Broken man.
There was nothing boyish about Landon anymore. He’d physically changed over the course of the past several months in more ways than I could’ve imagined. His arms were covered in tattoos, ink hiding the scars of his past, different designs spiraling across his tan skin, but some things still remained the same.
His dopey, crooked smile. His perfectly carved out dimple. His eyes full of passion and desire.
Now, there he stood, still so painfully broken.
Damaged.
Broken.
Disheveled.
And mine.
Sigh.
Not that much of mine.
“Hi,” he said on an exhalation, stuffing his hands into his pockets.
“Hi,” I replied, trying to tame my wild heartbeats. I hadn’t known you could miss someone so much even when they were standing right in front of you. It was as if he was there physically, but the Landon I was hoping to see was so far away from me.
I crossed my arms, holding on to myself so tight, nervous that if I let go of the strong hold, I’d shatter into a million pieces right in front of the boy who controlled my heartbeats. “How’s your heart tonight?”
He didn’t answer my question. He moved in swiftly and pulled me into his embrace. His lips pressed against mine and he stole my kisses as if they were the life support keeping him alive that night. He inhaled my existence, leaving me feeling weak and shaky. His hands moved up the back of my shirt as he pressed his hardness against my thigh.
My body instantly fell into his touches, too. It betrayed my mind by allowing my legs to quiver in desire. His kisses tasted of whiskey, and that was the first red flag. Sure, he was old enough to drink, and sure, I wasn’t his mother and couldn’t scold him for partaking in alcohol, but the taste of the liquor burned a piece of my soul.
His kisses were filled with passion, and I hardly had enough time to register what exactly was happening. He pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it to the side of the room. He pulled mine off next and did the same.
“Land…wait…” I murmured breathlessly. He pinned me against the wall and began lapping his tongue against my neck, rolling it around in small circles, sucking the skin and nibbling against me as his hips rocked against mine.
“I want you so fucking bad,” he growled into my ear as he lifted one of my legs and placed it around his waist. “I want all of you tonight, Shay…please… Can I have you? Can I taste you? Can I swallow you whole tonight?”
“Yes.” I sighed the word out, feeling ashamed of my need to give him everything he wanted, ashamed of my need to give him myself when he refused to do the same. My brain shut down, and my wants took over. I kissed him back, harder as my hips pressed against his hardness.
“You are my poison,” I whispered, pain in my breaths as my body pressed against his.
His lips rolled against my collarbone as he unbuckled my jeans. “You’re my remedy,” he swore as his mouth pressed against mine.
Panic raced through me as I deepened my kiss against his lips. I swallowed him in, knowing the way he loved me was killing me, knowing by tomorrow he’d be gone, off to a world that didn’t include me. I wasn’t welcome in whatever universe he’d been creating over the past few months. I wasn’t a part of the future he was building. I was merely a small corner of his past that he only visited during his darkest days.
I was his shadows, stupidly praying for slivers of light to shine through me.
He called me his remedy, his safe haven, his freedom, but he was the opposite of that to me. He was my weakness, my kryptonite, my gated cage. While I lifted him up, he weighed me down. It confused me how love could feel so much like a war. While Landon was becoming victorious, I was dying on the battlefield.
This isn’t love, I thought to myself.
This was an addiction, an infectious disease that was going to leave me raw and broken—
just like my grandfather had left Mima, just like my father had shattered my mother.
How had we gotten here? How had we gone from feeling everything mind, body, and soul, to only feeling one another’s touches? How had we shifted into something that was solely physical?
He used to talk to me. He used to let me in. Now, whenever he came, it seemed he only craved my body, not my mind, not my thoughts, not me. We were strictly physical, nothing more, nothing less. I couldn’t even think of the last time he asked me how my heart was doing. If he had, I would’ve told him of its erratic beats.
In the morning, he’d be gone, and I’d be left with the broken pieces of my heart that Landon left behind. Why did I allow it to keep happening every single year? Why did I save myself for a man who wasn’t willing to give me anything more than just one night? Who was this person I was becoming?
I’d grown up surrounded by unstable relationships. I’d watched my grandfather take and take from my grandmother. I’d seen my father drain my mother dry. And still, somehow, I found myself in that same position.
It was as if the women of my family were cursed with broken love, a love that hurt more than it healed.
With every thrust inside of me, Landon took a piece of my soul. With every deep, passionate kiss, he stole away a part of me. I was falling apart for a boy who wasn’t even going to be around to catch my shattered pieces.
I couldn’t breathe as the panic in my chest began to rise every time his fingers brushed against my skin, every time his tongue swept against my core, every time his hardness slid inside of me.
We lay in the bed having sex, and I was wise enough to no longer confuse it with making love. Love didn’t feel this way. Love didn’t hurt. At least it wasn’t supposed to be painful.
I shut my eyes as tears began cascading down my cheeks. I turned my head to the side as Landon pinned my hands above my head. My sniffles increased more and more, causing him to open his eyes and look at me. He really looked at me. I figured that was the first time he’d looked my way since arriving at my place.
His movements came to a halt as he hovered over my body. “You’re crying.”
“You’re hurting me.”
