This was just freaking unbelievable. Knox was standing in front of me, in the flesh, and I couldn’t hug him.
“So, I hear you’ve been out since Wednesday.”
He glanced away, as if he were disinterested in our conversation.
His response devastated me in multiple ways. But at least he wasn’t running off and hiding anymore. He was still here, letting me look at him, and talk to him.
The last time I’d seen him—excluding last night, which didn’t count because I hadn’t realized who he was—he’d held me desperately close and whispered his love to me.
I’d been fully ready to wait his four-year sentence for him. Except that sentence had been extended another thirty.
Which led to another reason I was crushed.
“How are you free this soon?” He wasn’t supposed to be free this soon.
His gaze finally lifted to mine, his dark brown eyes bruised with pain. “I don’t know. They let me out on parole, I guess.”
I laughed, but the sound morphed into a sob. But Parole? Parole was causing all this? Why hadn’t I thought of parole?
Slapping my hand over my mouth, I bit my lip as hard as I could to quell the tears I could feel forming. When I was able to finally control some of my emotions, I dropped my hand.
“So, I, uh...” I let out a shaky laugh and brushed the hair out of my face. “I have so many questions.” When he looked away again, my nerves went haywire. “You want to get out of here? Go somewhere to talk?”
He took a sudden interest in his feet and mumbled something that sounded a lot like, “No.”
My jaw dropped. “Excuse me? Did you just say no?”
He shrugged. “I just don’t see the point.”
I shook my head, my mind utterly blown.
“The point in what? In talking? But...what?” Was he insane? “It’s been six years. There’s like a million things to catch up on. We need to talk.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched, the one and only sign I’d gotten so far that this encounter might in any way be difficult for him. But then he hitched up one shoulder. “I don’t have anything to say.”
“How could you not...but what about...oh my God! Of course we have shit to say
. We never even officially broke up.”
“We’re broken up,” he told his feet.
I almost clutched my heart because it felt as if he’d just stabbed it. Gaping, I shook my head. “Can you look me in the eye when you tell me that?”
He lifted his tortured brown eyes. “I don’t want to talk,” he said softly.
I wanted to pull my hair and scream. I wanted to hit him in the chest with both of my fists.
No, I just wanted to grab him hard and yank him against me and kiss him, hug him, force him to admit he missed me just as hard as I’d missed him and that he was happy to see me.
But he only looked away.
The bastard couldn’t even watch as he broke my heart.
My pain snapped into rage. “Well, I do! You might not have anything to say, but I have plenty. The last time I saw you, you swore you didn’t blame me for what happened.”
He still refused to look at me, but his dark eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “I don’t.”
“Then why are you treating me like this?”