“Did you block my number?”
“Yes.”
He ground his teeth together, the muscle in his jaw flexing. “If you had just given me a second tae explain …”
“I’m giving it to you now.”
With a clipped nod, Caleb took hold of my arm again and started walking me off the bridge. We took a right just before the George Washington statue and Caleb stopped us at the end of the path, under the shade of a tree.
“I can see you better here,” he explained, his voice gruff as his eyes seemed to drink in every aspect of my face.
The intensity of his stare made me shiver in awareness and I had to pull my gaze away from his. “Talk, Caleb.”
“I think you’re wonderful.”
Astonished, I felt my gaze fly to his face to determine the seriousness of this statement. He looked at once fierce and sorry.
“I can’t let you think you’re anything else. I tried tae tell you that, but you ran out of my place before I could get the chance. As soon as I realized you thought I was … I’m not Nick. I dinnae think like Nick. No man in his right mind would, Ava. I am sorry for how I acted. I felt ambushed. I wasn’t expecting you tae turn up, let alone force that conversation. I honestly thought if I stopped calling you, you would just protect yourself and move on without ever confronting me. Bringing up nonsense about another woman … I acted like a child. And I’m sorry.”
Before I could even get over the monumental moment of alpha guy Caleb Scott apologizing and admitting to acting like a child, he reached for me, his palms on my neck, his thumbs stroking my cheeks. I knew he could probably feel my pulse racing beneath his hold. “You are the smartest, funniest, most caring, loyal, determined woman I have ever met. Having a beautiful face and a beautiful body doesn’t make you any less of those things and it doesn’t make you more attractive. Who you are makes you beautiful, Ava. When I met you, I thought you were sexy, aye, but the more I got tae know you the more beautiful you became. You are a find, wee yin. A precious find.” He pulled me closer, and I gasped at the frustration and pain in his eyes. “If it could be anyone … it would be you, Ava Breevort. In a heartbeat. But I just …” He sighed, a shuddering, harsh sigh, and I felt the hopes he’d just built up crash as he let me go and stepped back. “I dinnae have that left tae give. She killed it when she—” Caleb cut off, his voice breaking, and he glanced around the gardens as if seeking something.
When he didn’t find it, he stared off into the distance and whispered, “I need you tae be a good memory.” He wrenched his eyes to me again. “I could handle almost anyone else in my life turning into a regret. But not you. I can’t have what we had together going bad. I was an arse for trying tae make it that way. So we end it now the right way. In honesty and kindness. Because I can’t regret you.”
His words were agony. Tears of exasperation filled my eyes. “You know it would have been better if you never tried to explain. Better for me to think of you as a bastard than—”
“Than what?” he bit out impatiently.
I shook my head. “Caleb, don’t you see? You changed me. You made me brave enough to fight against what I was most afraid of and admit that I’m in love with you. I wish I could make you feel brave too. But that’s not going to happen apparently.” I swiped at my tears but refused to break eye contact. He needed to understand the reality of what he was doing to us. “Just because you’ve decided I’m not worth the risk doesn’t mean that I’m not willing to take it again. So I have to thank you for that. Because it might take weeks, months, but I will fight to get over you. I will fight to find someone who loves me and wants to make a future with me. I will move on.”
The look on his face … it nearly crippled me.
Caleb didn’t hide behind his usual blank mask. No. He looked furious and tortured and resentful of my words all at once.
I placed a hand on his chest, over his heart, hating to hurt him like he had hurt me but knowing it was necessary to get through to him. “Does that hurt, Caleb? To think of me with someone else?”
His answering expression was almost menacing and it said it all.
“Then don’t you see? If you don’t fight for me, if you let me go … there is no if or maybe about it. You will regret me.” I reluctantly dropped my hand from his chest, waiting for him to answer. To wake the hell up!
All he did was stare at me, so visibly conflicted I had to fight not to comfort him. Instead I turned to my disappointment and my resentment of him because they were the emotions that bolstered me. They stiffened my spine and gave me the strength to walk away from the man I loved.
For good.
Thirty
What’s that song that guy sings? You know, the one with those lyrics …
I’m only human after all.
Well, I am only human after all, and that’s why, after saying that I wouldn’t, I gave myself permission to wallow.
I told Harper I was allowing myself a week and then she had to drag me out of my gloom.
It didn’t quite work out like that. After seeing Caleb, I couldn’t return to the office; instead, I called in sick and asked Stella to explain to any clients who called that I’d be back in the office the next day. I went back to my apartment, curled up on my bed, and cried until I passed out from exhaustion.
Harper woke me later that evening calling to check on me, and that was when I told her about my confrontation with Caleb and how I was probably going to need a week to get over him. She acted like she thought it made sense, but I’d soon realize she was just appeasing me.
Although I dragged myself to work the next day and the day after that, the pain didn’t lessen. In fact, I had to retreat to this numb place where I didn’t let any kind of emotion in, in order to block out my grief. I was a black cloud of heartbreak, depressing everyone I met.