He slid himself out of me and sat up. He raised an eyebrow. “I can go slower.”
I shook my head and sat up as well. “No, you’re hurting me, Landon,” I said once more, this time placing my hand over my chest. “You’re hurting me every time you come here and then disappear.” I pulled the sheet over my exposed body as I uncovered more and more of my damaged heart. “Every time you come, I feel whole for a split second. Then, you leave, and you take pieces of me with you. I am falling apart waiting for the day you’ll say you’re ready for this, for me, for us, and I don’t just mean my body. I mean my heart and my soul. Each day that passes, I feel more like a fool.”
He grasped the edge of the mattress and lowered his head. “Things have been crazy in Los Angeles… I’ve been trying to work on myself, and it’s hard, Shay.”
“I get that, I do. But does that means you can’t even reach out and call me? Or update me on anything? Nothing? All I get is you when you’re at your lowest?”
“Shay…”
“You make me feel like a whore,” I whispered, the words sliding off my tongue. “Something you can use and then toss to the side when you’re done with it. You get to stand up and walk away with nothing harmed.”
He grimaced and brushed his hand against the back of his neck as his bicep took form. “I don’t mean to hurt you. I never want to hurt you.”
“Just because you don’t mean to do it, doesn’t mean the hurt doesn’t exist.” I inched closer to him and took his hands into mine. My heart was racing as I leaned in and placed my forehead against his. “Tell me.” I sighed, closing my eyes. “Tell me you’re ready to let me back in emotionally. Tell me you want me. Tell me you’ll stay. Tell me I’m not making a fool of myself waiting for a boy who is no longer waiting for me. Tell me it’s our time.”
My heart beat wildly in my chest.
One beat, two beats,
three beats, four…
Then, he crushed me.
“I can’t say that.”
“You can’t or you won’t?”
His silence was so achingly loud.
I dropped hold of his hands and moved a few inches away from him. His eyes were filled with emotion, glassed over as if he were holding something inside of himself. As if he had so much to say, but still, no words.
“I waited for you,” I whispered, shaking my head in disbelief. “I waited for you. I kept this thing between us going for so long, because I love you, Landon, but clearly now this is just a sex thing for you.”
“It’s not like that, Shay. I didn’t think it all through. The moment I saw you, I just wanted to be near you, I wanted to hold you, and feel like everything was all right. You don’t know what it’s like being in the limelight now while trying to figure out your own messed up brain. It’s been hard lately.”
“How so?”
Again, silence.
He lowered his head and didn’t say another word.
Geez. When had that happened? When had he stopped letting me in? This wasn’t who we’d been. This wasn’t the love story we’d created. This was a completely different, twisted love that I didn’t recognize anymore.
I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t hold him because he was broken. I couldn’t protect his heart while giving him the freedom to crush mine. I couldn’t save him while surrendering myself.
I refused to be his sacrifice when he refused to let me in.
“You need to leave,” I whispered, the words burning as I pushed them off my lips.
“Shay…” He sighed and ran his hands through his wild mane.
“Don’t say my name if no truths are coming after it.”
More silence.
He stood up and began getting dressed.
Tears burned at the back of my eyes as I studied his body, bent over to pull up his jeans. Yet, I didn’t cry. I wouldn’t give him the gratification of seeing how he hurt me. I wouldn’t give him the pleasure of knowing the effect he had on my soul.
I wouldn’t give him any more of my tears.
I’d already cried enough over the boy who wasn’t ready for me, who would obviously never be ready for this, for us…for the love story we could’ve told.
“Say it’s over,” I said, standing tall even though my body wanted to crumple over.
“What?”
“I want you to say that we are over. I don’t want to make believe that you’re going to show up here again. I don’t want to think there still might be a chance for us to work this out. So, say it. Say it’s over. Say we’re done.”
The corner of his mouth twitched, and he hesitated for a split second. He didn’t even have enough nerve to look me in the eyes. “We’re done, Shay, you and me. Whatever this is, it’s over.”
Even though I’d told him to give me those words, they still pierced me as they were spoken.
That was it. We were done. Landon and Shay were officially over.
Before he left, he looked at me. His blue eyes were so heavy and he looked drained to his core. There was something there, something scary eating at his spirit, and all I wanted to do was hug him. I wanted to pull him in close to me and tell him that everything was going to be okay, but I couldn’t.
We were over, and he was no longer mine to hold.
Besides, he wouldn’t have let me in.
“I love you,” he confessed, and his words stole my breaths away. “I love you so much, Shay, and I’m so sorry I’m this messed up. I wish I could’ve been what you wanted, what you needed, what you deserved, but I can’t do that. I hope you have all the best things in this world come to you. I hope you get every wish you’ve ever wished for. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything in this fucking world, and I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry that I hurt you,” he said. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he walked out of the front door. His shoulders were rounded forward, and his hands were stuffed deeply into his pockets.
Oh, Landon.
My chest ached with regret, and worry, and love.
Didn’t he know it? Couldn’t he see? The only thing I’d ever wished for was for him to come back to me. He was my dreams, my hopes, my wishes, and my prayers, and now he was leaving me, and I was letting him go.
