The Boy Who Has No Redemption (Soulless 8)

She lifted her chin and looked at me, still cold, like she expected me to apologize for taking too long with the submissions or something casual. The last thing she expected was a real apology…for what I’d done.

I rolled the papers in my hand as I held her gaze, my heart beating so fast, my knuckles sore because I gripped the stack of papers so tightly. Everything hit me hard, flashbacks of my behavior, of the way I dumped her in the stairwell, of the way I ignored her when she tried to talk to me again, of every single interaction when I barely gave her the time of day. I remembered the way Lizzie spoke to me on the phone, how shitty their Christmas had been…because of me. “I’m sorry…for the way I treated you.”

When she understood what was happening, her eyes gradually fell, at first in confusion…and then disappointment. Her body slowly tightened, and her breathing changed, like she was more offended than she’d been before. “Excuse me?”

“I’m sorry for…everything. I’m sorry about the stairwell, the way I’ve treated you for the last three months, for—”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” She cocked her head to the side, looking furious, and then she released a maniacal laugh, like this was somehow funny. “This has to be a fucking joke. Please tell me this is a joke. You’re apologizing to me…three goddamn months after everything happened?”

This was going way worse than I ever imagined. A part of me hoped that the Emerson I knew was still in there, that she would extend her compassion toward me, even though I didn’t deserve it.

“Asshole.” She snapped her fingers to get my attention even though I was staring at her. “I don’t need your apology. I’m over it, Derek. Soooo fucking over it. You can take your apology and shove it up your ass.” She dropped her chin and turned back to the candidates like nothing happened.

“Emerson, I’m sorry. Really, I am.”

Now her voice was quiet, like her outburst was over. “Okay.” She flipped the page and kept reading.

“It hit me hard recently…that I treated you so terribly, and I’m so sorry—”

“It’s fine, Derek.” She raised her chin and looked at me. “Let’s just move on.”

My heart sank into my stomach because it wasn’t fine. Nowhere near it. She just…didn’t care.

She turned the page and kept reading. “Alessandra Martinez is a great candidate. Her grades are pretty good, and she’s the first person in her family to go to college. Her parents came from Cuba. She has a really interesting backstory.”

I stared at her, my heart cracking like frozen glass. “Please…”

She lifted her chin again and looked at me, her eyes narrowed. “Please what?”

I threw the papers on the desk. “I need you to know how sorry I am. I need you to know how much I regret what I did. I need you to know…I’m not that person anymore. I treated you so terribly, and it’s going to haunt me for the rest of my life—”

She abruptly stood up and placed her hands on the desk. “We’re really going to do this? Fine. Derek, I put everything on the line for you, completely trusted you, gave you my entire heart, and you fucking dropped me the second things got difficult. You hurt me, you hurt my daughter, and our world came crashing down. You think an apology is going to make any kind of difference after that?”

I slowly rose to my feet, the adrenaline making the blood pound in my ears. I’d provoked her, and even though it didn’t go the way I wanted, I had to keep hoping for a change. “Maybe it would…if you knew how sorry I was—”

“I don’t care how sorry you are. You have no idea what your abandonment did to us. You have no idea the damage you caused. And you have no idea because I haven’t heard from you in three months. You dumped me because someone hurt you, someone violated your trust, and that’s fine. But you know what? You turned around and did that to me.” She pointed into her chest. “Hurt people hurt people. And that’s exactly what you did. Now, I’ll never trust a man again. I’ll never recover from this heartbreak. Because I completely, implicitly, unquestionably trusted you without reservation—and I can’t do that ever again.”

I closed my eyes briefly because that made me choke up, made me sick.

“Tabitha and Kevin ruined you. Well, now you’ve ruined me. Congratu-fucking-lations.”

My eyes watered because I hated myself more than I ever had.

“I dragged my feet telling Lizzie what happened with us because I knew she’d be heartbroken, and that bit me in the ass because we were shopping for Christmas presents for my parents and she grabbed a mug that said Best Teacher on it and said she was going to get it for you. And I couldn’t even bring myself to tell her… I just broke down…in the middle of a department store…and sobbed.” She raised her voice, her eyes filling with angry tears. “I literally fell to my knees and sobbed because I was so devastated. I’ve kept my shit together in front of my daughter since she was fucking born, and all that went to shit because of you. Now my daughter has to have that memory in her mind forever, even after I’m dead. Now Lizzie will probably be unable to have a healthy romantic relationship because she’s so disturbed by what she witnessed. I’m supposed to be a role model to her, and now I’ve written the playbook for what not to do with a guy. So, thank you for that. Fucking thank you.”