I was vaguely aware that Stella was quietly losing her mind over my passionless interaction with the clients and Harper kept subtly suggesting I should see her therapist.
By the end of week two I was not getting any better.
When I turned up to work on that Friday I was surprised to find Patrice waiting for me in my office. “Stella called me. She’s worried about you.” Patrice’s gaze drifted over me and she threw up her hands. “What are you wearing?”
I glanced down at myself.
I had on the skinny jeans I loved so much.
But that wasn’t really the problem.
I was wearing a white T-shirt with a giant coffee stain on it.
Oops.
Patrice hurried at me, her eyes searching my face and growing wider by the second. “You’re not wearing any makeup. And your hair—” She gestured to me.
I patted my head where I’d tied my hair up into a messy bun.
“When did you last wash it?”
Oh, and I might not have washed it in a while.
My friend sighed. Heavily. Then she grabbed her purse off my desk, and then came back to me. Taking hold of my arm, she led me out of the building, calling good-bye to Stella before I could say anything.
“Where are we going?” I asked, totally confused.
“Back to your apartment.”
I didn’t need to ask why.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
“What has gotten into you? This isn’t like you.”
I’m wallowing. I gave myself permission to wallow. “A month tops,” I suddenly said.
“What?” Patrice frowned at me as she marched down Beacon Street.
“It was supposed to be a week of wallowing. Allowing myself to grieve for the bastard. You know … get it out of my system before I move on to bigger and better things. But I’m thinking—” I glanced down at my stained T-shirt and my unmanicured fingernails as they clutched at the T-shirt. “A month tops.”
“I’m thinking neither. It stops. Today.”
I glared at her as she marched ahead.
You couldn’t just tell your heart to stop wallowing! And I never allowed myself to wallow
over Nick, probably because he wasn’t worth the time. But it was my right now to wallow over he who shall not be named!
Pain constricted my throat as I rushed after Patrice.
By the time we got to my apartment I was beginning to panic that she might actually force me to stop my pity party before I was ready.
“Keys,” she demanded when we reached my place.
I handed them over and then, like a sullen teenager, followed her in and up to my apartment. When she opened the door, she gasped with all the melodrama of someone walking onto a murder scene.
As she stared dispassionately around at my space, I realized in a way it was. A murder of neat freak Ava Breevort.
Every inch of the place was covered. In dirty clothes, food wrappers, soda cans, takeout cartons, and the kitchen sink was overflowing with dirty dishes.
What?
I was wallowing.
“Oh my God.” Patrice gaped at everything. “This is not your apartment.” She took a sharp inhale of breath at finding a curry stain on my cream carpet. “Have you seen this?”
I shrugged.
Her eyes widened in horror and she reached out to grab me by the upper arms. “Ava, are you in there?”
I rolled my eyes. “Patrice.”
“The Ava Breevort I know would die at seeing her apartment like this. There is never an inch of you or your apartment out of place. This … Oh my God, what is going on?”
Seeing mold gathering on my dishes for the first time, I began to feel a niggle of shame. “I should clean.”
“Yes, you should. But more importantly, why aren’t you losing your mind over the state of your apartment?”
Now it was my turn to be disbelieving. “Really, Patrice? Really?” Tears burned my nose and my lips shook as I waved at the place. “I should care about a stain when I feel like my insides have been torn out!”
The words echoed around the room and I bit my lip, wishing I could pull them back because they’d acted like a huge sledgehammer against my comfortable numbness.
Patrice’s eyes shone bright with sympathy. “Darling … I’m so sorry I ever thought matchmaking you with Caleb was a good idea. Still, I never thought I’d see the day when nothing else would matter to you but a man.”
Not sure if I was being reprimanded, I stared her down. “I’m allowed to be heartbroken. It doesn’t make me weak.”
“I never meant that.” She stepped over a pile of laundry to take hold of my hand. “I just don’t want you to lose yourself.”
I nodded, wrinkling my nose as I saw the apartment from her perspective, and repeated, “I should clean.”
“Yes.”
“But I don’t think it’s a bad thing to stop caring about the things that don’t really matter. So much of my life felt out of my control that I became obsessed with the little things I could control. Like my apartment and my appearance. I wouldn’t even buy a pair of skinny jeans, for God’s sake.”
“Uh … you’re wearing a pair of jeans.”
“Yes. I am. And I intend to wear more. I’m going to clean my apartment and I’m going to wash my hair … but after I wash it I might just throw it back up in a messy bun. And I might not wear mascara if I don’t feel like it. Or high heels.”
Patrice seemed unsure. “To work? Events?”
I laughed softly, the act of it a relief. “Don’t worry, Patrice. I’ll be my immaculate self for work and to any of your wonderful events. I just might give myself a break on the weekends if I feel like it. And I’m changing my carpet because there’s a stain on it and I live my life tiptoeing around my own apartment, worrying about my guests leaving stains on the carpet with their footwear and following them around with coasters. It’s exhausting and I’d rather spend my time on things that matter.” I gazed at the floor. “I think I’ll put down hardwood and a nice big rug.”
