“You’re taking her side?” Caleb stares at me in disbelief.
“No, I’m taking my side,” I say, determined. “This passion between us, it’s held me hostage for long enough. I can’t keep living this way, not when… Not when I love you like I do,” I admit, tears coming now, hot on my cheeks. “I want a future with you. I want forever. But only if you can forgive me and move on. Can you?” I ask, imploring. “Will you ever get past my mistakes?”
I wait, my heart on a knife edge. Everything I want in the world is right there, close enough to touch. But I can’t bridge the chasm between us, I can’t do any more to mend what’s broken.
Only he can.
Only Caleb.
He looks at me, and for a moment, I feel a ray of hope. There’s tenderness in his eyes, even love. I’m already moving towards him when he opens his mouth, and a single, bitter word emerges.
“No.”
I freeze.
“I can’t trust you!” Caleb continues, his voice hot with fury. “You lied to me, you set me up, and I can’t see a way around it. I thought you were the one, that you were everything, that I had finally found someone to share my life with, but you tore all that apart. It doesn’t matter what you do, I won’t ever trust you again.”
My world ends.
Everything around me swirls to oblivion. My knees go weak. The only sound is that of my pulse, thudding hard in my ears. I’m vaguely aware that I’m standing in the home of someone who hates me. Who will always hate me.
Caleb’s words from after the gala come rushing back to me. “You don’t know what I do to my enemies. But I swear to you, you’re about to find out.”
And I have. He plays with his enemies, makes us desperate and insane, and then he cuts us, so deep that we can’t possibly survive. Like I can’t possibly survive.
I step back, to the door, tears blurring my vision. “I love you,” I whisper. “Don’t you see that? But there’s no future for us if you can’t trust me.”
He stares at me, unblinking. “Then there’s no future for us left at all.”
It takes everything I have not to fall apart. I keep my head held high, biting back the sobs. “Then it’s over.” I swallow hard and make my way to the door on unsteady feet. “Don’t worry, I won’t come to the office again. Consider this my resignation.”
I don’t look back. When the elevator doors slide shut behind me, I finally give in to the tears: great shaking sobs. My heart is broken, sliced clean apart in my chest.
God, it hurts so much, I can’t stand it.
I ride down in a daze, blinded by tears. It’s only when I reach the parking garage that I realize I have the keys to Caleb’s Porsche clutched in my hands.
I need to get out of here, as fast as I can, so I quickly climb into the car and start the engine, trying to muffle my sobs long enough to breathe.
He doesn’t love me. It’s over.
I grip the steering wheel with shaking hands and throw the car into drive. Outside, it’s dark and rainy, and I cut through traffic towards the expressway, trying to outrun the pain swirling inside. But there’s nowhere to go to escape the heartbreak, it just pounds through me, sharp and aching.
‘I thought you were the one, that you were everything, that I had finally found someone to share my life with, but you tore all that apart.’
BEEEEP!
A sharp burst of horn pulls me back to the present. There’s a car right behind me, a sleek black sedan, driving way too close.
I try to put some distance between us, but they speed up too, swerving to follow me along the narrow lanes of the expressway. Dammit. The last thing I need is some cocky speed-racer trying to make a point.
I slow down, hoping they’ll get the hint and pass me.
They don’t.
The first tendrils of fear snake down my collar, pushing aside the all-consuming heartbreak I’d been wallowing in just moments before.
The sedan is following me.