He turned with the hit, his jaw clenched tight. He slowly turned away, his face turning red from ferocity, not from the mark I’d just landed on his face. His body tightened even more, but he didn’t rise out of his chair. “Get. The. Fuck. Out.”
I lost my temper when I hit him, and now that the dialogue was coming to an end, I knew I didn’t accomplish what I set out to do. “Conway, you leave for a few days, and you come back as a whole different person. What the hell happened?”
He slowly rose to his feet, his arms shaking as the adrenaline pumped through his veins. “Get. Out.”
This time, I actually feared him. I was afraid of the way he stared at me, afraid of the way he leered over me with his size and strength. His arms shook, like he was barely controlling himself from grabbing me by the neck.
I didn’t feel comfortable there.
Just like I had been with Knuckles, I was afraid.
I was actually afraid.
He didn’t come to the bedroom that night, and I knew he wasn’t going to.
I still didn’t understand what had happened.
It was like he hated me.
His cold treatment was unbearable, but it was nothing compared to the unknown. I had no idea what was causing him to behave this way. Even a fight with his father wouldn’t make him snap like this. When I spoke to him in his hotel room, he was upset about the way things were going…but he never shut me out.
I didn’t know what to do, so I decided to ask the one person who would.
Carter.
I sent a text to Vanessa. Can you give me Carter’s number?
She sent the number immediately, along with a happy face.
It was ironic because nothing about this was happy. I called the number and listened to it ring.
Carter answered with a deep voice that was similar to Conway’s. “Carter.”
“Hey, it’s Sapphire.” My voice was beginning to crack before I even started the conversation. “I’m sorry to bother you, but…”
“Fuck, what did he do?” he asked with a sigh.
“Ever since he came home, he’s been a completely different person. He’s cold, mean… Not the man I know. He won’t talk to me, and he can barely stand to be in the same room with me. But he won’t tell me what happened. I know this isn’t your problem, but could you tell me what’s going on? Do you know anything? Did something happen?”
“Jesus,” he said with another sigh. “Conway is fucking stupid. That’s what’s going on.”
I waited for a more detailed response.
“I showed him that video where you said you loved him…”
They shoved a microphone in my face, and I’d just admitted the truth. The weight had been taken off my shoulders, and I actually felt good about it. I didn’t care whether Conway saw it or not, but I assumed he wouldn’t. He didn’t strike me as a man who watched the news about himself. “So? Why would that matter? I know he loves me too.” He didn’t strike me as a petty man who would get upset that I told the whole world first before saying it to him in private.
“Uh…” Carter paused as he tried to find the right words to say. “According to him, that’s not how he feels.”
Slowly, my heart started to sink into my stomach. I felt it grow smaller, all my joy and love disappearing. I wasn’t ashamed to wear my heart on my sleeve and love Conway openly, despite our difficult beginning, and that made this blow so much harder to take. “He said he didn’t love me…”
Carter didn’t say anything.
“That’s what he said?” I pressed.
“I don’t know. That’s what he says, but I think he’s lying to himself. I’ve seen the way he is with you, and I know he’s happy.”
“But that doesn’t matter to him.”
“He wants everything to stay the same. He just wants you to be a man and a woman. He says he doesn’t want marriage or love, because that stuff fades, and then the passion goes stale and you’re just stuck with someone you don’t want to be stuck with…”
I closed my eyes and felt two tears escape. Our intense relationship had been reduced to nothing more than an inconvenience. He didn’t think our passion would last forever because it was just lust, not love.
“Sapphire?”
I swallowed my tears and kept my voice steady. “Even so, that doesn’t give him the right to treat me this way.”
“I agree,” he said. “Like I said, I don’t think he means it. I think he’s just struggling to accept the inevitable.”
“Which is?”
“That he does love you…but he doesn’t want to.”
Another tear escaped, and I felt lower than I ever had. When I was running from Knuckles, I was scared, but I wasn’t heartbroken. Ever since Conway had become part of my life, I’d been a happy person. He gave me a home, a place where I belonged. We had such a connection, such emotion.