He left that night, and I lay in bed, unable to rest at all. The following days moved by slowly, and the knot in my stomach didn’t disappear. I couldn’t shake him from my mind. I couldn’t focus on school, on eating, on anything other than the empty part of my heart that was left after Landon walked away.
There were so many moments where I felt as if I’d made a mistake, as if I was in the wrong to push him away. I knew how his demons ate away at him each night. Who was I to try to rush his healing? Besides, I’d told him to take his time. Even worse, I’d told him to not rush. Yet there I was, with the voices of my own doubts and of others shouting inside my head, telling Landon to hurry up and figure out how to love me and let me in.
I’d made a mistake, a massive, harsh mistake that left me longing for the broken boy I loved.
I loved him.
I hadn’t even told him that before he left. When he’d told me he’d loved me, I hadn’t said I loved him times two. That was the worst part—thinking he’d walked away without knowing I loved him more than I’d ever loved another.
Whenever my phone dinged, I stupidly hoped it was Landon, writing me to explain things, writing me to bring clarity to my very confused mind. When I didn’t see his name, I sighed.
I opened the message anyway, seeing that it was a group text between Tracey, Raine, and me.
Tracey: WTF?! What a fucking asshole. I told you this was a thing.
My heart started racing as I saw she’d attached a link to an article. I clicked it open and read the headline over and over again.
New Couple Alert: Oscar-Winning Actress Sarah Sims has been spotted with the new boy on the block, up-and-coming actor Landon Pace.
What? No way. That wasn’t possible.
Clickbait. It had to be clickbait—there was no other option.
Sarah Sims was one of the most beautiful, breathtaking actresses in the industry at this time. She did it all, and she had enough awards to prove that. She was everything I wished to be and everything I was not. I was her biggest fan. He knew I was her biggest fan. He wouldn’t do that to me.
The article went on to explain how the two had been working on the promo for their film and had been seen getting cozy outside the interviews. That couldn’t be. There was no way Landon would hook up with a woman so soon after we’d parted ways. It hadn’t even been two weeks. There was no way he’d do such a thing, no way he’d get close to someone else while cutting me out.
Then came the pictures.
Pictures of Landon and Sarah freaking Sims cuddled up. Pictures of them getting lunch together. Photographs of her arms wrapped around him. Her lips kissing his cheeks. His smile.
His smile.
Oh my gosh, he never came to me with his smiles anymore, only his darkness. But with her, he was beaming from ear to ear with excitement. There was so much light in his eyes that it made me want to cry. And scream. And shatter.
Then the last photograph was their kiss.
Their. Kiss.
They. KISSED!
His lips against hers. Her lips against his.
They looked so perfect together, as if they were a puzzle with perfectly cut matching pieces, fitting together in a way I only dreamed of fitting beside Landon.
I was going to vomit.
Tracey: I told you that you were wasting your time with that loser.
There it was, the ‘I told you so’ Tracey had been waiting to give me for years now. Raine texted me separately outside of the group text.
Raine: Are you okay?
Raine: I’m on my way back to our place.
That night, I sobbed into Raine’s arms, feeling humiliated, saddened, and furious. My core hurt as I cried, my w
ords inaudible between my hiccupping. She soothed me, rocking me back and forth in her arms as I fell apart for a boy who’d betrayed me in the most painful way. Not once that night did Raine scold me for crying over a boy like him. Not once did she say she’d told me so like Tracey had. She simply held my broken pieces in her hands and told me to let my emotions out.
10
Landon
You’re hurting me.
I hadn’t stopped replaying those words in my heads since Shay spoke them.
They were on an endless loop in my mind. The one person I was never supposed to hurt, was in pain because of me, and I knew I needed to fix it.
I came back to Illinois a few weeks after the smoke cleared from my personal hell. I wanted to see Shay and explain everything to her. She deserved that, at least. She deserved a reason for why I was the way I was, and how everything fell apart for me over the past few months.
“You damn idiot,” I muttered to myself. I should’ve just told her what was going on. I should’ve let her in because I knew she’d probably be able to calm my wildness, but a part of me didn’t think I deserved to be healed.
Even though I fought it every single day, my depression was beginning to cripple me again. After being okay for so long, it was as if my father’s death acted as a slingshot, flung me into the air, and I was stuck in the webs of despair, unable to break free. I tried to ignore it. I pretended it didn’t exist, but that seemed to only make it worse. Sometimes you couldn’t run from depression—you had to face it head on, and when I turned to look mine in the eyes, it almost killed me.
The only time I felt safe falling apart was when I was in Shay’s arms. She felt like my safe haven. A place I could be both damaged and broken. She was my heaven and I was her hell.
I headed back to Shay’s to talk to her. When I parked the car, I walked up to her front door with a pathetic bouquet made of Laffy Taffys and peanut butter M&M’s, along with our notebook. Right before I was about to knock, I heard laughter from inside. I looked in the window and saw Shay tossing her head back in chuckles, looking happy as ever, and beside her was some guy, laughing with her. Some fucking guy with his hand against her thigh. Some fucking guy making her laugh. Who the fuck was that guy?
Landon & Shay - Part Two: (The L&S Duet Book 2) Page 9