“Oak.” Patrice nodded, tapping her mouth in thought. “It’ll warm the room up. And I’d get rid of your white sofa.”
“I hate that sofa,” I agreed. “It looks pretty but I can’t eat cheese puffs on it.”
“Then it should go.”
I locked eyes with my very understanding friend. “I’ll stop wallowing.”
“Good. You can be as heartbroken as you want for as long as you want. There is no magic number of days or weeks or months, my darling. But wallowing makes you look and sound just awful.”
I cracked a smile at her bluntness. “I’ll jump in the shower.”
“And I’ ll …” She made a face at the kitchen. “Call my cleaner.”
“I can clean my own apartment,” I said as I made my way into my bedroom.
“Yes, but Stella said she needs you at the office. Hello, Anne-Marie? Yes. I have an emergency … right now … I’ll pay you double …”
I rolled my eyes as she talked on the phone presumably to her cleaner. But I did as she asked. I stripped and got in the shower.
And as soon as the water poured over me, I let go of my numbness and let the pain back in again. I muffled my sobs, squeezing my arms around my chest to try to stop the harsh racking of my body.
I missed him.
So much.
Knowing I’d never touch him again or feel him smile against my skin while he was kissing me all over.
Knowing I would never be able to turn to him again when I needed him the most, that he would never be a strong, supportive presence to help bear the weight of future burdens.
One day I’d have that again with someone, but it wouldn’t be the same. I couldn’t imagine anyone ever making me feel as safe as he did. And I’d lost him before I ever really had him.
I never knew anything could feel so unbearable.
Finally, the sobs slowed to tears and I wiped them away, still shaking but feeling calmer. And I promised myself that that would be my last meltdown.
I had to let him go.
I just … I had to.
Not wanting a serious relationship because of Vince isn’t healthy,” I said the following night.
I was doing my best to act like I was moving on by sharing a celebratory drink with my best friend. Harper’s cast had come off, much to her relief. Not only could she return to work in a full capacity, but she said the cast coming off was the last physical reminder of what had happened to her. She still had Vince’s trial to deal with, and it wouldn’t be for months, but for now she could move on.
We were in a down-to-earth dive bar on Pearl Street. I was wearing new skinny jeans and a Ralph Lauren tee I got on sale, and my hair was washed. Moreover, I was wearing strappy sandals, because some things didn’t change. I liked my heels.
Harper looked gorgeous as always, her bruises gone, and the dark marks from the cuts that had needed stitches covered up with makeup. However, having been informed that she planned on only having casual physical relationships from now on, I felt an uneasy sense of déjà vu.
“My therapist says it’s okay if that’s what I want.”
“Are you going to try to win every discussion with, ‘My therapist thinks it’s okay’? Because I may regret asking you to make an appointment with the shrink.”
Harper gave me her best dirty look, but her quivering lips gave away her amusement. “Now I am.”
I leaned across the tall round table where we sat on our high stools. “Seriously, learn from my mistakes. You’re not built for casual sex.”
“Right now I am. Look, I’m only twenty-six. I’m not saying that from here on out I just want to do casual. Who knows what the future holds? I am, however, saying that right now and for the foreseeable future there is no part of me that feels like handing over the kind of trust you need to give a guy to be in a real relationship with him.”
Since that all sounded reasonable and rational, I nodded at her in support.
“What about you?”
That made me scowl, as I didn’t particularly want to talk about moving on while I was still figuring out how to pretend to move on. “What about me?”
�
�You look better. You’ve even gained back a few of the pounds you lost with all that sex, and you look great.”
I flinched at the reminder I was no longer having sex with Caleb. Harper winced.
“I’m sorry. Sometimes my mouth opens before it engages with my brain.”
“It’s okay.” I glared at my drink. “He just ruined the entire act for me, but it’s fine.”
“You’ll find someone just as good.”
At my brittle silence, Harper leaned toward me. “Don’t answer if it pisses you off … but … was he seriously that good?”
I looked up at her with all the pain of my loss shining in my eyes. “He wasn’t good. We were phenomenal. It was like we were made for each other in that respect. It’ll never be like that with someone else. That’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Now can we change the subject?”
“Another beer?” Harper replied in answer.
I nodded and watched her hop gracefully off the stool to make her way through the busy room to the bar. Peeling at the label on my now empty beer bottle, I studied her as she edged her way through the crowd around the bar. Only a few months ago she would have bulldozed her way in, grinning at the people she was pissing off, her adorable dimpled smile giving her a free pass. She would lean across the bar and flirt until the bartender served her next.
She wasn’t doing that now. Although she was still blunt and straightforward, there was a tentativeness about her that wasn’t there before. I could only hope time would take care of it.
“Ava?”
Caleb?
My heart stopped.
I whipped my head around, only somewhat relieved the voice belonged to Jamie Scott and not his older brother. He stood just off to my side, a pint of beer in his hand, eyeing me uncertainly.
“How are you?”
“I’m okay,” I said, my voice stiff. “You?”
“Not bad.” He took a step toward me, his eyes moving across the room. “Is that Harper with you?”
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