My eyes drank him in as he strode to a nearby trash barrel, tossed his pancake inside and kept going. I spotted his Maserati—as always double-parked—and watched him disappear behind the wheel.
That was the second time my fake husband, who forced me to marry him, walked out on me. It was also the second time he took my heart with him.
But it was the first time I realized that I would never have it back.
He owned it, clutched it in his iron fist.
And sometimes, I knew, he squeezed too hard.
One hour later, we packed our stuff and closed for the day. Despite Lucy and Daisy doing their best to keep my mind off him, trying to persuade me to grab a few beers down at our local bar, I rushed home. I wasn’t in the mood for anything other than running. Funnily enough, the Brock encounter didn’t deter me from my favorite sport. I still jogged, but now, I only took the main streets, and went out in the evenings, when the city was buzzing with people. With life.
When I walked into our apartment that evening, I leaned my back against the door and squeezed my eyes shut. I never thought I’d fall in love with someone like Troy Brennan. As it turned out, love didn’t give a damn about personal preferences.
Yanking my cell phone from my back pocket and throwing it across the sofa, I noticed a green text message flashing on the screen. It was sent at around noon. I had to rub my eyes to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating when I saw the contact name the text was under. A lump of excitement forming in my stomach, I opened the text with shaky hands.
Troy: I wanted to do the right thing. I really fucking did. But then it dawned on me that in order to do a good thing, you have to be a good person. I’m not good, and we both know that. I watched you over the past few months. Trying to tell myself that I was only looking out for you, making sure you’re okay. Bullshit. I knew you’d be okay the moment Brock was out of the picture. I watched you because I wanted you for myself, because you belong with me.
My heart beat faster, harder, wilder and I slouched on a chair, trying to remember how to breathe. There was a second message from him. I opened it right away.
Troy: I changed my mind. You’re not free. Not if you’re flying away with nowhere to go, and for all the wrong reasons. What do you really want? Don’t answer that. I’m about to find out. I’m waiting in line to see how you react when you see me again. Because Red, if you were so hot on getting rid of my ass, you wouldn’t be postponing the divorce, knowing how much money’s waiting for you. You wouldn’t have kept my secrets to yourself. So what’s it going to be? Am I going to see fear and loathing behind those greens, or want and need? Are you going to level with me? Fight back? Throw me away? It’s about to go down in 3…2…1…
That was it. Only those two messages. What the hell? Did he not see how much I longed for him? How much I wanted him? How I couldn’t, for the life of me, form a coherent sentence when he was around? I darted up from my seat, eager to do something, anything, to distract myself. I got into my running gear, tucked my phone into my yoga pants and bolted out the door.
Running with my earbuds plugged in, “Sympathy for The Devil” by the Rolling Stones playing in my ears, I tried to burn all the extra energy I generated from reading his texts. My mind was too occupied to tell my legs where to take me. I ran without direction, without purpose. I ran because running was better than staying put and dealing with all those feelings.
With him.
Why was I so disappointed that he didn’t text me after our encounter? I still hadn’t forgiven him. Not for what he did to my mom and certainly, and more importantly, not for hiding all those secrets from me after we had already established a genuine relationship.
Forgiveness.
I never forgave anyone. Not necessarily because I held grudges, but because no one who had let me down ever asked for it.
Was I willing to forgive Troy? I stopped at the corner of the street, leaning against an industrial building and catching my breath. Yanking my phone out, I texted quickly, firing the message before I got the chance to let self-doubt, my ego and logic step into this mess.
Me: You could have told me about why you married me. About what you did to my mother. You never even tried to confess and apologize.