“Dean . . .”
I wait, desperate for her to say something that might make me believe we can salvage this so I can breathe again, but she doesn’t continue, so I finish it for her. “Everything you feel for me is muffled by the hate you feel for yourself. Until you get that in check, I’m not sure you really can love me. And even if you do, your self-loathing is breaking us before we ever have a chance, and I refuse to let these insecurities of yours make me hate you. You are the most beautiful thing in my life, and these weeks we’ve been together have been some of the best, but I refuse to let the way you hate yourself turn my feelings for you into something ugly. Don’t you see it? No matter how many times I try to prove my love, no matter how many ways I shower you in it, no matter how many times I try to remind you what I see when I look at you or how I feel about you, there’s absolutely nothing I can say or do to make you love yourself. And you’re going to have to love yourself before you can ever trust me.”
The tears in her eyes spill onto her cheeks, and that knife embedded in my chest feels like it plunges a little deeper.
“I love you,” I repeat. “I’ll walk out that door still loving you.” I shake my head. This is all so fucking screwed up. It doesn’t need to be like this. “Do you remember what you told me about how much you needed to feel beautiful? How much you needed to really believe it?”
She nods, and more tears spill over.
“Did you ever stop and think I might have some wounds that needed tending as well? That maybe after the way I was raised and the crap I was told, I needed someone to see I can be trusted as much as you needed someone who can see your beauty?” I huff out a breath and drag my hand through my hair. “Of course it would end like this. Look at how we began.”
“I’m sorry,” she says.
“Yeah.” I take a final ragged inhale that feels like a blade being dragged down through my heart. “Me too.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Dean
There’s a single booth in a dark corner at the back of Smithy’s where I got drunk two nights in a row after Amy broke up with me. I find myself there again tonight, but I’ve barely had a sip of my beer. My stomach is too tangled to take anything in, and I already know there’s no amount of alcohol that’s going to make this better.
“Can I join you?”
I don’t know how long I’ve been staring at my black phone screen, waiting for it to light up with a notification, but I pull my gaze away from it at the sound of Kace’s voice. “Hey, go ahead.”
Kace slides into the booth across from me and cradles his bourbon in both hands. “So, Amy showed up at my house earlier and had an interesting story to tell.”
Closing my eyes, I blow out a breath. Fuck. Of course she went running to Kace. I don’t even care, though. Right now, Kace knowing about me and Abbi is the least of my worries. “That so?”
“You and Abbi?”
I shrug. “I wanted to tell you, but Abbi thought . . .” I shake my head. “I was hoping I’d change her mind, but then she walked in on Amy naked in my fucking bed, and everything is a mess now.”
Kace leans back in the booth. “Amy left out that part.”
“Did she also leave out the part about me being in love with your sister?”
Kace blinks at me then sighs. “Yeah, I guess she did.” He mutters a curse and stares out toward the crowded bar for a few loaded moments of silence.
“If you’re pissed at me about Abbi,” I say, “that’s fine, but don’t base shit on what Amy told you.”
“Yeah, I know better than that,” he says softly.
I take a sip of my beer and barely manage to get it down. Another glance at my phone. No texts. No calls. But why would she call when I laid it all out and walked away? I can’t decide if I made a terrible mistake or did exactly what needed to be done.
“I’m sorry for the things I said when Stella suggested you and Abbi double-date with us. I had no idea.” He coughs. “I just didn’t think Abbi was what you were looking for.”
I scoff. “Half the reason I never dated anyone seriously is because of my feelings for Abbi. It wasn’t always conscious, but I never wanted to date someone looking for commitment when I was still hung up on someone else.”