as if I’d shot him with bullets instead of goodbyes.
His stony eyes, tense body, and clenched jaw all screamed to be left alone.
So I did.
With one last look, I gave him the saddest smile and left Cherry River forever.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Jacob
* * * * * *
I SAT ON my deck, looking at my vegetable garden that had died and been invaded by weeds, watching the paddocks and meadows that needed better care than a casual contractor could do, and waited to succumb to the pain of losing everything.
I waited to break into a thousand brilliant pieces.
Hope had left me.
She’d cut me off, severed our connection, done what I’d pushed her to do.
Goodbye.
Forever.
I wanted to feel agony.
I deserved to feel it.
To cripple and crumple as my heart split down the middle, and all the light in my life drained free.
But the miserable silence clutched me deeper, protecting me from sorrow, muting death and breakups and the terrible knowledge that Hope was right.
I was alone.
I’d successfully shoved everyone who cared about me away.
I’d gotten my wish multiple times over.
And I felt nothing.
Fucking nothing.
I didn’t know when Hope had left me.
Five minutes or five hours ago?
Time was just a sequence of numbers that no longer had any relevance.
What should I do? Where should I go? Return to Bali and continue to be Sunyi? Stay at Cherry River and tend the land I was born for? Or run into the forest like my father and forget about humanity for good?
To regress to baser instincts. To be the animal I’d embraced.
At least those questions kept me company; they hid the emptiness inside while pretending I had thoughts and feelings when both had been stripped from me.
But then my phone rang.
Snapping me back into the present, filling me with ice once again.
Graham Murphy.
Why would he call me? To commiserate on my grandfather’s death? To discuss yet another family member who had passed?
My thumb hovered over the decline button. I was in no mood to talk—especially after his daughter had done her best to destroy me—but a breeze kicked through the meadow.
A harsh, cutting wind that hissed angry and judgmental.
I hadn’t felt my father’s presence while I wandered the globe, but in that moment he breathed down my neck, crushing me with his disappointment.
And even that didn’t make me break.
But it did make me accept the call.
To speak to another human before I turned my back on them completely.
Pressing the screen, I held the phone to my ear. Slow and methodical. No rush or panic. Vacant of normal nervousness. “Hello, Graham.”
“Jacob, fuck, thank God.” Graham rushed. Graham panicked. His voice wobbled with tears and terror. “I can’t get there in time. Shit, you need to go. Right now. I beg you. Please, go.”